* HIST 009a, Yale Engages the World: A History of U.S. Power  David Engerman

This course uses moments in the history of Yale University to shed light on the forms, functions, and trajectory of U.S. global power from the late 19th century through the late 20th century. Students explore the Yale campus through archival, digital, and published primary sources as well as scholarly writing about Yale in particular or aspects of American history more generally. We visit not just written records stored in the archives but also campus sites. The seminar thus provides historical insight into aspects of Yale that are familiar today, from academic programs to student activities to protest movements. It also explores the nature of Yale’s longstanding ties to China, the anthropological collections at the Peabody Museum, and how Yale has mobilized for war. Enrollment limited to first-year students.  WR, HU
T 1pm-4pm

* 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.   WR, HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 024a / CLCV 031a, The Age of Cleopatra  Joseph Manning

This course introduces students to historical method using a pivotal and fascinating period in Mediterranean history. This course goes far beyond the typical framework, mainly from Roman sources, to examine Egypt in the age of Cleopatra, 50-30 BCE and the much wider world. We examine the reception of Cleopatra through the lens of women's history.  Enrollment is limited to first-year students.  WR, HU
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

* HIST 039a / SAST 020a, Bombay/Mumbai: Life in a Megacity  Rohit De

Mumbai as a case study for the transformations brought by urbanization and modernity in Asia. Focus on how Mumbai's residents and its planners navigated the challenges of living in a rapidly growing cosmopolitan city and reflected it in their art and ideas. Themes include capitalism, globalization, British empire, religious pluralism, radical politics, organized crime, and Bollywood. Enrollment limited to first-year students.  WR, HU
MW 9am-10:15am

* HIST 060b, History of Crime and Punishment  Rohit De

Changing attitudes and policies towards crime from the ancient world to the present. Topics include explanations of crime as a moral, biological, and social phenomenon; crime in the ancient, medieval, and modern age; alternative “informal” or “non-western” approaches to criminal justice; criminal trials as public spectacles; political trials and war crimes; impact of race and gender hierarchies; debates about death sentence, imprisonment, and corporal punishment. Enrollment limited to first-year students.   WR, HU
MW 4pm-5:15pm

* HIST 071a, Nighttime: The Night in History  Maria Jordan

The alterations of day and night created dissimilar imaginaries for these phenomena, day symbolized activity and good, while the night was associated with passivity, evil, and even the dangerous and the horrific. In this seminar, we challenge these static and opposite notions by presenting a more complex, dynamic, and complete view of the night in different moments in history. We approach questions such as how the experience of the night changed, how religious paradigms altered, changes in the lighting technologies, how political and economic forces modified notions, the uses an the experience of the night by different groups, taking into consideration the disparities between rural and pre- and industrial era cities. We also examine the roots of the prejudices toward darkness, explore the reasons of why we fear the night, and examine the process  of criminalization, commercialization and even politicization of nocturnal spaces. Nights also offer times for pleasure, transgression and freedom that open the possibility for expressing dissent and opposition to the prevailing  standards. In this matter we include themes of gender, sexuality, slavery, students movements, and contemporary street revolts. Enrollment limited to first-year students.  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.   WR, HU
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* HIST 081b, Afterlives of Co-Prosperity: World War Two and Displacement Across Asia  Hannah Shepherd

The global movement of people that occurred in the aftermath of the Second World War is often evoked today. It’s used as a benchmark against which the scale and scope of the current global refugee crisis is measured. However, histories of this ‘global’ post-1945 crisis of displaced people have mainly focused on Europe, especially the aftermath of the Holocaust. This was a global war, but historical work on its aftermath for those displaced by fighting, genocidal regimes, and wartime mobilization is far less global in scope. Unlike in Europe after 1945, where, as historian Tony Judt writes, “boundaries stayed broadly intact and people were moved instead,” in East Asia, “both people and boundaries moved.” In this seminar, we look at the histories of the wartime and postwar movement of people in Asia, especially those mobilized or displaced by the wartime expansionist Japanese state, its colonial governments, and military forces. Enrollment limited to first-year students.  HU
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

* HIST 089a / HUMS 090a, Thinking about History  Stuart Semmel

An introduction to the discipline of history. Exploration of influential historical narratives; the philosophy of history; the emergence of historical subdisciplines including history from below, microhistory, the new cultural history, and Big History; and interdisciplinary engagement with anthropology, literary criticism, art history, and psychology. Enrollment limited to first-year students.   WR, HU
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* HIST 098b, Little Ice Ages: Climate Crises and Human History  Fabian Drixler

Anthropogenic global warming is one of the defining crises of our time. Before the 20th century, it was cooling and drought that posed the greatest challenges to human flourishing. Temperatures could drop for centuries, such as in the Little Ice Age (ca. 1300-1850). Volcanic winters typically lasted only a year or two but rattled the ecological foundations of many societies. Through a focus on such periods of climatic disruption, this seminar serves as an introduction to the broader study of climate history. This is a rapidly developing field that combines methodologies across many disciplines, from ice core analysis and volcanology to tree rings and the analysis of written records. Our readings are often authored by multi-disciplinary teams, but our focus is on how historians understand the past interactions of human beings and the climate. The scope of the course is global and ranges from the collapse of ancient societies to the prospects for (deliberately) engineering the climate of the future. Our temporal center of gravity is the early modern period─already exquisitely documented but still highly vulnerable to changes in temperature. Enrollment limited to first-year students.   WR, HU
HTBA

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  0 Course cr
TTh 1:30pm-2:20pm

HIST 109a / EVST 109a, Climate & Environment in American History: From Columbian Exchange to Closing of the Frontier  Staff

This lecture course explores the crucial role that climate and environmental conditions have played in American history from the period of European colonization to the end of 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 lectures offer a new framework for organizing and periodizing North American history, based on geographical and environmental conditions rather than traditional national and political frameworks. The course provides a historical foundation for understanding contemporary American (and global) climate and environmental issues.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 110Ja / HSHM 496a, 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 113b, The Un-American Century  Beverly Gage

This course explores the political history of the United States in the 20th century through the national contest over communism and anticommunism, a conflict that reshaped American politics and society at every level. Through this subject, the course investigates debates about democracy and extremism, policing and surveillance, civil liberties and civil rights, liberalism, radicalism, and conservatism, foreign and domestic policy. It describes the evolving histories of both the Left and the Right, along with the ways that government institutions responded to their challenges. Subjects include McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, intellectual history, labor, espionage and security, gender and sexuality, and the Cold War.  WR, HU
MW 1pm-2:15pm

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

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
HTBA

* HIST 116Jb, 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 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 117b / AMST 307b / ER&M 298b / LITR 375b / MGRK 306b, The Greek Diaspora in the United States  Maria Kaliambou

The seminar explores the history and culture of the Greek diasporic community in the United States from the end of the 19th century to the present. The Greek American experience is embedded in the larger discussion of ethnic histories that construct modern America. The seminar examines important facets of immigration history, such as community formation, institutions and associations, professional occupations, and civic engagement. It pays attention to the everyday lives of the Greek Americans as demonstrated in religious, educational, and family cultural practices. It concludes by exploring the artistic expressions of Greek immigrants as manifested in literature, music, and film production. The instructor provides a variety of primary sources (archival records, business catalogs, community albums, personal narratives, letters, audiovisual material, etc.). All primary and secondary sources are in English; however, students are encouraged to read available material in the original language.  WR, HU
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 120b / AMST 163b / EVST 120b / HSHM 204b, American Environmental History  Paul Sabin

Ways in which people have shaped and been shaped by the changing environments of North America from precolonial times to the present. Migration of species and trade in commodities; the impact of technology, agriculture, and industry; the development of resources in the American West and overseas; the rise of modern conservation and environmental movements; the role of planning and impact of public policies.  WR, HU
MW 11:35am-12:25pm

* HIST 123a / AMST 430a / ANTH 430a / ER&M 432a, Muslims in the United States  Zareena Grewal

Since 9/11, cases of what has been termed “home-grown terrorism” have cemented the fear that “bad” Islam is not just something that exists far away, in distant lands. As a result, there has been an urgent interest to understand who American Muslims are by officials, experts, journalists, and the public. Although Muslims have been part of America’s story from its founding, Muslims have alternated from an invisible minority to the source of national moral panics, capturing national attention during political crises, as a cultural threat or even a potential fifth column. Today the stakes are high to understand what kinds of meanings and attachments connect Muslims in America to the Muslim world and to the US as a nation. Over the course of the semester, students grapple with how to define and apply the slippery concept of diaspora to different dispersed Muslim populations in the US, including racial and ethnic diasporas, trading diasporas, political diasporas, and others. By focusing on a range of communities-in-motion and a diverse set of cultural texts, students explore the ways mobility, loss, and communal identity are conceptualized by immigrants, expatriates, refugees, guest-workers, religious seekers, and exiles. To this end, we read histories, ethnographies, essays, policy papers, novels, poetry, memoirs; we watch documentary and fictional films; we listen to music, speeches, spoken word performances, and prayers. Our aim is to deepen our understanding of the multiple meanings and conceptual limits of homeland and diaspora for Muslims in America, particularly in the Age of Terror.  HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 123Jb, Reagan’s America  Beverly Gage

This course examines U.S. politics in the 20th century through the life and times of Ronald Reagan. This is not a course about biography. Instead, the course uses the major political events of Reagan’s lifetime−from his years as a New Deal-era labor leader to his presidency in the 1980s−in order to explore the political history of the era. The course emphasizes intersections between domestic and foreign policy, as well as between high politics (the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court) and grassroots social movements. Topics include liberalism, conservatism, civil rights, communism and anticommunism, California politics, presidential power, AIDS activism, abortion politics, immigration, foreign policy, and the Cold War.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 127a / EVST 206a / HSHM 201a / HUMS 106a / PHYS 106a, Sustainable Energy: Physics and History  Staff

Students explore the physical logic of energy and power in parallel with the histories of technology for energy exploitation and economic theories of sustainability on the path to modernity. They learn the fundamentals of quantitative analysis of contemporary and historical energy harvesting, its carbon intensity, and climate impact. They also gain an understanding of the historical underpinnings of the current global energy status quo and its relationship to economic theories of sustainability.  Mathematical proficiency with algebra is assumed. Students from all academic interests and experiences are welcome in the course.  QR, SC, SO  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 133Ja, The Creation of the American Politician, 1789–1820  Joanne Freeman

The creation of an American style of politics: ideas, political practices, and self-perceptions of America's first national politicians. Topics include national identity, the birth of national political parties, methods of political combat, early American journalism, changing conceptions of leadership and citizenship, and the evolving political culture of the early republic.  WR, HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 134Ja or b, Yale and America: Selected Topics in Social and Cultural History  Jay Gitlin

Relations between Yale and Yale people—from Ezra Stiles and Noah Webster to Cole Porter, Henry Roe Cloud, and Maya Lin—and American society and culture. Elihu Yale and the global eighteenth century; Benjamin Silliman and the emergence of American science; Walter Camp, Dink Stover, and the all-American boy; Henry Luce and the information age; faith and ideology in postwar Yale and America.  WR, HU
HTBA

HIST 135a / ECON 182a, American Economic History  Staff

The growth of the American economy since 1790, both as a unique historical record and as an illustration of factors in the process of economic development. The American experience viewed in the context of its European background and patterns of industrialization overseas. After introductory microeconomics.  WR, SO  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 135Jb, 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
W 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 139Ja / HSHM 445a, Fetal Histories: Pregnancy, Life, and Personhood in the American Cultural Imagination  Megann Licskai

In our twenty-first-century historical moment, the fetus is a powerful political and cultural symbol. One’s fetal politics likely predicts a lot about how they live their life, vote, worship, and even about how they understand themselves. How, then, has the fetus come to carry the cultural significance that it does? Are there other ways one might think of the fetus? And what is happening in the background when we center the fetus up front? This course examines the many cultural meanings of the fetus in American life: from a clump of cells, to a beloved family member, to political litmus test, and considers the way that these different meanings are connected to questions of human and civil rights, gender relations, bodily autonomy, and political life. We look at the history of our very idea of the fetus and consider how we got here. Each of us may have a different idea of what the fetus is, but every one of those ideas has a particular history. We work to understand those histories, their contexts, and their possible implications for the future of American political life.  WR, HU
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 140b / HSHM 215b, Public Health in America, 1793 to the Present  Naomi Rogers

A survey of public health in the United States from the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 to AIDS, breast cancer activism, bioterrorism and COVID. Focusing on medicine and the state, topics include epidemics and quarantines, struggles for reproductive and environmental justice, the experiences of healers and patients, and organized medicine and its critics.  HU  0 Course cr
TTh 10:30am-11:20am

* HIST 142Ja / HSHM 498a, Collecting Bodies: Historical Approaches to Specimen Collection  Megann Licskai

Why is there a room full of brains in the basement of Yale’s medical school, and why does it welcome hundreds of visitors every year? What compels us about the macabre spectacle of human remains, and what is their place in medical history? What kinds of stories can and should a museum space tell, and what are the multivalent functions of a collection like this in a university setting? Using Yale’s Cushing Center as a center of discussion, this class examines the ethics of collecting and viewing human specimens. The course ties these practices to histories of colonialism, racism, medicine, anthropology, and natural history while considering the cultural specificity of the collectors and the collected. Students analyze the kinds of stories that museum spaces can tell and imagine possibilities for ethical storytelling through both academic analysis and creative engagement. In doing so, we prioritize hands-on historical work while reading theory to address broader ethical and epistemological questions. This course will, on occasion, meet at 333 Cedar St. to facilitate this hands-on work.  WR, HU
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 143b, The American Revolution: The Contest for North America  Mark Peterson

This lecture course explores the history of eastern North America and the West Indies in the second half of the 18th century, and their relationship with British Imperial authority, in order to determine what was "revolutionary" about this history, as well as what was not. We, of course, examine the causes and consequences of the rebellion staged by thirteen of Britain's American colonies in the 1770s, but we also investigate the broader context in which these events occurred, and consider their reverberations throughout the Atlantic world as well.  HU  0 Course cr
MW 11:35am-12:25pm

HIST 144a / DEVN 200a, Can It Happen Here Again? Yale, Slavery, the Civil War and Their Legacies  Staff

As citizens of the United States and the world, we live in a time of reckoning for the very idea and mission of universities and colleges, as well as primary and secondary schools, curriculums, the freedom to read and learn.  Inside and outside the gates of universities, academic freedom, the pursuit of diversity, the faith in universals as we probe ever deeper into particular experiences are all undergoing new pressures of scrutiny.  All of this stems from our history even as it emerges in new forms.  The Civil War and Reconstruction era lives on in palpable ways in our divided, polarized political and legal culture today.  Universities, like the societies and nations in which they live, have histories, and they merit critical, analytical examination, as well as careful, engaging storytelling.  This course will consist of three parts.  First, we will study the history of Yale University’s connections to and entanglements with racial slavery and its afterlives; second, we will explore in some depth the first existential crisis of the American experiment – the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction as it swept the nation into destruction and rebirth; and third, we will take up the many legacies of that period – political, constitutional, racial, economic, and commemorative – as they have shaped American life and polity ever since. The course is by tradition open to any and all public and community members in the New Haven region.  And the course is a regular lecture coffering in history, cross-listed in other departments, for undergraduates.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 149Ja, A History of the Border Wall: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in US History  Greg Grandin

Ever since the US’s founding, the idea of an open and ever-expanding frontier has been central to United States identity. Symbolizing a future of endless promise, the frontier made possible the United States’ belief in itself as an exceptional nation—democratic, individualistic, forward-looking. Today, the country has a new symbol: the border wall. This course focuses on both the current crisis at the U.S.-Mexican border, which has consumed the country’s attention and challenged its public morality and national identity, and the long history that has led to the crisis. After an introductory period focused mostly on the history of the U.S. border (with indigenous peoples, Spain, and Mexico), we alternate between issues pertaining to the current moment and the larger historical context. We read about and discuss events of the moment, related to the immediate causes of migration, the rise of nativism in the U.S., along with calls for building a border wall, family separation and child detention policies, and the activity of the Border Patrol and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, as we continue to set the current crisis in historical context.   HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

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

Exploration of the institutions, movements, and policies that have attempted to provide healthcare for the urban underserved 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
F 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 154Ja, Neighboring Democracies: Representative Politics in the United States and Canada, 1607-Present  Brendan Shanahan

This seminar examines how representative politics have evolved in the United States and Canada from the turn of the seventeenth century to the present. Students learn diverse ways in which forms of liberal democracy—republicanism and constitutional monarchy in particular—have emerged in North America, how processes of democratization have operated, and the degree to which representative governments in Canada and the U.S. borrow from and emerge out of common and/or disparate contexts. Special emphasis is placed on—but is not limited to—the history of suffrage and voting rights in the United States and Canada.   WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 157Ja, The United States and the Middle East: The 19th Century to the Present  Staff

This seminar invites students to delve into the multifaceted history of relations between the United States and the Middle East from the 19th century to the present. Students explore not only how Americans have imagined, perceived, and represented the Middle East over time, but also how Middle Eastern populations have interpreted, experienced, and debated America’s expanding political, cultural, economic, and military power in their region. We proceed in a roughly chronological fashion, beginning with the arrival of Protestant missionaries on the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean in the early 19th century and concluding with the ongoing Gaza war. To what extent have American and Middle Eastern perceptions of each other evolved in the intervening two hundred years? What has the Middle East meant to Americans, and what has America meant to Middle Eastern populations? Was the relationship between them always destined to be fraught with misunderstanding and antagonism, or were there missed opportunities for alternative futures? If so, are those alternatives still viable today? By juxtaposing American and Middle Eastern perspectives and mining the contested space between them, students weigh answers to these and other historical and historiographical questions throughout the semester. In doing so, they acquire the knowledge, analytical tools, and critical thinking skills to partake in scholarly debates and research on the history of U.S.-Middle East relations.  WR, HU
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 159a / CLCV 129a / HUMS 129a / NELC 158a / RLST 158a, Jesus to Muhammad: Ancient Christianity to the Rise of Islam  Stephen Davis

The history of Christianity and the development of Western culture from Jesus to the early Middle Ages. The creation of orthodoxy and heresy; Christian religious practice; philosophy and theology; politics and society; gender; Christian literature in its various forms, up to and including the early Islamic period.  HU  0 Course cr
MW 9:25am-10:15am

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

This reading and discussion class offers an overview of U.S. congressional history and politics from 1789 through today, including separation-of-powers relations with the executive branch. Topics include elections, polarization, supermajority processes, legislative productivity, and classic showdowns with the presidency.  Emphasized is Congress's participation in a sequence of policymaking enterprises that have taken place from the launch of the nation through recent budget difficulties and handling of climate change. Undergrads in political science and history are the course's typical students, but anyone is welcome to apply.   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 169a, Early National America: Creating a Nation  Staff

An introduction to America's first decades as a nation. Topics include the creation of a national politics, partisan conflict in the states and on a national level, the logistics of democratic politicking, and changes in American society and culture.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 171Jb / AFAM 392b / HSHM 447b, Medical Racism in History and Practice  Carolyn Roberts

This seminar invites students to study historical and contemporary texts related to race and racism in medicine, science, and healthcare. Our primary focus is anti-Black racism, and we study connections between the period of slavery and present-day issues in healthcare, biomedical research, reproductive justice, and medical and nursing education and practice. Students from any department and discipline are welcome to join this seminar, which privileges deep listening, close reading, community, and care.  HU
HTBA

* HIST 173Jb, The Ends of History  Samuel Moyn and Daniel Judt

We encounter history every day in the world—in our families, our communities, and our politics. More than that: we use history to make all sorts of arguments, and not just ones about what really happened in the past. We appeal to historical claims to argue about questions of ethics and morality; to advocate for a particular vision of the future; to frame the present in a hopeful or foreboding light. Today in the United States, these uses of history are impossible to escape in our public, political life. Invocations of the legacies of slavery and colonization; warnings about the threat of fascism; appeals to tradition or a return to ‘better’ times: history is everywhere, and it is being put to various, and often conflicting, ends. This seminar invites students to think about the ways we can and should use the practice of history in society. Why does history matter? What can it do for us? What do we use it for, and are we using it for the right things? Is history a science, dedicated to the discovery of the real truth about the past, or is it an unending contest of different interpretations? Can it be both? To investigate these questions, we examine arguments from the recent past about the proper uses of history. Many of these arguments come from historians. We also read philosophers and social theorists, journalists and political actors, all of whom have tried to put history to use in different and conflicting ways. By exploring the ends to which we have put history in the past, we ask what we want history to do for us today.
  This is an upper-level seminar intended for sophomores, juniors, and seniors. There are no prerequisites for the course, although some experience with academic history (e.g., having taken a college history class) will be helpful  WR, HU
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* 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 184a / AFAM 160a / AFST 184a / AMST 160a, History of Atlantic Slavery  Staff

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.  HU  0 Course cr
TTh 10:30am-11:20am

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

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  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 193Jb, Seances & Spirits: Science and the Occult during the Long 19th Century  Murphy Temple

The 19th century was an age of secularism, rationality, industrialization, urbanization, and scientific and technological innovation—but it was also marked by a popular obsession with the paranormal. People from all walks of life held séances, summoned ghostly apparitions, and performed magic rituals. Why did this interest in the occult persist in the rational modern word? Exploring this paradox, this course focuses on Britain, with occasional forays across the ocean to America. Using a wide variety of fascinating sources like spirit photographs, séance transcripts, and documents in the Yale archives, we examine the origins, spread, and significance of our modern fascination with the “other world."  WR, HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* 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
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 211b, The Birth of Europe, 1000-1500  Paul Freedman

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 214Ja, History of the Night  Maria Jordan

This seminar is dedicated to the reality and the perception of the night across time and in different cultures. We explore how religious and philosophical beliefs, political and economic forces, changes in technologies of lighting, human biology, and the shift from rural to urban and agrarian to industrial societies affected attitudes toward time in general and the night in particular. These changes influenced the perceptions, uses, and the ways different groups experienced nocturnal time, and how we act, sleep, work, interact, and even dream. The traditional binary view of day and night is questioned by presenting a more complex "and dynamic face" of the night. Nightfall provides multiple opportunities for dissent and rebellion and becomes an ideal space for marginal and subordinate people. Historical analysis, literary texts, medical and scientific writings, and primary sources provide the class with a cross-disciplinary approach to examine how the night became the abode of the ghost, the devil, the witch, and the dead, and how the night became criminalized, commercialized and even politicized. In our time, improvements in lighting changed the nocturnal world, but also had detrimental effects on sleep and dreams, and caused contemporary movements–aesthetic and scientific–to "rescue" the night.  WR, HU
T 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.  WR, HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 219a / ER&M 219a / JDST 200a / MMES 149a / RLST 148a, Jews and the World: From the Bible through 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  0 Course cr
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* HIST 220Ja, Grand Strategy and the Origins of the Second World War  Paul Kennedy

A survey of the most important literature and debates concerning the coming of the Second World War in both Europe and the Pacific. Emphasis on the comparative approach to international history and on the interplay of domestic politics, economics, and strategy. Counts toward only European distributional credit within the History major.  WR, HU  RP
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 221Ja / RSEE 231a, Russia in the Age of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, 1850-1905  Sergei Antonov

Russian politics, culture, and society ca. 1850 to 1905. Tsars’ personalities and ruling styles, political culture under autocracy. Reform from above and revolutionary terror. Serfdom and its abolition, problem of “traditional” Russian culture. Growth of industrial and financial capitalism, middle-class culture, and daily life. Foreign policy and imperial conquest, including the Caucasus and the Crimean War (1853-56). Readings combine key scholarly articles, book chapters, and representative primary sources. All readings and discussions in English.  WR, HU
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

* 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
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 223b / AFAM 362b / ER&M 272b / FREN 262b / GLBL 272b, Black France  Marlene Daut

This course offers an in-depth exploration of the complex history of Black France, tracing its roots from the era of French colonization in the Caribbean and the transatlantic slave trade to its contemporary manifestations across France and its overseas territories. Beginning with an examination of French colonialism in the Caribbean, particularly focusing on the brutal system of slavery and the development of the Code Noir under the reign of Louis XIV, students gain a comprehensive understanding of the origins of race-thinking in France. Students also read about the pivotal role of French colonies like Saint-Domingue, Martinique, and Guadéloupe in the resistance against slavery, highlighting the Haitian Revolution as a watershed moment in the struggle for freedom and self-determination. Through the lens of this historic event, students analyze the complexities of slave rebellion, the quest for abolition, and the enduring legacy of resistance in Black (francophone) communities. By highlighting the socio-political relationship of the colonial and revolutionary era to the present, students explore the interconnectedness of slavery, colonialism, and power dynamics within the French empire and the enduring impact of this tumultuous history on contemporary conceptions of Blackness in France. Using an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses history, sociology, literary, and cultural studies, students analyze the formation of Black identity, racial ideologies, and the ongoing struggle for recognition and equality within French society.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 227a / SPAN 367a, The Spanish Civil War: Words and Images  Noel Valis

An introduction to the history and cultural and literary impact of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), through national and international perspective and an analysis of the literature and culture produced during and after the conflict. The course is divided into four sections: the war “from within”, the war “from outside”, women in war and the memory of war. Authors include George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, Javier Cercas, Mercè Rodoreda, Julio Llamazares, Ramón J. Sender and others; films: The Spanish Earth, The Good Fight, El laberinto del fauno, Rojo y negro; arte: Guernika (Picasso), El rostro de la guerra (Dalí), war posters. In Spanish. Open to students who have placed into L5 courses or who have successfully completed an L4 course in Spanish. Counts toward the Spanish major.  L5, HU
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm

* HIST 230a, Twentieth-Century Jewish Political History: Holocaust, Israel, American Jewry  Staff

This course studies Jewish political behavior in response to three key developments of the twentieth century that directly impinged upon Jews: Nazi totalitarianism resulted in the mass murder of Jews, de-colonization resulted in the Jews’ return to sovereignty with the establishment of the State of Israel, and the development America’s post-war “open” society of equality resulted in American Jewry flourishing in perhaps unprecedented ways. This course aims to study the vexed question of Jews’ political behavior in response to these twentieth-century developments. Students write essays about the three events and have the opportunity to undertake original research about one of them.  WR, HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* 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  RP
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 234Jb / RLST 234b, History of the Supernatural from Antiquity to Modernity  Carlos Eire

This survey course aims to provide an introduction to ancient, medieval, and early modern Western beliefs in supernatural forces, as manifested in saints, mystics, demoniacs, ghosts, witches, relics, miracles, magic, charms, folk traditions, fantastic creatures and sacred places. Using a wide range of primary sources and various historical methodologies, our aim is to better understand how beliefs and worldviews develop and change and the ways in which they shape and determine human behavior.  This course is not open to students previously enrolled in HIST 299.  HU
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

* 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 237b / RSEE 390b / RUSS 241b, Russian Culture: The Modern Age  Claire Roosien and Sergei Antonov

An interdisciplinary exploration of Russian cultural history, focusing on literature, art, religion, social and political thought, and film. Conceptions of Russian nationhood; the myths of St. Petersburg; dissent and persecution; the role of social and cultural elites; the intelligentsia; attitudes toward the common people; conflicting appeals of rationality, spirituality, and idealism; the politicization of personal life; the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath. Readings and discussion in English.  HU
MW 1pm-2:15pm

HIST 238b, Daily life in Greco-Roman Egypt  Joseph Manning

This course intends to fill the gap between Ancient History survey courses and areas of more specialized knowledge within the discipline. One of these specialized fields is Papyrology, which examines texts written in both Greek and demotic Egyptian languages evidencing various aspects of ancient life in the most densely-documented place in the ancient Mediterranean world, Egypt. The aim is to introduce the student to the history and culture of Ptolemaic and Roman period Egypt, and to explore the ancient sources themselves and how scholars work with them. Egypt in this period, from roughly 300 BCE to 300 CE, in many ways occupies a pivotal place in world history. Two of the great world religions, Judaism and Christianity, rose to prominence in Egypt during this period; world trade was extended for the first time from the Mediterranean to the Far East through Egyptian ports on the Red Sea; coinage was used in market exchange; and the sciences as well as philosophy were extended and developed. Societies became truly “multi-cultural” for the first time, and we can explore this phenomenon in great depth. We also, again for the first time, are able to study women’s history in fine detail. By the end of the course, students have a sound foundation of the basic facts and the sources of the period and socio-economic trends of the period, which in some ways mark the beginning of the modern world. Students better understand the context of the rise of Rome, the split between the Latin West and the Greek East, the coming of Islam, and ultimately just how intimately bound together we moderns are to those who lived along the Nile two thousand years ago.  HU
HTBA

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 244Jb / HUMS 202b / JDST 354b, Modern Jewish Political Thought: Jewish Politics Through Texts, Philosophy, and History  David Sorkin

This course examines the canonical texts of modern Jewish political thinking from the seventeenth to the late twentieth century. Students engage with the major thinkers and major political movements of the period.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

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 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
Th 9:25am-11:15am

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 268Ja / JDST 351a / PLSC 466a / RLST 324a, 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
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* 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 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 303a, Japan's Modern Revolution  Staff

A survey of Japan's transformation over the course of the nineteenth century from an isolated, traditional society on the edge of northeast Asia to a modern imperial power. Aspects of political, social, and cultural history.  WR, HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

HIST 308a, History of Southeast Asia  Staff

For centuries, Southeast Asia has been a crossroads of cultures, languages, religions, diasporas, and empires. Few parts of the world are more politically and ecologically diverse. In the twenty-first century, Southeast Asia is one of the most economically vibrant regions of the world, but growth has come with rising inequality. Southeast Asian societies are the front line in feeling the impact of climate change, and Southeast Asian waters are a frontier of geopolitical rivalry. Beginning with a glimpse into ancient Southeast Asia, the class focuses on the early modern and modern eras, with plenty of coverage of the recent past. Key underlying themes include the importance of migration, and the role of the environment—and especially of water—in shaping modern Southeast Asia. Throughout the class, we turn to literary, film, and visual sources to enhance our understanding of cultural change. By the end of the course, students have a broad understanding of modern Southeast Asian societies and politics. They are also able to discern how Southeast Asia’s historical experience offers insights and inspiration in relation to universal challenges—how to live with cultural differences, for instance, or how to adapt to rapid environmental change.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

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. Preference given to first years and sophomores.   WR, HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

HIST 325b / ER&M 345b / LAST 325b, Introduction to Latin American History  Anne Eller

Critical themes and events in Latin American history from pre-Columbian times to the present. Major formative epochs such as the pre-Columbian era, colonization, independence, and contemporary moments; modern political flashpoints, including Haiti, Cuba, Argentina, and Peru.  HU
TTh 1:30pm-2:20pm

* 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 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 352Jb / AFST 352b / AKKD 350b, 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 361a / LAST 361a, History of Brazil  Staff

Brazilian history from European contact to the reestablishment of civilian government in the 1990s. Focus on the multiethnic nature of Brazilian society, the formation of social and political patterns, and the relationship of people to the environment.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* HIST 365Jb, Law and History in China  Maura Dykstra

This seminar takes scholars on a journey through the laws and the history of China. We encounter a series of case studies: scholarly analyses of sets of historical materials from different periods and various contexts that illustrate types of law and ways of writing history. Students read and analyze a wide variety of case materials: legal sources, trial accounts, printed records, and archival materials from different times and places in Chinese history to familiarize themselves with a range of texts used to narrate and analyze histories of law. At the same time, students familiarize themselves with materials used to study the law, and discuss and critique a diverse range of case studies written for various audiences. Working simultaneously with case materials and case studies, students become familiar with both the range of sources and the variety of methods used to study law and history in China.  The seminar is open to students with all levels of Chinese language comprehension.  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 367a / AFST 366a / EP&E 305a / PLSC 364a, Bureaucracy in Africa: Revolution, Genocide, and Apartheid  Jonny Steinberg

A study of three major episodes in modern African history characterized by ambitious projects of bureaucratically driven change—apartheid and its aftermath, Rwanda’s genocide and post-genocide reconstruction, and Ethiopia’s revolution and its long aftermath. Examination of Weber’s theory bureaucracy, Scott’s thesis on high modernism, Bierschenk’s attempts to place African states in global bureaucratic history. Overarching theme is the place of bureaucratic ambitions and capacities in shaping African trajectories.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 368a / ER&M 368a / LAST 368a, Political Violence, Citizenship, and Democracy in Latin America  Staff

Exploration of how and when definitions of citizenship and democracy have been shaped by violent conflicts; how local and global contexts have influenced individual and collective political action; and the transformation of leadership, ideologies, and utopias in different Latin American contexts.  WR, HU  0 Course cr
TTh 10:30am-11:20am

* HIST 370Ja, The Arabic Atlantic  Alan Mikhail

This course begins with advent of colonialism in the Americas in order to rethink the ways in which race and religion comingled in histories of conquest, genocide, and slavery that bridge, but also to sort through the differences between the Atlantic, Caribbean and Mediterranean worlds. The course examines and conceptualizes how the Middle East figured in European imperial projects in the Western Hemisphere. It starts with the Papal sanction of Spanish and Portuguese colonial projects in the Americas as a continuation of their expulsion of the Moors from Iberia and proceeds to examine the histories of enslaved Black Muslims. A visit to the Beinecke Library and the Yale Archives to examine Ezra Stiles’ collection of Hebrew and Arabic texts and the ‘moorish’ identity of the boy he enslaved brings our inquiry closer to home. Additional visits to the archives of American missionary societies active in the Middle East, which are housed at the Yale Divinity School, invites students to examine primary sources linking Yale and New Haven to the Middle East. Our class ends in 1887 with Frederick Douglass’ visit to Egypt and the concurrent histories of officers in the US Confederacy who served in the Egyptian military. By examining how the Middle East came to appear in European imperial projects in the Americas, we can more critically understand how American and European colonizers, missionaries, and travelers came to appear in the Middle East. Topics include toleration and violence, women and gender, settler colonialism, slavery, ecological and climatic changes, and the birth of financial capitalism. The study of the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and the Americas.   WR, HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 372Jb / ER&M 342b / LAST 372b, 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 378a / AFAM 375a / AMST 465a / FREN 365a / LITR 377a, Haiti in the Age of Revolutions  Marlene Daut

The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) was an event of monumental world-historical significance. This class studies the collection of slave revolts and military strikes beginning in August of 1791 that resulted in the eventual abolition of slavery in the French colony of Saint-Domingue and its subsequent independence and rebirth in January of 1804 as Haiti, the first independent and slavery-free nation of the American hemisphere. Considering Haiti's war of independence in the broader context of the Age of Revolutions, we cover topics such as enlightenment thought, natural history, the workings and politics of the printing press, and representations of the Haitian Revolution in art, literature, music, and in various kinds of historical writings and archival documents. Students develop an understanding of the relevant scholarship on the Haitian Revolution as they consider the relationship of this important event to the way it was written about both as it unfolded and in its long wake leading up to the present day.  WR, HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 388Ja, Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa  Robert Harms

The slave trade from the African perspective. Analysis of why slavery developed in Africa and how it operated. The long-term social, political, and economic effects of the Atlantic slave trade.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 396b / SAST 224b, India and Pakistan since 1947  Rohit De

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
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

* HIST 396Ja / AFST 396a, 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
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 398Ja / MMES 300a / RSEE 329a / RUSS 329a, Introduction to Modern Central Asia  Claire Roosien

An overview of the history of modern Central Asia—modern-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. This course shows Central Asia to be a pivotal participant in some of the major global issues of the 20th and 21st centuries, from environmental degradation and Cold War, to women’s emancipation and postcolonial nation-building, to religion and the rise of mass society. It also includes an overview of the region’s longer history, of the conquests by the Russian and Chinese empires, the rise of Islamic modernist reform movements, the Bolshevik victory, World War II, the perestroika, and the projects of post-Soviet nation-building. Readings in history are supplemented by such primary sources as novels and poetry, films and songs, government decrees, travelogues, courtly chronicles, and the periodical press. All readings and discussions in English.  HU
MW 1pm-2:15pm

* 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 412Jb / HUMS 261b / NELC 364b / RLST 264b, The Psalms, A Cultural History of Ancient Prayer  Stephen Davis

This course introduces students to the Book of Psalms and its significant cultural and religious impact in ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The course is organized in three units. Unit 1 focuses on the text of the Psalms, with special attention to their literary forms, editorial organization, and early ritual context in ancient Israel. Unit 2 focuses on the reception and use of the Psalms in late ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with special attention to matters of translation, interpretation, worship, prayer, and scriptural authority. Unit 3 focuses on material and sensory encounters with the Psalms from antiquity to the present day within these three religious traditions—case studies related to tactile and visual contact with the physical book, oral and aural engagement through song or chant, and embodied forms of writing, reciting, and enacting the Psalms in the context of ritual practice, including magical spells. The goal of the course is thus to trace the life and afterlife—to write the textual and extra-textural “biography,” as it were—of a major biblical book.  HU
Th 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 433a / GLBL 433a, The Twentieth Century: A World History  Staff

For most people, almost everywhere, the twentieth century was a time of profound and accelerating change. Someone born in the 1890s could, if they lived a long life, have experienced two world wars, a global depression, collapse of empires, the enfranchisement of women and young people, and the rise of the United States to global power.  They could have witnessed the first cars, the first planes, the first radios and TVs, and the first computers. They could have been among the first to swear allegiance to one (or several) of 130 new states, almost twice the number that existed in 1900. They would have been certain to witness massive ecological destruction, as well as unparalleled advances in medicine, science, and the arts. The twentieth century was, as one historian puts it, an age of extremes, and in this class we explore some of these aspects of the age. The class is not intended to be a complete history nor is it one that provides an integrative interpretation of historical events. The aim is rather to enable students to know enough to think for themselves about the origins of today’s world and about how historical change is created.  HU  0 Course cr
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* HIST 444Jb / HSHM 418b / WGSS 435b, Queer Science  Joanna Radin and Juno Richards

Why are there so many studies involving trans brain scans? Can facial recognition technology really tell if you’re queer? Why is everyone so obsessed with gay penguins? For that matter, how did science come to be the right tool for defining and knowing sex, gender, and sexuality at all? How does that history influence our collective lives in the present, and what are some alternatives? This course gives students a background in the development of sex science, from evolutionary arguments that racialized sexual dimorphism to the contemporary technologies that claim to be able to get at bodily truths that are supposedly more real than identity. It introduces scholarly and political interventions that have attempted to short-circuit the idea that sex is stable and knowable by science, highlighting ways that queer and queering thinkers have challenged the stability of sexual categories. It concludes by asking how to put those interventions into practice when so much of the fight for queer rights, autonomy, and survival has been rooted in categorical recognition by the state, and by considering whether science can be made queer.  HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* HIST 447Jb / HSHM 467b / WGSS 465b, 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 / HUMS 446b / 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 459a / EVST 228a / HUMS 228a / LITR 345a, Climate Change and the Humanities  Katja Lindskog

What can the Humanities tell us about climate change? The Humanities help us to better understand the relationship between everyday individual experience, and our rapidly changing natural world. To that end, students read literary, political, historical, and religious texts to better understand how individuals both depend on, and struggle against, the natural environment in order to survive.  HU
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

HIST 465b / EVST 209b / HSHM 209b, Making Climate Knowledge  Deborah Coen

This is a course about how humans have come to know what we know about our impacts on the earth’s climate and our vulnerability to climate change. When did humans first know that their actions, in the aggregate, could transform the planet? Did scientists bear responsibility to warn of these consequences? In what ways has the modern science of climate both appropriated and undermined traditional and indigenous forms of climate knowledge? Students learn to work with the methods of history of science: we analyze science as a social and material process bound to the cultural and epistemological particularities of its historical context, and we examine the political dimensions of historical narratives about the emergence of the theory of global warming. Via hands-on experience with Yale’s historical collections, students learn to analyze maps, artifacts, and instruments as historical sources. They also gain familiarity with the methods of environmental history, learning to attend to historical evidence of shifting relationships between humans and non-humans. Finally, students become more attuned to the evidence of climate change around them and more confident in their ability to make climate knowledge for themselves.  HU
MW 1:30pm-2:20pm

* HIST 467Ja / HSHM 422a, Cartography, Territory, and Identity  Bill Rankin

Exploration of how maps shape assumptions about territory, land, sovereignty, and identity. The relationship between scientific cartography and conquest, the geography of statecraft, religious cartographies, encounters between Western and non-Western cultures, and reactions to cartographic objectivity. Students make their own maps. No previous experience in cartography or graphic design required.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* HIST 483Ja / GLBL 344a / PLSC 161a, Studies in Grand Strategy II  Arne Westad and 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 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.
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* HIST 495a or b and HIST 496a or b, The Senior Essay  Anne Eller

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.
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* HIST 497a or b, One-Term Senior Essay  Anne Eller

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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