Global Arc

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.

This seminar surveys influential writing about North American cities, towards the goal of students developing their own research. We begin in the 19th century but focus on the 20th. Why have some publications set popular frameworks, while others languished? Where have new ideas originated? Comparing different genres, what writing has shaped experiences of cities, and policy? How has region mattered? Writing about built environments poses unique challenges. Since the 1950s, oppositions have dominated urban frameworks, such as Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses. Students will explore the potential for fresh perspectives on past and present.

This course explores the medieval understanding of nature, the heavens, bodies, and minds. In medieval Islam and the Latin West, science was shaped by debates over important questions - the extent of divine and human power, the existence of other worlds, the generation of life, the legitimacy of magic and astrology. We will ask how medieval people sought to put this knowledge into practice, from healing sickness and prolonging life, to making automata, transmuting metals, or predicting the future. The course draws on a wide range of sources, including books, images, material objects, and our own attempts to reconstruct experiments in class.

From the consolidation of European imperial control in South and Central Asia through the present day, Afghanistan has featured in the global imagination of empire. Imperial writers have termed it a "buffer state," "the graveyard of empires," and the land of the "great game". But how have Afghans experienced imperialism? We will trace the history of imperial engagement with Afghanistan alongside Afghan articulations of history, society, and culture. We ask how empires imagined Afghanistan and established regional authority. Equally, we study how Afghans responded to imperial geopolitical claims and developed their own historical narratives.

In this course we will explore various examples of "the dictator novel," attempting to make sense of the genre in its overlapping historical and world-literary contexts. Each week our focus will be on a specific novel, which is to be read alongside scholarly work and other writing as we consider the aesthetic, political, and cultural significance of this strikingly global literary form. We will strive to understand the complex relationship between literature and politics; more specifically, the representation of state power, authoritarian rule, and struggles for human freedom in--and through--cultural production. All readings are in English.