ANCIENT HISTORY OF EGYPT

A survey of the history of ancient Egypt from the first appearance of the state to the conquest of the country by Alexander of Macedon, with emphasis of the political history, but also with attention to the cultural, social, and economic developments.

• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Marc Van de Mieroop
  CULPA: 23 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

The Romans and Their World

This course examines the history of the Roman Empire from the formation of the Roman monarchy in 753 BCE to the collapse of the Western Empire in 476 CE. At the heart of the class is a single question: how did the Roman Empire come to be, and why did it last for so long? We will trace the rise and fall of the Republic, the extension of its power beyond Italy, and the spread of Christianity. Epic poetry, annalistic accounts, coins, papyri, inscriptions, and sculpture will illuminate major figures like Cleopatra, and features of daily life like Roman law and religion. The destructive mechanics by which Rome sustained itself--war, slavery, and environmental degradation--will receive attention, too, with the aim of producing a holistic understanding this empire.  Discussion Section Required.

• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Sailakshmi Ramgopal
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

The Year 1000: A World History

This course is designed to introduce students to the study of premodern history, with a substantive focus on the variety of cultures flourishing across the globe 1000 years ago.  Methodologically, the course will emphasize the variety of primary sources historians use to reconstruct those cultures, the various approaches taken by the discipline of history (and neighboring disciplines) in analyzing those sources, and the particular challenges and pleasures of studying a generally “source poor” period. The course queries the concepts of “global history” and “world history” as applied to the “middle millennium” (corresponding to Europe’s “medieval history”), by exploring approaches that privilege connection, comparison, combination, correlation, or coverage.

• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Adam Kosto
  CULPA: 20 Info
• 4 points

The Year 1000: A World History - DISC

The Year 1000 - DISC

Required zero-credit/ungraded discussion for The Year 1000: A World History lecture (HIST UN1942). Discussion section day & times to be determined.

• T 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• W 7:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• R 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• R 5:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• 0 points

HIST JESUS/ORIGIN-CHRISTIANITY

The goal of this course will be to subject the source materials about Jesus and the very beginnings of Christianity (before about 150 CE) to a strictly historical-critical examination and analysis, to try to understand the historical underpinnings of what we can claim to know about Jesus, and how Christianity arose as a new religion from Jesus life and teachings. In addition, since the search or quest for the historical Jesus has been the subject of numerous studies and books in recent times, we shall examine a selection of prominent historical Jesus works and theories to see how they stand up to critical scrutiny from a historical perspective.

• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Richard A Billows
  CULPA: 40 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

EARLY MOD EUR: PRINT & SOCIETY

This course will examine key cultural, political, and religious developments in early modern Western Europe (c. 1500-1800) using the lens of print technology and culture as entry point. From the Reformation of Luther, to the
 libelles
 of pre-revolutionary France, from unlocking the mysteries of the human body to those of the heavens, from humanist culture to the arrival of the novel, no important aspect of European culture in the early modern centuries can be understood without taking into account the role of print. Its material aspects, its marketing and distribution channels, and its creation of new readers and new “republics” form the contours of this course.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Elisheva Carlebach
  CULPA: 6 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY

An introductory survey of the history of Russia, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union over the last two centuries. Russia’s role on the European continent, intellectual movements, unfree labor and emancipation, economic growth and social change, and finally the great revolutions of 1905 and 1917 define the “long nineteenth century.” The second half of the course turns to the tumultuous twentieth century: cultural experiments of the 1920s, Stalinism, World War II, and the new society of the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years. Finally, a look at very recent history since the East European revolutions of 1989-91. This is primarily a course on the domestic history of Russia and the USSR, but with some attention to foreign policy and Russia’s role in the world.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Yana Skorobogatov
  Info
• 4 points

Shadow of the Sun King: Early Modern Fra

Early Modern France

This course will offer a survey of French history from the Wars of Religion to the Revolution, when the kingdom was the predominant power in Europe. Topics to be addressed include the rise of the Bourbon monarchy, the crystallization of absolutism as a political theology, the spectacular rise and collapse of John Law’s financial system, the emergence of the philosophe movement during the Enlightenment, and the gradual de-legitimation of royal power through its association with despotism. Thematically, the course will focus on shifting logics of representation—that is, the means by which political, economic, and religious power was not only reflected, but also generated and projected, through a range of interrelated practices that include Catholic liturgy, courtly protocols, aristocratic codes of honor, financial experimentation, and the critical styles of thinking and reading inculcated by the nascent public sphere.

• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Charly J Coleman
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 4 points

POLITICAL HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY AFRICA

POLITICAL HIST CONTEMP AF

This course offers a survey of the political history of contemporary Africa, from independence to the present day, with a focus on the states and societies south of the Sahara. We will use the tools of historians to study African political life: who held political power; how they wielded it and to what ends; and what kinds of opposition they faced. An important sub-theme involves American policy and actions, including those of civil society organizations, vis-à-vis African nation-states.

• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Gregory Mann
  CULPA: 15 h-index: 13 Info
• 3 points

THE VIETNAM WAR

April 30, 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Upon the semicentennial, this special edition lecture course will reflect on the half century of scholarship and art to examine war’s history, including its origins, evolution, and conclusion, and assess its legacies today. Rather than just view the war as an event in American or Vietnamese history, this course will examine the war from a multitude of perspectives by inviting special lecturers, analyzing primary documents, dissecting novels and memoirs, screening war films, and drawing from the rich historiography of that oft-studied war. Throughout this course, we will ask questions that continue to elicit fierce debate: What brought the United States and Vietnam to war? What impact did the war have on North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, and American politics? How did decisions made in the corridors of power on both sides of the Pacific affect everyday people on the battlefronts and homefronts? Why did it end the way it did? What lessons can we draw from the Vietnam War?

Attendance and participation in lectures and weekly discussion sections is mandatory. All the readings and episodes are available online through Butler Library (CLIO) or Canvas (C).

• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Lien-Hang Nguyen
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

THE VIETNAM WAR - DISC

• T 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• T 5:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• W 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• W 5:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• R 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• R 5:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• 0 points

US INTELLECTUAL HIST 1865-PRES

This course examines major themes in U.S. intellectual history since the Civil War. Among other topics, we will examine the public role of intellectuals; the modern liberal-progressive tradition and its radical and conservative critics; the uneasy status of religion ina secular culture; cultural radicalism and feminism; critiques of corporate capitalism and consumer culture; the response of intellectuals to hot and cold wars, the Great Depression, and the upheavals of the 1960s. Fields(s): US

• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Casey Blake
  CULPA: 22 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

US INTELLCT HIST 1865-PRES-DIS

• R 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• R 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• R 5:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• R 6:10 p.m.-7 p.m.
• 0 points

HISTORY OF THE SOUTH

A survey of the history of the American South from the colonial era to the present day, with two purposes: first, to afford students an understanding of the special historical characteristics of the South and of southerners; and second, to explore what the experience of the South may teach about America as a nation.

• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Barbara J Fields
  CULPA: 22 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

American History at the Movies

Amer. Hist. at the Movies

This lecture explores major topics in modern American history through an examination of the American film industry and some of its most popular films and stars. It begins with the emergence of “Hollywood” as an industry and a place in the wake of WWI and ends with the rise of the so-called ‘New Hollywood’ in the 1970s and its treatment of the 1960s and the Vietnam War. For much of this period, Hollywood’s films were
not
protected free speech, making movies and stars peculiarly reflective of, and vulnerable to, changes in broader cultural and political dynamics. Students will become familiar with Hollywood’s institutional history over this half-century in order to understand the forces, both internal and external, that have shaped the presentation of what Americans do and don’t see on screens and to become skilled interpreters of American history at the movies.

• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Hilary-Anne Hallett
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

MEXICO FROM REVOL TO DEMOCRACY

This course will survey a century of Mexican history that oscillated between an authoritarian regime (Porfirio Díaz’s presidency, 1876-1911), a massive revolutionary upheaval (1911-1920), the construction of a single-party, corporatist regime that became a model of stability and economic success (that of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional), and a complex transition to democracy (culminated in the July 2000 presidential elections but, one might argue, still ongoing).

Politics will be defined in broad terms. Lectures and readings will consider social and cultural processes from diverse perspectives. Topics will include: migration and population growth; economic expansion and stagnation; urban history, crime and punishment; gender, women and families; elite and popular culture; labor, agrarian reform; the left, electoral and armed insurgency; relations with the United States and other countries of Latin America. Local and regional perspectives will be offered as an alternative against prevailing state-centered, national narratives. Combining thematic and chronological lectures and discussion of primary sources, the course will examine the most exciting recent literature on Mexican society, culture, and politics.

Discussion of primary sources will be an important component of this course. Classes will combine lecture and discussion of historical contents with discussion of primary documents. These documents will include texts (political manifestos, essays, letters, testimonies, legislation, literature) as well as movies, music and visual records (mostly photography and painting). Discussions sections will also use those documents to expand on topics presented in the lectures and the required readings.

• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Pablo Piccato
  CULPA: 22 h-index: 20 Info
• 4 points

The Ottoman Empire and the West in the 1

“The Ottoman Empire and the West” is a course designed to familiarize undergraduate students with the major developments concerning the Ottoman Empire’s relations with the West throughout the ‘long’ nineteenth century, roughly from the end of the eighteenth century to the outbreak of World War I. The course will adopt a predominantly chronological structure but will address a wide range of themes, from politics and ideology to economics and diplomacy, and from religion and culture to gender and orientalism.

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Edhem Eldem
  Info
• 4 points

Provinces of the Roman Empire

Between the mid-third century BCE and mid-second century BCE, Rome rapidly acquired a Mediterranean empire consisting of territories that it divided into administrative units called provinces. Through the examination of documentary and literary sources, and art and archaeology, this seminar traces the formation and growing complexity of Roman provincial administration and life in the provinces during the Republic and imperial period. Topics of study include the responsibilities of the provincial governor and his staff; the creation of provincial landscapes through the destruction of cities and construction of long-distance roads; the emergence of new provincial identities; revolts against Rome; and provincial expressions of loyalty to the emperor.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Sailakshmi Ramgopal
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

Solidarity in the Age of Decolonization

Solidarity / Decolonizati

The central demand in numerous contemporary emancipation movements is “decolonization,” irrespective of the presence of a formal empire. This class addresses how we think about decolonization today. What does paying attention to the big picture view of decolonization reveal about the term’s changing meaning? We will look at events, paying attention to how decolonization is perceived by different people, in different places, at different times–not only in the colony but in the metropole. How do “sympathetic” members of society react? What does it mean to sympathize? What kinds of solidarity were formed between metropolitan activists and anti-colonial leaders? What about solidarity-activists in the empire? What counts as solidarity? How does this fit into our understanding of decolonization? These are the questions that will be guiding our course. We will focus our topic by concentrating on liberation from the maritime empires of Great Britain and France (though these are just a fraction of independence movements), starting with the independence of the American colonies and ending with contemporary debates on the notion of decolonization. We will also direct our attention to specific global issues connected to the process of decolonization: the world economy, human rights, apartheid, and transnational protest.The course will be organized like a seminar–there are no lectures, only discussions of the assigned texts.

• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Roxanne S Houman
  Info
• 4 points

Feminist Histories of Gender and Sexuali

Feminist Histories of Bri

This undergraduate seminar offers students an introduction to the histories of gender and sexuality in Modern Britain since the early-nineteenth century. The advent of new nation states, industries, empires, and political ideologies transformed the place of gender and sexuality in British society. Yet the attempt to document those historical transformations changed the ways that feminist historians wrote that history too. This class thus introduces students to the major topics in the history of gender and sexuality in modern Britain: the relationship between industrialization and family labor, conceptions and categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality, the impact of imperialism on gender roles, queer histories of urbanization and the metropolis, and the place of gender, race, and sexuality in the development of the modern state. But it will also ask students to consider how historians like Sally Alexander, Catherine Hall, Judith Walkowitz, Durba Mitra, Samuel Rutherford, and Kennetta Hammond Perry have applied and engaged the major theorists of gender and sexuality, including Frederick Engels, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Carole Pateman, Henri Lefebvre, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Stuart Hall, and Hazel Carby. In doing so, students will learn both the histories and the theories that comprise the feminist historical tradition of Modern Britain.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Roslyn E Dubler
  Info
• 4 points

TELLING ABOUT THE SOUTH

A remarkable array of Southern historians, novelists, and essayists have done what Shreve McCannon urges Quentin Compson to do in William Faulkners Absalom, Absalom!--tell about the South--producing recognized masterpieces of American literature. Taking as examples certain writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, this course explores the issues they confronted, the relationship between time during which and about they wrote, and the art of the written word as exemplified in their work. Group(s): D Field(s): US Limited enrollment. Priority given to senior history majors. After obtaining permission from the professor, please add yourself to the course wait list so the department can register you in the course.

• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Barbara J Fields
  CULPA: 22 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

The Seven Years War (1754-1763), Glob

THE SEVEN YEARS WAR

Prerequisites: History Majors Preferred This research seminar explores the causes, course, and consequences of the Seven Years’ War, arguably the first world war in modern history. Topics include the origins of the conflict in North America and in Europe, the relationship between imperial rivalry in the American colonies and the contest for supremacy in central Europe, the impact of the war on trade and settlement in South Asia, the West Indies, the Philippines, and West Africa, and the legacies of the conflict for British imperial expansion in India, North America, Senegal, and the southern Caribbean. During the second half of the semester, members of the seminar will devote the majority of their time to the research and writing of a substantial paper.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Christopher L Brown
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 4 points

One Person, One Vote?

In recent years, the American public has ranked worries over the future of American democracy among its top concerns. American citizens consider free and fair elections to be the bedrock of U.S. representative democracy. However, for most of U.S. history, there has been a profound gap between the ideals of democratic representation and its reality, with many Americans being disenfranchised. This course will examine the history of efforts to secure voting rights for U.S. citizens, including women and people of color, as well as continuing attempts to curtail or suppress these rights. Further, we will survey how debates over voting rights intersected with conflicts over the nature of political representation, and how the ideal of “fair representation” has been construed and fought over during the 20th century. Topics will include: the nineteenth amendment, Jim Crow disenfranchisement in the U.S. South, the Voting Rights Act, histories of apportionment and redistricting, as well as fights over the electoral college.

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Alma Steingart
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

Women and Gender in Latin America and th

Women & Gender-Latin Amer

This course examines women’s experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean from colonial times to current days. We will investigate debates on class, race, religion and ethnicity while looking at major historical events. We will rely on several primary and secondary sources such as archival documents, oral histories, arts and visual resources that will help us understand how gender shaped the political, social, and economic structures of Latin America and the Caribbean.

We will also learn about important women, such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Chica da Silva, examine the role of women warriors and spies in the Wars of Independence and the Haitian Revolution, and discuss how multiple gender-based issues are deeply tied to the history of Latin America and the Caribbean, such as indigenous gender systems, Catholicism and education, female suffrage, feminism and populism, conservatism, the ideology of separate spheres, the politicization of motherhood, among others.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Daniela M Traldi
  Info
• 4 points

Jews in Early Modern Europe, 1492-1750

Jews Early Mod Euro 1492-

A seminar on the historical, political, and cultural developments in the Jewish communities of early-modern Western Europe (1492-1789) with particular emphasis on the transition from medieval to modern patterns. We will study the resettlement of Jews in Western Europe, Jews in the Reformation-era German lands, Italian Jews during the late Renaissance, the rise of Kabbalah, and the beginnings of the quest for civil Emancipation. Field(s): JWS/EME

• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Elisheva Carlebach
  CULPA: 6 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

History of African Muslims: Timbuktu and

HIST AFRICA MUSLIMS TIMBU

This seminar uses the celebrated city of Timbuktu as a starting point from which to explore the history of West African Muslims and their scholarship from the age of the Sudanic empires (10th-17th centuries) through the troubled present in the Republic of Mali. Key questions include the relationship between scholars and rulers, the boundaries of the Muslim community, the entanglements of race, slavery, and religious practice, and the impact of secular governance on the Muslim scholarly tradition.

• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Gregory Mann
  CULPA: 15 h-index: 13 Info
• 4 points

SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR

A year-long course for outstanding senior majors who want to conduct research in primary sources on a topic of their choice in any aspect of history, and to write a senior thesis possibly leading toward departmental honors. Field(s): ALL

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Marc Van de Mieroop
  CULPA: 23 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Hannah Farber
  h-index: 1 Info
• Instructor: Paul T Chamberlin
  CULPA: 3 Info
• Instructor: Michael F Stanislawski
  CULPA: 66 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Matthew J Connelly
  CULPA: 15 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Medieval Religion: definitions and conce

MEDIEVAL RELIGION: DEF &

In this course, the concept of religion stands at the heart of our exploration, as it shaped and was shaped by the medieval world. We will critically engage with definitions and interpretations of religion, both as a subject of scholarly debate in the study of religions and as a pivotal force in medieval history. The course will examine how Christianity, Judaism, and Islam were not only systems of belief but also comprehensive frameworks that structured medieval society, politics, and intellectual life. Through an analysis of religious texts, practices, and institutions, we will explore how religion was lived and understood in the Middle Ages, while also addressing broader theoretical debates in the history of religion. This approach invites us to reflect on the historical construction of "religion" as a category and its relevance in shaping our understanding of the medieval world.

• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Benedicte Sere
  Info
• 4 points

FRENCH AMERICA 1534-1804

A study of the French Atlantic World from the exploration of Canada to the Louisiana Purchase and Haitian Independence, with a focus on the relationship between war and trade, forms of intercultural negotiation, the economics of slavery, and the changing meaning of race.

The demise of the First French Colonial Empire occurred in two stages: the British victory at the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, and the proclamation of Haitian Independence by insurgent slaves in 1804. The first French presence in the New World was the exploration of the Gulf of St. Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534. At its peak the French Atlantic Empire included one-third of the North American continent, as well as the richest and most productive sugar and coffee plantations in the world.

By following the history of French colonization in North America and the Caribbean, this class aims to provide students with a different perspective on the history of the Western hemisphere, and on US history itself. At the heart of the subject is the encounter between Europeans and Native Americans and between Europeans and Africans. We will focus the discussion on a few issues: the strengths and weaknesses of French imperial control as compared with the Spanish and the British; the social, political, military, and religious dimensions of relations with Native Americans; the extraordinary prosperity and fragility of the plantation system; evolving notions of race and citizenship; and how the French Atlantic Empire shaped the history of the emerging United States.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Pierre Force
  CULPA: 12 h-index: 11 Info
• 4 points

Resources and Regimes: Environmental His

Environmental Histories o

Environmental historical research began to intensify in the 1960s to interpret human history through the lens of historical and ecological processes. This framework of interpretation gained impetus with the growing concerns of environmental degradation, pollution, and man-induced climate change. The course is intended to demonstrate the intricate relationship and the intertwined nature of societies with their environments using case studies and examples from Central Europe. Firstly, there will be a review of how environmental history thinks of processes in the disciplines and sub-disciplines that have developed and what approaches exist in the field to human-nature relations. Then sources the discipline utilizes will be overviewed. Classes then look at the formation of water management systems, forest utilization the exploitation of soil and mineral goods, and the impact of the different political, economic, and social changes on the landscapes from the period of state formations in the region (ca. tenth – eleventh centuries) to the change of regimes at the turning of the 1980s and the 1990s. While the main focus will be on the long-term changes, case studies look at short-term environmental processes – floods, droughts, sea surges, tornadoes, epidemic diseases – to introduce concepts of resilience and vulnerability.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Andras Vadas
  Info
• 4 points

A Global History of East Central Europe

ECE Before the Modern Tim

Looking at Central and Eastern Europe through the systematic application of transnational methods and from a truly global perspective can offer original and valuable insights. Central and Eastern Europe has tended to be a semi-peripheral area in the global scheme of things, and it has thus been much closer to the global average than some of the parts of the world on which much of recent global historiography has focused. Central and Eastern European countries have also developed numerous and still underexplored intercontinental connections outside the Western core that should be of special interest in our age of multipolarity. At the same time, it can be assumed that this diverse area, as a peripheral part of Europe in a formerly largely Eurocentric world. The global history of the region is not intended to exaggerate the role Central and Eastern Europe played in transcontinental processes in the last millennia. It rather aims to show how the diverse people of the region have come to be interconnected with and shaped by phenomena originating in all the various parts of the globe, transnational and global trends that certainly have exerted a much greater impact on their country’s multifaceted history than the other way round.

The course does not intend to deconstruct national narratives as such. It attempts to substantially enrich such narratives and reconceptualize them for an age of manifold global interconnectedness. To put it differently, the words “East Central European” and “global” are equally significant parts of the course’s title. It aims to re-contextualize medieval and early modern histories of Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland by looking at global processes in their regional context rather than looking at the region as an exceptional and distinct area. While the region has traditionally been described in scholarship as the periphery of Western Christianity, there has been little understanding of the region as an area with close ties towards the Eastern Mediterranean (Byzantium), towards Eastern Europe (towards the Ruses) and how global processes such as climate change, trade connections, political representation or artistic changes reached (and spread from) the region.

• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Andras Vadas
  Info
• 4 points

A Cultural History of the Soviet Century

Culture of the USSR

In the English-language literature, the history of the Soviet Union is often dominated by the Cold War. As a result, events central to the lives of Soviet citizens are viewed within a wider geopolitical context that often overlooks regional and ethnic specificity. Cultural products from music, film, dance, and literature provide insight into individual and collective responses to traumatic events. In this course, students study the history of the USSR through the lens of memory and trauma studies by analyzing cultural artifacts as a form of testimony and social history. This course engages with varied cultural products chronologically from the formation of the Union and Revolution through Soviet collapse and the kleptocratic rise of Putin. Materials include poetry and prose by Solzhenitsyn, Mandelstam, and Akhmatova, music by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Vysotski, primary sources and speeches, and historical analyses by Kotkin, Snyder, and Fitzpatrick. To present a de-Russified view of the USSR, materials also include those produced by marginalized Soviet populations like Indigenous and Eveny scholars, Holocaust and GULAG survivors, and veterans.

• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Alexandra Birch
  Info
• 4 points

RACIAL HISTORIES OF EUROPE (15th- 21st C

After being somewhat eclipsed after World War II, race has reemerged as a central preoccupation in Western European politics, making it more important than ever to understand how the concept and practices have developed and how they have shaped the history of Europe.

In this class, we will focus on historiographical debates about race, including how and when it emerged as an ideology and how it has permeated the history of modern Europe.  We will emphasize the histories of Spain, France, Britain and Germany. We will focus on a set of connected debates, starting with the relationship between race and modernity. Was race a product of internal European dynamics in the late middle-ages related to the status of Christians of Jewish and Muslim origin or of social relations in the Americas following the conquest and the Atlantic slave trade? How much does the history of race share with the history of capitalism and imperialism? What was the role of scientific and artistic representations in the production of race? How was race connected to class, gender and sex? How and when did it become a central dimension of historical narratives and especially of how Europeans told their history? How shall we understand the relationship between antisemitism and other forms of racism in the
longue durée
history of Europe? How have historians analyzed the role of racism in the final solution and, conversely, how has race been transformed after the holocaust and into the present?

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Emmanuelle Saada
  CULPA: 13 Info
• 4 points

Ever Closer Union?: Histories of Europea

European Integration from

This class offers an introduction to the history and the practice of European integration since 1945. In 1945, western Europe lay in ruins after one of the largest and most destructive wars in world history. By 1957, however, six European governments decided to come together in a European Economic Community and, some sixty years later, they had built a European Union that included twenty-seven countries and, by combined size, constituted the second largest economy in the world. Why would six states just ravaged by occupation and war so quickly volunteer to share sovereignty with one another and why did so many other governments decide to join up later? What kinds of European unification did they envisage, how did these visions of European integration change, and what kind of united Europe did they build?

To answer these questions, this class explores the evolution of European integration from the end of the Second World War and the collapse of European empires to the end of the Cold War and the creation of the European Union. We will reconstruct various and evolving visions for the integration of Europe, studying the place of Europe in a world of empires to the place of Europe in a globalizing economy. We will examine the rise of the major policies and institutions of the European Community: from agricultural policy to environmental law, from demands for democratic representation to the regulation of international migration. All the while, we will assess how the European Community responded to the major events of the late twentieth century – including decolonization, the oil crisis, neoliberalism, the end of the Cold War, the migrant crisis, and the rise of right-wing populism – and interrogate the impact of European institutions upon those events. To do so, we will read widely across history and political science and we will make extensive use of new primary source collections, especially those newly digitized by the Historical Archives of the European Union. This course thus doubles as a history of European integration and an examination of Europe’s changing place in the world.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Roslyn E Dubler
  Info
• 4 points

Rousseau and the Modern Self

This seminar is the third in a series on the history of modern conceptions of the self.  Other figures in the series include Montaigne, Pascal, and Tocqueville.

This seminar focuses on Rousseau, and in particular
Emile
, his treatise on education and psychology.  We will pay particular attention to how he draws from both Montaigne and Pascal to develop a third conception of the self and its development.  We also examine
Reveries of a Solitary Walker
to see how Rousseau’s general theory of the self relates to his understanding of himself at the end of his life.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Mark Lilla
  CULPA: 57 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

The Bible in Early America

Anglo-American colonists enjoyed a relatively high degree of literacy, and what they mostly did with that literacy was read the Bible. This course shows how early American culture and the course of American history were shaped by extraordinarily widespread reading and oral transmission of the Bible. Each week will focus on the biblical texts, dilemmas, and crises of a different period in early American history. Topics include Puritan colonization, Native American conversion, Black Bible culture, American nationalism, religious mysticism, and the slavery debate.

This course will have an immersive element: in order to better understand the intellectual and psychological effect of constant contemplation of the Bible, students will experiment with text exegesis, memorization, dream analysis, and the interpretation of contemporary events in the style of early Anglo-American Bible readers.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Hannah Farber
  h-index: 1 Info
• 4 points

Harm Reduction and/as Historical Analysi

Harm Reduction Hist Analy

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Through a series of secondary- and primary-source readings, digital archive research, and writing assignments, we will explore the history of harm reduction from its origins in activist syringe exchange, health education, and condom distribution, to the current moment of decriminalization, safe consumption politics, and medically assisted treatment (MAT). At the same time, we will think about how harm reduction perspectives challenge us to rethink the histories and historiography of substance use, sexuality, health, and research science. Along with harm reduction theory and philosophy, relevant concepts and themes include syndemic theory and other epidemiological concepts; structural inequities (structural violence, structural racism); medicalization; biomedicalization; racialization; gender theory and queer theory; mass incarceration, hyperpolicing, and the carceral state; Transformative Justice; Liberatory Harm Reduction; the “housing first” approach; political and other subjectivities; and historical constructions of “addiction”/“addicts”, rehabilitation/recovery, what are “drugs,” and the “(brain) disease model”/NIDA paradigm of addiction.

Readings are multidisciplinary and include works in history, epidemiology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and other disciplines, and the syllabus will include at least one field trip to a harm reduction organization. As an upper-level seminar course, this one will emphasize inquiry and original analysis. The writing component of the course therefore is a short research paper of 3,500-4,000 words.

There are no official prerequisites. However, this is an upper-level course, and students should have some academic or professional background in health studies (especially public health), African-American/ethnic studies (history or social science), or some other work related to the course material.

Admission to this course is by application only
, at
https://forms.gle/b9Nww6QvbzmgpR1b7
.  Students from all schools, including Teachers College, are welcome to apply. Students may not enroll in this course on a pass/fail basis or as an auditor without instructor permission.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Samuel K Jr Roberts
  Info
• 4 points

Power, Place, Politics, and Health: Hist

Power, Place, Politics, H

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Through assigned readings and a 3500-4000 word paper, students will gain familiarity with a range of historical moments in the history of public health in the 20th-century United States. Themes will include ethnic and racial formations, technological development, biopolitics and biopower, medicalization, geography, political economy, and biological citizenship, among others.. Topics to be examined will include, but will not be limited to, women’s health organization and care; HIV/AIDS politics, policy, and community response; reproductive justice; “benign neglect”; urban renewal and gentrification; social movements, and environmental justice.  Previous coursework in relevant fields required (U.S. history or health history, certain area studies, Public Health/Sociomedical Sciences, medical humanities, etc.).

GUIDELINES & REQUIREMENTS

There are no official prerequisites. However, this is an upper-level course, and students should have some academic or professional background in health studies (especially public health), African-American/ethnic studies (history or social science), or some other work related to the course material.

ADMISSION

Admission to this course is by application only, Students from all schools, including Teachers College, are welcome to apply. Students may not enroll in this course on a pass/fail basis or as an auditor without instructor permission.

• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Samuel K Jr Roberts
  Info
• 4 points

TOPICS IN AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND RECONST

US CIVIL WAR/RECONSTRUCTI

Few events in American history can match the significance of the American Civil War and Reconstruction and few left a better cache of records for scholars seeking to understand its signal events, actors, and processes.  Starting with the secession of eleven southern states, white southerners’ attempts to establish a proslavery republic (the Confederate States of America) unleashed an increasingly radical, even revolutionary war.  Indeed, as the war assumed a massive scope it drove a process of state building and state-sponsored slave emancipation in the United States that ultimately reconfigured the nation and remade the terms of political membership in it.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Stephanie McCurry
  CULPA: 3 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

JEWS-LATER ROMAN EMP,300-600CE

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Seth R Schwartz
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Jews in the Ancient City: Politics and M

This course will examine the experience of Jews in the cities of the eastern Roman Empire, offering a challenge to modern hypotheses of Jewish corporate stability in that setting and contributing to modern discussions of the relations between the Roman state, Greek cities, and Jewish and Christian subjects.

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Seth R Schwartz
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

WRITERS ON HISTORY: THOMAS MANN

WRITERS ON HISTORY:THOMAS

This seminar is devoted to examining the work of writers who address the nature and course of history in their imaginative and non-fiction work. This semester we will be exploring the work of Thomas Mann in the context of the First and Second World Wars. This will include his relation to the German “conservative revolution,” the Weimar political experience, and the United States, where he spent several years in exile. We will pay particular attention to his conceptions of modern history as expressed in his novels.

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Mark Lilla
  CULPA: 57 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Urban Waters: ecologies, inequalities, a

How does climate change transform how we read, write and tell urban histories? How can the so-called Anthropocene change how we do urban ethnography? How does it affect how we imagine viable, desirable urban futures? Finally, how do we reassess agency, social change, and collective life in the face of challenges brought about by the entanglement of human and non-human actions in phenomena like melting icebergs, air pollution, viruses and pandemics, floods and landslides, or rising sea levels? Addressing these questions requires expanding the temporal and spatial scopes and scales usually deployed in modern urban histories. With this end in mind, we will engage with readings that explore how ports, landfills, pollution, rivers, lakes, pipes and wells, wastewater, beaches and disasters constitute sites of city making in different cities and time periods, and therefore of instituting, reproducing or perpetuating inequalities. We will focus mostly but not exclusively on case studies of Latin American cities, drawing scholarly work in history, anthropology, social and environmental history, urban political ecology, geography, science and technology studies, architecture, urbanism and urban planning.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• 4 points

OCCULT IN THE MUSLIM PAST

This seminar is designed to explore the rich but sorely understudied occult scientific lore in the pre-modern Islamic world. For over a millennium, from the seventh through even the twenty-first century, and spanning a broad geographical spectrum from the Nile to Oxus, different forms and praxis of occult scientific knowledge marked intellectual and political endeavors, everyday lives and customs, and faith-based matters of individuals constituting the so-called Islamicate world. However, despite the impressive array of textual, material, and visual sources coming down to us from the Muslim past, the topic has been severely marginalized under the post-Enlightenment definitions of scientific knowledge, which also shaped how the history of sciences in the Islamicate world was written in the last century. One of this seminar’s main objectives is to rehabilitate such biased perspectives through a grand tour of occult knowledge and practice appealed in the pre-modern Muslim world.

Over the semester, by relying on a set of secondary studies and translated primary sources, we will revisit the question of the marginalization of Islamicate occult sciences, explore the actors’ definitions and discussions about the epistemic value of these sciences, trace their social and political implications in everyday life and imperial politics, and examine the key textual, technical, and material aspects of the occult tradition. In several of our sessions, we will have hands-on practice to better familiarize ourselves with the instructed techniques and methods in different branches of occult sciences. We will also regularly visit the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library to view texts and materials available in our collection.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Tunc Sen
  Info
• 4 points

Imag(in)ing the Ottoman Empire: A visual

“Imag(in)ing the Ottoman Empire: A visual history, 18th-20th centuries” is an undergraduate/graduate seminar focusing on visual representations of the Ottoman Empire during the last two centuries of its existence, from the early eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The objective is to study the development of visual representations both
by
and
about
the Empire, from Ottoman miniatures to early European paintings, and from the surge of Western illustrated magazines to the local uses of photography. The seminar’s chronological thread will be complemented by a thematic structure designed to explore different aspects and influences concerning the production and diffusion of images: curiosity, documentation, exoticism, propaganda, orientalism, modernity, self-fashioning, eroticism, policing, to name just a few.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Edhem Eldem
  Info
• 4 points

Sources and Methods in Islamic History

Source + Method Islamic H

This course trains students in approaching sources in Arabic and Persian from the premodern period. Depending on interest and experience, the course will expand to include Turkic and Hindvi/Urdu as well too. Students will gain a solid understanding of the wide range of historical writings in these languages, the conceptual and methodological problems involved in working with each, and how this source base changed over the centuries all the while reading exemplary historical studies that creatively and proficiently engaged with these materials. Students will gain proficiency in archival research while also reading a wide swathe of primary texts in the target languages (or in translation if students lack the proper language training). Upper intermediate Arabic and/or Persian preferred.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Ali Karjoo-Ravary
  Info
• 4 points

Encounters with Nature: The History and

This course offers an understanding of the interdisciplinary field of environmental, health and population history and will discuss historical and policy debates with a cross cutting, comparative relevance: such as the making and subjugation of colonized peoples and natural and disease landscapes under British colonial rule; modernizing states and their interest in development and knowledge and technology building, the movement and migration of populations, and changing place of public health and healing in south Asia. The key aim of the course will be to introduce students to reading and analyzing a range of historical scholarship, and interdisciplinary research on environment, health, medicine and populations in South Asia and to introduce them to an exploration of primary sources for research; and also to probe the challenges posed by archives and sources in these fields. Some of the overarching questions that shape this course are as follows: How have environmental pasts and medical histories been interpreted, debated and what is their contemporary resonance? What have been the encounters (political, intellectual, legal, social and cultural) between the environment, its changing landscapes and state? How have citizens, indigenous communities, and vernacular healers mediated and shaped these encounters and inserted their claims for sustainability, subsistence or survival? How have these changing landscapes shaped norms about bodies, care and beliefs? The course focuses on South Asia but also urges students to think and make linkages beyond regional geographies in examining interconnected ideas and practices in histories of the environment, medicine and health. Topics will therefore include (and students are invited to add to these perspectives and suggest additional discussion themes): colonial and globalized circuits of medical knowledge, with comparative case studies from Africa and East Asia; and the travel and translation of environmental ideas and of medical practices through growing global networks.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Kavita Sivaramakrishnan
  Info
• 4 points

The City & the Archive

How to write the city? What is an archive for writing the city? What liminal and marginal perspectives are available for thinking about writing the city? What is the place of the city in the global south in our historical imagination? Our attempt in this seminar is to look at the global south city from the historical and analytical perspectives of those dispossessed and marginal. Instead of ‘grand’ summations about “the Islamic City” or “Global City,” we will work meticulously to observe annotations on power that constructs cities, archives and their afterlives. The emphasis is on the city in South Asia as a particular referent though we will learn to see Cairo, New York, and Istanbul.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• 4 points

North Korean History, Culture and Politi

North Korea is widely regarded as a country without a history; as enigmatic as it is isolated. Dispensing with this cliché, this course invites students to engage with North Korean history using a variety of primary and secondary sources. We begin in the medieval period to trace the distinct features of the northern region that made it uniquely receptive to outside ideas. Understanding the north as a frontier zone of experimentation and adaption allows us to examine the attractive power of modernity in the north during the early twentieth century via the influence of Christianity, capitalism and communism. Utilizing texts and materials made in North Korea and internationally, including feature and documentary films, women’s magazines, graphic novels, literary fiction and testimony, the course investigates the conditions within which knowledge about North Korea has been produced, circulated and repressed. Key topics to be explored include the history of Christianity and capitalism in Pyongyang and the northern provinces, communist cadres in the 1930s, the allure of the North in the 1940s, the Korean War and the purges that followed, North Korea’s relations with neighbors and the world, and the high cost its citizens pay for the country’s brutal sanction economy.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Ruth Barraclough
  Info
• 4 points

American Radicalism in the Archives

US Radicalism in the Arch

“American Radicalism in the Archives” is a research seminar examining the multiple ways that radicals and their social movements have left traces in the historical record. Straddling the disciplines of social movement history, public humanities, and critical information studies, the seminar will use the archival collections at Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library to trace the history of social movements and to consider the intersections of radical theory and practice with the creation and preservation of archives.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Thai S Jones
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

RES SKILLS/MTHDS-INT/WRLD HIST

In the first semester a series of workshops will introduce the field of international history and various research skills and methods such as conceptualization of research projects and use of oral sources. The fall sessions will also show the digital resources available at Columbia and how students can deploy them in their individual projects. In the second semester students will apply the skills acquired in the fall as they develop their proposal for the Masters thesis, which is to be completed next year at the LSE. The proposal identifies a significant historical question, the relevant primary and secondary sources, an appropriate methodology, what preliminary research has been done and what remains to be done. Students will present their work-in-progress.

• F 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• 2 points

PERSP ON INT'L & WORLD HISTORY

This course gives students the opportunity to design their own curriculum: To attend lectures, conferences and workshops on historical topics related to their individual interests throughout Columbia University. Students may attend events of their choice, and are especially encouraged to attend those sponsored by the History Department. The Center for International History and the Heyman Center for the Humanities have impressive calendars of events and often feature historians. The goal of this mini-course is to encourage students to take advantage of the many intellectual opportunities throughout the University, to gain exposure to a variety of approaches to history, and at the same time assist them in focusing on a particular area for their thesis topic.

• Instructor: Line Lillevik
  Info
• 1-3 points

GRADUATE SEMINAR

JEWS IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

HIST 6999 GR is a twin listings of an undergraduate History seminar provided to graduate students for graduate credit. If a graduate student enrolls, she/he/they attends the same class as the undergraduate students (unless otherwise directed by the instructor). Each instructor determines additional work for graduate students to complete in order to receive graduate credit for the course. Please refer to the notes section in SSOL for the corresponding (twin) undergraduate 3000 level course and follow that course's meeting day & time and assigned classroom. Instructor permission is required to join.

• Instructor: Elisheva Carlebach
  CULPA: 6 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Industryscapes: Socio-natural Sites of R

Industryscapes - Preindus

From about 1400, Europe saw very rapid expansion of industries such as shipbuilding, mining, wood extraction and transport. These industries have mainly been studied by economic and technology historians along a short timeline of boom, outputs, and decline. In contrast, this course aims to introduce and investigate natural, social, cultural, and material ecologies of these industries over the long term to track change over time in relationships between humans and the environment. The course will introduce students to the concepts and methods of describing and analyzing socio-natural sites, to recent research and conceptualization of “extraction,” “resource,” and consider attitudes to the natural world foreclosed by European colonial extraction.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Pamela Smith
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 4 points

INTRO-LIT OF EUROPEAN HISTORY

• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Mark Mazower
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Readings in Twentieth Century U.S. Histo

Readings in 20th C. U.S.

This is a graduate reading course focusing on twentieth century US historiography. The goal of the course is to introduce students to some of the pressing historiographic questions in the field. The first part of the semester will be spent thinking through periodization and its limits. How useful are periodizations such as “the progressive era” and the “the Cold War”? What are the major historiographic arguments surrounding their use?  In the second part of the semester, we will take a thematic approach. We will read some of the newest (and award-winning) books published in the past few years. Many of these books originated as dissertations and should be useful for students to read as they think about constructing their own research projects.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Alma Steingart
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

BORDERLANDS HISTORY COLLOQUIUM

This course will argue for a broader spatial history of empire by looking at sites such as frontiers and borderlands in a theoretical and comparative perspective. The course will familiarize students to  “frontier thesis” to the “spatial turn” and to the emergence of “Borderland Studies” before embarking on specific monographs highlighting borderlands scholarship in a global context. Formulations of power, race, gender, and class will be central to our comparative units of historical analysis and allow us to create conversations across area-studies boundaries within the discipline.

• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Manan Ahmed
  CULPA: 6 Wikipedia h-index: 6 Info
• 4 points

Family, Household, & History in Africa

Family, Household, Hist:A

What is a family? What makes a household? These are social units that vary significantly in meaning and composition across time and across space. African households and families have long been the focus of scholarship, not least in colonial ethnographies of the twentieth century. But those works imagined them as timeless. Historical scholarship and later anthropologists have challenged that notion and shown that these were and are complicated and diverse social institutions with specific histories and consequences. Yet, they rarely feature in archives other than at moments of crisis. We will explore how historians have sought to write histories of families and households. By the end of the course, students will be familiar with central debates around the meaning and form of these social institutions and with the critical place of households and families to social and political history in Africa.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Rhiannon Stephens
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

RESEARCH SEMINAR FOR PHD STUDENTS

This course will provide a structured environment in which graduate students will write a research paper. It will be offered in the spring and will not be field-specific. It will be recommended for first-year students in particular, who will be expected to enter from GR8910 (the required first-year course) and with a topic and/or prospectus for the paper they plan to complete in the course. The aim of the course is to ensure that all PhD students complete one of their two research papers within the first year. This seminar is recommended for, and restricted to, PhD students in the History Department. The aim of the seminar is to guide and assist students in the completion of a 10,000-12,000 word research paper appropriate for publication in a scholarly journal. The seminar is not field-specific, and students may work on any subject of their choosing. The paper must however be based on primary source research and represents a substantial departure from earlier work. The assignments for the course are designed to help students complete a polished piece of work by the end of term.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Amy E Chazkel
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: Kimberly K Phillips-Fein
  Info
• 4 points

Capitalism and Democracy

It is a common-place that the twentieth century ended with the establishment of capitalism and democracy as the “one best way”. In triumphalist accounts of the end of the Cold War the two are commonly presented as sharing a natural affinity. As never before the democratic formula was recommended for truly global application. To suggest the possibility of a contradiction between capitalism and democracy has come to seem like a gesture of outrageous conservative cynicism, or leftist subversion. And yet the convergence of capitalism and democracy is both recent and anything other than self-evident. It has been placed in question once again since 2008 in the epic crisis of Atlantic financial capitalism. This course examines the historical tensions between these two terms in the Atlantic world across the long 20th century from the 1890s to the present day.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Adam Tooze
  CULPA: 3 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

SEMINAR IN TEACHING

History Doctoral students who are for TAs for a course must enroll in this independent study seminar. The DGS is always listed as instructor.

• Instructor: Kimberly K Phillips-Fein
  Info
• 4 points