Global Arc

This seminar explores the history of modern Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict, from the late nineteenth century through the early 2000s. Our focus will be on reading a range of primary sources as well as engaging with scholarly debates. Topics covered include: the origins of Zionism and early Zionist colonization; the rise of Palestinian nationalism; the British Mandate; the war of 1948; regional aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict; the 1967 war and the occupation; Israeli and Palestinian politics, literature and popular culture; the involvement of the United States; and, strategies for reconciliation and peacemaking.

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This course asks you to examine the history of those aspects of United States government that have been called the national security state. This is a history course; it is also intended as something of an old-fashioned civics course, asking you to take part in an exercise of citizenship: to consider fundamental questions about the form of government under which you live and under which you wish to live.

The Reconstruction of the Union, following the American Civil War, remade the United States. This course will examine how Reconstruction set the stage for rest of the Nineteenth century in all its contradictions. One big theme for the course is how the Civil War and Reconstruction shaped American political philosophy, especially how later debates of the Progressive Era over the size of the government and over laissez-faire capitalism developed out of Reconstruction. We will examine some of the major Constitutional and political changes that occur during the aftermath of the Civil War.

This course explores the social, political, and cultural history of the African diaspora in the period spanning national independence and decolonization; civil rights, Black Power, and black consciousness; postcolonialism, migration, and transnational cultural exchange. It considers the ways Africans and African-descended peoples in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Europe helped bring about the fall of the old colonial order and responded to the various developments that arose in its wake. Topics will include racial formation, nationalism, pan-Africanism, anticolonialism, anti-apartheid, and popular culture.

The ups and downs of the so-called "special relationship" between the United Kingdom and the United States is one of the major themes of the history of the twentieth century, and the one figure who embodies that association in all its many contradictory guises is Winston Churchill, who actually coined the phrase. For Churchill's relationship with the United States was much more nuanced and complex (and, occasionally, hostile) than is often supposed, and it will be the aim of this course to tease out and explore those nuances and complexities (and hostilities), in the broader context of Anglo-American relations.

In this course, we analyze the history and evolution of prison, persecution and incarceration in Europe during the nineteenth century. The focus of the class is Eastern Europe and Russia: in particular, we analyze the history of the political prison in the Russian and the Austrian Empires. This course is inspired by the debates on the nature of prisons in the late eighteenth century and today, and we cover some of the classical works on political persecution and political prison in Europe, academic studies, memoirs, and fiction.

We live in the age of ethnicity. The surge of ethnic conflicts after the collapse of the Soviet Union has brought dramatically to the fore the importance of ethnicity as a motive for social action, often violent. Ethnic difference is a key factor employed to explain social inequality in the Global North. In the United States, ethnicity and race are official categories applied by governmental agencies in dealing with discrimination and poverty. In this course, students will look at ethnicity as a historical phenomenon that happens in different times and places, and become familiar with theories and methods as well as case-studies.

An introduction to the discipline of history aimed at, but not limited to, history majors. Through case studies, students will learn how historians of the last few generations have framed problems, found and interpreted evidence, and built arguments. Participants will both study the major recent movements in the discipline of history and reflect on and improve their own historical techniques. The course will culminate with an examination of history and memory in the early 21st century. Prerequisites: successful completion of the department's junior requirements or comparable work in another department. One three-hour seminar.

The French Enlightenment was one of the most intensely creative and significant episodes in the history of Western thought. This course will provide an introduction to its major works. Each class meeting will consist of a two-hour discussion, followed by a 45-minute background lecture for the subsequent week's readings.