Global Arc

This course will explore the history of political propaganda in the context of mass politics, international rivalries, colonialism, and the rise of totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century. We will discuss the use (and abuse) of visual images and verbal messages, channels of delivering them to audiences, and their reactions. The topics for comparative and cross-cultural study of mass persuasion will include avant-garde art and propaganda, the cult of political leaders in totalitarian regimes, propaganda of hate and genocide, new media and terrorism, "weaponization" of information in international politics, and more.

Few political gestures are as ubiquitous or powerful as the appeal to our common "humanity." But a politics based on the human self (or, as it once was, "man") has often been accused of harboring limitations or prejudices that undercut its claim to be universal. More recently, the priority accorded to humans has been brought into question by studies into the cognitive and emotive capabilities of other animals, and developments in computing. In this course, we will examine the emergence of the human self as a master concept of politics, and we will also track the criticisms made by feminists, anti-colonial writers, and animal rights activists.

Catastrophe reveals the fragility of human society. This course examines a series of phenomena--plague, famine, war, revolution, economic depression etc.--in order to reach an understanding of humanity's imaginings of but also resilience to collective crises. We shall look in particular at how political forces such as empire have historically both generated and resisted global disasters. Material dealing with the especially fraught centuries at the transition between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period will be set alongside examples drawn from antiquity as well as our own contemporary era.

This course aims to explain the historical roles of fascism and antifascism in the making of our political world.

This seminar explores the history of Ukraine from the early 20th century through the present day. Though it covers a rather long period, this course is geared towards the contemporary events in the 21st century. We will try to understand how despite a relatively peaceful transition from communism to independence in the 20th century Ukraine became engulfed by a new war with unprecedented destruction. We start this seminar by setting up historical background of Ukrainian territories between the empire in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. We will end the course with discussion and analysis of most recent events in Ukraine.

Studies of war and society rarely address environmental factors and agency. The relationship between war and environment is often either reduced to a simple environmental determinism or it is depicted as a war against nature and ecosystems, playing down societal dynamics. The seminar explores the different approaches to the war-environment-society nexus and highlights how and why the three spheres should be studied in conjunction. The objective is to assess how and why environmental and societal factors and forces caused and shaped the conflicts and how in turn mass violence shaped societies and how they used and perceived their environments.

In 1917, a new socialist state emerged from the ruins of the old Romanov Empire, and the dreams of several generations of Russian radicals came true. This seminar explores the history of revolutionary ideas and movements in Russia from the 1860s, through the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the emergence of new order in the early 1920s. We will read memoirs of terrorists, as well as cult novels of Russian revolutionary youth and political pamphlets of Russian Marxists and Bolsheviks. We will also analyze the role of women in the radical movement and the dynamics of mass political protests among workers, soldiers and peasants.

From Antiquity to the late Renaissance, objects moved and were moved in the Mediterranean world. Trade goods crossed the ocean. Obelisks, statues and relics traveled great distances to be incorporated into new sacred sites. Automata amazed visitors to courts and awed worshipers in churches. In this course we will map the premodern Mediterranean's trade networks to try to understand how premodern men and women viewed and understood these objects in motion.

Focusing on work class histories on the Indian subcontinent - especially in cities and towns - this course studies the organization of labor from medieval towns to modern megacities. Students will analyze overarching shifts in the structural relationships between classes, as well as the diversity of working class experiences. We will also ask how laborers shaped the evolution of cities and towns across South Asia. Along the way, students will examine the rise of labor rights movements; the relationship between caste and class; the gendering of labor; and processes of urbanization, industrialization, and labor migration.

This class examines the relationship between law and society in the Roman and post-Roman worlds. We begin with the Roman Jurists of the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD and end with the rediscovery of Roman law in the West in the 11th and 12th centuries. Over the course of the intervening millennium, we will focus on pivotal moments and key texts in the development of the legal cultures in Europe and the Middle East. We will trace how legal thought and practice evolved across these areas and think about how law and law-like norms both shape and are shaped by society and social practices.