Global Arc

Examines the rise of nationalism in the Balkans, beginning with an examination of Balkan society under the Ottomans and continuing up through the establishment of nation-states in the 19th and 20th centuries. Case studies will include Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania. Themes covered: social organization, prenational politics, imperialism, cultural and economic elites, the Ottoman heritage. One lecture, two preceptorials.

This course surveys the breadth of Jewish experience from the era of the Enlightenment to the contemporary period. Tracing the development of Jewish cultures and communities in Europe and the United States against the background of general history, the course focuses on themes such as the transformation of Jewish identity, the creation of modern Jewish politics, the impact of anti-Semitism, and the founding of the State of Israel.

This is a survey of the history of Russian multinational empire from the late 1600s to the Revolution of 1917. Students will learn how the Russian Empire expanded, and why it collapsed in 1917. Special attention will be paid to the history of Russian colonialism, the policies of Russification, religious conversion and imperial assimilation in Ukraine, Alaska, Caucasus, Central Asia, Poland, and other national borderlands.

The history of contemporary America, with particular attention to political, social and technological changes. Topics will include the rise of a new conservative movement and the reconstitution of liberalism, the end of the divisive Cold War era and the rise of an interconnected global economy, revolutionary technological innovation coupled with growing economic inequality, a massive influx of immigrants coupled with a revival of isolationism and nativism, a revolution in homosexual rights and gender equality coupled with the rise of a new ethos of "family values."

An examination of the transformation of the Russian Empire into the Soviet Union and that Union's eventual collapse. Topics include: the invention and unfolding of single-party revolutionary politics, the expansion of the machinery of state, the onset and development of Stalin's personal despotism, the violent attempt to create a noncapitalist society, the experiences and consequences of the monumental war with Nazi Germany, and the various postwar reforms. Special attention paid to the dynamics of the new socialist society, the connection between the power of the state and everyday life, global communism, and the 1991 collapse.

The history of Western and Central Europe since World War I viewed from the perspective of Europe's rapidly changing role in world history. Europe's political, social, and economic adjustment to the Russian Revolution, to the emergence of America and Russia as superpowers, and to the loss of overseas imperial possessions. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

Sets German history after the Napoleonic invasion in a context of international politics, and shows how the development of a peculiarly German idea of the nation was a response to pressures exerted by European political changes and by the European state system. Examination of how, after national unification in 1871, German domestic policy in turn affected the whole world: in German foreign policy before the First World War, in the aftermath of 1918, and during the Nazi dictatorship. Treatment of the separate courses of the two Germanies since 1945 and of their position in world politics. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

A study of the development of the English Constitution to 1600, with special emphasis on the institutions and ideas that form the background for American constitutional history. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

In the twentieth century, Europe underwent a range of wrenching social and political upheavals that brought into question received truths about subjectivity, the nature of society, the forms and purpose of politics, the role of religion, the relationship between the sexes, and the place of Europe within the wider world. Over the course of the semester, we will study a range of intellectual movements--Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, critical theory, existentialism, structuralism, and postmodernism--examining how European thinkers responded to the historical events happening around them.

Thematic survey of the social, cultural, and political transformations in the lives of women and men in Britain from the Industrial Revolution to the present. Topics include Britain's rise and fall as the first "modern" society and imperial power; national identities and civil society, gender, and class; democracy and imperialism; Irish nationalism and contemporary culture. Two lectures, one preceptorial.