Global Arc

How have Black healers and communities conceived of health and healing throughout history? Notions of health and healing and healing practices in the "Black Atlantic" (inclusive of Africa and the Americas) from the era of slavery to the present are the focus of this course. Students will engage with primary sources, historical and sociological scholarship, and historical documentaries concerning healing and Black life.

This is an undergraduate seminar about the urban experiences and representations of the modern city as society. Beginning with the premise that the "soft city" of ideas, myths, symbols, images, and psychic expressions are as important as the "hard city" of bricks and mortar, this course explores the experiences and imaginations of modern cities in different historical contexts. Among cities we will examine are Manchester, London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Algiers, Bombay, and Hong Kong. The course will use a variety of materials, but will focus particularly on cinema to examine different imaginative expressions of the urban experience.

This seminar uses the history of medicine in China over two millennia to explore a set of essential questions faced by all societies: What kind of persons with special skills and quality should we entrust with the care of the sick, and how to raise and allocate resources to foster the growth of medicine as an intellectual and social enterprise? In this class, we explore the health-related issues and challenges still facing governments and the general public today by looking back in time, and also discover how the history of medicine can illuminate aspects of social life and human experiences marginalized in conventional historiography.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Ethiopia underwent rapid processes of expansion and modernization in the highlands of Northeast Africa, and at the same time became a beacon of hope for global Black movements, perhaps made most visible through Rastafarian culture and beliefs. This course introduces students to the history of the modern Ethiopian state and its role shaping moments and movements in global history. It highlights the way African histories are essential to, but often ignored (or erased) in the telling of modern world history. Students will engage with primary and secondary historical texts, literature, and film.

A study of the emergence of a distinctive Western European civilization out of Christian, Greco-Roman, and Germanic institutions and ideas from the decline of the Roman Empire to about A.D. 1050. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

An analysis of typical institutions, social and economic structures, and forms of thought and expression from about 1050 to about 1350. Emphasis is placed on the elements of medieval civilization that have influenced the subsequent history of European peoples. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

The Crusades were a central phenomenon of the Middle Ages. This course examines the origins and development of the Crusades and the Crusader States in the Islamic East. It explores dramatic events, such as the great Siege of Jerusalem, and introduces vivid personalities, including Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. We will consider aspects of institutional, economic, social and cultural history and compare medieval Christian (Western and Byzantine), Muslim and Jewish perceptions of the crusading movement. Finally, we will critically examine the resonance the movement continues to have in current political and ideological debates

This course charts the history of international order from the 1815 Congress of Vienna to today's world system. It is a saga of grand schemes for world parliaments and universal peace, as well as imperial domination and dismal violence. Can the globe be governed? Can great power politics be squared with global ethics? And how do the rights of states relate to the rights of individuals? We will investigate shifting answers to these questions in conversation with figures like Kant, Marx, Wilson, Ho Chi Minh, Arendt. As we track the struggle between power and morality from Metternich to the IMF, we uncover the origins of the world we know today.

The political and social history of France from Napoleon to the Fifth Republic. The impact of revolution, industrialization, and war on French society in the 19th and 20th centuries. Particular attention will be paid to movements of popular revolt and the efforts of elites--rural, bourgeois, and technocratic--to maintain control in the face of social ferment. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

This course will explore how democracy has evolved as a concept, a practice, and an ideology, in Europe from the end of the Second World War to the present day. It will study the different models of democracy that emerged in east and west, which had different ideologies and structures, but also shared the ambition to build a viable relationship between rulers and ruled and create new regimes of freedom and social justice. Democracy was never a fixed reality, but an evolving system, that responded to social and ideological challenges, as well as external events.