[C] This course will explore World War II in global perspective. Historians of Europe, Japan, and the United States will join together to teach the history of the world’s most destructive war. Topics include the rise of militant regimes in Germany and Japan; German and Japanese aggression in the 1930s; the attack on Pearl Harbor; famous battles of the war; the Holocaust; German and Japanese occupation practices; civilian life in the Allied and Axis countries; and the later memory of the war. The course will also address moral controversies raised by the war, including the Anglo-American firebombing of Germany and the decision to drop the atomic bomb. Texts for the course will include film, memoirs, government documents, graphic and other novels, and secondary accounts of the war. Two class meetings per week.
Fall semester. John J. McCloy Visiting Professor Jacobson.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 102 [AS/TE] and ASLC 102) Arguably beginning with the Manchurian Incident in 1931 and ending with Japan's surrender to the Allies in 1945, the Second World War lasted longer in Asia than anywhere else. Yet, histories of the global conflict still tend to focus disproportionately on the European theater. Countering that tendency, this course surveys the Asian theater, asking and answering a number of questions: How did imperialism and the rise of nationalist movements precipitate total war in Asia? What was the character of the warfare and how did it transform politics and societies in Asia? How did the war alter the geopolitical configuration of Asia and give rise to the Cold War? What are the continuing legacies of the war in the region today? While we will use Japan as a fulcrum to engage these questions, the course will attend to the regional dynamics of World War II in Asia. Classes will combine lectures, group work, and discussions. There will be a mid-term, final exam and three topical essays. Three class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor Maxey.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 104 [c] and ENST 220) This course considers the ways that people in various parts of the world thought about and acted upon nature during the nineteenth century. We look historically at issues that continue to have relevance today, including: invasive species, deforestation, soil-nitrogen availability, water use, desertification, and air pollution. Themes include: the relationship of nineteenth-century colonialism and environmental degradation, gender and environmental change, the racial dimensions of ecological issues, and the spatial aspects of human interactions with nature. We will take at least one field trip. In addition, we will watch three films that approach nineteenth-century environmental issues from different vantage points. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 30 students. Fall semester. Professor Melillo.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 112 [AS/EUCP], ASLC 112, EUST 112 and RUSS 130) In the course of five hundred years, the Russian empire in Eurasia evolved as the largest territorial polity in the world. In this course, we will explore the medieval foundations of the imperial state and look at its predecessors and models (Kievan Rus’ and the empire of the Mongols), discuss ways in which cooperation and resistance shaped the imperial state and society, and study cultural and political entanglements among different ethnic, linguistic and confessional groups in Eurasia. Chronologically, we will cover the period from the tenth century to the crisis of the empire in the early twentieth century. Thematically, we will focus on structures of imperial state and society (the imperial house, peasantry, nobility, confessions, intelligentsia, revolutionary movement) and most important regions of the Russian Empire (Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Baltics, Siberia, Central Asia). Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Five College Associate Professor Glebov.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 114 [ASC] and ASLC 114) How does a study of the Chinese diasporic communities in Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, the United States, and other parts of the world help us understand the questions of ethnic identity formation, construction, and negotiation? More specifically, how does the study of their history and experiences force us to rethink the concepts of “China” and “Chinese-ness”? How did scholars, officials, and travelers construct the categories of “China” and being “Chinese”? These are the main questions that we seek to answer in this introductory course to the history of the Chinese diaspora. We will begin by looking into the early history of Chinese migration (circa 1500 to 1800) to particular geographical areas in the world, including the United States. The rest of the course will look into the history of selected diasporic communities from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. All throughout the course we will also examine how these diasporic people and their families manipulated and continue to manipulate attempts by dominant groups to control their identities, bodies, and resources, and how their lives challenge the meanings of “China” and “Chinese-ness.” Other questions to be discussed during the course are: What caused people from China to move, and to where? What forms of discrimination and control did they experience? How do their experiences and histories deepen our understanding of “race,” “empire,” and “transnationalism”? Themes to be discussed throughout the course include imperialism, colonialism, race, ethnicity, gender, nationalism, transnationalism, orientalism, hegemony, and globalization. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Five College Associate Professor Chu.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 123 [EUP] and EUST 123) This course provides an introduction to the remarkable history that still conditions our current lives. The course explores how the mingling of people at the far western end of the Eurasian continent led to the rise of a European civilization that would later seek to mold the world in its own image. It examines how a distinct "Europe" arose from the effort of "barbarians" to "restore" the Roman Empire and their failure to do so. It considers how fragmented communities under a universal religion sought to reconstruct their lives by rebuilding their material bases, reimagining their faith, and reconstituting their polities. It canvasses how this process was tied to the constant encounter and conflict with others and how this would serve as a template for later expansion. Through the voices and visions of the past and the writings of modern authorities, the course will provide an overview of how, in the course of the Middle Ages, a Europe arose, developed and changed, and set the basis for the making of our modern world. Two course meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor Cho.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 124 [EUP] and EUST 124) This course provides an introduction to the momentous transformations that Europe underwent during the early modern period. From the post-Black Death turmoil in the fourteenth century to the impending crisis of the Old Order in the eighteenth, Europe experienced multiple upheavals that continue to shape our modern lives. The course visits the experience of contemporaries recorded in memoirs, diaries and letters, their visions and dreams presented in treatises, essays and novels, and the modern debates and syntheses of historians to discern these changes. It examines how conscious revivals of imagined ancient traditions gave way to assertions of contemporary greatness. It considers how an urge to purify and reform religious life brought about an irreversible schism, fraternal strife, and tolerance. It probes how the resulting social disruptions required innovative forms of consent, control and governance. It canvasses how these processes were tied to expanding horizons and new commercial practices that intensified exchange and exploitation with the wider world. It reveals how new discoveries required new modes of inquiry and knowledge-making. The course asks how these changes together led Europeans to gain a striking self-confidence in their own ideas of man, society, and history, whereby Europe would seek to mold the world in its own image. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 35 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Cho.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 130 [EU] and EUST 130) The image of the First World War is so iconic that it can be evoked through a handful of tropes: trenches, machine guns, mud, “going over the top,” crossing “no man’s land.” Yet in many ways this is a partial vision, one that focuses myopically on the experiences of European soldiers who occupied a few hundred miles of trenches in northern France. Why is it that a conflict as unprecedented in its size and complexity as “the Great War” has been reduced in our minds to this very limited scale? In conjunction with the war’s 100th anniversary, this course both explores the role of World War I in our cultural imagination and aims to create a broader, messier, and more complicated portrait of the history. It will examine the conflict on multiple fronts, study the perspectives of both Western and non-Western soldiers and civilians, and analyze the war’s role in shaping the twentieth century. Three class meetings per week.
Limited to 40 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Boucher.
2023-24: Not offered[US] The course traces United States political, social, and cultural history from 1900 to the present. Among the topics covered are the rise of the modern corporation, class conflict and the Progressive movement; immigration, ethnic pluralism, and the rise of mass culture; the Great Depression and the New Deal; World War II, the Cold War, and McCarthyism; the civil rights, women’s and environmental movements, the New Left, the New Right, and the continuing inequalities of race and class. Films and videos will regularly supplement class readings. Three class meetings per week.
Limited to 40 students. Spring semester. Professor Couvares.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2020[US/TE] This course is an introduction to the major trends and developments in United States foreign relations from the nation’s rise from a loose coalition of colonies on the Atlantic seaboard to a continental and world power by the beginning of the twentieth century. This course will seek to understand the effect of expansion on the nation’s values, institutions, and history, and examine the methods used to extend the nation’s borders, trade, and influence. It engages “foreign relations” in broad terms to incorporate ideology, race, gender, technology, economics, geopolitics, and culture as important forces in shaping the United States’ understanding of and behavior toward the world. The country’s domestic character critically determined the ways in which the nation’s power took shape on the world stage, even as global interactions shaped nascent U.S. institutions and identities. This course will examine how economic and security needs shaped foreign policy goals, while social norms and domestic values informed the ways Americans interacted with other societies. Three class meetings per week.
Limited to 40 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Walker.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023[US] This course investigates the United States’ foreign relations in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and seeks to understand why and how it has become increasingly involved in world affairs. Starting with the War of 1898 and closing with the contemporary global war on terrorism, it examines the interplay of domestic and foreign considerations that have defined the “American Century.” This period raises important questions about the nature of American power in relation to traditional empires. The course asks students to think critically about the United States in the context of imperialism and explore how Americans, both in and out of government, sought to reconcile domestic values and identities with the country’s growing global presence. It investigates the ideological, economic, political, social, racial, and security considerations that shaped America’s emergence as a world power and formed the basis of modern American foreign policy and domestic society. Three class meetings per week.
Limited to 40 students (10 spots reserved for first-year students). Omitted 2018-19. Professor Walker.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2023(Offered as HIST 162 [US] and SWAG 162) Sexuality is a product of history and culture. This course will survey sex throughout United States history in relation to the various discourses of power and difference that have given it meaning, such as class, ethnicity, gender, race, and religion. Topics covered include the legal and social history of marriage, sex education, sexuality and the family during and after slavery, masculinity and the Western frontier, sexology and the invention of homosexuality, the making of urban gay subcultures, feminism and sexual liberation, the politics of abortion, HIV/AIDS, the LGBT rights movement, and the transgender revolution. We will consider the ways in which the study of sexuality creates opportunities to re-think major themes in U.S. social, cultural, and political history, with emphasis on the history of medicine, the history of social change, and the history of the family. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 35 students. Spring semester. Professor Manion.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2017, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2023, Fall 2024(Offered as HIST 165 [US] and AMST 165) This course is an introduction to the history of U.S. Latinos/as, 1848 to the present. Central themes include ethnic and national identity, migration, gender, and political mobilization. Questions the course will answer include: What is ethnic identity? How does it relate to nationality? How has race historically fit into the equation? We will consider the role that imperialism has played in shaping patterns of Latino/a migration, identity and political mobilization. While the history of some groups begins with U.S. territorial conquest, for most Latinos/as migration has been central to their experiences. How has the crossing of different kinds of cultural and political frontiers changed over time? What is the difference between immigration and transnational migration? And how have different ideas of “home” and changing patterns of migration affected modes of political mobilization and ideas of citizenship? The course pays particular attention to the 1960s through the 1980s when Latinos/as mobilized in defense of their rights and against economic exploitation and undertook the “decolonization” of their communities. We will address why their struggles took the form of the right to have rights, a rejection of stereotypes, and the right to define their own identities. But what kind of narration of self did they recover? What issues divided different groups of U.S. Latinos/as (e.g., Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicanos, etc.) from one another? What commonalities have they shared? By the 1980s, ethnic-specific identities and mobilizations were increasingly subsumed under pan-Hispanic and pan-Latino/a movements. Why? What does “Latino” mean? How is it similar to or different from “Hispanic”? Is there an “American experience” that unites different U.S. Latinos/as groups and that separates them from Latin Americans? Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professors del Moral and Lopez.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 170 [US] and AMST 250) What do Americans want their schools to accomplish? What happens when they don’t agree (as has frequently been the case)? How have disagreements about educational goals been embedded in policy? And how have schools mediated larger conflicts—over the place of pluralism in the American nation or the contradictions between democratic commitments to political equality and capitalist tendencies towards economic inequality—in American politics and culture? By exploring questions like these, this discussion-based course addresses central themes in the history of American education. First, it explores the history of American educational goals, drawing clear distinctions between what Americans say they want their schools to accomplish and what functions schools actually perform. Second, the course examines struggles for power over educational governance, including debates over localism, bureaucratization, expertise, philanthropy, and privatization. Third, the course focuses on educators’ efforts to foster cohesion and respond to diversity in a pluralist nation. And finally, the course centers arguments over stratification, especially whether schools can transform—or are destined to simply replicate—racial, gender, and socio-economic hierarchies. The course is organized chronologically, addressing: the nineteenth century common school movement and rise of the high school; education for Native Americans, African Americans, and immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century; educational progressivism, including debates over testing, tracking, and vocational education; battles over school desegregation in the half century following Brown v. Board of Education (1954); the expanding federal role in education after the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1964); and late twentieth century movements for privatization, testing, standards, and accountability. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 30 students. Fall semester. Lewis-Sebring Visiting Professor L. Gordon.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 171 [ASP] and ASLC 171 [C]) This introductory course provides a broad overview of China’s long history and major cultural traditions from its very beginnings to the eve of modernity. No familiarity with China or previous experience in the study of history is assumed or required. Over the course of the semester, we will investigate long-term economic, social, and cultural transformations as well as the great diversity of this enormous part of the world. We will examine a broad array of issues, such as the important role of geography in shaping Chinese history, the glorified antiquity in traditional Chinese political thought, the rise and fall of unified dynastic empires, China’s troubled relationship with the Inner Asian steppe and nomadic people, continuing state penetration of frontier regions and ethnic statecraft, cycles of peasant rebellions and civil wars, the emergence of major philosophical schools and the canonization of Confucian thought, the establishment of the civil examination system and bureaucratic states, the formation of a literati culture, the rise of Buddhism and Daoism and the transformation of the Chinese religious landscape, the evolution of gender, family, and kinship structures, and China’s engagement with the outside world through trade and diplomacy. In this course, students will study a wide range of primary sources—ancient classics, poems, films, paintings, novels, and memoirs—and learn to develop skills in critical analysis and situating these sources in their historical contexts. At several points in the semester, we will also look at how this history has been used and recycled in contemporary politics and popular culture and reflect upon the continuing legacies of this history for China and the world today. Classes will entail lectures combined with close readings and discussions that engage primary texts, interpretive essays, and film. Two class meetings per week.
Fall semester. Professor Qiao.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024(Offered as HIST 172 [AS] and ASLC 172 [C]) This survey of Chinese History examines the matrix of the internal and external forces and movements that have shaped modern China from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. During this period, the Chinese people dispensed with a form of government that had been used for three thousand years to form, despite various complications, a modern nation-state. We will explore major events in Modern China beginning with the Opium War, the Taiping Rebellion, the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of a new Republic, the Republican revolution, the “New Culture” Movement, Communist revolution, War against Japan, the Chinese Civil War, the founding of the People’s Republic of China, China’s role in the Korean War, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, post-Mao economic reform and the 2008 Beijing Olympics, all with comparative references to current events. Readings, which include a wide variety of documents such as religious and revolutionary tracts, eye-witness accounts, memoirs, and letters, are supplemented by interpretive essays and videos. Two class meetings per week.
Spring semester. Professor Qiao.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2021, Spring 2023, Spring 2025(Offered as HIST 173 [AS/TEP] and ASLC 173 [SA]) This course introduces major themes and developments in medieval and early modern South Asian history with a focus on the emergence and flourishing of Islamicate regimes in the sub-continent. Commencing with the origins of Islamic polities in South Asia, the course explores the Delhi Sultanates, various syncretistic movements and devotional sects, the Vijayanagara Empire, and the Mughal Empire, as well as politics, religion, literature, art, architecture, and trade within these formations. Readings are drawn from a variety of both primary and secondary sources and combine political, social, and cultural histories. Challenging both colonialist and nationalist views of this vast period as one of religious persecution, tyranny, and stagnation, the course seeks to demonstrate the vitality, hybridity, and dynamism characterizing these centuries of the second millennium. We will therefore lay particular emphasis on the processes of transculturation between the Islamic and Indic distinguishing this period. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor Sen.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, Fall 2023(Offered as HIST 174 [AS/TE] and ASLC 174 [SA]) This survey course introduces key themes and events in the making of modern South Asia. The objective is to provide a skeletal historical narrative of the various transformations the subcontinent and its peoples experienced through the colonial and post-colonial eras. A variety of primary sources and audio and visual materials will be utilized in conjunction with excerpts from panoramic textbooks as well as portions of monographs, combining perspectives from political, social, cultural and economic history. Commencing with the transitions occurring in the middle to late 18th century, the course explores some of the major historical developments in South Asia until the present moment including the East India Company-state, colonial and imperial rule, social reform, the revolt of 1857, Indian nationalism, caste and communal conflict, and the struggles for post-colonial democracy. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor Sen.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 175 [AS/TEP] and ASLC 225 [J]) Contrary to images of a uniform and stable culture, the Japanese archipelago possesses a history marked by fragmentation, violent conflict, and dynamic cultural change. This course traces that history from the beginnings of human history on the archipelago to the establishment of one of the most stable and peaceful regimes in human history, the Tokugawa shogunate. Our survey will be organized around a central riddle: why was it so difficult to produce a stable, unified polity on the Japanese archipelago? Placing Japan within the broader regional context of East Asia, we will answer this riddle by following the rise of successive political authorities, from the sacral rulers of the tomb period to the samurai. Prominent themes include the rise of early polities, contact with the Chinese continent and Korean peninsula, the aristocratic culture of the Heian court and its displacement by medieval samurai rule, the role of Buddhist thought and institutions, the “warring states” period of the sixteenth-century and cosmopolitan contact with Christian Europe, and the Tokugawa peace and its urban cultural forms. Throughout, we will read a variety of sources, including eighth-century mythology, aristocratic literature, war chronicles, religious and philosophical texts, as well as modern fiction and film.
This is a writing attentive survey of Japan’s history from antiquity through the eighteenth century. It traces political, social, and cultural developments in order to provide basic literacy in pre-modern Japanese history and a basis both for comparative history and further course work in Japanese history. Classes will combine lectures with close readings and discussions of the assigned texts. Requirements include short response papers and topical essays. Three class meetings per week.
Fall semester. Professor Maxey.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 176 [AS/TE] and ASLC 247 [J]) The transformation of the Japanese archipelago from a relatively secluded agrarian polity in the early-nineteenth century into East Asia’s leading economic power with a global footprint by the end of the twentieth century is one of the most dramatic stories of modern history. This course introduces the history of this transformation through two “revolutions”: the formation of an imperialist nation-state and post-World War II creation of a pacifist democracy. We will pay close attention to the political debates and social conflicts that accompanied these revolutions. We will begin with the collapse of Tokugawa shogunate, follow the rise of the modern Japanese nation-state through colonial expansion and total war, and conclude with the postwar economic recovery, democratization, and the socio-political challenges facing the Japanese nation-state in the twenty-first century. Our goal along the way will be to explore in the specific context of Japanese history themes relevant to the history of global modernities: the collapse of a traditional regime, the creation of a nation-state, imperial expansion, industrialization, feminist and socialist critiques, total war, democratization, high economic growth and mass consumer culture. Classes will entail lectures combined with close readings and discussions that engage primary texts, interpretive essays, and film. This is a writing attentive course with requirements including short writing exercises and topical essays. Three class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor Maxey.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 181 [AF/TE] and BLST 221 [A]) Africa is a continent of fifty-four countries, but in many people’s minds the continent’s name conjures up a host of stereotyped images—some positive and many negative—that misrepresent the continent as an undifferentiated whole. The primary goal of this course is to address the images of Africa by putting the continent’s contemporary situation into historical perspective from the late nineteenth century until the present day. The main themes will be the social, political and economic impacts of imperial policies on African societies, the constructions and alterations of “tribal” identities and nationalist politics, issues concerning medicine and public health, the development of “gatekeeper” states, and problems faced by post-colonial states. We will explore the variety of experiences as people from multiple societies have often innovated new cultural forms in the wake of colonial rule, and the advent of “resource conflicts,” particularly those involving petroleum, diamonds, and other minerals. Three class meetings per week.
Spring semester. Professor Redding.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024(Offered as HIST 190 [ME/TEP] and ASLC 126 [WA]) This course surveys the history of the Middle East from the outset of the Islamic period to the beginning of the modern period. It is divided into the following segments: the formative period of Islam, the classical caliphates, the classical courts, the Mongols, and the great empires of the Ottomans and the Safavids. The course is organized chronologically and follows the making and breaking of empires and political centers; however, the focus of the course is on the intellectual, social, cultural and religious developments in these periods. Two class meetings per week.
Spring semester. Professor Ringer.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2022(Offered as HIST 191 [ME/TC/TE] and ASLC 148 [WA]) This course surveys the history of the Middle East from 1800 to the present. The focus is threefold: following political, social and intellectual trends as they evolve over time, exploring contemporary historical and methodological debates and analysis, and introducing students to important historical literature of the period. The class is divided into modules: “From Subject to Citizen,” “Engineering a Modern Middle East,” “Nationalism and the Quest for Independence,” “Islamist Opposition,” and “Taking Sovereignty: Contemporary Debates and the Post-Modern Era.” The class is discussion-oriented and writing intensive. Two class meetings per week.
Fall semester. John J. McCloy Visiting Professor Simon.
2023-24: Not offered[EUC] This course introduces students to the history of the Jews from the 16th century to the present. Jews—a small group, lacking a stable geographical or political center for most of modern history—have played a remarkably central role in world events. Jewish history exemplifies questions of tolerance, intolerance, and diversity in the Modern Age. From Europe to the Americas to the Middle East, Jewish history has witnessed constant interchange between the non-Jewish world and its Jewish subcultures. This course investigates Jewish history’s multiple dimensions: developments in Jews’ political status and economic opportunity; dramatic demographic shifts and global migrations; transformations in Jewish cultures, ideologies and identities; and religious adjustments to modernity. We examine a variety of Jewish encounters with the modern world: integration, acculturation, assimilation, anti-Semitism, Jewish dissimilation and nationalism. Finally, the course will use this broad historical lens to explore and contextualize the double watershed of the 1940s—the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel—as well as contemporary Jewish life. Two class meetings per week.
Spring semester. Professor A. Gordon.
2023-24: Not offered[C] For thousands of years, wild and domesticated plants have played crucial roles in the development of cultures and societies. Students in this course will consider human relationships with plants from a global-historical perspective, comparing trends in various regions and time periods. We will focus on the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, seed-saving practices, medicinal plants, religious rites, food traditions, biopiracy, agribusiness, and biofuels. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 30 students. Spring semester. Professor Melillo.
2023-24: Not offered[EU/TCC] Disease has always been a part of human experience; doctoring is among our oldest professions. This course surveys the history of Western medicine from antiquity to the modern era. It does so by focusing on the relationship between medical theory and medical practice, giving special attention to Hippocratic medical learning and the methods by which Hippocratic practitioners built a clientele, medieval uses of ancient medical theories in the definition and treatment of disease, the genesis of novel chemical, anatomical, and physiological conceptions of disease in the early modern era, and the transformations of medical practice associated with the influence of clinical and experimental medicine in the nineteenth century. The course concludes by examining some contemporary medical dilemmas in the light of their historical antecedents. Two class meetings per week.
Spring semester. Professor Servos.
2023-24: Not offered[EU/TCP] An introduction to some major issues in the history of science from antiquity to the twentieth century. Topics will include the genesis and decay of a scientific tradition in Greco-Roman antiquity, the reconstitution of that tradition in medieval Europe, the revolution in scientific methods of the seventeenth century, and the emergence of science as a source of power, profit, and cultural authority during the past century. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor Servos.
2023-24: Not offered[US/TC] A survey of the social, political, and institutional development of science in America from the Civil War to the present. Emphasis will be on explaining how the United States moved from the periphery to the center of international scientific life. Topics will include the professionalization of science; roles of scientists in industry, education, and government; ideologies of basic research; and the response of American scientists to the two world wars, the Depression, and the Cold War. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor Servos.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 220 [EU] and EUST 220) In an interview shortly before her death, Leni Riefenstahl, renowned director of the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, claimed that art was apolitical and that she was blameless in the crimes of the Nazi state. “I didn’t drop any atom bombs. I didn’t denounce anyone. So where does my guilt lie?” she questioned. This course explores the specific relationship between visual artifacts such as Triumph of the Will and politics and society in modern Europe. Focusing on primary artifacts and scholarly interpretations of Europe’s cultural history, students will examine how the politics and the practices of visual artifacts reflected and/or shaped Europeans’ experiences of historical change in the twentieth century. First, we will examine the terms and concepts central to the study of propaganda and persuasion, the historical contexts of propaganda in war (World War I, World War II, and the Cold War) and revolution, and major contemporary theoretical approaches to understanding propaganda. In case-studies of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, the course will explore the role of visual aesthetics in ethical questions of consent and coercion in everyday life under authoritarian regimes and in wartime conditions. Second, the course will explore the changing relationship between art and politics, and the efforts made by artists to not simply reflect, but shape political, cultural, and social change beyond the confines of state-sponsored propaganda. Students will develop skills in analyzing primary artifacts including visual art and film within the context of historical transformations and artistic movements.
Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2018-19.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 224 [EU], EUST 224, and SWAG 224) In the 1920s and 30s, authoritarian and fascist states across Europe declared that sexuality was not private. Sexual choices in the bedroom, they claimed, shaped national identities and the direction of social and cultural development. Through a variety of programs, propaganda and legal codes, states such as Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sought to regulate sexual behavior and promote specific gender roles and identities. The intervention of the state in the intimate lives of citizens in the twentieth century, however, was rooted in the transformations of state, culture and economy that took place long before the speeches of great dictators. This course explores the cultural debates surrounding sexual practices, medical theories of gender and sexuality, and the relationship between sexuality and state that shaped European societies in the twentieth century. In case studies from across the continent, the course explores a range of topics, including but not limited to the history of sex reform, prostitution, homosexuality, venereal disease, contraception, abortion, the “New Woman” and sexual emancipation movements, sexual revolutions and reactionary movements and reproductive politics, among others. Students will explore how seemingly self-evident and unchanging categories – feminine and masculine, straight and gay, “normal” and “deviant”– have taken shape and changed over time, and how historical processes (modernization, imperialism, urbanization) and actors (social movements, sex reformers, nationalist groups and states) sought to define and regulate these boundaries in the so-called “century of sex.” Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2018-19.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 225 [EU/TCP] and EUST 225) Medieval Europe is often remembered and imagined as a chivalric civilization—a time when men were courageous and courteous, ladies were fair and respected, and the clash of arms was also an embodiment of Christian piety. This course seeks to uncover the myths and realities of medieval chivalry and thereby provide a window into the material, social, and cultural life of the Middle Ages. The course will track the beginnings of chivalry as a form of warfare centered on the horseback soldier, to its transformation as a code of conduct and ethos of a ruling class, and its later formalization into rituals and ceremonies to be performed and enacted as a means of social distinction. By examining documentary, fictional and pictorial sources, the course will review how competing ideals of chivalry were depicted and prescribed; how Christian ideals, aristocratic values and commercial realities aligned together; and how a mode of fighting became a way of life that defined an era. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor Cho.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 226 [EUP], ARHA 226, EUST 226, and SWAG 225) Although overlooked in military histories until recently, women have long been actively involved in warfare: as combatants, as victims, as workers, and as symbols. This course examines both the changing role of women, and the shifting constructions of “womanhood,” in four major European conflicts: the wars of Elizabeth I in sixteenth-century England, the wars and peace of Marie de Médicis in seventeenth-century France, the French Revolution, and the First World War. Using methodologies drawn from Art History and History, the course seeks to understand the gendered nature of warfare. Why are images of women and the family central to the iconography of war, and how have representations of womanhood shifted according to the aims of particular conflicts? To what extent do women’s experiences of warfare differ from men’s, and can war be considered a source of women’s liberation or oppression? Students will analyze a range of historical images in conjunction with primary source texts from these conflicts and will also develop an original research project related to the course’s themes. Two class meetings per week.
Recommended requisite: A course in Art History or History. Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Professor Boucher.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 230 [EUP] and EUST 230) Often viewed as one of the defining events in modern history, the French Revolution has been debated and discussed, derided and celebrated by generations of politicians, cultural commentators, and historians. This course enters into this on-going conversation by examining the nature of the revolutionary process as it unfolded in late eighteenth-century France and its empire. Beginning in the “old regime” of kings and commoners, it untangles the social, political, and intellectual roots of the Revolution and investigates the extent to which these factors contributed to the radical overthrow of the French establishment in 1789. It then follows the extension of the Revolution throughout French society and across the seas to the Caribbean, analyzing how popular and colonial upheavals influenced the revolutionary new order of “liberty, equality, and brotherhood” that was taking shape in France. Finally, the course explores the aftermath of the Revolution by tracing the various ways that its history has been interpreted and reinterpreted from the nineteenth century to the present day. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor Boucher.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2014, Spring 2018(Offered as HIST 234 [EU] and EUST 234) In the 1920s, Germany was celebrated throughout Europe and North America as a model of democratic political reform, artistic experimentation, economic prosperity, and cultural diversity. Yet by 1933, millions of Germans gave their political support and allegiance to a movement that called for the destruction of democracy, an attack on Jews, Communists, gay men, and lesbians, and deemed "asocial" anyone who did not conform to narrowly prescribed social, political, and sexual standards. This course will explore the rocky transition from the Germany of the Imperial period to the authoritarian Third Reich through the way station of the democratic Weimar Republic. It will examine the promise and excitement, the sense of possibility and openness of the 1920s, and the utopian vision of a "racial state" that succeeded it in the 1930s. This course explores the emergence of Hitler and Nazism in Germany, the culture wars in the 1920s and 1930s, Nazi ideology and aesthetics, Nazi racial policies, daily life in the Third Reich, the march toward World War and the “war against the Jews”—the Holocaust. Class participants will discuss specific case-studies as well as broader themes surrounding the nature of political consent and coercion in German society. Texts will include films, diaries, historical fiction, memoirs, government and policy texts and scholarly accounts of the era. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 40 students. Omitted 2018-19.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 235 [EU], EUST 245, and RUSS 235) Joseph Stalin, the infamous Soviet dictator, created a particular type of society in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Stalinism became a phenomenon that influenced the development of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, and North Korea. This course will begin with the exploration of Stalin’s own life, and then focus on what historical forces enabled the emergence of Stalinism. The course will cover the period on the eve of and during the Russian Revolution, Stalinist transformation of the USSR in the 1930s, WWII, and the onset of the Cold War. Among issues to be explored are the extent of popular support for Stalinist-type regimes, the mechanisms of large-scale political terror, the longevity of Stalinist regimes, and historical memory about Stalinism. Three class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Five College Professor Glebov.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2014, Fall 2016, Spring 2021, Fall 2023(Offered as HIST 236 [EU], EUST 238, and RUSS 237) The Cold War indelibly shaped the second half of the twentieth century. Spies seemed ubiquitous; nuclear annihilation imminent. Films such as Red October and the James Bond series forged a Western image of the Soviet Union. But how were these decades experienced behind the Iron Curtain? This class explores Soviet history between the end of World War II and the collapse of the USSR. We will study the roots of the Cold War; the politics of de-Stalinization in the USSR; the unfolding of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe; and Soviet relations with the West, China, and the developing world. We will also explore the internal dynamics of Soviet society: the rise of the Soviet middle class, consumerism, tourism, the entertainment industry, demographic trends, education, and public health. Two class meetings per week.
Fall semester. Five College Professor Glebov.
2023-24: Not offeredFor the past 2,000 years, both combat veterans and observers of the conflicts have captured the dynamic and often dark experience of war. This course will expose students to the twentieth and twenty-first century experience of American men and women at war. Using novels, memoirs, and poems, as well as documentary, docu-drama, and other films, students will consider the complicated nature of combat and how those dynamics transcend time. Students will compare the experience of different identity groups and their military service. After introductory sessions, students will review the literature and films that depict the World Wars, the Vietnam War, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Guest speakers and authors will augment class readings and discussion.
Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Spring Semester. McCloy Visiting Professor Jacobson.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 240 [EU], EUST 240, and RUSS 240) This course explores the tumultuous and unprecedented transition from the late Soviet Communism to contemporary Russian Federation. We will discuss the state of the Soviet Union on the eve of dissolution and politics of nationalism; emergence of the post-Soviet states and divergence in their historical development; transition to capitalism and privatization; challenges of federalism and regionalism in post-Soviet Russia; relations between the Russian Federation and “Near Abroad,” NATO and China, and the social and cultural developments from the late Soviet period to the early twenty-first century. The class will also explore the historical evolution of the phenomenon of Putinism as rooted in long-term transformation of the former Soviet space. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Five College Professor Glebov.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 245 [US] and SWAG 247) An overview of punishment from the Enlightenment to modern times. Topics include theories of criminality; birth of the penitentiary; growth of carceral culture; role of reform movements; relationship between slavery, abolition, and punishment; rise of criminology, eugenics, and sexology; persistence of poverty among carceral subjects; and the emergence of the contemporary prison industrial complex. Primary sources for consideration include newspaper articles, reform and abolition organizational records, official prison reports, and legal and sociological papers. Secondary readings will be primarily historical with some critical theories of difference and power including critical race theory, feminist theories of intersectionality, queer theory, and contemporary critical prison studies. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 30 students. Five spaces reserved for Five College students. Fall semester. Professor Manion.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 250 [US] and BLST 245) This course will explore the life and times of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Through a deep engagement with his published work and public rhetoric, relevant secondary literature, and personal papers, students will locate the civil rights leader within the broader upheavals of mid-century America. As such, the course serves as an introduction to modern US history, the black freedom struggle, and the archive of civil rights. Moving beyond mythology, this course will emphasize his connections to American liberalism, the labor movement, the black prophetic tradition and human rights. As such, this course will excavate the radical King, a man whose life and work often challenged the liberal consensus on questions of class, race, and empire, and thus questions later ahistorical characterizations of the Civil Rights Movement as either “moderate” or “conservative.” The course will culminate in a student research-led conference, to mark and reflect upon the fiftieth anniversary of King’s assassination in 1968. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2018-19. Visiting Lecturer Hickmott.
2023-24: Not offered[US] This course will study the evolution of American foreign policy since 1989. We will examine the theory and practice of diplomacy under the first President Bush, President Clinton, the second President Bush, and President Obama. At the heart of the course will be a consideration of the extent to which the United States has attempted and been able to sustain the unipolar power position in world politics that the United States gained with the collapse of the Soviet Union. One two-and-a-half-hour meeting per week.
Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Emeritus G. Levin.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course will explore the nature of the uprisings that began in 2010 in Tunisia and ultimately swept through Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, to Bahrain. We will ask why these events took place, when and where they did, why the outcomes have differed so widely, why monarchies emerged unscathed, and why authoritarian rule proved so durable. We will pay close attention to the voices of protest from this period as well as the role of social media as a mobilizing factor. Two class meetings per week.
Spring semester. John J. McCloy ’16 Visiting Professor Simon.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 258 [ME] and ASLC 258) In 2011, the Middle East was convulsed by revolutions. Some, like Syria's, are still raging; others, as in Egypt, appear to be in remission. Some states, particularly monarchies, seem to have proved immune. This course will ask why these revolutions erupted, why they did so in 2011, and why some states were transformed and others were not. It will also explore the development of Israel’s political economy since independence. We will rely on a political economy approach to these questions, exploring the interactions of the state, economy, society and ideology—especially political Islam—that led to the upheavals of 2011 and have shaped the evolution of the region since then. Along the way, the course will cover the relationship between economic growth and social outcomes; the governance of Middle Eastern states from the end of colonial rule to the present; the role of demographics in shaping both politics and economics; human capital and food security; the role of gas and oil; models of development embraced by regional states or imposed upon them; intra-regional trade; the structure of civil society; dynamics of popular mobilization; and the effects of war. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-2019. John J. McCloy Visiting Professor Simon.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2023, Spring 2025(Offered as HIST 259 [ME/US] and ASLC 259) U.S. security policy in the Middle East has shaped America’s interaction with the region since World War II. Indeed, U.S. strategic interest has defined this interaction and even dominated it in crucial ways. The substantial overlap between security policy and the broader diplomatic, economic and cultural dimensions of the U.S. relationship with the countries of the region is reflected in the structure of the course and assigned readings. Although the course presupposes a basic understanding of U.S. national security decision-making and some familiarity with modern Middle Eastern history, the readings and class discussion should provide enough of this background for students who have not already been exposed to these topics to participate and complete the course successfully. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. John J. McCloy Visiting Professor Simon.
2023-24: Not offered[US/TS] Is preserving collective security and individual rights inherently contradictory or can they be mutually reinforcing? Focusing on rights within the United States, this class will explore how the United States has sought to balance these competing concerns in the past, and the implications of this history for contemporary debates. We will examine the shifting meaning of "national security" and how it has changed at key moments in the nation’s history. We will also analyze how debates over national security and rights have reflected broader partisan divides, served diverse political objectives, and reflected competing visions of national identity and purpose. The shifting relationship between these two imperatives addresses the central purpose and dilemma of democratic governance: to advance the collective good while ensuring basic freedoms for all individuals.The course will initially survey these issues through a historical lens, demonstrating how questions of security and rights have been present since the nation’s founding. Contemporary case studies will make up the bulk of the remainder of the course: refugees and immigration; domestic counter-terrorism and due process; cybersecurity and surveillance; domestic terrorism and hate crimes; detention and interrogation. Three class meetings per week.
Limited to 60 students. Spring semester. Professor Walker.
2023-24: Not offered[LA] In this course, students will gain an understanding of major events and themes in the histories of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. As important, they will think and write critically about the contentious history of the region. For good reason, Central America is often considered as a whole, but despite many commonalities, each country's history is unique. How did the indigenous cultures of northern Central America compare to those of the south? Why did the once-united Federation of Central America fracture into five different states? How did Honduras become the quintessential "banana republic"? Why did Guatemala suffer decades of military dictatorships, while Costa Rica abolished its military at the same time? Through lectures and readings, we will address topics including precolonial indigenous cultures; the conquest, slavery, and encomienda; independence and the struggles of nation-building; foreign interventions; and reforms, revolutions, and counterrevolutions. Two class meetings per week.
Spring semester. Visiting Professor Lohse.
2023-24: Not offered[LA] Latin Americans began their struggle for democracy during the Independence wars at the start of the nineteenth century. Their struggle continues today. This course considers the historical meanings of democracy in various Latin American countries, with particular attention to the relationship between liberalism and democracy in the nineteenth century; the broadening of democracy at the start of the twentieth century; the rise and fall of military dictatorships in the 1960s–1980s and their impact upon civil society; and the current clashes between neo-Liberal economic programs and the neo-populist resurgence of the left. Readings and discussions will focus on the ways broad economic and political shifts impacted individuals' lives; how each economic class experienced these shifts differently; the way race and gender have shaped peoples' experience with democratization and repression; and the personal processes of radicalization by which individuals became inspired to take risks in their struggle for inclusion and against repression. Because the approach is thematic and chronological, some countries and regions will receive more attention than others. Meetings and readings will draw on secondary studies, historical documents, testimonials, music, images, and film. Two meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor R. López.
2023-24: Not offered[LAP] Over the course of three centuries, massive migrations from Europe and Africa and the dramatic decline of indigenous populations in South and Central America radically transformed the cultural, political, economic, and material landscape of what we today know as Latin America. This class will investigate the dynamism of Latin American societies beginning in the ancient or pre-conquest period and ending with the collapse of European rule in most Spanish, Portuguese, and French speaking territories in the New World. We will explore this history through the eyes of various historical actors, including politicians, explorers, noble men and women, indigenous intellectuals, and African slaves. In addition to interrogating the myriad of peaceable and creative cross-cultural exchanges and interactions that characterized the relationship between these groups, we will also explore how conflict, exploitation, and natural disaster shaped the Colonial Latin American experience. Through a mixture of lecture, small and large group activities, and analysis of primary and secondary sources we will also consider how historians understand the past as well as the foundational debates which shape our current interpretations of colonial Latin American history. Two class meetings per week.
Fall semester. Visiting Professor Lohse.
2023-24: Not offered[LA] In this course we will focus on the links between environmental impacts (such as environmental degradation, desertification, soil “exhaustion,” species extinction, genetic simplification, oil extraction, biotic invasions, deforestation, pesticide contamination, and animal grazing) and human problems (such as colonial and imperial domination, declining subsistence, defense and violation of civil rights, income inequality, scientific racism, regional underdevelopment, incomplete capitalist transformation, social marginalization, and political violence). Questions we will engage include: How have environmental changes contributed to, or otherwise conditioned, processes of conquest and domination? How have these processes of conquest, domination, and resistance, in turn, altered the environmental? In what ways has environmental devastation been a rational response to the challenges people face, and in what ways has it been irrational? Can history guide us in our current efforts to develop a sustainable approach to the environment that helps the land and its fauna, but does so in a way that brings greater justice and self-determination to the people who live there, while at the same time balancing the interests of the state and of investors? The class will introduce students to classic texts in Latin American environmental history (including the foundational studies by Warren Dean and Elinor Melville), as well as some of the newest scholarship. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor López.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 271 [AS/TS] and ASLC 271 [SA]) This course explores how caste was politicized over the course of colonial and post-colonial periods in India. It focuses on the emergence and development of various movements opposed to caste-based inequality and injustice, as well as the ongoing search for social justice. The course reviews scholarly debates about understanding this form of identification and social hierarchy, and examines the complex ways in which caste articulates with other social phenomena, like gender, class, religion, and nationality. It lays emphasis on the writings and work of key anti-caste thinkers and activists, in particular, Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar, the preeminent leader of the Dalits, and a key figure in drafting the Constitution of India. Based on close readings of various kinds of primary sources, as well as an engagement with secondary literature in history, political science, sociology, anthropology and literary studies, the course follows the story of the struggle to “annihilate” caste. Two class meetings per week.
Fall semester. Professor Sen.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 272 [AS/TE] and ASLC 272 [SA]) Political and social movements in South Africa, the United States of America, Germany, Myanmar, India, and elsewhere, have drawn inspiration from the non-violent political techniques advocated by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi during his leadership of the anti-colonial struggle for Indian freedom from British colonial rule. This course charts a global history of Gandhi’s thought about non-violence and its expression in civil disobedience and resistance movements both in India and the world. Organized in three modules, the first situates Gandhi through consideration of the diverse sources of his own historical and ideological formation; the second examines the historical contexts and practices through which non-violence acquired meaning for him; the third considers the various afterlives of Gandhian politics in movements throughout the world. We will examine autobiography and biography, Gandhi's collected works, various types of primary source, political, social, and intellectual history, and audio-visual materials. In addition to widely disseminated narratives of Gandhi as a symbol of non-violence, the course will also closely attend to the deep contradictions concerning race, caste, gender, and class that characterized his thought and action. By unsettling conventional accounts of his significance, we will grapple with the problem of how to make sense of his troubled legacy. Prior familiarity with the subject matter is not required. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Sen.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 274 [AS/TE] and ASLC 274 [SA]) What did it mean to overthrow the colonial yoke? This course will address the processes and consequences of decolonization in both newly independent nations and former colonial powers with a view to comparative analysis. The temporal focus will be on the period from 1945 to the present and the geographic reach will include South Asia, Southeast Asia, North and West Africa, and the Caribbean, and the relevant colonial entities (primarily, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and France). We commence with consideration of select independence movements, their intellectual and political foundations, political organization and strategy, as well as the responses to them by both the colonial authorities and international political organizations. The period since independence will be the focus of attention, as we explore the impact of different routes to independence on the new nations, the interactions of former colony and metropole, and the impact of globalization and European unification. Primary documents, including literature, film, and political writings will form the bulk of our readings, even as we also consider some secondary sources (drawn from history, anthropology, and sociology), and key theoretical texts. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2018-19.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 276 [AS] and ASLC 276 [C]) China—the modern nation—was born of revolution. Before the revolution there was China—the civilization—with its long and complex history. Modern historians, Western and Chinese alike, have tended to describe this history as “traditional,” leaving the modern condition to be defined by what happened in the West. In this course we will suspend this modern prejudice while asking a variety of questions on some specific topics. How did ancient laws and rituals come to define the relations between imperial states and local societies? How and to what degree did they continue to do this as societies changed? How did world religions like Buddhism and Christianity come to cohabit with Confucian ethics and ancestral rites? How did complex networks of trade, manufacturing, and credit coexist and interact with global economies and powerful military states? How did cohorts of classically educated, literary and artistic men help to integrate ethnically and linguistically diverse peoples into a culturally consistent foundation against which, and upon which, the modern Chinese nation could be built? How did ordinary working people and especially women participate or react? In each case we will discuss and develop our perspectives on how one thing led to another and then consider how modern views have tended to highlight or obscure the process. Sources include historical narratives and biographies, classical texts, philosophical and religious essays, family instructions, comparative historical analyses, fiction, and film. Reading and discussion. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2018-19.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 283 [AF/TE/TSP] and BLST 222 [A]) South African history is undergoing radical shifts in the way it is being written, read and interpreted, and this course will explore established and emerging themes in the history of this intriguing country. The time period covered will span the precolonial indigenous cultures and move on to study the initiation and expansion of white settlement and its early dependence on slave labor. The course will also investigate African resistance, both in its political and cultural forms, as well as the social effects of gold-mining and migrant labor. African nationalism, including the ANC, the Black Consciousness Movement, and the United Democratic Front, will be the focus of our study of the responses to apartheid and the ultimate collapse of the apartheid state. The course will end with discussions of recent events in South Africa, particularly the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its aftermath as well as the developing AIDS epidemic and the growing problem of crime. Two class meetings per week.
Spring semester. Professor Redding.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2021, Spring 2023, Spring 2025(Offered as HIST 284 [AF/TEP] and BLST 211 [A]) The African continent has been called by one historian the social laboratory of humanity. Art, trade, small-scale manufacturing, medical knowledge, religion, state systems, history and legend all flourished before the formal political take-over of the continent by European powers in the late nineteenth century. It is this varied history of states and cultures in the period before 1885 that this course will examine. The course will explore four topics in depth: slave-ownership within African societies and the impact of both the trans-Atlantic and east African slave trades; the interaction of religion and power on the rise and fall of the central African kingdom of Kongo; the genesis of the Zulu state in southern Africa and the historical evidence behind the contradictory histories of Tshaka; and the changing roles of women as economic, political, and social actors. We will discuss some of the differences between oral historical narratives and written ones to understand both the history of the people living on the continent as well as the active process of writing and interpreting that history. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor Redding.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2013, Spring 2018, Spring 2025[ME] This course will survey the history of Israel from the pre-state origins of Zionism in the late nineteenth century to the present. It will explore political, military, social and cultural history. We will seek a better historical understanding of many of Israel’s ongoing challenges, such as the place of religion in civil life, the state’s relation to world Jewry, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. We will pay special attention to contested identities and inner debates within Zionism and Israel, highlighting different and occasionally opposing visions of a Jewish homeland. In addition to historical documents and books (non-fiction and fiction), we will rely on the growing wealth of Israeli documentary films. Two class meetings per week.
Omitted 2018-19. Professor A. Gordon.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course offers an opportunity for history majors to reflect upon the practice of history. How do we claim to know anything about the past at all? How do historians construct the stories they tell about the past from the fragmentary remnants of former times? What is the connection of historians’ work to public memory? How do we judge the truth and value of these stories and memories? The course explores questions such as these through readings and case studies drawn from a variety of places and times. Two class meetings per week.
Not open to first-year students. Limited to 25 students per semester. Fall semester: Professor Boucher. Spring semester: Professor Maxey.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025[C] This course will introduce students to major philosophical roots, historical developments, and contemporary debates in human rights politics. The course will begin by examining the global historical evolution of the notion of human rights, stressing the pivotal role of the American and French Revolutions in framing modern conceptions of rights in the late eighteenth century. It will then examine the growth of international laws, institutions, and norms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Finally, the course will explore the human rights dimensions of three major issues in contemporary politics: humanitarian intervention; the war on terror and national security; and global capitalism and working conditions. Considerable weight and attention will be given to human rights issues in the context of the United States and its domestic and international politics. At the same time, the universalizing nature of human rights and their global import compels us to think beyond cultural, political, and historical boundaries to challenge our assumptions about the meaning and form of universal rights. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Walker.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 319 [ME/TC/TEC], ASLC 320 [WA] and RELI 322) Conceptions of the religious and the secular that continue to resonate today assumed global significance in the course of the nineteenth century as colonial empires and nascent nation-states negotiated how they would govern heterogeneous populations and interact with each other. Drawing on scholarship from a number of disciplines that historicize the categories of religion and secularity, this course will examine the political function of the religious and the secular as conceptual and regulatory categories in the 19th century. Colonial administrations, for example, employed the conceit of secularism to neutralize religious difference while individuals and communities attempted to reform and modernize local traditions as “religion” in order to navigate global hierarchies. We will begin with a historiographic and theoretical survey, covering topics that include the academic creation of “World Religions,” the politics of conversion within the British Empire, and the discourse of Orientalist spiritualism. The second half of the course will apply these historiographic and theoretical concerns to East Asia and Japan in particular. Requirements will include two topical essays and one longer paper entailing modest research. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 15 students. Not open to first-year students. Spring semester. Professor Maxey.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Fall 2015, Spring 2019(Offered as HIST 325 [EU] and EUST 325) Seventy years on, World War II remains a point of rupture, an “hour zero,” in histories of Europe, Germany and the modern world. Rather than fading into the memories of our past, the Second World War has grown in the public imagination, spurring a deluge of films and books on the experiences of combat, loss and survival. Considered the most total conflict of world history, World War II wrought unparalleled destruction upon both soldiers and civilians across three continents. The Nazi regime turned the conflict into the most horrific war in European history, resorting to genocidal methods in their “war of annihilation” against European Jews. States harnessed levels of social mobilization and personal commitment to an extent not seen before or after. Through scholarly texts and original artifacts, this seminar explores the relationship between the destructive capacity of war and the effects on those who produce, are subject to, and must come to terms with its experience. The course focuses on the diverse experiences of the people who were involved in the war: soldiers on the battlefields; women mobilized into new roles at home and on the frontlines; children whose lives were shaped by new strategies of survival and/or given purpose by the war effort; colonial troops who both fought for Europe’s empires and against colonialism; European Jews who faced “impossible” choices in the path to genocide; and individuals for whom the war provided new opportunities to transgress boundaries of community surveillance, state and sexuality. The course will focus on topics including: the social, economic, ideological and sexual complexities of wartime occupation; population movement and displacement; domestic mobilization; and the Holocaust. Two course meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Omitted 2018-19.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 327 [EU] and EUST 327) Over the last two decades, the European "New Right" (from the French "Nouvelle Droite") has gained new ground in political discourse and among European electorates. Historically speaking, the New Right emerged in response to the 1968-movement in France, combining features from social activism with ideas linking back to conservative thinkers in history such as Carl Schmitt, Joseph de Maistre or Edmund Burke. One central concept is that politics is guided by "meta-politics" (similar to the "theoretical superstructure" in Marxist thought) and that the New Right hence needs to conquer this space by taking control over discourses on philosophy, culture and identity. This course explores the history, rise and contemporary position of the New Right in Europe and offers insights in its ideology as much as its representations. Moving from the historical origins in the writings of chief ideologue Alain Benoist to contemporary European social movements such as "PEGIDA" in Germany and the pan-European "Identitarian Movement," this course offers a general overview of the New Right and insights from particular case studies. We will discuss how and why the New Right has experienced increasing momentum and what the implications of this development are for political culture: a radicalization of the mainstream or the mainstreaming of the radical? Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 25 students. 5 seats reserved for first-year students. Fall semester. STINT Fellow Önnerfors.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 330 [EU] and EUST 330) This course will explore the thought and historical context of Germany’s radical rightwing intellectuals, who played a fateful role in the ideological formation of National Socialism in the wake of the Great War. These thinkers identified themselves with the oxymoronic and elusive title of a German “Conservative Revolution.” Defying traditional divisions between Left and Right, they opposed parliamentary democracy and royalist reactionary Wilhelminian conservatism, as well as Liberalism and Marxism. Beyond offering an important case study into the role, responsibility, and accountability of public intellectuals, this course will focus on the content and context of this group's radical conservative thought. Our discussion will highlight five fields of knowledge that they attempted to reshape: theology, legal thought, race biology, geography, and political philosophy. Once the National Socialist party took power, its relations with Conservative Revolutionaries was anything but simple: some Conservative Revolutionaries joined the Nazi party or collaborated with the Nazi state. Many others, however, dissented, and claimed that Nazism distorted their ideas. The posthumous legacy of these thinkers was equally ambivalent and unpredictable, while many sank into oblivion, some inspire and challenge not only contemporary rightwing movements and intellectuals, but also contemporary left. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Admission with consent of the instructor. Omitted 2018-19. Professor A. Gordon.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 335 [EU] and EUST 335) By tracing the journeys of people into, across, and out of Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this course explores the role of migration in forging modern national, regional, and global identities. On one level, it analyzes the factors that have impelled groups of people to cross borders. On another, it examines how these migrations have changed the social landscape of Europe, serving both to forge and to challenge the divides of culture, religion, and nationhood. Topics will include: mass emigration and the rise of European imperialism; debates over “belonging” in the era of nation-building; the development of passports, visa restrictions, and quotas; the emergence of the categories of “refugee” and “asylum seeker”; forced migration and human trafficking; colonial and postcolonial immigration into Europe; and contestations over multiculturalism. Readings will relate to a variety of geographical locations, but with special emphasis on migration into and out of Britain, France, Germany, and their empires. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 35 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Boucher.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 339 [EUP] and EUST 329) This seminar reviews the various socio-cultural configurations of economic relations from the high medieval to the early modern era. Drawing on works from a range of disciplines, we focus on the intersection of market and culture, on how people have struggled to arrange and institutionalize market exchange, and how they have sought to make sense of those changing relations. The course is built around a basic question that is also a current debate: What can we and what can we not buy and sell? And why? To answer these questions, we first consider the foundational works that still govern our basic notions about the market society we live in. We then review several fields of our social lives that have been transformed through market exchange: What makes one good a gift and another a commodity? How can we set a price on the work we do? How did money make the world go around? Why am I often the sum of what I own? And what do these questions tell us about our relationship with each other and our things? We will consider both critical essays and historical case-studies. The goal of the course is to gain a historical and critical perspective on the making of a market society, provide approaches for applied research, and allow us to be conscious participants in the contemporary transformation of our own society. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Cho.
2023-24: Not offered[LA] The Inquisition is one of the most notorious institutions in world history, but it remains little understood. As part of their drive to unite the Spanish kingdoms under their rule, Ferdinand and Isabella secured papal permission to launch a nationwide Inquisition in 1478. Although charged with safeguarding Catholic orthodoxy from heresy, the Inquisition was in fact a state-run institution that worked from political and economic motives as well as religious ones. The Inquisition targeted tens of thousands of converted Jews and Muslims, Protestants, and others suspected of such crimes as blasphemy, sorcery, or sexual improprieties during its 350-year history. Yet, far from an arbitrary "witch hunt," the Inquisition was a thoroughly bureaucratic institution that operated according to rigidly defined rules and procedures. In reading and discussing some of the most important classic and current works, students will learn about the major historiographical controversies and debates on the Inquisition in Iberia and Latin America. In a series of short papers, students will analyze secondary readings as well as primary sources drawn from Inquisition records. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Visiting Professor Lohse.
2023-24: Not offered[LA] With one significant exception, Latin America’s major revolutions have been led by groups espousing one of three main currents of Marxist thought: Marxism-Leninism (Stalinism), Trotskyism, and Maoism. In this course, the student will master the basics of those theories through the reading and analysis of their primary texts. We will then consider case studies of Marxist-inspired revolutions in Bolivia, Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, and Peru. With the aid of lectures and further readings, the student will critically evaluate, in a series of papers, how Marxist theories were applied in practice in twentieth-century Latin America. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 18 students. Fall semester. Visiting Professor Lohse.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 345 [LA/TS] and SWAG 345) Popular mythologies of Latin America have historically relied on hyper-masculine archetypes, including the conquistador, the caudillo, and the guerrillero to explain the continent’s past, culture and political development. By contrast, students in this course will be asked to bring women, gender and sexuality from the margins to the center of Latin American history. In doing so, we will reevaluate four transformative historical moments: the Spanish conquest, the wars of independence, the emergence of industrial capitalism, and the proliferation of late twentieth-century political revolutions. Through an exploration of these key periods of upheaval we will assess how social conflict was frequently mediated through competing definitions of masculinity and femininity. In addition, this course will explore the ways in which women’s activism has been central to social and political movements across the continent. Furthermore, we will investigate how the domain of sexual practice and reproduction underpinned broader conflicts over racial purity, worker power, and the boundaries of citizenship in racially and ethnically diverse societies. The course will culminate in a final research paper on a topic chosen by the student. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Hicks.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 350 [AF/LA/TECP] and BLST 309 [CLA/D]) One of the longest and largest migrations in world history was between Western Africa and Brazil; over the course of four centuries the slave trade displaced nearly six million Africans to the then-Portuguese colony. In this course, students will explore the material, cultural, intellectual, linguistic and economic exchanges that defined the relationship between Western Africa and Brazil from 1500 to the present. Through this history, students will consider how this unique connection spurred new forms of transatlantic consciousness and identity in Brazilian society. Our examination of the linked histories of Africa and Brazil will allow us to probe a number of questions: How does this history help us understand Brazil’s emergence as the world’s first self-described “racial democracy”? Who decides what is “modern”? How is race related to ideas of civilization, order and progress? What does “authenticity” mean? Does understanding black history outside of the United States challenge our ideas of how racial identities are created, experienced and maintained? And finally, is black consciousness universal? Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 20 students. Fall semester. Professor Hicks.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 351 [US] and AMST 351) A history of urban America in the industrial era, this course will focus especially on the city of Holyoke as a site of industrialization, immigration, urban development, and deindustrialization. We will begin with a walking tour of Holyoke and an exploration of the making of a planned industrial city. We will then investigate the experience of several key immigrant groups – principally Irish, French Canadian, Polish, and Puerto Rican – using both primary and secondary historical sources, as well as fiction. Students will write several papers on one or another immigrant group or a particular element of social experience, and a final research paper that explores in greater depth one of the topics touched upon in the course. The course will include students from Amherst College and Holyoke Community College and is open to all students, majors and non-majors. All students will engage in some primary research, especially in the city archives and Wistariahurst Museum, in Holyoke. Amherst College history majors who wish to write a 25-page research paper and thereby satisfy their major research requirement may do so in the context of this course. Classes will be held at both Amherst and Holyoke sites; transportation will be provided.
Enrollment is limited to ten students per institution. Admission with consent of the instructor. Omitted 2018-19. Professors Couvares and Clinton (HCC).
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 352 [US/TC/TS], AMST 352, and BLST 351) Focusing on the United States, this course introduces students to foundational questions and texts central to the history of education and education studies. We will explore the competing goals and priorities Americans have held for primary, secondary and post-secondary education and ask how and why these visions have influenced – or failed to influence – classrooms, schools, and educational policy. We will pay particular attention to sources of educational stratification; the tensions between the public and private purposes of schooling; and the relationship between schooling and equality. In the first part of the course, students will reflect on how Americans have imagined the purpose of self-education, literacy, public schooling, and the liberal arts. Among the questions we will consider: What do Americans want from public schools? Does education promote liberation? Has a liberal arts education outlived its usefulness? How has the organization of schools and school systems promoted some educational objectives in lieu of others? In the second section of the course, we will concentrate on the politics of schooling. Here, we will pay particular attention to several issues central to understanding educational inequality and its relationship to American politics, culture, and society: localism; state and federal authority; desegregation; and the complicated relationship between schooling and racial, linguistic, class-based, gender, and ethnic hierarchies. Finally, we will explore how competing ideas about the purpose and politics of education manifest themselves in current policy debates about privatization, charters, testing, and school discipline. Throughout the course, students will reflect on both the limits and possibilities of American schools to challenge and reconfigure the social order. Course assignments will consist of a mix of short papers and analytical reading exercises. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Visiting Associate Professor L. Gordon.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2025(Offered as HIST 359 [US] and AMST 359) When calling for the nation’s first public school systems, Horace Mann described common schools as the “great equalizer of the conditions of men” and “the balance wheel of the social machinery.” This basic idea, that formal education can reduce poverty by “leveling the playing field” or providing a “fair start in life” is among the most cherished ideals in American social and political thought. At the same time, whether and how education can equalize the social, economic, and political order has generated considerable debate, especially in the twentieth century. Drawing on philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, literature, and popular culture, this course focuses on three questions: What does educational equality mean? Why should we equalize education? And can equal schools create an equal society? By exploring the many ways Americans answered—and argued over—these questions, the course investigates the promise and pitfalls of treating schooling as a social policy tool. Readings and discussions also examine efforts to link educational reform to reform in other policy arenas, namely employment, housing, social welfare, and criminal justice. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 20 students. Fall semester. Lewis-Sebring Visiting Professor L. Gordon.
2023-24: Not offered[USP] This course examines the revolutionary era of American history (1750–1800), a period defined by a radical transfer of state power from elite aristocrats to common men. Yet largescale power differentials persisted, evidenced by the enslavement of African Americans, the removal of Native Americans, the subjugation of women, and the harsh laboring conditions of poor whites. The course examines the many contradictions of this important era. We will ask the following questions: Who built America? What were the causes of the American Revolution? How were ideals such as "liberty" and "freedom" conceptualized? Did the lives of ordinary people change after the war? What did African American resistance to slavery and inequality look like? What were the prospects for women's economic, educational, or political advancement? The main course texts include social and cultural histories of the period as well as primary sources such as newspapers, memoirs, and pamphlets. Includes class meetings in the Amherst College Archives and Special Collections and the Mead Art Museum. Two meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Manion.
2023-24: Not offered[USC] This course will explore how information has been used as a political tool and a weapon of armed and non-armed conflict throughout history. The course will begin with a discussion of the development of theories of propaganda and mass persuasion from the early modern period through the nineteenth century to include readings on how technological advances and societal changes aided in the development of propaganda as a tool to both advocate and persuade. The next segment of the course will discuss how propaganda and political warfare developed during the twentieth century with an emphasis on the institutionalization of techniques and structures designed to wage psychological warfare during the World Wars as well as the political warfare and subversion used by both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War. Additionally, students will have the opportunity to read about the development of “disinformation” strategies used both on and off the battlefield to mislead and deceive target audiences. Finally, the course will conclude with readings on the contemporary period to include further discussion of change and continuity in approaches to political warfare as a result of technological advances such as the internet, mobile computing, and social media. While looking at the issue from a historical perspective, readings from various fields will be incorporated so students understand the psychology and social marketing dynamics underpinning modern approaches to political warfare, propaganda, and disinformation. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 18 students. Fall Semester. John J. McCloy Visiting Professor Jacobson.
2023-24: Not offered[US] This course will afford students the opportunity to experience the process of national security policy-making through role-play and intensive interaction mediated by visitors with extensive White House experience and direct involvement in significant strategic decisions. The first part of the course will explore the national security decision-making process instituted under the National Security Act of 1947, its subsequent evolution, and the varied roles that national security advisors have played. The second part will focus on specific challenges that would trigger National Security Council meetings at various levels in the “real world,” ranging from acute crises to chronic problems that might create a crisis in some plausible future. Over the course of the seminar, students will rotate through the different roles, so that each participant will come to grips with the full range of factors that shape policymakers’ choices and, ultimately, national security policy. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Omitted 2018-19. McCloy Visiting Professor Simon.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course seeks to provide an introduction to the fundamentals of military strategy and the “art of war.” We will begin with readings and discussions about the origins of war and the nature of conflict and then examine the origins of classical strategy, reading the work of Clausewitz and Jomini, maritime strategists such as Mahan and Corbett, and airpower theorists such as Douhet. We will also look more broadly at the ideas of Sun Tzu, T.E. Lawrence, Galula and other scholar-practitioners of “small wars” and “insurgencies.” Throughout, students will search for continuity and contrasts in styles of warfare. Students will consider how these various strategists influenced contemporary American military operational theory and practices. The course will conclude by contemplating strategy and the future of warfare. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 18 students. Spring Semester. McCloy Visiting Professor Jacobson.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 367 [AS] and ASLC 367 [C]) This seminar introduces students to the major historical scholarship and debates on the state, society, and economy in China during the Ming-Qing era, the last two imperial dynasties. The purpose of the course is to not only familiarize students with important issues in late imperial Chinese history, but also engage them in representative work by successive generations of scholars in order to understand how historical interpretations (including theoretical orientations, methodology, and use of sources) have developed over time. We will focus on the following key topics: the respective features of the Ming and Qing imperial states; frontier expansion and ethnic statecraft; the structure of local government and rural control; the law in society; heterodoxy, collective violence, and peasant rebellion; the evolution of the Chinese family and lineage system; the nature of the Chinese “gentry” and the foundations of their power; civil examinations and their role in fostering social mobility, elite reproduction, and stable imperial rule; commercial expansion and the rise of an urban culture; the role of merchants in society, the organizations of commerce and industry, and “sprouts of capitalism”; cities and the debate over whether a “civil society” or “public sphere” existed in late imperial China; the flow of silver and China’s participation in the early modern global maritime trade; and the rival approaches to understanding that most controversial of topics, the late imperial Chinese economy and the “Great Divergence” debate. All of these topics have provoked intense debates and fostered an important and growing body of scholarship. This is a reading intensive and writing attentive course. Requirements include short response papers, book reviews, and topical essays. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 25 students. Fall semester. Professor Qiao.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2018(Offered as HIST 370 [AS] and ASLC 370 [J]) Japan emerged as the only non-Western multi-ethnic empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. Comparing that empire to others across the globe, this course will consider how Japanese imperialism facilitated the complex circulation of goods, ideas, people and practices in modern Asia. We will ask how that complex circulation shaped Japan, as well as the colonial modernities of Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria. Topics will include the formation of a regional imperial order in Asia, colony and metropole relations, gender and imperialism, regional migration, empire and total war, decolonization, and history and memory. Requirements include short response papers and topical essays. Two class meetings per week.
Spring semester. Professor Maxey.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2015, Spring 2019, Fall 2020(Offered as HIST 375 [AS/TC/TE], ANTH 375 and ASLC 375 [SA]) This course explores the intervention made by the Subaltern Studies Collective in the discipline of history-writing, particularly in the context of South Asia. Dissatisfied that previous histories of Indian nationalism were all in some sense “elitist,” this group of historians, anthropologists, and literary theorists sought to investigate how various marginalized communities—women, workers, peasants, adivasis—contributed in their own terms to the making of modern South Asia. Their project thus engaged broader methodological questions and problems about how to write histories of the marginal. Combining theoretical statements with selections from the 12-volume series as well as individual monographs, our readings and discussion will chart the overall trajectory of Subaltern Studies from its initial moorings in the works of the Italian Marxian theorist Antonio Gramsci to its later grounding in the critique of colonial discourse. The objective is to understand how this school of history-writing transformed the understanding of modern South Asian history. Our discussion will engage with the critiques and debates generated in response to the project and the life of the analytical category, “subalternity,” outside South Asia. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Sen.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 377 [AS/TE] and ASLC 377) This course examines the rise, establishment, and decline of British colonialism in India. Originating with the profound transitions underway in the mid-eighteenth century, the colonial state extended its reach over much of the subcontinent over the following century, yet crumbled by the middle of the twentieth. How do we understand these great revolutions in society and politics historically? What did they mean for those whose lives were transformed by them? How does the legacy of colonialism endure? Structured by the most important debates colonial rule generated both historically and historiographically, the course offers the opportunity to ask the old riddle, what was colonialism? In consultation with the instructor, students may choose to write the seminar-paper required for the History major in this course. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 20 students. Fall semester. Professor Sen.
2023-24: Not offeredIndependent reading course.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024(Offered as HIST 393 [MEP] and ASLC 355 [WA]) This course examines in depth the formative period of Islam between c. 500-680. Using predominantly primary material, we will chart the emergence, success, and evolution of Islam, the Islamic community, and the Islamic polity. The focus of this course is on understanding the changing nature over time of peoples’ understanding of and conception of what Islam was and what Islam implied socially, religiously, culturally and politically. We concentrate on exploring the growth of the historical tradition of Islam and its continued contestations amongst scholars today. This course will familiarize students with the events, persons, ideas, texts and historical debates concerning this period. It is not a course on the religion or beliefs of Islam, but a historical deconstruction and analysis of the period. This class is writing intensive. Two class meetings per week.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Ringer.
2023-24: Not offered[C] Nationalism–by far the most powerful political idea of the past 250 years–has transformed human history the world over. By positing a new form of human identity, it has liberated and enslaved, built and destroyed. Most importantly it persisted by presenting itself as a natural fact of human life. Studying nationalism, therefore, is an act of self-exploration, whether we regard ourselves as national or not. Yet, though nationalism has shaped the modern age, people strongly disagree on its most basic concepts: What are nations? When did they emerge? What is their future? This research seminar will begin with a systematic and comparative study of the key theories of nationalism, seeking to understand both their claims and historical contexts. From this theoretical foundation, the seminar will explore case studies from different epochs and continents. Further: more than focusing on nationalism’s impact on politics, our case studies will illustrate nationalism’s impact on gender norms and class, on religion and philosophy, on culture and the arts. Finally the course will culminate in individual student research projects, consisting of a 25-page research paper and a final presentation as part of a mini-conference event. One class meeting per week.
Not open to first-year students. Limited to 18 students. Enrollment requires attendance at the first class meeting. Fall semester. Professor A. Gordon.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2025(Offered as HIST 425 [EUP] and EUST 425) The history of the pre-modern European economy is usually understood as the singular and exceptional rise of the first modern economy. Yet recent research in economic history and shifts in the world economy have provided new perspectives to reconsider the rise of the European economy. From this long-term and global viewpoint, the story of Europe’s economic take-off becomes the remarkable story of a backwater that became mainstream. How was Europe able to reposition itself from a periphery of the Eurasian economy to a central node of the global economy? What drove Europeans further and further into the East and how did their incursions disrupt or adapt to previous trade networks and practices? How did the exports and imports of Europe change as their relation to the world economy changed? By considering these questions, the course will revisit the familiar histories of the Commercial Revolution, the travels of Marco Polo, the Age of Discovery, the East India Companies, the Atlantic System, and the road to the Industrial Revolution. Using the analysis and synthesis of modern historians, we will situate the economic take-off of Europe in the context of the transformation of the world economy. Utilizing past travel logs, eyewitness reports, business contracts, customs receipts, and other non-narrative sources, students will complete a research paper that tackles one of these histories and casts them in new light. One class meeting per week.
Not open to first-year students. Limited to 18 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Cho.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 432 [EU] and EUST 432) Victorian Britain was a nation of contrasts. It was at once the world’s foremost economic and imperial power, the richest nation in Europe, and the country where the consequences of industrialization–slums, poverty, disease, alcoholism, sexual violence–took some of their bleakest forms. In an era of revolution, Britain enjoyed one of the most stable political systems in Europe; yet it was also a society plagued by crime and by fears of popular unrest, the place where Marx predicted the worker’s revolt would begin. This seminar explores the complex world of the Victorians through a focus on what contemporaries termed the “social problem”: the underclass of criminals, paupers, and prostitutes who seemed immune to reform. Themes will include political liberalism and the Poor Law, imperialism at home and abroad, industrialization and urbanization, sanitation, hygiene, and disease control initiatives, shifting cultural understandings of gender and class, and Jack the Ripper. Students will be expected to write a research paper on a topic of their choice. One class meeting per week.
Not open to first-year students. Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Boucher.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 445 [EU] and RUSS 345) The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the end of the dynastic imperial regime and the onset of the new, unprecedented attempt to create a utopian society of universal equality and justice. It was also the beginning of the bloody and brutal Civil War and foreign intervention. Yet the Russian Revolution as a modernist project of remaking the social order and human nature had a much longer history as it developed since the nineteenth century in politics, science, literature, and arts. Following the Revolution, the Bolshevik reordering of state, society and empire developed along with and conflicted with the futuristic project of global transformation of the old world. What Soviet life would look like and how the Soviet multiethnic empire should be built became highly contested projects. This seminar introduces students to the new research into the elaboration, implementation, domestication, taming, or overcoming of revolutionary utopianism and futurism. Studying secondary and primary sources, we will explore how people created new forms of life, moral, knowledge, gender order, postcolonial arrangements, and new state institutions. Students will produce a research paper based on primary sources, including those at the Amherst Center for Russian Culture. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Spring semester. Five College Professor Glebov.
2023-24: Not offered[USP] An exploration of life in colonial North America through laws passed to regulate, restrict, and give meaning to sexual relations by British, Spanish, French, and Dutch colonizers. Major themes will be sexual and gender norms, faith and family, economic systems, geography, and culture with an emphasis on cross-cultural conflicts, interactions, and communities. Students will work extensively with primary source documents from court cases about interracial sex, premarital sex, sexual assault, abortion, same-sex intimacies, bastardy, and people of indeterminate sex and gender. Students will write an original research paper. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Manion.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 455 [US] and BLST 431 [US]) This course will explore the temporal, ideological and cultural dimensions of the American Civil Rights Movement. Following 1954’s Brown vs Board of Education decision, a diverse social movement of students, preachers, working people, activists and intellectuals challenged—and eventually dismantled—Jim Crow segregation in the American South. How did this happen? To answer this question, we will examine the origins of the movement, its institutional dimensions, its key figures, and its intellectual underpinnings. In addition, this class will trace the afterlife of the movement, assessing its national and global reverberations, as well as its relationship to the Black Power movement. As a research seminar, this course will culminate in the production of a 25-page research paper based on an analysis of primary sources related to the movement. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Omitted 2018-19. Visiting Lecturer Hickmott.
2023-24: Not offered[US/TS] The 1960s was arguably the most turbulent decade the United States experienced in the twentieth century. It evokes strong images of youthful protests and “sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll,” which defined the era in the popular mind. These exuberant stereotypes, however, also concealed the complexities and fissures at the core of Cold War American society. This research seminar will examine the dominant values and policies of the Cold War United States at the beginning of the decade, and the subsequent challenges posed to the existing order in the areas of race, foreign affairs, domestic economic policy, political leadership, gender relations, and popular culture. It will emphasize a wide array of protest movements and activism—both left and right—and the interplay among formal politics, grassroots movements, and popular culture. Finally, it will question whether the decade provides a valid and coherent framework for historical analysis, looking for continuities and unique aspects of this era in the broader context of modern American history. The course will explore these questions in historical documents, as well as music, visual arts, literature, and film. Students will conduct in-depth research on a topic of their choice, culminating in a 20-25 page seminar paper. One class meeting per week.Limited to 18 students.
Not open to first-year students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Walker.
2023-24: Not offered[US/TE] This seminar will trace the path and nature of the United States' involvement in Vietnam from World War II to the fall of Saigon in 1975 and its aftermath. It will examine U.S. policy in the context of Cold War foreign relations and how U.S. policy responded to the decolonizing Third World and the perceived danger of communist expansion and control in Southeast Asia. The seminar will explore the various pressures and influences on American policymakers, the nature of the war, and its effects on Vietnam and the United States. It will also stress Vietnamese perspectives on the conflict and analyze how Vietnamese history and culture shaped interactions with the United States, the Soviet Union and the global community. Finally, the course will spend significant time on the conflict's broad impact on U.S. society and popular culture, as manifested through music, film, and literature. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Walker.
[US] The purpose of this course is to provide an overview of the role and effectiveness of intelligence in forming and executing national security policy in the U.S. Government. It will include three major components: (1) a survey and assessment of the intelligence enterprise, its organization, and major functions, to gain insight into how the intelligence community works, and into its ethos and organizational culture; (2) an examination of the impact of intelligence collection and analysis on the policy community and of the interactions between the policy and intelligence communities from both their perspectives; and (3) review of case studies to gain deeper insight into intelligence community/policy making community dynamics in the “real world.” One class meeting per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Fall semester. McCloy Visiting Professor Simon.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course will cover the history of Jerusalem from approximately 1000 BC to the present. Using primary sources as much as possible, we will focus on the religious, cultural, and strategic significance of the city as well as the evolution of its physical and human geography over time. One class meeting per week.
Spring semester. Limited to 15 students. John J. McCloy ’16 Visiting Professor Simon.
2023-24: Not offered[US/TE] This seminar approaches the Hawaiian Archipelago as a focal point for examining the environmental, cultural, and economic processes that crisscrossed the Pacific Ocean from the maritime settlement of Polynesia to the present day. As a realm of vibrant cultural development prior to European contact, a hub of missionary and whaling activities, a coaling station for transpacific steamships, a front line in the Second World War, a zone of diasporas during the post-war era, and an epicenter for Pacific Islander social revitalization, Hawaiʻi has much to offer our understanding of globalization and its varied histories. Participants will use translations of Hawaiian-language materials to augment course readings and to open a window into a range of Native Hawaiian viewpoints that remain largely invisible from the historical record. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Spring semester. Professor Melillo.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 470 [AS] and ASLC 470 [C]) The rise of Shanghai as a cosmopolitan modern city in the nineteenth century and the vicissitude of its fortune in the twentieth century closely paralleled China’s modern history–in fact, many of China’s most important modern transformations first took place in the metropolis. Shanghai was the largest treaty port with the first foreign concessions in China, and thus emerged as the primary conduit for western ideas and culture. It witnessed the rise of China’s first bourgeoisie and urban middle class, and along with them, a modern consumer culture, popular media, modern aesthetics and new forms of art. It was also the origin of the workers’ movement and communist revolution and where the Chinese Communist Party held its first meetings. During the Mao era, Shanghai was not only the preeminent industrial city in the country, but also a major political center where the cultural revolution was plotted. Thanks to its key role in China’s modernity, the history of Shanghai has generated a substantial and impressive body of scholarship over the past few decades. In this research seminar, we will examine the various scholarly approaches to Shanghai’s history and grapple with a number of important theoretical and historiographic issues that are central to the study of modern Chinese history. In this seminar, we will develop research and writing skills in order to conduct a research project. This course requires some familiarity with modern Chinese history, but command of Chinese language is not necessary. Assignments include research exercises, short response papers, presentations, a research prospectus, and a final paper. Students wishing to fulfill the seminar paper requirement may opt to write a research paper. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Spring semester. Professor Qiao.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 474 [AS/TE] and ASLC 474 [SA]) Anti-colonial nationalism in India was one of the first major movements towards the decolonization of the global south. This reading and writing intensive research seminar examines the story of the Indian nationalist movement and the effort to liberate the subcontinent and its peoples from British colonial rule. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, the course chronologically explores the rise and development of nationalist ideology and practice, and introduces students to four broadly conceived historiographical schools and their interpretations of this movement—nationalist, Marxist, Cambridge, and Subaltern Studies. Students will thereby engage with a number of prominent historiographical debates about Indian nationalism and gain an in-depth appreciation of the triumphs, contradictions, and failures that marked the struggle for freedom in India, as well its troubled legacies. Writing assignments are designed to culminate in a substantial research paper. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Sen.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 475 [AS/TC] and ASLC 475) The practice of history has been reshaped over several decades by a series of theoretical turns that cut across the humanities: the cultural turn, the linguistic turn, and transnational turn. Historians now grapple with a number of "posts" (post-structuralism, post-modernism, post-colonialism), "news" (the new imperial history, the new humanities, the new environmental history) and "criticals" (critical regionalism, critical race studies, critical Asian studies) as we read, write, and teach history. This seminar will grapple with a number of these theoretical provocations and examine their application to the writing of history. The syllabus pairs a theoretical reading with a historical monograph applying the same theme—ideology, time, the social, etc.—to modern Japan. Assignments include weekly responses, presentations, an annotated bibliography, and a final paper. Students wishing to fulfill the seminar paper requirement may opt to write a research paper. One class meeting per week.
Not open to first-year students. Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Maxey.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 477 [AS/TE] and ASLC 462 [J]) The fifteen years of war initiated by Japan—variously referred to as the Pacific War, the Great East Asian War, the Fifteen-year War, World War II, and the Asian-Pacific War—continue to shape the politics and diplomacy of Asia. This seminar examines the historiographic challenges that arise from the war in the memory and history of Japan, East Asia, and the United States. The principal questions guiding the seminar will be: What is the relationship between history and memory in our media-saturated world? How are the memory and history of war intertwined in both national and international politics? What forms of memory have been included and excluded from dominant historical narratives and commemorative devices? What role can the academic discipline of history play in these controversies? The goal of the seminar will be to immerse ourselves in a critical conversation and to produce archival research projects. To that end, scholarly monographs, edited volumes, oral history, literature, and film will guide our discussions. Active class participation, ungraded writing exercises, and one research paper (20~25 pages) will be required. One class meeting per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Maxey.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 488 [AF/TE] and BLST 321 [A]) There were numerous rebellions against the state during the period of European colonial rule, and violent resistance to state authority has continued to characterize political life in many post-colonial African countries. This seminar will examine the development of several outbreaks of violence in Africa in the colonial and post-colonial periods to explore important questions in a comparative context. We will look at the economic, social, religious, and political roots of these disturbances; at the challenges faced both by rebel groups attempting to gain a foothold and by states with a fragile hold on ruling authority; and at the social disruptions caused by the participation of child and youth soldiers in various conflicts. We will also discuss the problems historians face in trying to narrate and analyze revolts whose strength often emerged from their protean character, and the legends and rumors that frequently swirled around violent revolts and their role in the construction of historical narratives. The events studied will include the Maji-maji rebellion in German-controlled Tanganyika in 1906-1907; the first (1896-1897) and second (1960-1980) Chimurengas (revolts) in southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe; the widespread revolt in the 1980s and '90s in South Africa against the apartheid regime; and the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda in the late 1990s. Students will each write a 20- to 25-page research paper on an individually chosen topic as a final project; in addition there will be frequent, shorter writing assignments throughout the semester. One class meeting per week.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Redding.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 489 [ME] and ASLC 489) The Ottoman Empire underwent a process of intense reform in the nineteenth century. Reformers were determined to strengthen their countries’ sovereignty vis-à-vis increasingly aggressive European imperial powers and embarked on a series of measures designed to improve their economies, political institutions and militaries. European institutions served as one important source of inspiration for Ottoman reformers. This course explores the complex relationship between preservation and change and between admiration and rejection of Ottoman and European ideas, institutions, and cultures that characterized the nineteenth-century reform process. We will move beyond the oversimplification and distortion inherent in the paradigm of “adoption vs. rejection” and instead seek to conceptualize the complex relationship with Europe, and with the Ottomans’ own traditions, as a process of translation. The concept of "translation" allows us to understand the process as multidirectional, entangled and interactive. The course draws on a close reading of a variety of primary and secondary sources. Students will be encouraged to apply theories of "translation" to their own research projects. Two meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Admission with consent of the instructor. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Ringer.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 492 [ME/TC/TE] and ALSC 459 [WA]) This seminar explores contemporary Iran from a historical and interdisciplinary perspective. The aim of the course is both to provide an overall understanding of the history of Iran, as well as those key elements of religion, literature, legend, and politics that together shape Iran's understanding of itself. We will utilize a wide variety of sources, including Islamic and local histories, Persian literature, architecture, painting and ceramics, film, political treatises, Shiite theological writing, foreign travel accounts, and U.S. state department documents, in addition to secondary sources. Two class meetings per week.
Recommended requisite: a survey course on the modern Middle East. Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Omitted 2018-19. Professor Ringer.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 493 [ME/TC/TE/TS] and ASLC 493) Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk" looms large in Turkish historical memory. As a national hero and Turkey’s first President from 1923 until his death in 1938, Ataturk symbolizes a shift from empire to republic, from subject to citizen. He is remembered for promoting the secularization, democratization and Westernization of Turkey. Turkey’s current President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has now served as head of the Turkish Republic for nearly as long as Ataturk. Supporters point to Erdogan's policies of democratization as the fulfillment of Ataturk’s intentions, while his opponents argue that Erdogan is deliberately dismantling the foundations of Ataturk’s secular and western-oriented republic. This seminar focuses on how these two leaders are variously imagined and claimed, as a window onto contemporary debates surrounding secularism and the place of religion, nationalism and minority rights, the tensions between authoritarianism and democracy, and the ways in which competing visions of the Ottoman past surround alternative constructions of Turkey’s future. Two course meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Preference given to students who have taken HIST 191. Spring semester. Professor Ringer.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as HIST 494 [ME], ANTH 431, and ASLC 494) At different points in its nearly 2000-year history, the city now known as Istanbul has been the capital of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires. Alternately branded as a “global city” and selected as the “Cultural Capital of Europe,” Istanbul continues to thrive as a complex urban landscape of intersecting economies, histories, and ideas. Over its long history, millions of people and multiple communities have called Istanbul their home—each shaping the city with distinct visions of the past and longings for the future. As innumerable identities (communal, religious, national, ethnic) have been both claimed and erased to serve a variety of political, economic, and social ideologies, Istanbul stands today as a city where the meanings of space and place are contested like few others. This seminar explores the connections between contemporary politics and society in Turkey through the contested histories of space and place-making in Istanbul, with special attention to the varied historical legacy of architecture of the city. Two 80 minute class meetings per week.
The seminar will culminate with a 12-day trip to Istanbul, Turkey. All students enrolled in the course are expected to participate in the trip. The trip will begin immediately after the final exam period, departing on May 12 and returning on May 23. The cost of the trip will be covered by the College.
Recommended requisite: Prior course work in Middle East studies. Limited to 12 Amherst College students. Open to sophomores and juniors. Admission with consent of the instructors. Enrollment is by written application only, with an interview process to follow. Omitted 2018-19. Professors Dole and Ringer.
2023-24: Not offeredCulminating in one or more pieces of historical writing which may be submitted to the Department for a degree with Honors. Normally to be taken as a single course but, with permission of the Department, as a double course as well.
Open to juniors and seniors. Fall semester. The Department.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2025