* HIST 007a / HSHM 007a, Science and the Senses  Chitra Ramalingam

This course takes up the historical and cultural relationships between seeing, sensing, and knowing in science. Scientific work is conducted with the whole body, yet science is usually assumed to be a visual practice: looking into microscopes, peering into telescopes, gazing at screens and graphs and diagrams. How did vision take on this apparent role as the primary sense for knowing the world through science? What role have smell, hearing, taste, and touch—and other perceptual systems—played in scientific work, and why have they historically been devalued? What are the possibilities for a sensuous and embodied approach to the history of science? We examine the role of the senses in the production of science through primary sources on the senses and scientific inquiry; secondary scholarship in the history and anthropology of sensation, feminist science studies and disability studies; and through immersive experiences that engage students’ own perceptions of the world around them. Through site visits to Yale museums, libraries, and labs we also analyze the sensory world of science through historical scientific objects, images, and instruments, as well as contemporary spaces of experiment and observation.  WR, HU
MW 1pm-2:15pm

* HIST 014a, The Roots of the American Revolution  Winston Hill

A guided look at the genesis of the American Revolution, beginning over a hundred years before the Revolution itself and covering transatlantic intellectual traditions, politics, imperial competition, the Atlantic economy, and the final crisis of the 1760s and 1770s. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.  WR, HU
MW 1pm-2:15pm

* HIST 020a, Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Spain  Hussein Fancy

It is widely believed that Jews, Christians, Muslims lived together in relative harmony for significant periods of medieval Spanish history, that they experienced what has been called convivencia. What is more, the argument continues, because of this harmony, all benefited materially and culturally from diversity and interaction. Through careful reading of primary sources, students take a critical look at convivencia as both historical concept and practice. To what degree did tolerance exist in medieval Spain? And perhaps more critically, what do religious interactions in the distant past tell us about the possibilities for religious tolerance in the future. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.  WR, HU
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

* HIST 022a, What History Teaches  John Gaddis

An introduction to the discipline of history. History viewed as an art, a science, and something in between; differences between fact, interpretation, and consensus; history as a predictor of future events. Focus on issues such as the interdependence of variables, causation and verification, the role of individuals, and to what extent historical inquiry can or should be a moral enterprise. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.  WR, HU
MW 1pm-2:15pm

* HIST 031a, What Makes An American?: U.S. National Identity, Founding to Present  Alvita Akiboh

What makes someone an “American”? This question has plagued the United States since its inception. Most countries, in constructing their national identity, point to shared language, culture, or ethnicity. The United States, on the other hand, has been called a “nation of immigrants,” a “melting pot,” or a “mosaic.” These terms seek to describe how disparate groups of people from all over the globe have come together to form a nation. In this course, students grapple with questions of who has been considered “American” at different points in U.S. history, how the boundaries of this U.S national community have been policed, and why those boundaries have changed over time to allow some to become American while continuing to exclude others. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.  WR, HU
HTBA

* HIST 036a, Utopia and Dystopia: From Classic Times to the Present in Western Culture  Maria Jordan

We live in a time of dysfunctional societies but, at the same time, in a moment of ecological, egalitarian, and tolerant societies. In this class we examine utopian ideas from Antiquity to the present in Western societies, and compare them with the ones that we formulate in our days. Also, we examine the correlation between dystopias and utopias. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.   WR, HU
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

* HIST 037a, History of Indian Ocean Crossings  Nurfadzilah Yahaya

This seminar explores the history of the Indian Ocean from the Red Sea region to South Asia, and onward to Southeast Asia through two creative works by Amitav Ghosh. The first work is In an Antique Land, an autobiographical account of his time in Egypt as an anthropologist in the late twentieth century that he interspersed with that of the history of a Jewish merchant in Aden and Malabar in the twelfth century when Indian Ocean trade formed the backbone of international economy. The second book, Sea of Poppies is the first novel in his epic trilogy on the Indian Ocean, which traces the journey of a diverse group people from the Indian subcontinent to Southeast Asia and China during the nineteenth century. This seminar breaks out of conventional regional fields by closely following historical actors on the ground. Each session explores several core themes for historical research namely commerce, mobility, labor, climate, cosmopolitanism, colonialism, and modernization. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.  WR, HU
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

* HIST 040a, Comparative Women's History  Rebecca Tannenbaum

Comparative perspective on the lives of women and their experiences, the ways in which historical forces shaped gender roles in different cultures, and the similarities and differences in gender roles across different time periods and around the world. Topics include work, family roles, political participation, health and sexuality, religious roles, and global feminisms. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.  WR, HU
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

* HIST 072b, The History of World History  Valerie Hansen

How the great historians of ancient Greece, Rome, China, the Islamic world, and nineteenth-century Europe created modern historical method. How to evaluate the reliability of sources, both primary and secondary, and assess the relationship between fact and interpretation. Using historical method to make sense of our world today. Strategies for improving reading, writing, and public speaking skills. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.  WR, HU
HTBA

HIST 103b, The World Circa 1800 T  Stuart Semmel

Global history studies cross-cultural interactions, connections, influences, and conflicts. Our subjects include: colonial expansion; war and resistance; slavery; migration and diaspora; the diffusion of ideas and technologies; and the transplanting of crops, livestock, and bacteria. Looking at the world around 1800 lets us consider the impact of European imperial expansion, the French revolution, religious movements, industrialization, and the “international” emergence of “nationalism.” We consider and explore the very notions of “modernization” and “globalization.”  HU
TTh 1:30pm-2:20pm

* HIST 104Ja, Climate and Environment in America, 1500-1870  Mark Peterson

This seminar introduces students to the broad range of historical scholarship on climate and environmental conditions and change in North America and the Caribbean from the 15th to the 19th century. Its focus is on the dramatic changes brought about by the encounters among Indigenous, European, and African peoples in this period, the influence of climate and climate change on these encounters, and the environmental transformations brought about by European colonization and conquest and the creation of new economies and polities (including chattel slavery). The course provides a foundation for understanding modern American and global climate and environmental issues. It also introduces students to the wide-ranging opportunities for research and scholarly writing in this field.  WR, HU
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 106Jb, The Monroe Doctrine at 200 Years: History of the United States and Latin America  Greg Grandin

This seminar focuses on the history of the United States and Spanish, French, and Portuguese America, from the Age of Revolution to the present day. It covers such topics as the American, Haitian, and Spanish-American Revolutions; the Monroe Doctrine; the Confederacy’s foreign policy toward Spanish America, Brazil, and Haiti; William Walker’s invasion and occupation of Nicaragua; the end of slavery throughout the Americas, and the New World consolidation of jus soli (or birthright) notions of citizenship; the War of 1898; the building of the Panama Canal; US counterinsurgencies in Haiti, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic; the Good Neighbor Policy; the politics and culture of the Cold War, including CIA interventions in Guatemala, Chile, and Nicaragua; and the Invasion of Panama. Combining social, intellectual, and diplomatic history, the course covers topics such as the region's revolutionary wars for independence; comparative republicanisms; the creation of borders; the expansion and abolition of slavery; more revolutions, and counterrevolutions; military interventions and coups; and evolving forms of political economy. The course’s main comparative framework is to examine how the United States and Latin America both advanced, and struggled to define, a set of New World ideas and political forms: Christianity, republicanism, liberalism, democracy, sovereignty, rights, and, above all, the very idea of America.   WR, HU
T 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 107b / AMST 133b / ER&M 187b, Introduction to American Indian History  Ned Blackhawk

Survey of American Indian history, beginning with creation traditions and migration theories and continuing to the present day. Focus on American Indian nations whose homelands are located within the contemporary United States. Complexity and change within American Indian societies, with emphasis on creative adaptations to changing historical circumstances.  HU
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

HIST 108b, U.S. Colonial Empire  Alvita Akiboh

The United States was born from a revolution against an empire. Since then, one of the most cherished pieces of national mythology is that the United States, while an incredibly powerful country, has never itself been an empire. But for over a century, the United States has governed an overseas empire of colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific. This course places the U.S. colonial empire front and center, and asks: what does U.S. history look like from the perspective of the colonies? The first part of the course looks at the origins of U.S. imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Next, we look at the pivotal year of 1898, when the United States acquired most of its colonial possessions. Lastly, we examine twentieth century struggles in the U.S. empire, including anticolonial revolutions, wars, and the unfinished project of decolonization.  HU
TTh 1:30pm-2:20pm

* HIST 108Ja, Infrastructure and Ecosystems in Modern US History: Toward a Green New Deal  Taylor Rose

This course covers United States history from the colonial period to the present through the lens of infrastructure and the environment. Settlement, development, and maintenance of large technical systems which undergird the U.S. political economy and utilize natural resources. Topics include the foundations of territory and property law; the advent of the Post Office; enslaved labor and plantation agriculture; energy production, distribution, and consumption; issues related to nutrition and public health; and the rise of the surveillance state alongside U.S. global imperialism.  HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 109Jb / HSHM 489b, Activism and Advocacy in the History of American Health Care  Kelly O'Donnell

Is health care a human right? Can health advocacy shape health policy? What does it mean to be a health “activist” and to demand change of medicine? Health care in America has always been political. In this seminar students explore the rich history of health activism and health advocacy in the modern United States, focusing primarily on the postwar period through the present day. Each week we encounter new varieties of grassroots organizing, individual activists, and advocacy organizations that have made political claims about health care and pushed for its reform. We examine how health activism shapes broader cultural conversations about health and the practice of medicine itself. This course does not aim to provide a comprehensive history of health activism in modern America, but rather takes a case study approach, for critical analysis of themes and tactics. For each session, students read a selection of essays, book chapters, or primary source materials about a particular variety of health activism. Through these readings, we discuss how the critiques of activists and the responses by medical practitioners reveal the significant impact of race, gender, class, and sexuality on the provision of health care in this country. We also consider how historians have approached this subject, both as scholars and participant-observers. Students become adept at primary source analysis and able to engage in scholarly conversations with secondary sources.  WR, HU
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm

* HIST 110Jb / HSHM 496b, Childbirth in America, 1650-2000  Rebecca Tannenbaum

This course considers the ways childbirth has been conducted in the United states over three centuries.  Topics include the connections between childbirth and historical constructions of gender, race, and motherhood, as well as changes in the medical understanding and management of childbirth.  WR, HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 111a, The Revolutionary Transformation of America, 1492-1865  Staff

From the time that permanent contact between Europe and the Americas was established, North America experienced profound changes, in what was truly a world-historical transformation. This course introduces students to the scale and significance of these changes, and provides an intellectual framework for understanding why and how they happened that will be useful in making sense of our contemporary world. The emergence of the United States in the 1770s and its dissolution in Civil War in the 1860s are key events in this story, but the course takes a wider view of the experiences of the peoples of America, Africa, and Europe in shaping the new societies, economies, and polities that emerged in this critical era.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

HIST 114a / HSHM 206a, History of Reproductive Health and Medicine in the U.S.  Staff

This course surveys the history of reproductive health and medicine in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present. The course emphasizes the cultural and historical contexts of reproductive health; the significance of reproduction within the broader social, cultural, and political history of the United States; and the entanglements of reproductive medicine with social and political categories of race, gender, disability, nation, and kinship. Topics include the management of reproduction in U.S. slavery and empire, reproductive medicine and concepts of race, practitioners and professional authority over childbearing and pregnancy, eugenics and sterilization, movements for reproductive rights and healthcare, reproductive biotechnology, and present-day disparities in access to and quality of reproductive care.     HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 115Jb / AFAM 349b / AMST 326b / WGSS 388b, Civil Rights and Women's Liberation  Staff

The dynamic relationship between the civil rights movement and the women's liberation movement from 1940 to the present. When and how the two movements overlapped, intersected, and diverged. The variety of ways in which African Americans and women campaigned for equal rights. Topics include World War II, freedom summer, black power, the Equal Rights Amendment, feminism, abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights.  HU
M 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 116Ja, A History of American Citizenship: Membership and Exclusion; Rights and Belonging in U.S. History  Brendan Shanahan

This course explores the contested history of American citizenship from the early republic to the age of Trump. It interrogates both the relative inclusion and/or exclusion of disparate immigrant populations into the American citizenry and campaigns to expand citizenship status and rights to long-marginalized native-born populations throughout the history of the republic. It especially probes the degree to which policies governing U.S. citizenship have been employed to incorporate access to rights for some while restricting access to others.    WR, HU
T 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 118Jb, U.S. Immigration Policy: History, Politics, and Activism, 1607-Present  Brendan Shanahan

How can we study a history so broad, complex, and evolving as the history of American immigration policy?  This course explores that question by studying U.S. immigration law, politics, and activism from the colonial era to the present day.  Chronologically, we particularly examine: (1) antebellum immigration policy in the context of forced migration, settler colonialism, and slavery, (2) the rise of a federal “gatekeeping” immigration regime in the post-Civil War era, and (3) transformations in immigration policymaking and policies during the long twentieth century. Thematically, we emphasize how U.S. immigration policies have often been framed—and challenged by immigrant rights advocates—on the grounds of racialized and gendered exclusion and/or subordination.     WR, HU
T 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 119Jb / AMST 453b, The United States Constitution of 1787  Mark Peterson

This undergraduate seminar is organized around developing a deep historical understanding of one of our most important documents, the United States Constitution, as it emerged in the late 1780s.  In addition to close reading and analysis of this fundamental text, we read a series of other primary sources relevant to the evolution of constitutional thought and practice in the Anglo-American tradition of the early modern period.  And we engage relevant secondary scholarship produced by professional historians over the past century or more, in an effort to grapple with the evolution of changing approaches to the Constitution and its meaning over time. This course carries PI credit in History.  WR, HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 121Jb, The Religious Right and the Religious Left in Postwar America: Faith, Radicalism, and Reaction  Staff

This course seeks to grapple with contemporary debates around religion and political activism in the United States by exploring the recent history of the religiopolitical coalitions known as the Religious Right and the Religious Left. Beginning at the end of World War II, we examine how, at key historical moments, religion and politics intersected to create powerful rightwing and leftwing movements. While we compare these movements, we are also attentive to the relationships between them, asking how the Religious Right and the Religious Left were in dialogue and conflict over the second half of the twentieth century. We further consider how varieties of religious engagement in politics have been connected to struggles around race, gender, sexuality, and class. Through studying the Religious Right and the Religious Left in postwar America, we thus have an opportunity to think about not only the trajectories of American religious traditions in recent decades, but also broader developments in American politics, society, and culture since 1945  WR, HU
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 128a / AMST 228a / GLBL 201a, Origins of U.S. Global Power  Staff

This course examines the causes and the consequences of American global power in the “long 20th century,” peeking back briefly into the 19th century as well as forward into the present one. The focus is on foreign relations, which includes but is not limited to foreign policy; indeed, America’s global role was rooted as much in its economic and cultural power as it was in diplomacy and military strength. We study events like wars, crises, treaties, and summits—but also trade shows and movie openings. Our principal subjects include plenty of State Department officials, but also missionaries, business people, and journalists. We pay close attention also to conceptions of American power; how did observers in and beyond the United States understand the nature, origins, and operations of American power?  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 128Jb / HSHM 475b, Race and Disease in American Medicine  Sakena Abedin

An exploration of the history of race and disease in American medicine from the late 19th century to the present, focusing on clinical practice and clinical research. We discuss cancer, psychiatric disease, sickle cell disease, and infectious diseases including tuberculosis and HIV. We examine the role of race in the construction of disease and the role of disease in generating and supporting racial hierarchies, with special attention to the role of visibility and the visual in these processes. We also consider the history of race and clinical research, and the implications of racialized disease construction for the production of medical knowledge.   WR, HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 130Ja / AMST 441a / ER&M 370a, Indians and the Spanish Borderlands  Ned Blackhawk

The experiences of Native Americans during centuries of relations with North America's first imperial power, Spain. The history and long-term legacies of Spanish colonialism from Florida to California.  WR, HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 132b / AFAM 132b, Mass Incarceration in Historical Perspective  Elizabeth Hinton

This course traces the development of legal and penal systems in America over time to investigate the historical process that eventually gave rise to the mass incarceration of Black and Latinx people in the late twentieth century. Over the course of the term, our historical consideration provides us the necessary background to address the ongoing consequences of racial disparities in the criminal justice system and the extraordinary public policy implications of this dynamic.  WR, HU
MW 2:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 133b / ANTH 221b / HSHM 238b, The History of Drugs in America  Marco Ramos

Virtually every American today “does” drugs. As a nation, our drug use ranges from everyday activities, such as drinking coffee or beer, to combating illnesses with prescription medications, to using illegal drugs for recreation. This course follow a loose chronology beginning in the early twentieth century and ending in the present day. Instead of focusing on the biography of a single drug, or class of drugs, this course incorporates a wide range of substances, including alcohol, cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, psychedelics, and narcotics. Through a selection of essays, book chapters, and primary source material, we discuss how certain ways of using and selling drugs have been sanctioned and encouraged, while others have been pathologized as addiction or criminalized. We explore how drug definitions are constructed, how they shift over time, and how they reflect, reinforce, and sometimes challenge anxieties about race, disability, sexuality, and gender. Throughout the course, films, images, music, and television episodes are also presented as objects of analysis to provide insight into the cultural lives of drugs. We explore how historians approach this subject, assess their sources and assumptions, and consider the choices they have made in researching and writing. Students are expected to apply these historical lessons to the present and demonstrate the ability to think and write critically about the history of drugs. Students previously enrolled in HSHM 488, The History of Drugs in 20th Century America, are not eligible to enroll in this course.  HU, SO
MW 10:30am-11:20am

* HIST 135Ja, The Age of Hamilton and Jefferson  Joanne Freeman

The culture and politics of the revolutionary and early national periods of American history, using the lives, ideas, and writings of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton as a starting point. Topics include partisan conflict, political culture, nation building, the American character, and domestic life.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 136Ja, Liberalism and Conservatism in the Modern United States  Beverly Gage

American domestic politics and political thought since the New Deal. Emphasis on the decline of midcentury liberalism and the rise of modern American conservatism. Topics include McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, the New Left, labor, business activism, the conservative intellectual movement, the Christian Right, and the Reagan Revolution.  WR, HU
HTBA

* HIST 137Ja / AFAM 227a / AMST 227a / ER&M 349a, From the Voting Rights Act to #blacklivesmatter  Ferentz Lafargue

This course explores the period beginning from 1964 through the emergence of the #blacklivesmatter movement in 2013. Key concepts covered in this course include the Black Panther Party and rise of the Black Power movement; political campaigns of Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, and Barack Obama. The seminar concludes with an examination of the #blacklivesmatter movement and broader efforts addressing mass incarceration, poverty, and opportunity gaps in education.  HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 138Ja, The History Wars: Problems in Public Memory  David Blight

This junior research seminar is an exploration of the interpretive dimensions of the study of "memory" among American historians, as well as in the broad public. Several case studies are examined in depth: the long struggle over Civil War memory and the Lost Cause; how immigration caused bitter debates about school curriculums; anti-Communism and teaching American history; the National History Standards crisis of the 1990s; the Smithsonian conflict over how to commemorate the use of the atomic bomb, also in 1990s; debate over the American Indian Museum in Wash., DC; and debates today over the 1619 Project on slavery and its critics.    WR, HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 148Jb / AFAM 210b / AMST 445b, Politics and Culture of the U.S. Color Line  Matthew Jacobson

The significance of race in U.S. political culture, from the “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson to the election of an African American president. Race as a central organizer of American political and social life.  HU  RP
F 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 150Ja / HSHM 406a, Healthcare for the Urban Poor  Sakena Abedin

Exploration of the institutions, movements, and policies that have attempted to provide healthcare for the urban poor in America from the late nineteenth century to the present, with emphasis on the ideas (about health, cities, neighborhoods, poverty, race, gender, difference, etc) that shaped them. Topics include hospitals, health centers, public health programs, the medical civil rights movement, the women’s health movement, and national healthcare policies such as Medicare and Medicaid.   WR, HU
T 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 163Ja / AFST 411a / HSHM 419a, Madness and Decolonization  Marco Ramos

This seminar traces the history of psychiatry through its encounters and entanglements with colonial and postcolonial power. We begin with a discussion of how psychiatry has been used as an imperial tool of control in the 18th and 19th centuries. We pay particular attention to colonial scientific encounters with Indigenous and enslaved people, and how the psychiatric pathologization of Indigeneity and Blackness informed the construction of settler European whiteness. Then, we move to decolonization in the twentieth century to explore the emergence of international mental health, as former colonies transitioned to independent states. We discuss the attempts of African and Latin American thinkers, such as Frantz Fanon and Ignacio Martín-Baro, to use psychiatry for the liberation of oppressed groups in emerging postcolonial spaces. The seminar finishes with a discussion of the recent emergence of the global mental health movement and calls from former patients, BIPOC and disability activists, and others to “decolonize mental health” so that it serves—rather than harms—those traditionally marginalized by Western psychiatry. Throughout the course, students learn to trace the contours of psychiatry and decolonization through a variety of sources, including movies, music, photography, and monographs.  WR, HU
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

* HIST 164Ja, Foxes, Hedgehogs, and History  John Gaddis

Application of Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between foxes and hedgehogs to selected historical case studies extending from the classical age through the recent past.   WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 167Ja / PLSC 209a, Congress in the Light of History  David Mayhew

This course begins by studying analytic themes, including congressional structure, incentives bearing on members and parties, conditions of party control, supermajority rules, and polarization, followed by narrative works of major political showdowns entailing Congress such as those in 1850, 1876-77, 1919 (defeat of the Versailles Treaty), 1937 (defeat of court-packing), 1954 (the McCarthy-Army hearings), 1964 (civil rights), 1973-74 (Watergate), and 1993-94 (defeat of health care). Students also examine a series of policy performances, for the better or the worse in today’s judgments, ranging from early state-building through reacting to the Great Depression, constructing a welfare state, and addressing climate change. This is a reading course and does not accommodate senior essays.  SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 168Ja, Quebec and Canada from 1791 to the Present  Jay Gitlin

The history of Quebec and its place within Canada from the Constitutional Act of 1791 to the present. Topics include the Rebellion of 1837, confederation, the Riel Affair, industrialization and emigration to New England, French-Canadian nationalism and culture from Abbé Groulx to the Parti Québécois and Céline Dion, and the politics of language. Readings include plays by Michel Tremblay and Antonine Maillet in translation.  WR, HU
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

* HIST 177Ja / HSHM 448a / WGSS 448a, American Medicine and the Cold War  Naomi Rogers

The social, cultural, and political history of American medicine from 1945 to 1960. The defeat of national health insurance; racism in health care; patient activism; the role of gender in defining medical professionalism and family health; the rise of atomic medicine; McCarthyism in medicine; and the polio vaccine trials and the making of science journalism.  WR, HU
Th 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 181Jb, Time Machines: Reimagining the Past  John Gaddis

This course explores how representations of the past can help us to reimagine it, and thereby to “travel” there. We explore the concept of time machines and the means by which they might be―or are―constructed. This involves a quick review of the physics involved; some ways historians have used archives to reconstruct times past; the extent to which novelists complement, contradict, or complicate the work of historians; the possibility of “animating” past visual representations, whether through art, film, or computer simulation; and as individual student projects the reading of some digitally available newspaper for some particular place in some particular year.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 183Ja / ER&M 183, Race, Relationality, and Relationships in 20th Century South Asian America  Adi Kumar

This course explores 20th century South Asian American history through the lens of relationality and racial formation. The course engages the established South Asian American historiography, reading this literature alongside recent developments in ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, and American studies. This is a writing-intensive course designed to familiarize students with primary source analysis and other historical methodologies.  WR, HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 184b / AFAM 160b / AFST 184b / AMST 160b, The Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery  Edward Rugemer

The history of peoples of African descent throughout the Americas, from the first African American societies of the sixteenth century through the century-long process of emancipation.  WR, HU
HTBA

HIST 188b / AMST 234b / ER&M 243b / RLST 342b, Spiritual But Not Religious  Zareena Grewal

Study of the historical and contemporary “unchurching” trends in American religious life in a comparative perspective and across different scales of analysis in order to think about the relationship between spirituality, formal religion, secular psychology and the self-help industry.  HU, SO
HTBA

* HIST 190Ja / HSHM 497a, Technology in American Medicine from Leeches to Surgical Robots  Kelly O'Donnell

From leeches to robot-assisted surgery, technology has both driven and served as a marker of change in the history of medicine. Using technology as our primary frame of analysis, this course focuses on developments in modern medicine and healing practices in the United States, from the nineteenth century through the present day. How have technologies, tools, and techniques altered medical practice? Are medical technologies necessarily “advances?” How are technologies used to “medicalize” certain aspects of the human experience? In this class we focus on this material culture of medicine, particularly emphasizing themes of consumerism, expertise, professional authority, and gender relations.  WR, HU
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

* HIST 196Jb / AMST 353b, 21st-Century US History: The First Decade  Joanne Meyerowitz

Students conduct collaborative primary source research on the first ten years of the 21st century. Topics include September 11th, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis of 2008, the election of Barack Obama, and battles over domestic surveillance, immigration, policing, gun control, same-sex marriage, and reproductive rights.   HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 197Jb / HSHM 409b, Marriage and Medicine in Modern America  Kelly O'Donnell

This seminar explores histories of health, gender, and sexuality, by focusing on the intertwining of two institutions that have fundamentally shaped our culture: medicine and marriage. It uses marriage as a lens for viewing the historical and social transformations of the American medical profession, as well as to examine the medicalization of intimate relationships in the broader society. Weekly readings cover topics such as: eugenics, LGBTQ marriage and adoption, disability rights, sexuality and reproduction, sex education, health activism, the changing gender composition of the health professions, and the reform of medical education and training. Students also analyze a variety of primary sources, ranging from scientific studies and medical advice literature to popular magazines and romantic comedy films.   WR, HU
M 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 201b / CLCV 258b / EVST 257b, Ecocultures of Antiquity: Ecocritical Approaches to Ancient Greece and Rome  Kirk Freudenburg

This class examines how the Greeks and Romans exploited their natural surroundings not only as physical resources, but as resources for human thought. The focus is on how ancient thinkers, living lives that were largely city-bound and detached from nature, structured their thoughts about the lives they lived (and about human existence more generally) by reference to their nonhuman surroundings: creatures, plants and places, some of which existed in the real world (in places far off, largely unknown and elsewhere; in places penetrated, explored, and/or told of), others of which existed entirely in the imagination, whether as inherited lore, or as places and creatures invented ad hoc by individuals and groups to get certain kinds of cultural work done. We look not only at the how and what, but at the why of nature’s encoding via culture, and vice versa (their symbiosis), paying special attention to ancient Rome (though with a short first glance at Homer, Hesiod and Aristotle). We begin by scrutinizing the categories themselves, attempting to find historically appropriate ways to connect modern ecocritical concerns and ways of thought to the ancient world. Topics include: the cosmos, the heavens, and the first humans (and first peoples in their places); humans in their ‘kinds’ and animals, wild and tame; mountains, rivers, the sea and the undersea; human and animal foods, farming and food ways; wine and fermentation; groves, forests and trees; gardens, flowers, vegetables and fungi; birds, fish, weasels and snakes; earthquakes, floods and natural disasters; pollution, dirt and the city of Rome; the ecocultural lives of others.  HU
HTBA

* HIST 201Ja / CLCV 340a, Religions of the Roman Empire  CJ Rice

This course explores the various religious traditions of the Roman empire from the second century BCE to the sixth century CE. We pursue two principal intellectual aims. First, we work together to digest, analyze, and critique theoretical aspects of the study of premodern religion. Scholars have recently challenged in various ways the use of “religion” as a category to study the premodern past. Together, we examine and assess these arguments and their utility for “doing” ancient Mediterranean studies in the twenty-first century. Second, we examine a number of topics and issues in the study of “religion” (e.g., sacred texts, ritual, etc.) as they manifested–or, perhaps, did not–in Roman culture. To do so, we look to a wide range of texts and objects that enable us to explore a variety of case studies, including but not limited to sacrifice, legal regulation, and the emergence and integration of new or foreign religious movements.
   WR, HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 204b / CLCV 200b, Global Leadership, 600 BCE–600 CE  Noel Lenski

This course provides students with an accessible and engaging introduction to both the classical world and the problems of political organization and leadership through time and across societies. Students learn to think comparatively between individuals, societies, and systems and to analyze different ideals of leadership. This means considering not only traditional masculine and military conceptions of rule but also the leadership roles and styles of women, slaves, and rebels. We hope to bring into view, in other words, the intersectional challenges to power faced by non-traditional leaders in a world dominated by gender, class, and cultural prejudices, and to show how non-traditional leaders confronted and overcame these. Students draw upon this experience to access the premodern world as an alternative but related historical reality which can productively inform their engagement with the present.  HU
HTBA

* HIST 204Jb / ANTH 331b / ARCG 000 / ARCG 354b / EVST 354b / NELC 000 / NELC 324b, The Ancient State: Genesis and Crisis from Mesopotamia to Mexico  Harvey Weiss

Ancient states were societies with surplus agricultural production, classes, specialization of labor, political hierarchies, monumental public architecture and, frequently, irrigation, cities, and writing. Pristine state societies, the earliest civilizations, arose independently from simple egalitarian hunting and gathering societies in six areas of the world. How and why these earliest states arose are among the great questions of post-Enlightenment social science. This course explains (1) why this is a problem, to this day, (2) the dynamic environmental forces that drove early state formation, and (3) the unresolved fundamental questions of ancient state genesis and crisis, –law-like regularities or a chance coincidence of heterogenous forces?  HU, SO
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 210a, Early Middle Ages, 284-1000  Staff

Major developments in the political, social, and religious history of western Europe from the accession of Diocletian to the feudal transformation. Topics include the conversion of Europe to Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam and the Arabs, the "Dark Ages," Charlemagne and the Carolingian renaissance, and the Viking and Hungarian invasions.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 210Jb / HUMS 224b, Hobbes and Galileo: Materialism and the Emergence of Modernity  William Klein

Hobbes considered himself a disciple of Galileo, but as a systematic philosopher and ideologue during a period of civil unrest in England, he no doubt produced something that Galileo, a Tuscan astrophysicist and impassioned literary critic, was not entirely responsible for: an absolutist theory of the modern state situated within an eschatological time frame. In this course we will reflect on the relation between Galileo’s anti-Aristotelian physics and Hobbes’ system by reading key texts by Galileo and Hobbes along with an array of interpretations and criticisms of Hobbes that will serve to situate Hobbes in early modern currents of thought in science, religion and politics, while at the same time situating us in contemporary ideological debates about the origins of modernity.    HU
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 211b, The Birth of Europe, 1000-1500  Hussein Fancy

Europe during the central and late Middle Ages, from the feudal revolution to the age of discoveries. Europe as it came to be defined in terms of national states and international empires. The rise and decline of papal power, church reform movements, the Crusades, contacts with Asia, the commercial revolution, and the culture of chivalry.  HU  0 Course cr
TTh 2:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 212a / CLCV 223a, The Ancient Economy  Joseph Manning

A survey of the economies of the ancient Mediterranean world, with emphasis on economic institutions, the development of the economies over time, ancient economic thought, and the interrelationships between institutions and economic growth. Material evidence for studying the economies of the ancient world, including coinage, documentary material, and archaeology.  HU
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm

* HIST 212Jb / HUMS 313b, Philosophy of Dissent in Central and Eastern Europe  Marci Shore

This is a seminar in the field of European intellectual history, based on primary sources. It focuses on how philosophers, novelists, sociologists, and other thinkers developed and articulated a philosophy of dissent under communism. More specific topics include the relationships between temporality and subjectivity and between truth and lies, and the role that existentialism played in formulating philosophical critiques of repression. Readings consist of a mixture of philosophical and literary works from the Soviet Union, East Germany and the lands in-between. Potential authors include Merab Mamardashvili, Danilo Kiš, Józef Tischner, Adam Michnik, Jacek Kuroń, Ladislav Hejdanek, Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Leszek Kołakowski, Gajo Petrović, Norman Manea, Lev Kopelev, Igor Pomerantsev, Tomas Venclova.   HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 215Jb, The Art of Biography  John Gaddis

A comparative examination of successful as well as unsuccessful biographies, intended to identify both principles and pitfalls.  HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 219a / ER&M 219a / JDST 200a / MMES 149a / RLST 148a, Jewish History and Thought to Early Modern Times  Ivan Marcus

A broad introduction to the history of the Jews from biblical beginnings until the European Reformation and the Ottoman Empire. Focus on the formative period of classical rabbinic Judaism and on the symbiotic relationships among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Jewish society and culture in its biblical, rabbinic, and medieval settings. Counts toward either European or non-Western distributional credit within the History major, upon application to the director of undergraduate studies.  HU  RP
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

HIST 220b / JDST 201b / RLST 149b, Introduction to Modern Jewish History  David Sorkin

A broad introduction to the history of Jewish culture from the late Middle Ages until the present. Emphasis on the changing interaction of Jews with the larger society as well as the transformation of Judaism in its encounter with modernity.  HU
MW 2:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 221a / GLBL 281a, Military History of the West since 1500  Staff

A study of the military history of the West since 1500, with emphasis on the relationship between armies and navies on the one hand, and technology, economics, geography, and the rise of the modern nation-state on the other. The coming of airpower in its varied manifestations. Also meets requirements for the Air Force and Naval ROTC programs.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 222Jb / RSEE 222b, Russia and the Eurasian Steppe  Paul Bushkovitch

A study of Russia's interaction with the nomads of the Eurasian steppe. Topics include the Mongol invasion, the Mongol Empire in Asia and the Golden Horde, Islam, nomadic society, and the Russian state. Focus on conquest and settlement. May count toward either European or Asian distributional credit within the History major, upon application to the director of undergraduate studies.  WR, HU
HTBA

HIST 224a, England's Empire to 1783  Winston Hill

This course surveys the history of England's empire from its medieval beginnings to the end of the American Revolution, with particular emphasis on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It examines how the empire was built, who built it, and who reaped the benefits from North America to India. We also consider the extent to which the phenomena of globalization, capitalism, colonialism, and racism, among others, are rooted in England's imperial expansion in this period. The most famous part of this empire, especially for those of us who went to American primary and secondary schools, is the thirteen colonies that later became the United States. But this course also investigates English empire in Britain and Ireland, in Canada and the Caribbean, and in West Africa and India. Contemporaries linked all of these in their thinking, and we try to do the same.  HU
MW 10:30am-11:20am

* HIST 224Ja / GLBL 224a, Empires and Imperialism Since 1840  Arne Westad

Empire has been a main form of state structure throughout much of human history. Many of the key challenges the world faces today have their origins in imperial structures and policies, from wars and terror to racism and environmental destruction. This seminar looks at the transformation empires and imperialisms went through from the middle part of the nineteenth century and up to today. Our discussions center on how and why imperialisms moved from strategies of territorial occupation and raw exploitation, the “smash and grab” version of empire, and on to policies of racial hierarchies, social control and reform, and colonial concepts of civilizational progress, many of which are still with us today. The seminar also covers anti-colonial resistance, revolutionary organizations and ideas, and processes of decolonization.   WR, HU
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm

* HIST 225Ja, Perfect Worlds? Utopia and Dystopia in Western Cultures  Maria Jordan

This course explores the history of utopia and the ways in which societies at different times defined and conceived alternative or ideal worlds. It explores the relationship between real historical conditions and the models of utopia that were elaborated. By examining classic texts like Plato and Thomas More, as well as fictional accounts, students discuss the relationship between utopias and dystopias. The course also discusses how the crises of the last century, with WWII, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the difficulties of global capitalism provoked what some people now consider to be a crisis of utopian thought or, a moment of a redefinition of utopias as more pragmatic, inclusive, and egalitarian of societies.  WR, HU
T 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 226Jb / JDST 370b / RLST 231b, Jews and Christians in the Formation of Europe, 500-1500  Ivan Marcus

Students study how Jews and Christians interacted on a daily basis as medieval Europe became more restrictive and antisemitic, a contributing factor to the Holocaust. In this writing seminar, students discuss a variety of primary sources in class―laws, stories, chronicles, images―while researching and writing their own seminar paper structured by sessions on topics, bibliographies, and outlines.   WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 229a, From Oligarchy to Democracy in Britain, 1780-1914  Stuart Semmel

British politics, society, and culture in the long nineteenth century, a period of constitutional reform, industrial development, social dislocation, imperial expansion, and cultural criticism.  HU  0 Course cr
TTh 1:30pm-2:20pm

* HIST 232Ja / HUMS 443a / JDST 270a / MMES 342a / RLST 201a, Medieval Jews, Christians, and Muslims In Conversation  Ivan Marcus

How members of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities thought of and interacted with members of the other two cultures during the Middle Ages. Cultural grids and expectations each imposed on the other; the rhetoric of otherness—humans or devils, purity or impurity, and animal imagery; and models of religious community and power in dealing with the other when confronted with cultural differences. Counts toward either European or Middle Eastern distributional credit within the History major, upon application to the director of undergraduate studies.  WR, HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 236b / HSHM 226b, The Age of the Scientific Revolution  Ivano Dal Prete

The material, political, cultural, and social transformations that underpinned the rise of modern science between the 14th and 18th century, considered in global context. Topics include artisanal practices and the empirical exploration of nature; global networks of knowledge and trade; figurative arts and the emersion of a visual language of anatomy, astronomy, and natural history.   HU  0 Course cr
MW 11:35am-12:25pm

* HIST 236Ja / HUMS 323a, Truth and Sedition  William Klein

The truth can set you free, but of course it can also get you into trouble. How do the constraints on the pursuit and expression of “truth” change with the nature of the censoring regime, from the family to the church to the modern nation-state? What causes regimes to protect perceived vulnerabilities in the systems of knowledge they privilege? What happens when conflict between regimes implicates modes of knowing? Are there types of truth that any regime would—or should—find dangerous? What are the possible motives and pathways for self-censorship?  We begin with the revolt of the Hebrews against polytheistic Egypt and the Socratic questioning of democracy, and end with various contemporary cases of censorship within and between regimes. We consider these events and texts, and their reverberations and reversals in history, in relation to select analyses of the relations between truth and power, including Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Brecht, Leo Strauss, Foucault, Chomsky, Waldron, Zizek, and Xu Zhongrun.  WR, HU
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

* HIST 237Jb / MGRK 222b, History of Modern Greece  Paris Aslanidis

This seminar studies the history of modern Greece since the early 19th century. Greece’s contested position between East and West, both geopolitically and symbolically, functions as the ideational backdrop for the study of the country’s historical trajectory and the development of its main institutions. Discussion of the future of the Greek state vis-à-vis the ongoing sociopolitical crisis it has been facing since its near bankruptcy in 2010 is also considered.  HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 240a / RLST 347a / SOCY 331a / WGSS 291a, Sexual Minorities from Plato to the Enlightenment  Staff

This interdisciplinary course surveys the history of homosexuality from a cross-cultural, comparative  perspective. Students study contexts where homosexuality and sodomy were categorized, regulated, and persecuted and examine ancient and medieval constructions of same-sex desire in light of post-modern developments, challenging ideas around what is considered normal and/or natural. Ultimately, we ask: what has changed, and what has remained the same, in the history of homosexuality? What do gays and lesbians today have in common with pre-modern sodomites? Can this history help us ground or rethink our sexual selves and identities? Primary and secondary historical sources, some legal and religious sources, and texts in intellectual history are studied. Among the case studies for the course are ancient attitudes among Jews, early Christians, and Greeks; Christian theologians of the Middle Ages; Renaissance Florence; the Inquisition in Iberia; colonial Latin America; and the Enlightenment’s condemnation of sodomy by Montesquieu and Voltaire, and its defense by Bentham.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 240Ja / RSEE 241a, Government, Law, and Society in Modern Russia, 1853-1953  Sergei Antonov

Russian political culture from the Crimean War to the death of Stalin. Special attention to continuities, as well as changes, across the revolutionary divide of 1917, and to comparing official policies with daily experiences of ordinary Russians. Changing ideologies and ruling styles of tsars and early Soviet leaders (esp. Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin) and relations with aristocratic and bureaucratic elites; political dissent and protest, including popular and state-imposed violence; the problem of legality and the rule of law. All discussions and readings in English.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 242Jb / CLCV 319b / MGRK 300b / WGSS 293b, The Olympic Games, Ancient and Modern  George Syrimis

Introduction to the history of the Olympic Games from antiquity to the present. The mythology of athletic events in ancient Greece and the ritual, political, and social ramifications of the actual competitions. The revival of the modern Olympic movement in 1896, the political investment of the Greek state at the time, and specific games as they illustrate the convergence of athletic cultures and sociopolitical transformations in the twentieth century.  HU
Th 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 244a / HSHM 321a, Cultures of Western Medicine  Staff

A survey of Western medicine and its global encounters, encompassing medical theory, practice, institutions, and healers from antiquity to the present.  Changing concepts of health, disease, and the body in Europe and America explored in their social, cultural, economic, scientific, technological, and ethical contexts.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

HIST 246b / EVST 189b, The History of Food  Paul Freedman

The history of food and culinary styles from prehistory to the present, with a particular focus on Europe and the United States. How societies gathered and prepared food. Changing taste preferences over time. The influence of consumers on trade, colonization, and cultural exchange. The impact of colonialism, technology, and globalization. The current food scene and its implications for health, the environment, and cultural shifts.  HU  0 Course cr
TTh 10:30am-11:20am

* HIST 247a, The Making of Modern Ukraine  Staff

Study of the Ukraine from the Cossack rebellions of 1648 to the democratic revolution of 2004. Topics include the decadence of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic, Russian and Austrian imperial rule, the collapse of traditional Jewish and Polish social life, the attraction of Russian culture, the emergence of a Ukrainian national movement, civil war, modernization, terror, the consequences of Nazi occupation (including genocide and ethnic cleansing), problems of democratic reform, and European integration since 1991.  WR, HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 248Jb / JDST 293b / RLST 214b, Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought  Elli Stern

An overview of Jewish philosophical trends, movements, and thinkers from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first. Topics include enlightenment, historicism, socialism, secularism, religious radicalism, and Zionism.  HU
HTBA

HIST 249a / JDST 346a, Making European Culture Jewish: Five Media, 1780-1930  Staff

This course studies the ways in which Jewish writers and artists turned European culture into Jewish culture, that is, how a minority group fashioned its own version of the majority culture. As European Jews encountered European culture and society, they had to grapple with a host of fundamental questions. What was Judaism and who were the Jews: a religion, a history, a culture, a nation? We examine the way in which writers and artists struggled with these issues in five media: memoir, theology, history, fiction, and painting, thereby creating Jewish versions first of Enlightenment, Romanticism, and realism (1780-1870) and then of nationalism, positivism, and modernism (1870-1930).    WR, HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 256Jb / HUMS 264b, Imagining the Body Politic: Constitutional Art and Theory from Antiquity to the Present  William Klein

Do visual representations of social and political principles have a peculiar power to produce, reproduce, and disturb social and political relations? To what extent do some works of political theory seem to presuppose an imaginative construct, in particular one based on human bodies and their parts? Can we identify the birth of the modern state through an examination of key images of the body politic? Have the machine or network or program taken over the function of the body metaphor in more recent times? Does visualizing the principles and orders of society and politics elicit new critical awareness and reaction, or blindness and obedience? Does republican art differ fundamentally in this regard from monarchical—or fascist or communist or anarchist or neoliberal—art?     HU
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 260a / HUMS 255a / LITR 253a / RSEE 312a / RUSS 312a, Tolstoy's War and Peace TR  Staff

The course is a semester-long study of the quintessential big Russian novel, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, about Napoleon’s failed 1812 war against Russia. War and Peace (1865-1869) is a sweeping panorama of nineteenth-century Russian society, a novel of profound philosophical questions, and an unforgettable gallery of artfully drawn characters. Reading the novel closely, we pose the following questions. In what ways is this patriotic war epic also an imperial novel? What myths does it destroy and construct? How does it combine fiction and history? What forces drive history, as it unfolds in the present? What are the limits of individual agency, and how much do emperors and generals control the fates of nations and armies? Finally, a question that is never too broad for Tolstoy: what is a meaningful, well-lived life? We explore these questions while refining our tools of literary analysis and situating the novel in its historical context and in our contemporary world. Secondary materials include Tolstoy’s letters, contemporary reviews, maps, and historical sources, as well as readings in political theory, philosophy, international relations, and literary criticism.  All readings and class discussions in English.  No prerequisites required. Both WR and non-WR sections are offered.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 260Ja / HSHM 468a, Sex, Life, and Generation  Ivano Dal Prete

Theories and practices of life, sex, and generation in Western civilization. Politics and policies of conception and birth; social control of abortion and infanticide in premodern societies; theories of life and gender; the changing status of the embryo; the lure of artificial life.  WR, HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 263Ja / HSHM 446a, Contested Bodies: Histories of Health, Sex and Sport  Madeleine Ware

This class deconstructs idealized images of 'health' in medical and popular culture by examining various historical moments when diagnoses and conceptions of the body were made around ideas of sex, gender, reproduction, and race. We especially focus on moments of contestation over body compositions/physiologies that defined civic and social belonging. We constantly work to place these representations of health in conversation with the lived experiences our historical actors and individual senses of health, sickness, pain, and ability.  WR, HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 264b / ER&M 263b / RSEE 268b, Eastern Europe since 1914  Timothy Snyder

Eastern Europe from the collapse of the old imperial order to the enlargement of the European Union. Main themes include world war, nationalism, fascism, and communism. Special attention to the structural weaknesses of interwar nation-states and postwar communist regimes. Nazi and Soviet occupation as an age of extremes. The collapse of communism. Communism after 1989 and the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s as parallel European trajectories.  HU  0 Course cr
TTh 2:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 265a / RSEE 266a, Soviet Russia 1917-1991  Staff

Overview of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. Topics include political culture and ideology of the Bolshevik/Communist Party; social and economic changes; foreign policy and the role of WWII; major artistic and cultural movements. Paper assignments involve close readings of memoir and oral history accounts.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 265Ja / HUMS 193a, Screening the Past  Stuart Semmel

An interdisciplinary study of cinematic representations of the historical past. Films that treat historical events realistically; others that deliberately present history as it did not happen. Standards that can be applied to judge history on the screen; lessons for evaluating history on the page.  HU
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

* HIST 268Jb / JDST 351b / PLSC 466b / RLST 324b, The Global Right: From the French Revolution to the American Insurrection  Elli Stern

This seminar explores the history of right-wing political thought from the late eighteenth century to the present, with an emphasis on the role played by religious and pagan traditions. This course seeks to answer the question, what constitutes the right? What are the central philosophical, religious, and pagan, principles of those groups associated with this designation? How have the core ideas of the right changed over time? We do this by examining primary tracts written by theologians, political philosophers, and social theorists as well as secondary literature written by scholars interrogating movements associated with the right in America, Europe, Middle East and Asia. Though touching on specific national political parties, institutions, and think tanks, its focus is on mapping the intellectual overlap and differences between various right-wing ideologies. While the course is limited to the modern period, it adopts a global perspective to better understand the full scope of right-wing politics.  HU, SO
HTBA

* HIST 269Ja, History and Holocaust Testimony  Carolyn Dean

The history and memoirs of Holocaust testimony. How victims' experiences are narrated and assessed by historians. Questions regarding memory and history.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 271a / HUMS 339a / RSEE 271a, European Intellectual History since Nietzsche  Staff

Major currents in European intellectual history from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth. Topics include Marxism-Leninism, psychoanalysis, expressionism, structuralism, phenomenology, existentialism, antipolitics, and deconstruction.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 273Ja / MMES 204a / SOCY 204a, Empire, Nation, and Decolonization  Jonathan Wyrtzen

What is an empire? What is a nation?  How do these interact in moments of crisis like decolonization? This course examines how spatial boundaries and social boundaries interact as empires expand, both over land and over seas, and as empires contract.  Our central focus is how the “nation” works as a contested notion, and a contented boundary, within the broader frame of empire. We trace struggles over national identities as metropolitan cores and colonial peripheries have been produced in the Americas (including the Caribbean), Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The two main empire-nation cases the course focuses on are the United States and France, but we also consider the British, Russian/Soviet, Hapsburg, Japanese and other empires.  HU, SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 280a / ITAL 315a / RLST 160a, The Catholic Intellectual Tradition  Staff

Introductory survey of the interaction between Catholicism and Western culture from the first century to the present, with a focus on pivotal moments and crucial developments that defined both traditions. Key beliefs, rites, and customs of the Roman Catholic Church, and the ways in which they have found expression; interaction between Catholics and the institution of the Church; Catholicism in its cultural and sociopolitical matrices. Close reading of primary sources.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 280Jb, Nazi Germany  Jennifer Allen

Both the ideology and practices of Nazi Germany rank among the most insidious the world has ever seen. For this reason, this historical era has generated, simultaneously, immense revulsion and immense fascination among scholars. They have attempted to explain how such a regime could emerge, how its citizens could come to support it, how it could carry out atrocities with such scale and brutality, and how Germany could rebuild itself after such physical and ideological violence. In this course, we join these scholars in trying to understand Nazi Germany. Together, we chart the rise and fall of National Socialism in Germany from the early twentieth century through the decades after the end of the Second World War. Via a collection of both primary and secondary source literature, we confront some of the most contentious debates in this field of study: what made Nazism so popular among ordinary Germans? How do we interpret Hitler’s role in its development? Was German violence toward Jews and other groups slated for murder a product of deep-seated antisemitism and xenophobia or did it evolve organically over the course of the Nazi period? Did the Holocaust form from the top down as the product of a small collection of people driven by the demands of the Führer, or from the bottom up as a function of shifting circumstances like the trajectory of the Second World War? How can we understand the emergence of camps and killing fields? How do we make sense of the complicated registers of German guilt for the events of the Nazi period? Is it useful (or appropriate) to compare the Holocaust to other genocides? This course exposes students to the range of answers that responsible and meticulous historical research has offered to these questions. There are, however, mountains of literature that have been written on the rise, lifespan, and fall of National Socialism. This course can only begin to chip away modestly at that mass. Nevertheless, the goal is that, by the end of the semester, students develop a sense of the outlines of the major historiographical debates about this period and give thought to the ways that those debates remain relevant to our contemporary world.  WR, HU
T 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 281b / RLST 268b, Christian Mysticism, 1200–1700  Carlos Eire

An introductory survey of the mystical literature of the Christian West, focusing on the late medieval and early modern periods. Close reading of primary texts, analyzed in their historical context.  HU
TTh 2:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 289Jb / HSAR 399b / HSHM 407b / HUMS 220b, Collecting Before the Museum  Paola Bertucci

A history of museums before the emergence of the modern museum. Focus on: cabinets of curiosities and Wunderkammern, anatomical theaters and apothecaries' shops, alchemical workshops and theaters of machines, collections of monsters, rarities, and exotic specimens.     WR, HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 290a / RSEE 225a, Russia from the Ninth Century to 1801  Staff

The mainstream of Russian history from the Kievan state to 1801. Political, social, and economic institutions and the transition from Eastern Orthodoxy to the Enlightenment.  HU  0 Course cr
MW 11:35am-12:25pm

* HIST 291Ja / HSHM 482a / PHYS 105a, Electromagnetism: Physics, Magic, Religion  Alison Sweeney and Paola Bertucci

Electromagnetism is a foundational topic in scientific education. Its laws are crucial milestones for students interested in the hard as well as the life sciences; however, these topics can be challenging to learn and teach in our modern context of ubiquitous, miniaturized electronics. In contrast, in the nineteenth century, when most electromagnetic laws were codified, electromagnetism was anything but a dry science. The then-novel phenomena seemed to offer physical reality to occult practices and religious beliefs. This seminar offers scientific content in historical context. Students learn the physical theories of electromagnetism while entering the world of Victorian science and its paradoxes.  HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 292Ja / HUMS 279a / PLSC 286a, Democracy and the French Revolution  Isaac Nakhimovsky

The French Revolution of 1789 and its legacies, as viewed through the late-eighteenth-century debates about democracy, equality, representative government, and historical change that shaped an enduring agenda for historical and political thought in Europe and around the world.  WR, HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 294Ja / MGRK 305a, The Age of Revolution  Paris Aslanidis

The course is a comparative examination of the international dimensions of several revolutions from 1776 to 1848. It aims to explore mechanisms of diffusion, shared themes, and common visions between the revolutionary upheavals in the United States, France, Haiti, South America, Greece, and Italy. How similar and how different were these episodes? Did they emerge against a common structural and societal backdrop? Did they equally serve their ideals and liberate their people against tyranny? What was the role of women and the position of ethnic minorities in the fledgling nation-states? As the year 2021 marks the bicentennial of the Greek Revolution of 1821, special attention is given to the intricate links forged between Greek revolutionary intellectuals and their peers in Europe and other continents  HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 297a / AMST 297a, Introduction to Oral History  Frankie Barrett

The ultimate objective of this course is simple—to empower students with the skills necessary to take up the widely-accessible, vitally important scholarly method of oral history. The assigned texts and activities of the course illustrate the multi-faceted (and multimedia-ed) ways that oral history can inform interdisciplinary scholarship. In addition to learning oral history as a method, students develop analytical and interpretive skills, working individually and collaboratively to close-read oral histories and share findings through writing and/or other creative means. The course is divided into three conceptual sections: an overview of the theoretical debates around the practice of oral history; best practices of ethical oral history work; and opportunities for reflection on an initial interview as well as the life that each oral history continues to have, after the initial interview.  HU
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* HIST 302Jb, Korea and the Japanese Empire in Critical Contexts  Hannah Shepherd

This course addresses critical moments of contact, conflict, and connection in the modern histories of Korea and Japan. Each week our discussion and readings focus on a specific event, before looking at the wider contexts involved and historical debates they have produced. This is not a comparative study of the histories of the different countries, but a chance to focus on themes—nationalism, colonial oppression, collaboration, war, identity—which continue to shape both relations between Japan, South Korea and North Korea, and the work of historians today.  WR, HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 305a / LAST 100a, Introduction to Latin American Studies: History, Culture and Society  Staff

What is Latin America? The large area we refer to as Latin America is not unified by a single language, history, religion, or type of government. Nor is it unified by a shared geography or by the prevalence of a common language or ethnic group. Yet Latin America does, obviously, exist. It is a region forged from the merging of diverse cultures, historical experiences, and processes of resistance. This course provides an overview of Latin America and the Caribbean from the 16th century up to the present. While the class aims to provide students with an understanding of the region, due to time constraints, it focuses primarily on the experiences and histories of selected countries. The course introduces students to some of the most important debates about the region’s history, politics, society, and culture. The course follows a chronological structure while also highlighting thematic questions. Drawing on academic readings, films, music, art, literature, testimony, oral histories, and writings from local voices the class explores the political transformation of the region, as well as topics related to ethnic and racial identity, revolution, social movements, religion, violence, military rule, democracy, transition to democracy, and migration.   HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

HIST 307b / EAST 301b, The Making of Japan's Great Peace, 1550–1850  Fabian Drixler

Examination of how, after centuries of war in Japan and overseas, the Tokugawa shogunate built a peace that lasted more than 200 years. Japan's urban revolution, the eradication of Christianity, the Japanese discovery of Europe, and the question of whether Tokugawa Japan is a rare example of a complex and populous society that achieved ecological sustainability.  HU  0 Course cr
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* HIST 310Jb / LAST 370b, Continuities and Discontinuities of Violence in Latin America  Maria Aguilar

During the second half of the twentieth century, many Latin American countries experienced intense political conflict and waves of repression at the hands of government forces. This course introduces students to the histories of Latin American countries that experienced dictatorships and authoritarian regimes during the Cold War and traces their development into the democratic transitions and current attempts to come to terms with the legacies of violence. The first part of the course explores the factors that led to the seizing of power by military forces, the period of violence, and human rights violations that characterized these regimes. The second part examines the factors that led to democratic transitions and the legacies of authoritarian regimes. The course examines the experiences of countries in South and Central America, with special attention to Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala.   HU, SO
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 321a / EAST 220a, China from Present to Past  Staff

Underlying causes of current issues facing China traced back to their origins in the premodern period. Topics include economic development, corruption, environmental crises, gender, and Pacific island disputes. Selected primary-source readings in English, images, videos, and Web resources.  WR, HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 326Jb / EAST 326b, Yale and Japan  Daniel Botsman

Exploration of Yale's rich historical connections to Japan. Focus on use of the University's museum and library collections to learn about various aspects of the Japanese past, from ancient times to the post-World War II era. Knowledge of Japanese helpful but not required.  WR, HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 335b / AFST 335b / ER&M 325b, A History of South Africa  Daniel Magaziner

An introduction to the history of southern Africa, especially South Africa. Indigenous communities; early colonial contact; the legacies of colonial rule; postcolonial mismanagement; the vagaries of the environment; the mineral revolution; segregationist regimes; persistent inequality and crime since the end of apartheid; the specter of AIDS; postcolonial challenges in Zimbabwe, Angola, and Mozambique.  HU
TTh 11:35am-12:25pm

HIST 340b / AFST 340b, Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade  Robert Harms

Examination of the tumultuous changes experienced by African societies during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, approximately 1450–1850. Focus on the complex interaction between the internal dynamics of African societies and the impact of outside forces.  HU  0 Course cr
TTh 9:25am-10:15am

* HIST 341Ja / ENGL 368a / SAST 474a, The Novel and the Nation: Reading India in Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy  Priyasha Mukhopadhyay and Rohit De

This course pairs two interconnected phenomena: the rise of the Indian Republic and the birth of the postcolonial novel. Over the course of the semester, we read a single primary text: Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (1993). Set in the 1950s in the aftermath of India’s Independence and Partition, Seth’s encyclopaedic novel is the story of four families brought together by a mother’s search for a “suitable boy” for her daughter to marry. In the process, it builds a microcosm of an Indian society coming to terms with postcolonial statehood and weighing the aftereffects of British colonialism. Entwined in its plot about marriage, love, and relationships are some of the most urgent cultural and political concerns facing the new nation: legislative changes and land reforms, the violent aftermath of the Partition, secularism tainted by communal tensions, the disintegration of courtly forms of sociality, the reconstruction of city life, and the fate of the English novel in the postcolonial classroom. We read A Suitable Boy as literary critics and historians, pairing close readings of language and literary form with historical scholarship. Over the course of our discussions, we address the following questions: what is the relationship between the nation, the novel, and identity in the postcolonial world? How do we read narratives of “nation building” as literary and cultural constructions? What do we make of “literature” and “history” as disciplinary categories and formations? The seminar introduces students to methods of literary criticism and textual studies, and teaches them how to read a range of primary sources, from legislative debates, bureaucratic reports, newspapers, poetry, cinema, and radio.  HU
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 344a / AFST 344a, African Independence: A Cup of Plenty or a Poisoned Chalice?  Staff

In every African colony after World War Two there emerged nationalist movements which no longer called for civil rights as in the pre-war years but demanded self-determination. While many of them got it easy, some had to fight long and bloody wars for it. By the 1960s the colonial edifice had crumbled except for the few settler colonies in southern Africa. But even here the winds of change could not be stopped. But what did decolonization and independence mean to Africa? Did Africans get what they wanted? Was independence a cup of plenty or a poisoned chalice? In addressing these questions, this course charts the economic, political, and cultural transformations of postcolonial Africa from the 1960s to the present. The argument is this: there can be no understanding of Africa’s challenges today without an inquiry into the nature of what the continent got from the departing colonial powers.   HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

HIST 345b / JDST 265b / MMES 148b / RLST 202b, Jews in Muslim Lands from the Seventh to the Sixteenth Centuries  Ivan Marcus

Jewish culture and society in Muslim lands from the time of the Prophet Muhammad to that of Suleiman the Magnificent. Topics include Islam and Judaism; Jerusalem as a holy site; rabbinic leadership and literature in Baghdad; Jewish courtiers, poets, and philosophers in Muslim Spain; and the Jews in the Ottoman Empire.  HU
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* HIST 352Jb / AFST 352b / AKKD 350, Culture and Politics in Lusophone Africa, 1885-1992  Benedito Machava

The peculiar nature of Portugal as a colonial power produced a very distinct history in the five Portuguese-speaking African countries, namely Angola, Guiné-Bissau (Guinea-Bissau), Moçambique (Mozambique), and the Atlantic islands of Cabo-Verde (Cape Verde) and São Tomé e Príncipe. Lusophone Africa is a lose term that refers to the world created by Portugal’s colonialism in Africa. This course explores this distinct history through the lens of culture and politics. Focusing on the long twentieth-century, we consider Lusophone Africa as a study unit, dissecting its disparate societies, cultures, and political trajectories, while remaining anchored in the general context of Africa. Military conquest, colonial rule, race/lusotropicalism, nationalism, and liberation struggle are some of the core themes of the course. We begin with a brief assessment of Portugal’s efforts to retain its colonial enclaves amid the voracious expansion of British, French, Belgian, and German presence in Africa in the late 19th century. But our focus is on the twentieth-century, from the establishment of the colonial administration in the early 1900s to the fall of the Portuguese empire in 1974. We dedicate a good portion of the term to exploring the multiple ways (cultural and political) in which Africans responded to Portugal’s encroachment and how they navigated the color bar that came to dictate their social mobility under colonial rule. We end with the multifaceted longings for self-determination that led to the longest and bloodiest liberation wars in Africa. Our readings include scholarly essays (old and recent), primary sources, literary works (novels, poetry and short stories), photographs, music and films. We become acquainted with Portuguese-speaking African voices, faces, and places. Luís Bernardo Honwana’s collection of short stories in We Killed Mangy Dog and Other Stories (1964) and Zezé Gamboa’s film The Great Kilapy (2012) carry us through the important theme of race and race relations. While cautious in situating the discussion of race in its historical context, these and other materials challenge us to think about race relations and emancipation in our time.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 353a, 20th Century Japan: Empire & Aftermath  Staff

In 1905, in a victory which shocked the world, Japan defeated Imperial Russia in a regional conflict over control of Korea. To many in Asia and the non-Western world, Japan looked like a new model of anti-Western, anti-imperial modernity. However, the ensuing decades would see this image contested. The expansion of Japan’s political and economic power into East Asia over the first half of the twentieth century has shaped the region in ways still visible today. This course is split into three parts, each covering roughly two decades. First, we look at the legacies of Japan’s Meiji Restoration and the development of what has been called an “Imperial Democracy” in early 20th century Japan. Next, we look at the crises which rocked Japan in the 1930s and marked a new era. Finally,  we deal with the aftermath of empire—both in the immediate “postwar” era for Japan, and in the debates over imperial legacies and history which still reverberate in Japan and many of its former colonies today.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

HIST 355a / LAST 355a, Colonial Latin America  Staff

A survey of the conquest and colonization of Latin America from pre-Columbian civilizations through the movements for independence. Emphasis on social and economic themes and the formation of identities in the context of multiracial societies.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 362Jb / SAST 331b, The Economic History of India  Sunil Amrith

India has more billionaires than almost anywhere in the world, behind only the US and China; India is also home to more of the world’s poorest people than any other country on earth. How do we explain these contrasts? How far are India’s economic opportunities and its challenges rooted in its history? What were the economic consequences of colonialism? How have Indians, in the past and in the present, negotiated the economic obstacles and opportunities they face in their daily lives? This research seminar assumes no prior knowledge of Indian history. We approach economic history from the broadest possible standpoint, reading novels as much as statistics, photographs and movies as much as political documents. We cover the period from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Topics include: the economic impact of colonialism, the changing nature of poverty in India, the role of the state in India’s economic development, and the historical roots of India’s recent economic growth. We also consider connections and comparisons between India and its South and Southeast Asian neighbors. There is emphasis on understanding the roots of inequality in modern India, in particular gender and caste inequality. All students write a final research paper based on primary sources, and are encouraged to draw on material in the Yale collections, including the Beinecke and the Yale Center for British Art.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 366Ja / AFST 368a / EVST 369a, Commodities of Colonialism in Africa  Robert Harms

This course examines historical case studies of several significant global commodities produced in Africa to explore interactions between world market forces and African resources and societies. Through the lens of four specific commodities–ivory, rubber, cotton, and diamonds–this course evaluates diverse industries and their historical trajectories in sub-Saharan Africa within a global context from ~1870-1990s. Students  become acquainted with the historical method by developing their own research paper on a commodity using both primary and secondary sources.  WR, HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 368Ja / AFST 324a / EP&E 317a / PLSC 324a, Nelson and Winnie Mandela  Jonny Steinberg

A study of Nelson and Winnie Mandela’s marriage and public careers and the political and philosophical questions the marriage raises. Students examine the Mandelas’ conflicting ideas on race and on the colonial experience and compare them to those of Mohandas Gandhi and Franz Fanon. Students also read recent philosophical work on forgiveness and on violence in order critically to assess the politics of reconciliation that so divided the Mandelas. The course examines the politics of global celebrity and the portrayal of men and women in public media.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

* HIST 372Ja / ER&M 342a / LAST 372a, Revolutionary Change and Cold War in Latin America  Greg Grandin

Analysis of revolutionary movements in Latin America against the backdrop of the Cold War. Critical examination of popular images and orthodox interpretations. An interdisciplinary study of the process of revolutionary change and cold war at the grassroots level.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 374Ja / AFST 486a / HSHM 486a, African Systems of Thought  Nana Osei Quarshie

This seminar explores the effects of colonialism and post-colonial power relations on the production of scientific, medical, and embodied knowledge about Africa. The course focuses on three broad themes covered across four units. First, we read debates over the nature and definition of science and tradition. How have colonialism and post-colonial power relations defined the tasks of an African science? What does it mean to decolonize African thought or culture? Second, we examine the nature of rationality. Is reason singular or plural? Culturally-bound or universal? To what extent are witchcraft, African healing practices, and ancestor veneration rational practices? Is there a “traditional” rationality? Third, we explore the relationship between scientific representations, social practices, and local culture. What relationship exists between social practices and culturally shared categories of knowledge? Lastly, we examine the intersection of capital and medical expertise. How have shifting conceptions of value and capital, reshaped scientific and medical authority in Africa?  WR, HU
M 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 391Ja / AFST 385a / EP&E 350a / HLTH 385a / PLSC 429a, Pandemics in Africa: From the Spanish Influenza to Covid-19  Jonny Steinberg

The overarching aim of the course is to understand the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic in Africa in the context of a century of pandemics, their political and administrative management, the responses of ordinary people, and the lasting changes they wrought. The first eight meetings examine some of the best social science-literature on 20th-century African pandemics before Covid-19. From the Spanish Influenza to cholera to AIDS, to the misdiagnosis of yaws as syphilis, and tuberculosis as hereditary, the social-science literature can be assembled to ask a host of vital questions in political theory: on the limits of coercion, on the connection between political power and scientific expertise, between pandemic disease and political legitimacy, and pervasively, across all modern African epidemics, between infection and the politics of race. The remaining four meetings look at Covid-19. We chronicle the evolving responses of policymakers, scholars, religious leaders, opposition figures, and, to the extent that we can, ordinary people. The idea is to assemble sufficient information to facilitate a real-time study of thinking and deciding in times of radical uncertainty and to examine, too, the consequences of decisions on the course of events. There are of course so many moving parts: health systems, international political economy, finance, policing, and more. We also bring guests into the classroom, among them frontline actors in the current pandemic as well as veterans of previous pandemics well placed to share provisional comparative thinking. This last dimension is especially emphasized: the current period, studied in the light of a century of epidemic disease, affording us the opportunity to see path dependencies and novelties, the old and the new.  SO
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 396a / SAST 224a, India and Pakistan since 1947  Staff

Introduction to the history of the Indian subcontinent from 1947 to the present. Focus on the emergence of modern forms of life and thought, the impact of the partition on state and society, and the challenges of democracy and development. Transformations of society, economy, and culture; state building; economic policy.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 396Jb / AFST 396b, Revolutions and Socialist Experiments in Africa  Benedito Machava

This seminar explores the contours of Africa’s embrace and engagement with the most influential ideology of the twentieth-century. Why, and through which channels, were Africans attracted to socialism? Did particular forms of colonialism and decolonization push African political actors towards revolution and socialist experiments? Is it legitimate, as some scholars have suggested, to speak of genuinely African socialisms? If so, what was the nature of these socialisms and how did they differ from the versions of socialism around the world? What political, social, economic, and cultural ends did socialism serve in Africa? And what were the consequences and legacies of African socialist experiments? The seminar addresses these questions. Our goal is to place Africa in the mainstream of conversations about socialism. We begin with the assumption that, like any doctrine, socialism was the object of multiple interpretations, modification, and appropriation from its inception. In so doing, we challenge orthodox understandings of socialism, which hold the European versions as the pure models and the rest as diluted if not populist façades of the ‘true’ doctrine. We begin with theoretical readings that help us situate the major debates about socialism in general and socialism in Africa. We then proceed to examine the overall historical context in which African nationalists adopted socialism. We differentiate the first branch of “African Socialism” from the second wave of “Afro-Marxism.” We also pay close attention to issues of decolonization and political imagination; ideas and experiments of development; gender, morality, and social engineering.   WR, HU
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 403Jb / HSHM 473b, Vaccination in Historical Perspective  Jason Schwartz

For over two centuries, vaccination has been a prominent, effective, and at times controversial component of public health activities in the United States and around the world. Despite the novelty of many aspects of contemporary vaccines and vaccination programs, they reflect a rich and often contested history that combines questions of science, medicine, public health, global health, economics, law, and ethics, among other topics. This course examines the history of vaccines and vaccination programs, with a particular focus on the 20th and 21st centuries and on the historical roots of contemporary issues in U.S. and global vaccination policy. Students gain a thorough, historically grounded understanding of the scope and design of vaccination efforts, past and present, and the interconnected social, cultural, and political issues that vaccination has raised throughout its history and continues to raise today.  HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 410Ja, Money and Its Crimes: Forgers, Schemers, and Conmen  Vanessa Ogle

For as long as it has existed, people spending, producing, earning, legislating, or saving money have been confronted with its potential for deception. We look at the evolution of money through different forms (credit systems; coins, paper money) in the pre-modern era and then move forward from the 19th century, when arguably the wider availability of paper money, now firmly established financial markets, central banking, joint stock companies, and the principle of limited liability ushered in distinctly new and modern ways of understanding and encountering money. This new landscape of money also opened the doors to new criminal enterprises: Forgers who used the advent of paper money as an opportunity to produce counterfeit bills; conmen who lured gullible fellow citizens into their get-rich-quick schemes; dubious entrepreneurs who praised endless opportunities in the emerging markets of that time and age, in Latin America and the colonial world; and men like Charles Ponzi, after whom the notorious pyramid investment fraud is named, among other examples. How did societies historically view those engaging in such criminal activity, and what kind of laws, safeguards, and investigative tools were put in place to protect people from money crimes? How did understandings of what constituted such crimes, and what, accordingly, should be made illegal, change over time? How do we view what is now often referred to as “white collar crime” today, and what does the future of money crimes look like in the age of cryptocurrencies? Over the course of the semester, we combine different historical perspectives on these topics and questions.   WR, HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 418a, The History of Money  Vanessa Ogle

This is a lecture course on the history of money, ca. 900 to the present. The geographical focus lies on developments in Europe and North America, with occasional forays into Latin America, China, and various overseas empires. Students acquire an understanding of the evolution of money in its different forms. The course shows that our understanding of money today, and the forms in which money comes, are extremely recent developments and that for vast stretches of history, people used very different moneys. The course can therefore help us understand that anything we today might assume to be natural or inevitable about money and monetary politics, might in fact not be so given money’s colorful and mixed history.  HU
TTh 9:25am-10:15am

* HIST 418Jb / WGSS 297b, Gender Expression Before Modernity  Igor De Souza

What are the historical forms of gender non-conformity? This course investigates expressions of gender that were considered non-conforming within their historical contexts. Our point of departure is the idea that gender constitutes a “useful category of historical analysis” (Joan Scott). In this course we ask how deviant gender expression can be a category of historical analysis. How do we write history from the perspective of gender fluidity, non-binarism, and gender transgression? How can this history give us the tools to critique regnant norms of gender expression, then and now? How does this historical approach relate to trans* and non-binary people & movements today? The course is historically wide-ranging, from Antiquity to the Early Modern period, and geographically diverse, including Europe, the Middle East, and the colonial Americas. The breath of contexts enable us to consider broad patterns, continuities, and discontinuities. At the same time, we discuss the specificities of particular contexts, emphasizing the connection between gender fluidity/non-conformity, on the one hand, and local cultural norms around gender and sex, on the other. We investigate intellectual and cultural trends, as well as the lives of gender fluid/non-conforming individuals. We analyze sources drawn from law, medicine, religion, philosophy, visual arts & literature, biographies, and memoirs. All readings are in English translation. No prior background is required. However, it will be helpful to have taken either WGSS 291/HIST 287J or WGSS 306 before or in concurrence with this course.  HU
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

* HIST 421Jb, Piracy in Global History  Lauren Benton

This seminar examines piracy as an economic, cultural, and legal phenomenon. Major themes include piracy and the law; pirates as members of political communities; and piracy in relation to processes of imperial and global ordering. Some attention is given to piracy in the ancient world and in the twentieth century, but the emphasis is on European empires and piracy from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean worlds.   WR, HU
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

* HIST 429Jb / HSHM 412b, Laboratory Life  Chitra Ramalingam

The laboratory is the iconic space of modern science, where unruly nature is tamed and controlled, and scientific facts are made. Through historical, ethnographic, and sociological approaches to lab science, this course explores how an obscure, secretive site for managing alchemical labor in medieval Europe became the globally dominant mode of producing universal experimental knowledge across the modern sciences. We consider issues of labor, skill and class; gender and race; pedagogy and the politics of profession; state, industrial, and corporate laboratories; secrecy and openness; place and geography; and the implication of labs in geopolitical webs of power, inequality, and exploitation. Undergraduate enrollment limited to juniors and seniors.  WR, HU
T 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 447Jb / HSHM 467b, History of the Body  Ziv Eisenberg

What does it mean to have a “bad hair day?” How should you care for your skin? What happens when you eat a burger and drink wine? How are babies made? What happens when you die? The answers depend not only on who provides them, but also on where and when. This seminar examines historical production of systems of corporeal knowledge and power, as well as the norms, practices, meanings, and power structures they have created, displaced, and maintained. Structured thematically, the course familiarizes students with major topics in the history of the body, health, and medicine, with a particular focus on US history.  WR, HU
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

* HIST 449Jb / EVST 349b / HSHM 449b / URBN 382b, Critical Data Visualization: History, Theory, and Practice  Bill Rankin

Critical analysis of the creation, use, and cultural meanings of data visualization, with emphasis on both the theory and the politics of visual communication. Seminar discussions include close readings of historical data graphics since the late eighteenth century and conceptual engagement with graphic semiology, ideals of objectivity and honesty, and recent approaches of feminist and participatory data design. Course assignments focus on the research, production, and workshopping of students’ own data graphics; topics include both historical and contemporary material. No prior software experience is required; tutorials are integrated into weekly meetings. Basic proficiency in standard graphics software is expected by the end of the term, with optional support for more advanced programming and mapping software.  HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 458Jb / SAST 421b, Environmentalism from the Global South  Sunil Amrith

Most histories of the environmental movement still privilege the American and European experience. This research seminar examines the diverse forms of environmental thought and activism that have emerged from the global South—drawing examples from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America—since the early twentieth century. The course examines: the environmental legacies of colonialism, the role of ecology in anticolonial movements, early articulations of environmental justice in the 1970s, the role of violence and repression in state responses to environmental activism, the rise of increasingly networked environmental movements from the Global South that made themselves heard at the Rio Earth Summit of 1992—which took place 30 years ago, and the moral and political histories that underpin the negotiating stance of countries of the Global South in climate change negotiations. This class makes extensive use of primary sources, including material from the Yale collections and it straddles the boundaries between environmental, intellectual, and political history.  WR, HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 479b / AFAM 170b / HSHM 241b / WGSS 270b, Sickness and Health in African American History  Carolyn Roberts

A history of American medicine through the African American experience covering the period of slavery through #BlackLivesMatter. Oriented around the complex dynamics of medical abuse and medical resistance, key themes include medicine and slavery; gender and reproduction; medical experimentation and ethics; the rise of racial science; lynching and vigilante violence; segregation and public health; African-descended approaches to health and healing; the rise of the African American medical profession; and black health activism from slavery to #BlackLivesMatter.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 482Jb / GLBL 342b / PLSC 321b, Studies in Grand Strategy I  Michael Brenes

The study of grand strategy, of how individuals and groups can accomplish large ends with limited means. The spring term focuses on key moments in history that illustrate strategic thinking in action. During the summer, students undertake research projects or internships analyzing strategic problems or aspects of strategy. The following fall, students put their ideas into action by applying concepts of grand strategy to present day issues. Admission is by application only; the cycle for the current year is closed. This course does not fulfill the history seminar requirement, but may count toward geographical distributional credit within the History major for any region studied, upon application to the director of undergraduate studies. Previous study courses in political science, history, global affairs, or subjects with broad interdisciplinary relevance encouraged.  HU, SO
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 483Ja / GLBL 344a / PLSC 161a, Studies in Grand Strategy II  Michael Brenes

The study of grand strategy, of how individuals and groups can accomplish large ends with limited means. During the fall term, students put into action the ideas studied in the spring term by applying concepts of grand strategy to present day issues. Admission is by application only; the cycle for the current year is closed. This course does not fulfill the history seminar requirement, but may count toward geographical distributional credit within the History major for any region studied, upon application to the director of undergraduate studies. Prerequisite: PLSC 321. Previous study courses in political science, history, global affairs, or subjects with broad interdisciplinary relevance encouraged.  SO
M 2:30pm-4:20pm

* HIST 490Jb / HSHM 429b, Decolonizing the Mind  Nana Osei Quarshie

This seminar explores the effects of colonialism and post-colonial power relations on the production of scientific, medical, and embodied knowledge about psychiatry. First, we read debates over the geographies of power and distrust in medicine. How have colonialism and post-colonial power relations defined the tasks of non-European psychiatry? What does it mean to decolonize psychiatric practice or culture? Second, we examine the nature of rationality. Is reason singular, plural, or culturally bound or universal? To what extent is spirit possession a rational experience? Third, we explore the relationship between scientific representations, social practices, and local culture. What relationship exists between social practices and culturally shared categories of knowledge? Is psychiatry universalizable? Students learn to analyze and debate these questions by drawing on films, letters, photography, and monographs produced in and about Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, China, Cuba, Indonesia, and Vietnam.   WR, HU, SO
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 494a or b, Individual Writing Tutorial  Daniel Magaziner

For students who wish, under the supervision of a member of the faculty, to investigate an area of history not covered by regular departmental offerings. The course may be used for research or for directed reading. It is normally taken only once. The emphasis of the tutorial is on writing a long essay or several short ones. To apply for admission, a student should present the following materials to the director of undergraduate studies on the Friday before schedules are due: a prospectus of the work proposed, a bibliography, and a letter of support from a member of the History department faculty who will direct the tutorial. A form to simplify this process is available from the office of the director of undergraduate studies.
HTBA

* HIST 495a or b and HIST 496a or b, The Senior Essay  David Sorkin

All senior History majors should attend the mandatory senior essay meeting in early September at a time and location to be announced in the online Senior Essay Handbook. The senior essay is a required one- or two-term independent research project conducted under the guidance of a faculty adviser. As a significant work of primary-source research, it serves as the capstone project of the History major. Students writing the one-term senior essay enroll in HIST 497 (see description), not HIST 495 and 496. The two-term essay takes the form of a substantial article, not longer than 12,500 words (approximately forty to fifty double-spaced typewritten pages). This is a maximum limit; there is no minimum requirement. Length will vary according to the topic and the historical techniques employed. Students writing the two-term senior essay who expect to graduate in May enroll in HIST 495 during the fall term and complete their essays in HIST 496 in the spring term. December graduates enroll in HIST 495 in the spring term and complete their essays in HIST 496 during the following fall term; students planning to begin their essay in the spring term should notify the senior essay director by early December. Each student majoring in History must present a completed Statement of Intention, signed by a department member who has agreed to serve as adviser, to the History Department Undergraduate Registrar by the dates indicated in the Senior Essay Handbook. Blank statement forms are available from the History Undergraduate Registrar and in the Senior Essay handbook. Students enrolled in HIST 495 submit to the administrator in 237 HGS a two-to-three-page analysis of a single primary source, a draft bibliographic essay, and at least ten pages of the essay by the deadlines listed in the Senior Essay Handbook. Those who meet these requirements receive a temporary grade of SAT for the fall term, which will be changed to the grade received by the essay upon its completion. Failure to meet any requirement may result in the student’s being asked to withdraw from HIST 495. Students enrolled in HIST 496 must submit a completed essay to 211 HGS no later than 5 p.m. on the dates indicated in the Senior Essay Handbook. Essays submitted after 5 p.m. will be considered as having been turned in on the following day. If the essay is submitted late without an excuse from the student's residential college dean, the penalty is one letter grade for the first day and one-half letter grade for each of the next two days past the deadline. No essay that would otherwise pass will be failed because it is late, but late essays will not be considered for departmental or Yale College prizes. All senior departmental essays will be judged by members of the faculty other than the adviser. In order to graduate from Yale College, a student majoring in History must achieve a passing grade on the departmental essay.
HTBA

* HIST 497a or b, One-Term Senior Essay  David Sorkin

All senior History majors should attend the mandatory senior essay meeting in early September at a time and location to be announced in the online Senior Essay Handbook. The senior essay is a required one- or two-term independent research project conducted under the guidance of a faculty adviser. As a significant work of primary-source research, it serves as the capstone project of the History major. Seniors writing a two-term senior essay do not register for HIST 497; instead, they register for HIST 495 and HIST 496 (see description). History majors may choose to write a one-term independent senior essay in the first term of their senior year and register for HIST 497; however, students who choose the one-term senior essay option are not eligible for Distinction in the Major. The one-term essay must include a substantial research paper of no more than 6,250 words (approximately twenty-five pages) based on primary sources, along with a bibliographic essay and bibliography. Seniors enroll during the fall term of senior year; only History majors graduating in December may enroll during the spring term (or seventh term of enrollment). In rare circumstances, with the permission of the adviser and the Senior Essay Director, a student enrolled in HIST 497 during the fall term may withdraw from the course according to Yale College regulations on course withdrawal and enroll in the spring term. Each student enrolled in HIST 497 must present a completed Statement of Intention, signed by a department member who has agreed to serve as adviser, to the History Department Undergraduate Registrar by the dates indicated in the Senior Essay Handbook. Blank statement forms are available from the History Undergraduate Registrar and in the Senior Essay Handbook, available on the History department Web site. Additional details about the senior essay, including the submission deadlines are included in the Senior Essay Handbook. Essays submitted after 5 p.m. on the due date will be considered as having been turned in on the following day. If the essay is submitted late without an excuse from the student's residential college dean, the penalty is one letter grade for the first day and one-half letter grade for each of the next two days past the deadline. No essay that would otherwise pass will be failed because it is late. All senior departmental essays will be judged by members of the faculty other than the adviser. In order to graduate from Yale College, a student majoring in History must achieve a passing grade on the departmental essay. Permission of the departmental Senior Essay Director and of the student’s faculty adviser is required for enrollment.
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