Only HIST-UA 9XX courses fulfill the Workshop requirement and only HIST-UA 4XX courses fulfill the Capstone Seminar requirement. If you have any questions please contact the Undergraduate Program Administrator, Violeta Rivera at violeta.rivera@nyu.edu. *Please view Albert for the most accurate information. Schedule is subject to change in Albert. Cross-listed courses are not listed here.
Spring 2023 Undergraduate Course Schedule
All students welcome, including first-years and non-majors in addition to majors and minors.
Irvin Ibarguen
Mon. & Wed. 12:30-1:45pm
Bobst Room LL138
(Fullfills Intro US major requirement)
Developments in U.S. society within a global historical context. Topics: urbanization; industrialization; immigration; American reform movements (populism, progressivism, the New Deal, and the War on Poverty); and foreign policy. Beginning with the post-Civil War expansion of the U.S. into the American West, traces U.S expansion and increasing global influence through the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Cold War, Gulf Wars, and the War on Terror.
Erik Meddles
Tues. & Thurs. 9:30-10:45am
194 Mercer Room 304
(Fullfills Intro European major requirement)
This course surveys modern European history since about 1750. It proceeds chronologically and thematically, focusing on politics, ideas, and culture. The main topics are the Enlightenment, French Revolution, industrialization, nationalism, imperialism, mass politics, communism, fascism, world wars, decolonization, the fall of the Soviet Empire, and globalization.
Karl Appuhn
Tues. & Thurs. 11:00-12:15pm
TBD
(Fullfills Intro European major requirement)
*Required course for Science and Society Minor* Introduces students to the techniques used by the humanities and social sciences in studying the history of science, technology, and medicine. Topics include: Aristotelianism, the rise of experimentation and the Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment science, Darwin’s theory of evolution and the church, eugenics in 20th-century America, machines and humans during the 19th and 20th centuries, historical explanations of disease, and the history of Epidemics.
Tentative
Tues. & Thurs. 12:30-1:45pm
Kimmel Room 808
(Fulfills Non West major requirement)
Global Asia defines Asia as a space of perpetual globalization. Asian societies, cultures, and political economies have always been shaped by complex dynamic historical processes that expand human connectivity and transform territorial formations of power and authority. Global Asia is a dynamic natural and human environment, stretching from Russia and the Mediterranean to the Bering Sea and South Pacific, spanning regions all around the old Silk Roads and Indian Ocean, from ancient times to the present. This course explores Global Asia over two millennia up to the onset of industrial capitalist modernity, in the nineteenth century. Students will thus acquire a long-term view of History and a broadly transnational understanding of Asian History.
Karl Appuhn
Wed. 4:55-6:10pm
Silver Room 5290
Pandemics have been our constant companion ever since the first humans formed settled agricultural societies about 12,000 years ago. And Epidemic disease has been used to represent our cultural anxieties ever since. In the oldest surviving written text, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero Enkidu dies of a mysterious disease sent by the Gods. This course will examine the ways that filmmakers have employed pandemics as a way of exploring a wide range of social anxieties about the relationship between disease and society. Each film will be analyzed using concepts drawn from the history of medicine.
The below courses fulfill the US major requirement.
Susanah Romney
Tues. & Thurs. 11:00am-12:15pm
194 Mercery Room 304
(Also fulfills Pre-1800 major requirements)
This course explores witchcraft accusations in the early modern era. We will look at witchcraft in Europe, colonial Latin America, and colonial North America through primary and secondary readings. We will see the way that gender, sex, and sexuality influenced the thinking about the “crime” of witchcraft – one of the few crimes during the early modern period for which more women were accused than men.
Timothy Naftali
TBA
ROOM TBA
Description TBA
Steven Hahn
Tues. 2:00-4:45pm
KJCC 701
When we think of people who “make” history, we usually think about the high and the mighty, important political officials or intellectuals, prominent military or diplomatic leaders. But when we look at the past, the great changes that take place are often made possible by men and women who are not rich and famous, who don’t occupy places of power – who in fact come from humble roots, from minority populations, who struggle for power, and who envision the world in ways that elites cannot understand or outright reject. This course will explore some of these history makers, few of whom you’ve probably ever heard of, from back in the eighteenth century to our own day. Each week we will focus on a different history maker. We will read about them, read their texts, and learn about the differences they made to our history as well as the legacies they may leave for us. The history of the United States will look different by the end of the semester. Although this course will have its own syllabus of readings and assignments we will be partnering with a similar course being taught under the auspices of the NYU Prison Education Program at Wallkill Correctional Facility. The students at Wallkill are working toward an Associate's degree and, possibly, a Bachelor's degree but have limited access to the internet and a very small library to do their research for term papers. It is my hope that a final project for our course will include helping the Wallkill students carry out their research.
Ren Pepitone
Thurs. 4:55-7:35pm
KJCC 701
(Also fulfills Advanced European major requirement)
This course asks three fundamental questions--What is pornography? Who decides? Why does it matter?--to examine historical themes including contested sexual knowledge; pornography’s reinforcement of or challenges to existing power relations; and cultural and legal determinations over and regulations of pornographic material. We consider the historically contingent meanings of pornographic representation and censorship, as well as the problems and possibilities that arose as pornography expanded across various media. A useful focal point for an analytics of power, the course examines debates surrounding pornography and the ways that a variety of actors vied for access to or regulation of the pornographic. Examining a number of critical approaches, the course illuminates shifting conceptions, expressions, and regulations of the sexual.
David Oshinsky
Tues. 9:30-12:15pm
KJCC 607
Tens of millions of people, especially children, die needlessly each year from preventable diseases. Meanwhile, various groups with different models are engaged in confronting these global health emergencies-- from international and national agencies like the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control to private philanthropies like the Gates Foundation and Rotary International. This course will consider a core question-- How can we best work together as a global community to effectively control and eradicate preventable diseases?
Elisabeth Fink
Mon. and Wed. 12:30-1:45pm
Tisch Room LC11
Description TBA
Robert Cohen
Fri. 11:00-1:30pm
Kimball Room 301W
Reflecting the United States' birth as a slaveholding republic, many higher education institutions in pre-Civil War America promoted white supremacy ideologically and were subsidized economically by profits made via racial slavery. Students explore the role of US colleges and universities in institutionalizing racism, from this era of slavery though the heyday of Jim Crow racial segregation in the 20th century, and probe resistance to this regime among abolitionists, African American educators, Reflecting the United States' birth as a slaveholding republic, many higher education institutions in pre-Civil War America promoted white supremacy ideologically and were subsidized economically by profits made via racial slavery. Students explore the role of US colleges and universities in institutionalizing racism, from this era of slavery though the heyday of Jim Crow racial segregation in the 20th century, and probe resistance to this regime among abolitionists, African American educators, Reflecting the United States' birth as a slaveholding republic, many higher education institutions in pre-Civil War America promoted white supremacy ideologically and were subsidized economically by profits made via racial slavery. Students explore the role of US colleges and universities in institutionalizing racism, from this era of slavery though the heyday of Jim Crow racial segregation in the 20th century, and probe resistance to this regime among abolitionists, African American educators, integrationist lawyers, social scientists and civil rights organizations, as well as recent attempts by universities to confront their racist roots.
Thomas Sugrue
Mon. and Wed. 3:30-4:45pm
19 University Place Room 102
This course examines the political, cultural, social, and intellectual history of the US between 1954 and 1974. It considers the civil rights movement, national politics, liberalism and the rise of the New Right, the debate over Vietnam, student radicalism, sexual liberation and feminism, black and Latino power, the counterculture, the urban crisis, and white resistance. The course emphasizes the transformation of liberalism, the resurgence of conservatism, and the tensions between integration and separatism, between libertarianism and communitarianism that shaped the social movements of the sixties.
Michele Mitchell
Mon. & Wed. 11:00-12:15pm
Kimmell Room 803
This course is designed as a survey of African American people, politics, and culture since emancipation. From Reconstruction to migration, from world wars to mass social protest, we will assess how large-scale demographic and political phenomena shaped the daily lives of black women, men, and children. As much as we shall focus upon the ways in which a unified Afro-American experience has been forged since the Civil War, we will also consider how various factors—including class, region, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and ideology—contributed to substantial diversity within black communities by the mid-twentieth century. Moreover, a major goal of the course is to complicate “race”: at the same time that we explore the rigid yet arbitrary practices of racial segregation (“Jim Crow”), we shall also endeavor to discuss racial dynamics in the United States beyond binary notions of black and white. Throughout the term, we shall work with the artifacts and crafting of history as well. Not only will we read primary documents and analyze cultural expressions, then, we are also going to spend time thinking about how scholars have written African American history. Whereas this course is not an advanced seminar, it is nonetheless concerned with theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding the past.
The below courses fulfill the European major requirement.
Brigitte Bedos-Rezak
Wed. 2:00-4:45pm
KJCC 607
(Also fulfills Pre-1800 major requirement)
This seminar will examine the human life cycle as it was experienced and interpreted by men and women of medieval Europe. Age was, then as now, a significant dimension of individual lives, and our study of specific age groups, --children, teenagers, youth, adults, and the elderly-- will expose the effect age had on the course and on the representation of life, and the ways that this effect differed with geographic location, religion, gender, ethnicity, economic status, and social rank. There was therefore diversity in the patterns of life cycles, and in the prospects that stages of life held for medieval men and women. In this sociological model of the medieval life cycle, we will consider age as an aspect of social identity. Ageing registers the passage of time. Medieval philosophers, biblical exegetes, physicians, astrologers, encyclopedists, popular preachers, artists, all inherited from classical thought an understanding of the natural order according to which the universe (macrocosm) and man (microcosm) were harmoniously bound together by numbers. Medieval texts and iconography lavishly document pre-modern understandings of the differences between the ages of man, which varied according to disciplines. Thus, in Aristotelian biology, the life cycle was ordered by the three phases of growth, perfection, and decay. Elsewhere, the temporal cycle of the four seasons was made to correspond to the four human stages of life: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and old age. Alternatively, the seven planets inspired a life divided into seven stages. The most popular system took Genesis’s six-day creation of the world as the model for the six ages of man: infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity, old age. As the stages of life came to be described on grounds of intellectual, moral, and spiritual as well as bodily change, they stimulated a great deal of thought and artistic creativity in the later Middle Ages. Of course, the medieval life course impacted the body and took place within the material world. From the perspective of daily life, the life cycle is less a series of distinct stages than an integrated whole extending from conception to the afterlife. Our study of the rituals, social customs, and institutions that created linkages between the phases of the life cycle will comprehend pregnant women and their amulets and relic girdles; children who crafted their own toys; dubbing ceremonies; the sexually explicit clothing of young men; the maintenance agreements that secured food and shelter for the elderly who had to pass on their tenancies; as well as death and burials. Medieval human existence was perceived to extend beyond death. Death was held to constitute an age group, and the dead were believed to continue a parallel social existence. Not only was their memory honored, but actions took place to ensure their well-being in the afterlife. Thus, as we connect the biographies of people with their material environment, we come to realize that our two main categories of analysis, the life cycle and the life course, have differing analytical implications.
Hollis Dvorkin Shaul
Mon. & Wed. 4:55-6:10pm
Kimmel Room 808
(AND fulfills Pre-1800 major requirement)
Course description TBA
Ren Pepitone
Tues. 11:00-1:45pm
Silver Room 620
An introduction to various themes in the history of masculinities, including normative and transgressive gender practices; transnationalism and subaltern masculinities; and the role of leisure and the city in creating new possibilities for sexual and gender identities and practices. The course encourages students to think about what comprises masculine identities, and to consider masculinities beyond the confines of the male-assigned body. We examine a number of critical approaches to gender history, including second and third wave feminist critiques, Benjaminian Marxism, Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian analysis, and post-colonial theory, to illuminate gender performance in relation to domesticity, leisure, fashion, imperialism, race, war, cross-dressing, and sexuality.
Stefano Albertini
Mon. and Wed. 9:30-10:45am
Casa Italiana Auditorium
Course description TBA
Thomas Truxes
Mon. & Wed. 12:30-1:45pm
ERIN 102
(OR fulfills US OR Pre-1800 major requirements)
Students in this course will explore the roots of the global Irish presence. There were well established communities of Irish expatriates on the European continent by the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, and Irish mariners, merchants, settlers, and servants took part in the formation of the Atlantic World during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Important chapters in this story involve the American and French Revolutions and the creation of the new America nation.
Thomas Truxes
Mon. & Wed. 11:00-12:15pm
ERIN 102
(OR fulfills Advanced Non-West and Pre-1800 major requirements)
This course will sort out the myths and realities of the “Golden Age of Piracy.” The emergence of Spain as a political and economic superpower in the early sixteenth century bred waves of French, English, and Dutch interlopers, contraband slave traders, seaborne raiders, freebooters, and privateers eager to thwart her attempt at hegemony and expropriate her wealth. Their success gave rise to a multi-national and cross-cultural underworld of violence and crime on the high seas that flourished nearly unchecked from the mid-seventeenth century until its suppression in the early decades of the eighteenth century. The response of the early modern world to piracy and buccaneering is embedded in the “Law of Nations” and the “Law of the Sea,” progenitors of modern international law. Participants in this course will engage a rich body of primary and secondary historical sources to reconstruct and interpret the multiple contexts within which piracy and buccaneering operated.
Yanni Kotsonis
Wed. 11:00-12:15pm
Silver Room 618
(AND fulfills Pre-1800 major requirement)
Course description TBA
The below courses fulfill the Non-West major requirement.
Rebecca Karl and Laurence Coderre
Tues. and Thurs. 11:00-12:15pm
181 Mercer Street Room 251
China’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (GPCR/CR, 1966-1976) was one of the most important political and cultural events of the twentieth century. For various reasons, including the highly-contested nature of the decade and the difficulty of pursuing serious scholarship on the issue in the PRC, studies of the CR have remained partial and highly polemical. Nevertheless, in recent years, there has been an explosion of new work on the topic, the most intriguing of which seeks to rethink the CR in heretofore unexplored ways. Intended for students who have some background in modern Chinese history, cultural studies, literature and/ or film, this course will exploit and engage with new ways of thinking about this hugely consequential period.
Yijun Wang
Mon. 4:55-7:35pm
KJCC 701
(Also fulfills Advanced Non-West major requirement)This seminar is designed to introduce the cultural history of China through the lens of material culture. From the underground warriors of the First Emperor to Empress Wu’s fashion, materials culture shows all aspects of state and society in Chinese culture. Different from political and social history, which are structured by a linear time-line and national boundaries, material culture offers us a perspective to look at the connections, transmission, and nuanced changes by tracking the itineraries of things. Moreover, material culture offers us a chance to listen to the voice of nameless and faceless people in history, such as women and artisans. Students are going to read widely across the history of science and technology, art history, and anthropology. The big questions that we are going to ask in this seminar are: How does material culture rescue the agencies of women and other underrepresented historical subjects? What kind of history can we discover by utilizing non-textual sources? All readings are in English, no prior knowledge of East Asia is necessary.
Kevin Li
Tues. 4:55-7:35pm
KJCC 701
Course description TBA
Madina Thiam
Tues. 2:00-4:45pm
KJCC 701
Course description TBA
Robyn d'Avignon
Wed. 9:30-12:15pm
KJCC 607
(Also fulfills Pre-1800 major requirement)
This seminar explores the effects of colonialism and post-colonial power relations on the production of scientific, medical, and embodied knowledge about Africa. The course will focus on three broad themes covered across four units. First, we will read debates over the nature and definition of science and tradition. How have colonialism and post-colonial power relations defined the tasks of an African science? What does it mean to decolonize African thought or culture? Second, we will examine the nature of rationality. Is reason singular or plural? Culturally-bound or universal? To what extent are witchcraft, African healing practices, and ancestor veneration rational practices? Is there a “traditional” rationality? Third, we will explore the relationship between scientific representations, social practices, and local culture. What relationship exists between social practices and culturally shared categories of knowledge? Lastly, we will examine the intersection of capital and medical expertise. How have shifting conceptions of value and capital reshaped scientific and medical authority in Africa?
Susanah Romney-Shaw
Tues. and Thurs. 3:30-4:45pm
12 Waverly Room L120
(Also fulfills Pre-1800 major requirement)
This course explores witchcraft accusations in the early modern era. We will look at witchcraft in Europe, colonial Latin America, and colonial North America through primary and secondary readings. We will see the way that gender, sex, and sexuality influenced the thinking about the “crime” of witchcraft – one of the few crimes during the early modern period for which more women were accused than men.
Madina Thiam
Tues. and Thurs. 9:30-12:15pm
Kimmel Room 803
Course description TBA
Sinclair Thomson
Tues. & Thurs. 3:00-4:45pm
Kimmel 808
(Also fulfills Pre-1800 major requirement)
The purpose of the course is to introduce students to the long-term historical development of the Andean region. One of the core regions of Latin America, the Andes are distinguished by their extraordinary environmental conditions, the historical strength of indigenous culture, and the outcome of the engagement between native American society and Western colonial and capitalist forces. The course will cover pre-conquest, colonial, and contemporary periods, especially for the southern Andean region of what is today Peru and Bolivia. Course themes will include: Andean regional and cultural identity; Andean ecology and peasant agriculture; local native society and the Inka; colonialism, nationalism and race; global commodity production (from silver to coca) and economic dependency; Indian and working-class political struggles. The mix of class materials and sources includes ethnography and history, testimonial literature, journalism, photography, film, and fiction.
Manu Goswami
Thurs. 9:30-12:15pm
KJCC 607
Nationalism is a major political, social, and cultural phenomenon of the modern world. This course explores the emergence and circulation of ideas of nationhood and national belonging in diverse yet interlinked regions, including present day South Asia and South-East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe. The course opens with a set of general readings that help establish the larger historical and analytical issues at stake. The central questions and themes of the course include: How did ideas of nationhood and national belonging emerge within and across regions? What was the relation between empire and nation? Did nationalist movements alter the meaning and significance of collective identities based on religion, gender, or class? How were concepts of nation, territory, and economy placed together in different nationalist movements? Do contemporary processes of global economic change signal the fading of nationalisms and nation-states? Readings and class discussions will seek to address the historical and conceptual issues raised by nationalism as a global phenomenon.
Jim Peck
Thurs. 11:00-1:45pm
SILV 518
(OR fulfills US major requirement)
This course will focus on U.S. foreign policy in Asia since 1945. The ways U.S. global interests and concerns sought to shape Asian realities (and were shaped in turn by them) will be the touchstone for examining the Cold War in Asia. We will examine the following topics: Asia at the end of World War II; the occupation of Japan and early US global economic visions; the US and the Chinese revolution before the Korean War; the Korean War and the isolation of China; US India-Pakistan policy from the late 40s too 1965; the Vietnam War and the Kennedy/Johnson years; Nixon’s global geopolitical vision and his policies towards China; U.S. policy and CIA covert operations in Indonesia, Tibet, and Afghanistan; George H. W. Bush and Asia’s place in “a New World Order.”
Ada Ferrer
Tues. & Thurs. 3:30-4:45pm
SILV 520
Cuba was one of the first territories colonized by Spain and among the last of its colonies to secure its independence. Its struggle for independence from one country (Spain) helped usher in an age of imperialism by another (the United States). It was among the last territories in the hemisphere to abolish slavery, yet home to the first Black political party in the Americas. After the revolution of 1959, among the most radical of the modern world, it became an important international symbol of third world socialism and anti-imperialism and an unexpected focus of global Cold War struggles. Today, a new twenty-first century Cold War between the two countries seems alive and well. This course serves as a sustained examination of that complex and fascinating history. The course focuses in depth on the major themes that have shaped Cuban history to the present: race and slavery; nationalism and imperialism; reform and, in particular, revolution.
An introduction to historical methods; required for all History majors.
Julie Livingston
Mon. 11:00-1:45pm
181 Mercer Street Room 346
(Also fulfills Non-West major requirement)
Apartheid, a brutal system of racial segregation in South Africa, became official state policy in 1948 and ended through a transition to majority rule in 1994. Every South African social group was profoundly impacted by this exploitative system of legal controls, and depending on their position, many fought to direct, destroy, or simply survive it. This course traces the rise and fall of apartheid. We will examine political theory and social movements developed by South Africans and their allies to oppose the apartheid state; the social, economic, and cultural landscape of the apartheid era; the built environment and the infrastructure of segregation; intimate experiences of history; as well as some of the paradoxes of racial capitalism. This course is designed as a workshop for advanced methods in historical practice. Therefore written assignments and class discussion will emphasize the reading and interpretation of primary source documents, the development of research bibliographies, and the nature of debate among professional historians.
Andrew Lee
Wed. 11:00-1:45pm
Bobs LL 145
(Also fulfills European major requirement)
“Classical Anarchism” is an intellectual construction that frames a wide–ranging ideology within a narrow period that traditionally begins with the end of the eighteenth century and usually concludes in 1939 with the end of the Spanish Civil War. This construction is the base for your research. While it would appear to be concentrated in Europe and the Americas, there are anarchist movements all through the world, so we are not bounded geographically. The chronology is equally flexible.
Stephen Gross
Mon. 2:00-4:45pm
KJCC 607
(Also fulfills Advanced European major requirement)
This course introduces majors to the methodology of historical inquiry. Through four case studies of pivotal moments in twentieth century Europe, the class familiarizes students with the practices of historical analysis and writing, and helps them learn to “think historically.” By studying (1) World War I, (2) the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath, (3) Nazi Germany and the Second World War, and (4) postwar European reconstruction and integration we will trace how the continent descended into political violence and economic turbulence that destroyed conventional sources of authority, and how it subsequently strove to rebuild by forging new forms of political legitimacy and economic governance. The larger point is to learn to how to practice history through the study of 20th century Europe. We will learn how to pose historical questions, make historical claims, assess historical arguments, work with historical sources, and understand and even intervene in historical controversies. Ultimately, this course will (1) help you learn what defines history as a discipline distinct from other humanities or social sciences, and (2) prepare you for the advanced seminars that constitute the heart of the history major here at NYU.
Brigitte Bedos-Rezak
Tues. 9:30-12:15pm
KJCC 701
(Also fulfills Advanced European & Pre-1800 major requirements)
In this workshop, we will examine France during the Middle Ages (500-1500CE), even though historians have been hard put to find that France had a coherent identity prior to the 13th century. Traditional scholarship has stressed the role of kings in achieving unification by imposing statehood upon the territorial princes, regional lords, and local knights who had ruled over a society long termed feudal by influential historians (such as Marc Bloch). Modern scholars have challenged the very concept of feudalism, but do acknowledge the need to recognize France’s earlier regional units of rule, culture, and society in re-assessing the transformations of power and of economic and social structures that resulted in the late medieval emergence of France as a state. Also instrumental in this process were ideologies, myths, symbols, linguistic traits, artistic creativity, and attitudes toward those encountered either as neighbors (England, Empire, Iberian Peninsula) or as others (Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Asians), all of which all gradually fostered a self-awareness of national identity. A chief purpose of this workshop is to provide students the opportunity to utilize tools and practice methodologies of the historical discipline. Engaging with medieval textual, iconographic, and archeological materials, and with modern scholarship on Medieval France, students will identify and research a significant topic, and then present their analysis and interpretation of this material in both a spoken and a written paper. The spoken paper will be presented during the two last weeks of the semester, when the class will become a conference. Students will be expected to react to their classmates’ papers by asking questions and making comments. The written paper will be prepared through several shorter intermediary essays, each dealing with relevant aspects of the paper’s focus. Thus, students will conduct close readings of primary sources, compose a historiographical essay, prepare a paper proposal, and write an outline and early draft, before undertaking the composition of their final paper.
Tatiana Linkhoeva
Thurs. 2:00-4:45pm
181 Mercer Street Room 346
(Also fulfills Advanced Non-West major requirement)
This workshop invites students to think through WWII in East Asia in three stages: its causes; the course of conflict, and finally its consequences into our day. Our perspective is on the ideological dimension of the war as it was not simply about territory, but about conflicting ideas on how states should organize lives of their citizens. We will explore how the war tested communism, fascism, socialism, and liberal democracy, and with what consequences. Our focus will be the research and writing process, beginning with the feasibility of research topics, developing a sound argument with good evidence, and continuing to work together on historiography, methodology, analysis, and writing. Research topics could include issues of imperialism, planned economies, total mobilization, massive destruction, the coming of the atomic age, the end of European and Japanese colonialism, and the advent of the Cold War.
The research course that serves as the culmination of the major; one Capstone Seminar is required of all History majors before graduation; pre-requisite: Workshop.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Wed. 9:30-12:15pm
KJCC 701
(Also fulfills Advanced European major requirement)
*This is a capstone seminar for history majors. The history workshop is a prerequisite.* Fascism is back in the news today, with right-wing movements finding popularity in Europe and America and strongmen rulers finding favor. This interdisciplinary course gives us some history for our contemporary world by examining Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship that ruled Italy between 1922 and 1943. We address Fascism’s culture of violence; biopolitics and demographic policy; imperialism and war; Fascist ideology and visual culture; gender roles; anti-Fascism. We read Fascist speeches and anti-Fascist novels, watch newsreels and Fascist war films, and think more broadly about why dictators find support – and why they fail.
Erik Meddles
Mon. 2:00-4:45pm
Bobst LL 147
(Also fulfills Advanced US major requirement)
*This is a capstone seminar for history majors. The history workshop is a prerequisite.* In 1969, the Stonewall Riots sparked what many historians consider to be “the modern gay rights movement,” emphasizing visibility, coming out, and positive affirmations of queerness. But the struggle for rights for LGBTQ+ people began long before Stonewall, including the development of queer spaces, queer expression in the arts, and the struggle against Cold War blacklisting. Decades after Stonewall, LGBTQ+ rights have contested restrictions on transgender and homosexual military service, advocated for equal access to marriage, and appealed for the recognition of social and medical gender transitioning. This capstone course for History majors will cover the history of LGBTQ+ rights and will also consider how historical questions and research on this movement have evolved. Students will work in local and digital archives, analyze primary documents, discuss historiographic interventions, and will work collaboratively with their peers and the professor to write a 20 to 25-page research paper.
Sinclair Thomson
Wed. 2:00-4:45pm
Bobst LL 146
(Also fulfills Adv Non-West & Pre-1800 major requirement)
*This is a capstone seminar for history majors. The history workshop is a prerequisite.* The course will explore a series of challenges to European and United States control and its legacies in Latin America and the Caribbean from the sixteenth century to the present. We will consider definitions of colonialism and imperialism, internal colonialism and neo-colonialism, and we will examine native, African-diasporic, nationalist, socialist, and “postcolonial” critiques of these projects. This will involve looking at different actors – Spanish, indigenous, African-descended, mestizo, and creole – and their intellectual as well as political initiatives to destabilize or overturn colonial forces. The course will be run in a workshop fashion, with students designing and conducting their own research project and producing a primary-source-based paper on a topic related to the theme of the course.
Nicole Eustace
Thur. 2:00-4:45pm
KJCC 701
(Also fulfills Advanced European OR Advanced Non-West major requirements)
*This is a capstone seminar for history majors. The history workshop is a prerequisite.* The class is designed to follow the practices of a professional writing workshop. We will start the semester by reading a number of model microhistories, based in the early modern Atlantic. Doing so will allow students to gain familiarity with key themes in early Atlantic history—from slavery and imperialism to the rise of commerce and new cultural contacts in the early modern world—while thinking seriously about the process of producing stories and arguments around those themes. After an initial period of reading and reflection, students will apply their insights to the process of producing microhistories of their own. Through a guided step-by-step process, each student will develop a research project, share that project with the class, and then work with fellow students to draft and revise their microhistories.
Two-semester sequence that enables qualified majors to graduate with Honors in History.
Andrew Sartori
Mon. 9:30-12:15pm
KJCC 607
These courses are sponsored by neighboring departments and count as credit towards the major/minor.
TBA
Mon. and Wed. 2:00-3:15pm
TBA
(Also fulfills European major & Pre-1800 major requirements)
Anne O'Donnell
Fri. 12:30-2:30pm
19UP 144
(Also fulfills Non-West major requirement)
Course Description TBA
James Peck
Thurs. 2:00-4:30pm
TBA
(Also fulfills Non-West major requirement)
This course focuses on the American War in Vietnam – its origins, development, and the ways it was fought. It examines how and why American geo-political and military strategies led to, and shaped, the course of the war. Historical accounts will be regularly supplemented with a reading of parts of the Pentagon Papers and an oral history of those involved in the Vietnam War as told from all sides. The course begins by examining Vietnamese cultural and national identity and the impact of French colonialism. We will then examine in greater detail the following topics: the war from 1946-1954 between the French and the Viet Minh; the early American OSS links with Ho Chi Minh and the reasons for the Truman administration’s deepening commitments to the French; the policies of the Eisenhower administration – from Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Conference in 1954 to the decision to back Ngo Dien Diem; the deepening commitment of the Kennedy administration; the escalating war of the Johnson years; and the end of the war under Nixon and Ford. We shall conclude by discussing the legacies of the war and interpretations of them. The US government documents in the Pentagon Papers will be discussed to decipher their meaning and language, while carefully assessing the arguments used to justify American policy.