Course Catalog: 2020-21

101 World War II in Global Perspective

[^C/TE] This course will explore World War II in global perspective. Historians of Europe, Japan, and the United States will join together to teach the history of the world’s most destructive war. Topics include the rise of militant regimes in Germany and Japan; German and Japanese aggression in the 1930s; the attack on Pearl Harbor; famous battles of the war; the Holocaust; German and Japanese occupation practices; civilian life in the Allied and Axis countries; and the later memory of the war. The course will also address moral controversies raised by the war, including the Anglo-American firebombing of Germany and the decision to drop the atomic bomb. Texts for the course will include film, memoirs, government documents, graphic and other novels, and secondary accounts of the war. Three class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2018, Spring 2020

102 World War II in Asia

(Offered as HIST 102 [AS/TE] and ASLC 102) Arguably beginning with the Manchurian Incident in 1931 and ending with Japan's surrender to the Allies in 1945, the Second World War lasted longer in Asia than anywhere else. Yet, histories of the global conflict still tend to focus disproportionately on the European theater. Countering that tendency, this course surveys the Asian theater, asking and answering a number of questions: How did imperialism and the rise of nationalist movements precipitate total war in Asia? What was the character of the warfare and how did it transform politics and societies in Asia? How did the war alter the geopolitical configuration of Asia and give rise to the Cold War? What are the continuing legacies of the war in the region today? While we will use Japan as a fulcrum to engage these questions, the course will attend to the regional dynamics of World War II in Asia. Classes will combine lectures, group work, and discussions. There will be a mid-term, final exam and three topical essays. Three class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Maxey.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2017

104 Environmental Issues of the 19th Century

(Offered as HIST 104 [^c] and ENST 220) This course considers the ways that people in various parts of the world thought about and acted upon nature during the nineteenth century. We look historically at issues that continue to have relevance today, including: invasive species, deforestation, soil-nitrogen availability, water use, desertification, and air pollution. Themes include: the relationship of nineteenth-century colonialism and environmental degradation, gender and environmental change, the racial dimensions of ecological issues, and the spatial aspects of human interactions with nature. We will take at least one field trip. In addition, we will watch three films that approach nineteenth-century environmental issues from different vantage points. Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Melillo.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2023

105 Global Environmental History of the Twentieth Century

[TE, ^C] This course examines the environmental history of the world since 1900 with a particular focus on Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and China. We will use books, articles, four films, and a range of online media to illuminate the comparative and interdisciplinary possibilities of global environmental history. In addition to studying the past, we will explore how to use historical knowledge in the formulation of policy recommendations and grassroots initiatives for addressing contemporary environmental issues. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Melillo.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2019, Spring 2022

112 Russian Empire in Eurasia

(Offered as HIST 112 [AS/EU^CP], ASLC 112, EUST 112 and RUSS 130) In the course of five hundred years, the Russian empire in Eurasia evolved as the largest territorial polity in the world. In this course, we will explore the medieval foundations of the imperial state and look at its predecessors and models (Kievan Rus’ and the empire of the Mongols), discuss ways in which cooperation and resistance shaped the imperial state and society, and study cultural and political entanglements among different ethnic, linguistic and confessional groups in Eurasia. Chronologically, we will cover the period from the tenth century to the crisis of the empire in the early twentieth century. Thematically, we will focus on structures of imperial state and society (the imperial house, peasantry, nobility, confessions, intelligentsia, revolutionary movement) and most important regions of the Russian Empire (Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Baltics, Siberia, Central Asia). Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Five College Associate Professor Glebov.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2018, Spring 2022, Fall 2024

114 Race, Empire, and Transnationalism: Chinese Diasporic Communities in the U.S. and the World

(Offered as HIST 114 [AS^C] and ASLC 114) How does a study of the Chinese diasporic communities in Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, the United States, and other parts of the world help us understand the questions of ethnic identity formation, construction, and negotiation? More specifically, how does the study of their history and experiences force us to rethink the concepts of “China” and “Chinese-ness”? How did scholars, officials, and travelers construct the categories of “China” and being “Chinese”? These are the main questions that we seek to answer in this introductory course to the history of the Chinese diaspora. We will begin by looking into the early history of Chinese migration (circa 1500 to 1800) to particular geographical areas in the world, including the United States. The rest of the course will look into the history of selected diasporic communities from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. All throughout the course we will also examine how these diasporic people and their families manipulated and continue to manipulate attempts by dominant groups to control their identities, bodies, and resources, and how their lives challenge the meanings of “China” and “Chinese-ness.” Other questions to be discussed during the course are: What caused people from China to move, and to where? What forms of discrimination and control did they experience? How do their experiences and histories deepen our understanding of “race,” “empire,” and “transnationalism”? Themes to be discussed throughout the course include imperialism, colonialism, race, ethnicity, gender, nationalism, transnationalism, orientalism, hegemony, and globalization. Two class meetings per week.

Fall semester. Enrollment is limited to 18 students. Five College Associate Professor Chu.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Spring 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2022

121 Asia in the European Mind: Modern European Discourse on History and Identity

In post-Enlightenment Europe, intellectuals frequently drew on images of Asia to illustrate what it meant to be modern, enlightened, and historically progressive. Why and how might we be complicit in this mode of thinking even today? Through close readings of key figures in the intellectual tradition of modern Europe, including Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), Karl Marx (1818–1883), and Max Weber (1864–1920), this seminar will explore the epistemological and ideological function of historicism and the inescapable tension between visions of universal progress and resistance in the name of particular identities. We will end the seminar with more contemporary thinkers to weigh the abiding influence of Hegel, Marx, and Weber.

The seminar will focus on the related skills of close reading, engaged discussion, and critical writing. Reading prompts and short exercises will ask you to practice the reading skills required for active class discussion and effective writing. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Maxey.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2010, Fall 2011

122 Readings in the European Tradition II

(See EUST 122)

123 Europe in the Middle Ages

(Offered as HIST 123 [EU^P] and EUST 123) This course provides an introduction to the remarkable history that still conditions our current lives. The course explores how the mingling of people at the far western end of the Eurasian continent led to the rise of a European civilization that would later seek to mold the world in its own image. It examines how a distinct "Europe" arose from the effort of "barbarians" to "restore" the Roman Empire and their failure to do so. It considers how fragmented communities under a universal religion sought to reconstruct their lives by rebuilding their material bases, reimagining their faith, and reconstituting their polities. It canvasses how this process was tied to the constant encounter and conflict with others and how this would serve as a template for later expansion. Through the voices and visions of the past and the writings of modern authorities, the course will provide an overview of how, in the course of the Middle Ages, a Europe arose, developed and changed, and set the basis for the making of our modern world. Two course meetings per week.

Omitted 2020-21. Professor Cho.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017

126 Medieval Europe in a Mediterranean Context (500–1500)

[EU^_P/TC/TE] This course seeks to re-Orient our understanding of the European Middle Ages. We will trace the emergence of a distinctly new – European – culture and society after the fall of the Roman Empire that preserved parts of its Latin heritage but also engaged with Islamic regions of the Mediterranean. Its centers of gravity lay in France, England, and the Holy Roman Empire, but also in the Mediterranean, where ancient Roman cities began to thrive again. On the basis of primary sources and historical literature, we will investigate key phenomena such as the emergence of the feudal order; urbanization and self-government; sea-trade with the Levant; the emergence of vernacular literature; the Arabic “renaissance” and convivencia; Catholicism and female religious movements; the persecution of Jews and other “Others;” companionate marriages and patriarchal kinship; the revival of art and architecture; encounters with Africa and Asia. Mix of brief lectures, discussion, group work, and in-class assignments. The writing assignments will consist of papers that analyze the reading materials and that will help students develop an academic-style writing that observes the principles of detail, differentiation, debate, and documentation.

Not offered 2020-21.Visiting Professor Sperling.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2019

127 Early Modern Europe in a Global Context (1500–1800)

(Offered as HIST 127 [EU/^P/TC/TE] and EUST 127) This course introduces students to the history of Europe in the age of imperialism and colonization. It analyzes the emergence of "modernity" as a result of conquest and colonization, the globalization of commerce, the Atlantic slave trade, and the genocide of indigenous peoples. We will investigate instances of resistance to European imperialism and carefully examine the society that produced global capitalism. Among the topics we will address are the Italian Renaissance and the invention of perspective; the German Reformation and the emergence of interiority; gender, family, and the rise of domesticity; early modern science; new forms of visuality as methods of knowledge production; the emergence of racism; the French and Haitian Revolutions; religious syncretism; instances of hybridity and resistance in the imperial "contact zone." This course is essential for an understanding of the many contradictions and contestations we still live with. We will analyze primary sources, academic literature, and visual materials. There will be a mix of short lectures, discussions, group work, and in-class assignments.

Not offered 2020-2021. Visiting Professor Sperling.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2020

128 Medieval Europe (1000-1500)

[EU/TE/TC/^P] In about the year 1000, a new European civilization came into being. Its center of gravity lay in France, England, and Central Europe, but it preserved parts of its ancient Roman heritage and engaged with Islamic regions of the Mediterranean. In the countryside, feudalism emerged as a new legal, economic, and political system. The Catholic church consolidated itself alongside the new order and competed for dominance. But in towns and cities, burghers swore oaths to each other and established the principles of personal freedom and communal self-governance. Rapidly, new mercantile elites emerged. In this course, we will discuss the most innovative and influential scholarship on these main aspects of medieval history and study accompanying primary records. Students will be introduced to different historical methods such as structuralism and the anthropologically inflected works of the Annales school. Classes include a mix of brief lectures, discussion, group work, and in-class assignments. Students will complete three short papers that analyze the reading materials. Two meetings per week. This course will be conducted in class but also include remote students via zoom.

Fall semester. Professor Sperling.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Spring 2025

131 Introduction to the Black Freedom Struggle

(See BLST 131)

134 Religious Traditions in America:  A History of Communities and Their Scriptures

(See RELI 134)

135 Race and Religion in the U.S. West/Mexico Borderlands

(See RELI 135)

155 Twentieth-Century America

[US/TS] The course traces United States political, social, and cultural history from 1900 to the present. Among the topics covered are the rise of the modern corporation, class conflict and the Progressive movement; immigration, ethnic pluralism, and the rise of mass culture; the Great Depression and the New Deal; World War II, the Cold War, and McCarthyism; the civil rights, women’s and environmental movements, the New Left, the New Right, and the continuing inequalities of race and class. Films and videos will regularly supplement class readings. Three class meetings per week, taught via Zoom.

Limited to 20 students, with 5 places reserved for first year students. Fall semester. Professor Couvares.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2020

156 The U.S. in the World: 1756–1898

[US/TE] This course is an introduction to the major trends and developments in United States foreign relations from the nation’s rise from a loose coalition of colonies on the Atlantic seaboard to a continental and world power by the beginning of the twentieth century. This course will seek to understand the effect of expansion on the nation’s values, institutions, and history, and examine the methods used to extend the nation’s borders, trade, and influence. It engages “foreign relations” in broad terms to incorporate ideology, race, gender, technology, economics, geopolitics, and culture as important forces in shaping the United States’ understanding of and behavior toward the world. The country’s domestic character critically determined the ways in which the nation’s power took shape on the world stage, even as global interactions shaped nascent U.S. institutions and identities. This course will examine how economic and security needs shaped foreign policy goals, while social norms and domestic values informed the ways Americans interacted with other societies. Three class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Limited to 40 students. Fifteen spaces reserved for first-year students. Professor Walker.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023

157 The U.S. in the World: 1898 to the Present

(Offered as HIST 157 [US/TE]) This course investigates the United States’ foreign relations in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and seeks to understand why and how it has become increasingly involved in world affairs. Starting with the War of 1898 and closing with the contemporary global war on terrorism, it examines the interplay of domestic and foreign considerations that have defined the “American Century.” This period raises important questions about the nature of American power in relation to traditional empires. The course asks students to think critically about the United States in the context of imperialism and explore how Americans, both in and out of government, sought to reconcile domestic values and identities with the country’s growing global presence. It investigates the ideological, economic, political, social, racial, and security considerations that shaped America’s emergence as a world power and formed the basis of modern American foreign policy and domestic society. Two class meetings per week.This course will be conducted in a hybrid format, with both in-person and on-line components as needed. Options for online-only participation will be available for those students unable to participate in person.

Two sections, limited to 18 students each. (6 seats in each section reserved for first-year students). Spring semester. Professor Walker.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2023

162 History of Sexuality in the U.S.

(Offered as HIST 162 [US] and SWAG 162) Sexuality is a product of history and culture. This course will survey sex throughout United States history in relation to the various discourses of power and difference that have given it meaning, such as class, ethnicity, gender, race, and religion. Topics covered include the legal and social history of marriage, sex education, sexuality and the family during and after slavery, masculinity and the Western frontier, sexology and the invention of homosexuality, the making of urban gay subcultures, feminism and sexual liberation, the politics of abortion, HIV/AIDS, the LGBT rights movement, and the transgender revolution. We will consider the ways in which the study of sexuality creates opportunities to re-think major themes in U.S. social, cultural, and political history, with emphasis on the history of medicine, the history of social change, and the history of the family. Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 35 students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Manion.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2017, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

163 LGBTQ History in Popular Culture

(Offered as HIST 163 [US/TC/TS] and SWAG 163) While LGBTQ people might seem to be everywhere in popular culture today, this course takes such representations as a starting point to examine the past. Do popular representations distort the queer past and if so, to what end? By studying LGBTQ history through primary source materials, students will develop a rich and nuanced historical view of such major issues as the homophile movement, the Stonewall riot and other acts of resistance, the rise of the gay press, lesbian feminism, Harvey Milk, the March on Washington, anti-gay violence and hate crimes, the youth/student movement, HIV/AIDS, ACT-UP, Lawrence v. Texas, same-sex marriage, and the transgender revolution. By juxtaposing historic research with screenings of contemporary television and film, students will reflect on the power and limits of such representations and further consider why real stories of LGBTQ communities and people remain so elusive.

Limited to 18 students. Five spaces reserved for Five College students. Omitted 2020-21. Professor Manion.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2020, January 2022, Spring 2022

171 History of Dynastic China

(Offered as HIST 171 [AS^P/TC/TE] and ASLC 171) This introductory course provides a broad overview of China’s long history and major cultural traditions from its very beginnings to the eve of modernity. No familiarity with China or previous experience in the study of history is assumed or required. Over the course of the semester, we will investigate long-term economic, social, and cultural transformations as well as the great diversity of this enormous part of the world. We will examine a broad array of issues, such as the important role of geography in shaping Chinese history, the glorified antiquity in traditional Chinese political thought, the rise and fall of unified dynastic empires, China’s troubled relationship with the Inner Asian steppe and nomadic people, continuing state penetration of frontier regions and ethnic statecraft, cycles of peasant rebellions and civil wars, the emergence of major philosophical schools and the canonization of Confucian thought, the establishment of the civil examination system and bureaucratic states, the formation of a literati culture, the rise of Buddhism and Daoism and the transformation of the Chinese religious landscape, the evolution of gender, family, and kinship structures, and China’s engagement with the outside world through trade and diplomacy. In this course, students will study a wide range of primary sources—ancient classics, poems, films, paintings, novels, and memoirs—and learn to develop skills in critical analysis and situating these sources in their historical contexts. At several points in the semester, we will also look at how this history has been used and recycled in contemporary politics and popular culture and reflect upon the continuing legacies of this history for China and the world today. Classes will entail lectures combined with close readings and discussions that engage primary texts, interpretive essays, and film. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered 2020-21. Professor Qiao.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

172 Modern China: Traumatic Revolutions and Transformative Reforms

(Offered as HIST 172 [AS/TC/TE] and ASLC 172) This survey of Chinese history examines the matrix of the internal and external forces and movements that have shaped modern China from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. During this period, the Chinese people dispensed with a form of government that had been used for three thousand years to form, despite various complications, a modern nation-state. We will explore major events in modern China beginning with the Opium War, the Taiping Rebellion, the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of a new Republic, the Republican revolution, the “New Culture” movement, Communist revolution, war against Japan, the Chinese Civil War, the founding of the People’s Republic of China, China’s role in the Korean War, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and the post-Mao economic reforms and social transformations, all with comparative references to current events. Readings, which include a wide variety of documents such as religious and revolutionary tracts, eye-witness accounts, memoirs, and letters, will be supplemented by interpretive essays and videos. Two class meetings per week.

If conditions permit, the class will meet in person. Two sections offered in spring semester 2020-21. Each section is capped at 18 students. Professor Qiao.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2021, Spring 2023, Spring 2025

175 Japan from Shamans to Samurai

(Offered as HIST 175 [AS/TC^P] and ASLC 225) Contrary to images of a uniform and stable culture, the Japanese archipelago possesses a history marked by fragmentation, violent conflict, and dynamic cultural change. This course traces that history from the beginnings of human history on the archipelago to the establishment of one of the most stable and peaceful regimes in human history, the Tokugawa shogunate. Our survey will be organized around a central riddle: why was it so difficult to produce a stable, unified polity on the Japanese archipelago? Placing Japan within the broader regional context of East Asia, we will answer this riddle by following the rise of successive political authorities, from the sacral rulers of the tomb period to the samurai. Prominent themes include the rise of early polities, contact with the Chinese continent and Korean peninsula, the aristocratic culture of the Heian court and its displacement by medieval samurai rule, the role of Buddhist thought and institutions, the “warring states” period of the sixteenth-century and cosmopolitan contact with Christian Europe, and the Tokugawa peace and its urban cultural forms. Throughout, we will read a variety of sources, including eighth-century mythology, aristocratic literature, war chronicles, religious and philosophical texts, as well as modern fiction and film.

This is a writing attentive survey of Japan’s history from antiquity through the eighteenth century. It traces political, social, and cultural developments in order to provide basic literacy in pre-modern Japanese history and a basis both for comparative history and further course work in Japanese history. Classes will combine lectures with close readings and discussions of the assigned texts. Requirements include short response papers and topical essays. Three class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Maxey.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2015, Fall 2024

176 Japan's Modern Revolutions: 1800–2000s

(Offered as HIST 176 [AS/TC/TE] and ASLC 247) The transformation of the Japanese archipelago from a relatively secluded agrarian polity in the early-nineteenth century into East Asia’s leading economic power with a global footprint by the end of the twentieth century is one of the most dramatic stories of modern history. This course introduces the history of this transformation through two “revolutions”: the formation of an imperialist nation-state and post-World War II creation of a pacifist democracy. We will pay close attention to the political debates and social conflicts that accompanied these revolutions. We will begin with the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate, follow the rise of the modern Japanese nation-state through colonial expansion and total war, and conclude with the postwar economic recovery, democratization, and the socio-political challenges facing the Japanese nation-state in the twenty-first century. Our goal along the way will be to explore in the specific context of Japanese history themes relevant to the history of global modernities: the collapse of a traditional regime, the creation of a nation-state, imperial expansion, industrialization, feminist and socialist critiques, total war, democratization, high economic growth and mass consumer culture. Classes will entail lectures combined with close readings and discussions that engage primary texts, interpretive essays, and film. This is a writing attentive course with requirements including short writing exercises and topical essays. Three class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Maxey.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2015, Fall 2022, Spring 2025

181 Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa

(Offered as HIST-181 [AF/TE] and BLST-221 [A]) Africa is a continent of fifty-four countries, but in many people's minds, the continent's name conjures up a host of stereotypes—some positive and some negative—that misrepresent the continent as an undifferentiated whole. This course's primary goal is to introduce students to the historical evidence and scholarly conversations about Africa’s pasts from the 1870s to the present. The main themes will be the social, political, and economic impacts of imperial policies on African societies, and the long afterlife of these impacts. We will discuss the construction and alterations of “tribal” identities and nationalist politics, the problems caused by colonial labor policies and the denial of civil rights to Africans, the reconstruction of gender identities and roles, and the emergence of various forms of protest politics in both the colonial and post-colonial periods. Requirements include active participation in class and multiple graded and ungraded written assignments. Three class meetings per week.

Spring semester. Enrollment is limited to 18 students. Professor Redding.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

190 Middle Eastern History: 500–1600

(Offered as HIST 190 [ME/TE^P] and ASLC 126) This course surveys the history of the Middle East from the outset of the Islamic period to the beginning of the modern period. It is divided into the following segments: the formative period of Islam, the classical caliphates, the classical courts, the Mongols, and the great empires of the Ottomans and the Safavids. The course is organized chronologically and follows the making and breaking of empires and political centers; however, the focus of the course is on the intellectual, social, cultural and religious developments in these periods. Two class meetings per week.

The course is designed to have substantial preparation (online readings and occassionally powerpoint lectures) done in preparation for class sessions which will be devoted entirely to discussion. All readings are available online. Discussion will be in-person and online, depending on student needs and College stipulations. There are frequent response papers due, but no formal papers - the course is writting intensive, but not writing attentive. This course is an introduction to Middle Eastern history and anticipates no prior knowledge. 

Enrollment limited to 18 students. Fall Semester. Professor Ringer.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2022

191 The Modern Middle East: 1800-Present

(Offered as HIST 191 [ME/TE] and ASLC 148 [WA]) This course surveys the history of the Middle East from 1800 to the present. The focus is threefold: following political, social and intellectual trends as they evolve over time, exploring contemporary historical and methodological debates and analysis, and introducing students to important historical literature of the period. The class is divided into modules: “From Subject to Citizen,” “Engineering a Modern Middle East,” “Nationalism and the Quest for Independence,” “Islamist Opposition,” and “Taking Sovereignty: Contemporary Debates and the Post-Modern Era.” The class is discussion-oriented and writing attentive. Two class meetings per week.

Class time is devoted to discussion. Class discussion will be held in person (if possible) AND online for those who are unable to be on campus. There is substantial preparation for discussion to be done before class, in the form of readings (available online and on the course Moodle site) and occasional power point lectures to watch. Assignments consist of frequent response papers, but no formal papers. 

Enrollment limited to 18 students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Ringer.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Fall 2008, Fall 2009, Fall 2011, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018

203 Public Intellectuals

[EU/TC] This course explores the intellectual history of the “Age of Extremes” by focusing on its feuding political ideas and their chief advocates: the public intellectuals. Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, and Fascism were all created by intellectuals, and all relied on intellectuals for their ideological struggle. The course will investigate the many – glorious and inglorious – careers of intellectuals of very different agendas, polities, legacies and fates (Arendt, Gramsci, De Beauvoir, Sartre, Orwell, Schmitt, to name a few). The course thus has two goals: first, it is an introduction to twentieth-century political ideas in their historical contexts; second, it is an examination of public intellectuals, their history, role, responsibility and even accountability. Course materials will include historical analysis and works of fiction; works of propaganda and works of art; manifestos and political trial confessions. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor A. Gordon.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2019

204 Jewish History in the Modern Age

[EU^C] This course introduces students to the history of the Jews from the 16th century to the present. Jews—a small group, lacking a stable geographical or political center for most of modern history—have played a remarkably central role in world events. Jewish history exemplifies questions of tolerance, intolerance, and diversity in the Modern Age. From Europe to the Americas to the Middle East, Jewish history has witnessed constant interchange between the non-Jewish world and its Jewish subcultures. This course investigates Jewish history’s multiple dimensions: developments in Jews’ political status and economic opportunity; dramatic demographic shifts and global migrations; transformations in Jewish cultures, ideologies and identities; and religious adjustments to modernity. We examine a variety of Jewish encounters with the modern world: integration, acculturation, assimilation, anti-Semitism, Jewish dissimilation and nationalism. Finally, the course will use this broad historical lens to explore and contextualize the double watershed of the 1940s—the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel—as well as contemporary Jewish life. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor A. Gordon.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2023

207 The Wild and the Cultivated

(Offered as HIST 207 [^C] and ENST 207) For thousands of years, wild and domesticated plants have played crucial roles in the development of cultures and societies. Students in this course will consider human relationships with plants from a global-historical perspective, comparing trends in various regions and time periods. We will focus on the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, seed-saving practices, medicinal plants, religious rites, food traditions, biopiracy, agribusiness, and biofuels. Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 30 students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Melillo.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2019, Fall 2022

208 Spain and the Pacific World, 1571-1898

(Offered as HIST 208 [TE/^C] and LLAS 208)This course explores the historical relationship between the Spanish Empire and the peoples and environments of the Pacific Ocean region. We will begin in 1571 with the opening of Manila as a Spanish trading port and end in 1898 with the Spanish-American War. Over the course of the semester, we will discuss the trans-Pacific silver and silk trades, the function of Catholic missionaries in shaping the Pacific World, environmental exchanges between the Americas and Asia, indigenous resistance to imperialism, and the role of Pacific peoples in the development of the world economy. Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 30 students. Omitted 2020-21. Professor Melillo.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2010, Spring 2012, Fall 2014, Spring 2016, Spring 2020

209 ≠ (Inequality)

(See MATH 205)

210 Christianity and Islam in West Africa

(See BLST 210)

211 African Migrations and Globalization

(See BLST 208)

213 Turning Points in the History of Science

[EU/TC^P] An introduction to some major issues in the history of science from antiquity to the twentieth century. Topics will include the genesis and decay of a scientific tradition in Greco-Roman antiquity, the reconstitution of that tradition in medieval Europe, the revolution in scientific methods of the seventeenth century, and the emergence of science as a source of power, profit, and cultural authority during the past century. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. 

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Spring 2018

214 Science and Society in Modern America

[US/TC] A survey of the social, political, and institutional development of science in America from the Civil War to the present. Emphasis will be on explaining how the United States moved from the periphery to the center of international scientific life. Topics will include the professionalization of science; roles of scientists in industry, education, and government; ideologies of basic research; and the response of American scientists to the two world wars, the Depression, and the Cold War. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Fall 2009, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2019

215 Geopolitics and American Foreign Policy

(See POSC 214)

219 Venice, Perfect City (476-1797)

(Offered as HIST 219 [TE/TC/^C/P] and ARHA 219) When the Roman Empire imploded in 476, refugees from the Italian mainland settled on a few disconnected islands sheltered from the open Adriatic Sea by a lagoon. Within a few centuries, they created one of the most unlikely, beautiful, and long-lasting European cities ever to have been built. The cooperative spirit with which early medieval Venetians were able to create an urban environment built on seawater found its expression in the political and societal structures they formed to govern their city, republic, and, eventually, empire. In this course, we will discuss key events in the history of this extraordinary city, whose autonomy and self-government lasted until Napoleon invaded it in 1797. Topics include: art, architecture, and urban planning; the formation of an aristocratic but republican constitution; the emergence of civic institutions, poor relief, and neighborhood organizations; the history of the Ghetto and its Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and Italian communities; Venetian sea-trade and the conquest of the Levantine Empire; the Venetian Renaissance; ties with Byzantium, and the Mamluk and Ottoman Empires; convent culture; proto-feminism; and the Enlightenment. These topics will be discussed in the wider context of historical developments in the European and Mediterranean middle ages and early modern period. Two meetings per week. The class will be conducted over zoom, with extensive in-person office hours for on-campus students.

Spring semester. Visiting Professor Sperling.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2021, Spring 2023

223 Law, Sex, and Family in the Wider Mediterranean (1300–1800)

(Offered as HIST 223 [^C/^P/TC/TE] and SWAG 223) This course invites students to assume a comparative perspective when analyzing different patriarchal societies of the Mediterranean. We will discuss women’s access to properties, marriage, divorce, child rearing, and sexuality. Our case studies are located in Renaissance Italy, early modern France, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, and Mamluk Egypt, with brief forays into Spain, Iran, and Jewish communities in France and Italy. Rather than determining whether women had more or less agency, freedom, property rights, etc. in either “western” Europe or the Islamic “east,” we will stress the need to integrate the respective bodies of historical scholarship, separate the issue of religious denomination from family history, and foreground the question of commensurability. We will examine marital gift exchange and divorce in Renaissance Italy and Mamluk Cairo; female resistance to arranged marriages; women’s access to power in the Ottoman harem, the Byzantine imperial palace, and European courts; the fate of female refugees and converts; male and female same-sex desire in Renaissance Italy, the Ottoman Empire, and Safavid Iran; widowed mothers and their access to custody in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian communities; child abandonment in early modern Italy and Portugal.

Spring semester. Visiting Professor Sperling.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2019, Fall 2021

224 The Century of Sex: Gender and Sexual Politics in Modern Europe

(Offered as HIST 224 [EU], EUST 224, and SWAG 224) In the 1920s and 30s, authoritarian and fascist states across Europe declared that sexuality was not private. Sexual choices in the bedroom, they claimed, shaped national identities and the direction of social and cultural development. Through a variety of programs, propaganda and legal codes, states such as Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sought to regulate sexual behavior and promote specific gender roles and identities. The intervention of the state in the intimate lives of citizens in the twentieth century, however, was rooted in the transformations of state, culture and economy that took place long before the speeches of great dictators. This course explores the cultural debates surrounding sexual practices, medical theories of gender and sexuality, and the relationship between sexuality and state that shaped European societies in the twentieth century. In case studies from across the continent, the course explores a range of topics, including but not limited to the history of sex reform, prostitution, homosexuality, venereal disease, contraception, abortion, the “New Woman” and sexual emancipation movements, sexual revolutions and reactionary movements and reproductive politics, among others. Students will explore how seemingly self-evident and unchanging categories—feminine and masculine, straight and gay, “normal” and “deviant”—have taken shape and changed over time, and how historical processes (modernization, imperialism, urbanization) and actors (social movements, sex reformers, nationalist groups and states) sought to define and regulate these boundaries in the so-called “century of sex.” Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 25 students. Not offered in 2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018

225 The Age of Chivalry, 1000–1500

(Offered as HIST 225 [EU/TC^P] and EUST 225) Medieval Europe is often remembered and imagined as a chivalric civilization—a time when men were courageous and courteous, ladies were fair and respected, and the clash of arms was also an embodiment of Christian piety. This course seeks to uncover the myths and realities of medieval chivalry and thereby provide a window into the material, social, and cultural life of the Middle Ages. The course will track the beginnings of chivalry as a form of warfare centered on the horseback soldier, to its transformation as a code of conduct and ethos of a ruling class, and its later formalization into rituals and ceremonies to be performed and enacted as a means of social distinction. By examining documentary, fictional and pictorial sources, the course will review how competing ideals of chivalry were depicted and prescribed; how Christian ideals, aristocratic values and commercial realities aligned together; and how a mode of fighting became a way of life that defined an era. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Fall 2017

226 Women and War in European History, 1558–1918

(Offered as HIST 226 [EU^P/TC], ARHA 226, EUST 226, and SWAG 225) Although overlooked in military histories until recently, women have long been actively involved in warfare: as combatants, as victims, as workers, and as symbols. This course examines both the changing role of women, and the shifting constructions of “womanhood,” in four major European conflicts: the wars of Elizabeth I in sixteenth-century England, the wars and peace of Marie de Médicis in seventeenth-century France, the French Revolution, and the First World War. Using methodologies drawn from Art History and History, the course seeks to understand the gendered nature of warfare. Why are images of women and the family central to the iconography of war, and how have representations of womanhood shifted according to the aims of particular conflicts? To what extent do women’s experiences of warfare differ from men’s, and can war be considered a source of women’s liberation or oppression? Students will analyze a range of historical images in conjunction with primary source texts from these conflicts and will also develop an original research project related to the course’s themes. Two class meetings per week.

Recommended requisite: A course in Art History or History. Limited to 25 students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Boucher.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2016, Spring 2019

229 The Virgin Mary: Image, Cult, Syncretism (ca. 400-1700)

(Offered as HIST 229 [TC/^P/C], ARHA 229 and RELI 229) When, in 431, the Council of Ephesus declared the Virgin Mary to be Theotokos or God-Bearer, she had already been venerated in Egypt since the third century as a re-instantiation of Isis. The syncretism of her cult explains her ubiquitous popularity in medieval Byzantium and the Latin West, but also in early Islamic Syria and colonial Latin America. Her frequent depiction on moveable wooden panels (icons) and mosaics accompanied her early rise to liturgical prominence. By 1200, she rivaled Jesus Christ in religious importance, not only through her role as intercessor, but also as dispenser of divine grace in the form of breastmilk. She was the most active miracle-working saint in all of Christianity. Her frequent depiction on icons, altarpieces and devotional panels accompanies – and, in part, explains – the development of figurative art in the West. In colonial America, the introduction of her cult ended prior religious forms of expression, but also helped them to partially survive in a new context. In this seminar, students will produce a 15-page research paper based on a careful analysis of textual and visual sources as well as pertinent scholarship. Two class meetings per week. This course will be conducted in class but also include remote students via zoom.

Fall semester. Visiting Professor Sperling.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2020, Spring 2022

230 The French Revolution

(Offered as HIST 230 [EU^PTC] and EUST 230) Often viewed as one of the defining events in modern history, the French Revolution has been debated and discussed, derided and celebrated by generations of politicians, cultural commentators, and historians. This course enters into this on-going conversation by examining the nature of the revolutionary process as it unfolded in late eighteenth-century France and its empire. Beginning in the “old regime” of kings and commoners, it untangles the social, political, and intellectual roots of the Revolution and investigates the extent to which these factors contributed to the radical overthrow of the French establishment in 1789. It then follows the extension of the Revolution throughout French society and across the seas to the Caribbean, analyzing how popular and colonial upheavals influenced the revolutionary new order of “liberty, equality, and brotherhood” that was taking shape in France. Finally, the course explores the aftermath of the Revolution by tracing the various ways that its history has been interpreted and reinterpreted from the nineteenth century to the present day. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Boucher.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2014, Spring 2018

231 Race and Empire: The British Experience from 1760

(Offered as HIST 231 [EU, TE, TS] and EUST 231) From the mid-eighteenth century through the 1960s, Britain presided over the most powerful empire in the world. At its height, this small island nation ruled one-quarter of the earth’s surface and more than 450 million of its inhabitants. Not only did British imperialism play a decisive role in shaping world politics, economics, and cultures in its day, it also left a number of profound legacies that continue to affect our lives in the present. This course traces the rise, fall, and lasting influence of the British empire, and pays particular attention to questions of race and ethnicity. Through a series of colonial encounters--such as the first contacts made between explorers and Pacific Islanders in the  eighteenth century, the interactions between missionaries and Africans in the nineteenth century, or the migration of South Asians to Britain in the twentieth century--it examines what “race” meant in different historical contexts. The course thus explores the institutionalization of racism in government, law, and society, and analyzes moments in which racism has been combated and overturned. Readings and course materials will be drawn from secondary and primary sources, including newspapers, novels, photographs, artwork, oral histories, and films. Class sessions will combine synchronous and asynchronous instruction and make use of zoom breakout rooms to facilitate small group discussion and peer review.

 Spring semester. Enrollment limited to 18 students. Professor Boucher.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2016, Spring 2021

235 Stalin and Stalinism

(Offered as HIST 235 [EU/TC/TE/TS], EUST 245 and RUS 235) Joseph Stalin, the infamous Soviet dictator, created a particular type of society in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Stalinism became a phenomenon that influenced the development of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, and North Korea. The course will begin with the exploration of Stalin’s own life and then focus on what historical forces enabled the emergence of Stalinism. It will cover the period on the eve of and during the Russian Revolution, Stalinist transformation of the USSR in the 1930s, WWII, and the onset of the Cold War. Among issues to be explored are the extent of popular support for Stalinist-type regimes, the mechanisms of large-scale political terror, the longevity of Stalinist regimes, and historical memory about Stalinism. Two class meetings per week.

Spring semester. Five College Professor Glebov.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2014, Fall 2016, Spring 2021, Fall 2023

236 Soviet Union During the Cold War

(Offered as HIST 236 [EU], EUST 238, and RUSS 237) The Cold War indelibly shaped the second half of the twentieth century. Spies seemed ubiquitous; nuclear annihilation imminent. Films such as Red October and the James Bond series forged a Western image of the Soviet Union. But how were these decades experienced behind the Iron Curtain? This course explores Soviet history between the end of World War II and the collapse of the USSR. We will study the roots of the Cold War; the politics of de-Stalinization in the USSR; the unfolding of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe; and Soviet relations with the West, China, and the developing world. We will also explore the internal dynamics of Soviet society: the rise of the Soviet middle class, consumerism, tourism, the entertainment industry, demographic trends, education, and public health. Two class meetings per week. 

Not offered in 2020-21. Five College Professor Glebov.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2015, Fall 2018, Spring 2023, Spring 2025

239 Segregated America

(See BLST 239)

240 The Last Russian Revolution: State and Society from the Late Soviet Period to the Present

(Offered as HIST 240 [EU], EUST 240, and RUSS 240) This course explores the tumultuous and unprecedented transition from the late Soviet Communism to contemporary Russian Federation. We will discuss the state of the Soviet Union on the eve of dissolution and politics of nationalism; emergence of the post-Soviet states and divergence in their historical development; transition to capitalism and privatization; challenges of federalism and regionalism in post-Soviet Russia; relations between the Russian Federation and “Near Abroad,” NATO and China, and the social and cultural developments from the late Soviet period to the early twenty-first century. The class will also explore the historical evolution of the phenomenon of Putinism as rooted in long-term transformation of the former Soviet space. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Five College Professor Glebov.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2017, Spring 2020, Fall 2022

245 U.S. Carceral Culture

(Offered as HIST 245 [US/TS] and SWAG 247) An overview of punishment from the Enlightenment to modern times. Topics include theories of criminality; birth of the penitentiary; growth of carceral culture; role of reform movements; relationship between slavery, abolition, and punishment; rise of criminology, eugenics, and sexology; persistence of poverty among carceral subjects; and the emergence of mass incarceration. Primary sources for consideration include newspaper articles, reform and abolition organizational records, official prison reports, and legal and sociological papers. Secondary readings will be primarily historical with some critical theories of difference and power including critical race theory, feminist theories of intersectionality, queer theory, and contemporary critical prison studies. Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 18 students. Five spaces reserved for Five College students. Spring semester. Professor Manion.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2021

246 Race and American Capitalism: From Slavery to Ferguson

(See BLST 248)

247 African American History from the Slave Trade to Reconstruction

(Offered as HIST 247 [US/TS/P]; or may be included in AF concentration, but not AF for distribution in the History major and BLST 231 [US] ) This course is a survey of the history of African American men and women from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the Civil War and Reconstruction. The content is a mixture of the social, cultural, and political history of blacks during two and a half centuries of slavery with the story of the black freedom struggle and its role in America’s national development. Among the major topics addressed: the slave trade in its moral and economic dimensions; African retentions in African American culture; origins of racism in colonial America; how blacks used the rhetoric and reality of the American and Haitian Revolutions to their advancement; antebellum slavery; black religion and family under slavery and freedom; the free black experience in the North and South; the crises of the 1850s; the role of race and slavery in the causes, course, and consequences of the Civil War; and the meaning of emancipation and Reconstruction for blacks. Readings include historical monographs, slave narratives by men and women, and one work of fiction.

Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2020-21. Professor Moss.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2008, Fall 2013, Fall 2019

248 African American History from Reconstruction to the Present

(Offered as HIST 248 [TS/US; or may be included in AF concentration, but not AF for distribution in the History major], and BLST 241[US]) This course surveys African American history from emancipation through the 2008 election of Barack Obama. It explores the socio-economic, political, and cultural contributions of African Americans with an emphasis on movements for racial equality. Among the major questions to be addressed: what does “freedom” mean in the aftermath of slavery? How have African Americans fought to secure social, economic, and political equality? How has the “state” supported and subverted black efforts to lay claim to citizenship? What are the origins of segregation in America’s social institutions, particularly welfare, housing, and public education? How did African Americans envision desegregation and its relationship to equal opportunity? What are the origins and legacies of the Long Civil Rights Movement? How has integration promoted and undermined African Americans’ political, social, and economic mobility? What are the historical legacies of slavery and state-sponsored segregation for black Americans in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, particularly for policies relating to education, voting rights, housing, and mass incarceration? In addition to introducing students to major themes and debates in contemporary African American history, this course will also acquaint students with the practice of researching and writing about American black lives in the twentieth century. Assignments will expose students to primary source research and archival analysis. Readings will include foundational texts in modern African American history, including writings from W.E.B. Du Bois; Anna Julia Cooper; Martin Luther King; Malcolm X; Manning Marable; and Robin Kelley, among others. Two meetings per week.

Limited to 25 students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Moss.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2025

249 Black Reconstruction

(See BLST 232)

250 King

(Offered as HIST 250 [US] and BLST 245) This course will explore the life and times of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Through a deep engagement with his published work and public rhetoric, relevant secondary literature, and personal papers, students will locate the civil rights leader within the broader upheavals of mid-century America. As such, the course serves as an introduction to modern US history, the black freedom struggle, and the archive of civil rights. Moving beyond mythology, this course will emphasize his connections to American liberalism, the labor movement, the black prophetic tradition and human rights. As such, this course will excavate the radical King, a man whose life and work often challenged the liberal consensus on questions of class, race, and empire, and thus questions later ahistorical characterizations of the Civil Rights Movement as either “moderate” or “conservative.” Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Visiting Lecturer Hickmott.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2018, Spring 2021

251 Student Activism in U.S. History: Past and Present

(Offered as HIST 251 and BLST 310) What are the limits and possibilities of students engaging in social justice movements within a college campus? Which political issues have sparked student movements in the U.S. and why? Why do some student movements succeed, why do others fail, and how might one define and evaluate the meaning of success? How have student movements in higher education changed over time? This course surveys the history of collegiate student activism for freedom and racial equality during the abolition movement; Reconstruction and Jim Crow; The Long Civil Rights Movement; and Black Lives Matter. In particular, this course will explore how students have fought to secure freedom, equality, and citizenship through higher education. Students will also critically engage with how other social movements have impacted college campuses. Readings include historical monographs and student writings. Assignments include two papers based on primary and secondary sources and a presentation. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in  2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2020, Fall 2021

257 The Arab Spring

[ME] This course will explore the nature of the uprisings that began in 2010 in Tunisia and ultimately swept through Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, to Bahrain. We will ask why these events took place, when and where they did, why the outcomes have differed so widely, why monarchies emerged unscathed, and why authoritarian rule proved so durable. We will pay close attention to the voices of protest from this period as well as the role of social media as a mobilizing factor. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered 2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2024

260 Human Rights and National Security: Seeking Balance in the United States

[US/TS] Is preserving collective security and individual rights inherently contradictory or can they be mutually reinforcing? Focusing on rights within the United States, this course will explore how the United States has sought to balance these competing concerns in the past, and the implications of this history for contemporary debates. We will examine the shifting meaning of "national security" and how it has changed at key moments in the nation’s history. We will also analyze how debates over national security and rights have reflected broader partisan divides, served diverse political objectives, and reflected competing visions of national identity and purpose. The shifting relationship between these two imperatives addresses the central purpose and dilemma of democratic governance: to advance the collective good while ensuring basic freedoms for all individuals. The course will initially survey these issues through a historical lens, demonstrating how questions of security and rights have been present since the nation’s founding. Contemporary case studies will make up the bulk of the remainder of the course: refugees and immigration; domestic counter-terrorism and due process; cybersecurity and surveillance; domestic terrorism and hate crimes; detention and interrogation. Three class meetings per week.

Limited to 60 students. Not offered 2020-21. Professor Walker.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2025

261 History of Central America

(Offered as HIST 261 [LA/TC/TE/TS] and LLAS 261) In this course, students will gain an understanding of major events and themes in the histories of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. As important, they will think and write critically about the contentious history of the region. For good reason, Central America is often considered as a whole, but despite many commonalities, each country's history is unique. How did the indigenous cultures of northern Central America compare to those of the south? Why did the once-united Federation of Central America fracture into five different states? How did Honduras become the quintessential "banana republic"? Why did Guatemala suffer decades of military dictatorships, while Costa Rica abolished its military at the same time? Through lectures and readings, we will answer these questions as we address topics including precolonial indigenous cultures; the conquest, slavery, and encomienda; independence and the struggles of nation-building; foreign interventions; and reforms, revolutions, and counterrevolutions. Two class meetings per week.

Spring semester. Enrollment limited to 18 students. Visiting Assistant Professor Lohse.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021

262 Latin America and the United States

(Offered as HIST 262 [LA/TE] and LLAS 262) In this course, students will gain an understanding of major events and themes in the history of United States foreign policy toward Latin America from colonial times to the present.  As important, they will think and write critically about the contentious history of U.S.-Latin American relations.  Just a few of the many topics to be addressed are the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. invasion of Mexico, the construction of the Panama Canal, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and the Iran-Contra Scandal.

Fall Semester. Enrollment limited to 18 students. Visiting Assistant Professor Lohse.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2019, Fall 2020

263 Struggles for Democracy in Modern Latin America, 1820 to the Present

(Offered as HIST 264 [LA/TE/TS] and LLAS 264) Latin Americans began their struggle for democracy during the independence wars at the start of the nineteenth century. Their struggle continues today. This course considers the historical meanings of democracy in various Latin American countries, with particular attention to the relationship between liberalism and democracy in the nineteenth century; the broadening of democracy at the start of the twentieth century; the rise and fall of military dictatorships in the 1960s–1980s and their impact upon civil society; and the current clashes between neo-liberal economic programs and the neo-populist resurgence of the left. Readings and discussions will focus on the ways broad economic and political shifts impacted individuals' lives; how each economic class experienced these shifts differently; the way race and gender have shaped peoples' experience with democratization and repression; and the personal processes of radicalization by which individuals became inspired to take risks in their struggle for inclusion and against repression. Because the approach is thematic and chronological, some countries and regions will receive more attention than others. Meetings and readings will draw on secondary studies, historical documents, testimonials, music, images, and film. Two meetings per week.

Spring Semester. Enrollment limited to 18 students. Visiting Assistant Professor Lohse.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2007, Fall 2008, Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Fall 2017, Fall 2019, Spring 2021, Spring 2022

264 Introduction to Latin America: Conquest, Colonization and Rebellion

(Offered as HIST 264 [LA^P] and LLAS 264)  Over the course of three centuries, massive migrations from Europe and Africa and the dramatic decline of indigenous populations in South and Central America radically transformed the cultural, political, economic, and material landscape of what we today know as Latin America. This course will investigate the dynamism of Latin American societies beginning in the ancient or pre-conquest period and ending with the collapse of European rule in most Spanish, Portuguese, and French speaking territories in the New World. We will explore this history through the eyes of various historical actors, including politicians, explorers, noble men and women, indigenous intellectuals, and African slaves. In addition to interrogating the myriad of peaceable and creative cross-cultural exchanges and interactions that characterized the relationship between these groups, we will also explore how conflict, exploitation, and natural disaster shaped the Colonial Latin American experience. Through a mixture of lecture, small and large group activities, and analysis of primary and secondary sources we will also consider how historians understand the past as well as the foundational debates which shape our current interpretations of colonial Latin American history. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered 2020-21. Professor Hicks.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Fall 2021

265 Environmental History of Latin America

[LA/TE/TS] In this course we will focus on the links between environmental impacts (such as environmental degradation, desertification, soil “exhaustion,” species extinction, genetic simplification, oil extraction, biotic invasions, deforestation, pesticide contamination, and animal grazing) and human problems (such as colonial and imperial domination, declining subsistence, defense and violation of civil rights, income inequality, scientific racism, regional underdevelopment, incomplete capitalist transformation, social marginalization, and political violence). Questions we will engage include: How have environmental changes contributed to, or otherwise conditioned, processes of conquest and domination? How have these processes of conquest, domination, and resistance, in turn, altered the environmental? In what ways has environmental devastation been a rational response to the challenges people face, and in what ways has it been irrational? Can history guide us in our current efforts to develop a sustainable approach to the environment that helps the land and its fauna, but does so in a way that brings greater justice and self-determination to the people who live there, while at the same time balancing the interests of the state and of investors? The class will introduce students to classic texts in Latin American environmental history (including the foundational studies by Warren Dean and Elinor Melville), as well as some of the newest scholarship. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor López.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2011, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2021

267 Power and Resistance in the Black Atlantic

(See BLST 201)

281 Muslim Reformers of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

(Offered as HIST 281 [TC], ASLC 282 and RELI 281) A study of eminent Muslim reformers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, hailing from diverse Islamic cultures and geographical locations including South Asia, West Africa, Egypt, Arabia, Iran, Central Asia, and the Ottoman Empire. We will examine ways in which religion intersected with social and political reform projects, explore thematic conversations among these reformers that transcend time and place, and look at ways in which many of these issues continue to resonate to the present day.

Limited to 25 students. Not offered in 2020-21 Professor Ringer.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2018, Spring 2020

283 South African History

(Offered as HIST 283 [AF/TE/TS^P] and BLST 322 [A]) South African history is undergoing radical shifts in the way it is being written, read and interpreted, and this course will explore established and emerging themes in the history of this intriguing country. The time period covered will span the pre-colonial indigenous cultures and move on to study the initiation and expansion of white settlement and its early dependence on slave labor. The course will also investigate African resistance, both in its political and cultural forms, as well as the social effects of gold-mining and migrant labor. African nationalism, including the ANC, the Black Consciousness Movement, and the United Democratic Front, will be the focus of our study of the responses to apartheid and the ultimate collapse of the apartheid state. The course will end with discussions of recent events in South Africa, particularly the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its aftermath as well as the developing AIDS epidemic and the growing problem of crime. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Redding.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2021, Spring 2023, Spring 2025

284 Africa Before the European Conquest

(Offered as HIST 284 [AF/TE^P] and BLST 211 [A]) The African continent has been called by one historian the social laboratory of humanity. Art, trade, small-scale manufacturing, medical knowledge, religion, state systems, history and legend all flourished before the formal political take-over of the continent by European powers in the late nineteenth century. It is this varied history of states and cultures in the period before 1885 that this course will examine. The course will explore four topics in depth: slave-ownership within African societies and the impact of both the trans-Atlantic and East African slave trades; the interaction of religion and power on the rise and fall of the central African kingdom of Kongo; the genesis of the Zulu state in southern Africa and the historical evidence behind the contradictory histories of Tshaka; and the changing roles of women as economic, political, and social actors. We will discuss some of the differences between oral historical narratives and written ones to understand both the history of the people living on the continent as well as the active process of writing and interpreting that history. Two class meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Redding.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2013, Spring 2018, Spring 2025

291 African and African Diaspora Thought

(See BLST 291)

294 The History of Israel

[ME, TE] This course will survey the history of Israel from the pre-state origins of Zionism in the late nineteenth century to the present. It will explore political, military, social and cultural history. We will seek a better historical understanding of many of Israel’s ongoing challenges, such as the place of religion in civil life, the state’s relation to world Jewry, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. We will pay special attention to contested identities and inner debates within Zionism and Israel, highlighting different and occasionally opposing visions of a Jewish homeland. In addition to historical documents and books (non-fiction and fiction), we will rely on the growing wealth of Israeli documentary films.

Enrollment limited to 18 students. January term. Professor A. Gordon.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Spring 2009, Fall 2011, Fall 2014, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, January 2021

301 Proseminar in History: Writing the Past

This course offers an opportunity for history majors and students intrigued by the past to reflect upon the practice of history. How do we claim to know anything about the past at all? How do historians construct the stories they tell about the past from the fragmentary remnants of former times? What is the connection between the past as it was lived and the narratives that historians write? How do we judge the truth and value of these histories and memories? The course explores questions such as these through readings and case studies drawn from a variety of places and times. A central aim of the course is to give students a sense of how the discipline of History has developed over time, as new theories and agendas have emerged, and as earlier versions of the past have been reevaluated in light of changing circumstances and commitments. Requirements include active participation in class and multiple graded and ungraded written assignments. Two meetings per week.

Not open to first-year students. Two sections per semester, limited to 15 students per section. Fall semester: Sean Redding. Spring semester: Trent Maxey.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025

312 History and Politics of Human Rights

[TS^C] This course will introduce students to major philosophical roots, historical developments, and contemporary debates in human rights politics. The course will begin by examining the global historical evolution of the notion of human rights, stressing the pivotal role of the American and French Revolutions in framing modern conceptions of rights in the late eighteenth century. It will then examine the growth of international laws, institutions, and norms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Finally, the course will explore the human rights dimensions of three major issues in contemporary politics: humanitarian intervention; the war on terror and national security; and global capitalism and working conditions. Considerable weight and attention will be given to human rights issues in the context of the United States and its domestic and international politics. At the same time, the universalizing nature of human rights and their global import compels us to think beyond cultural, political, and historical boundaries to challenge our assumptions about the meaning and form of universal rights. Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 20 students. Not offered 2020-21. Professor Walker.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2024

319 Religion, Empires, and Secular States in the Nineteenth Century

(Offered as HIST 319 [ME/TC/TE^C], ASLC 320 and RELI 322) Conceptions of the religious and the secular that continue to resonate today assumed global significance in the course of the nineteenth century as colonial empires and nascent nation-states negotiated how they would govern heterogeneous populations and interact with each other. Drawing on scholarship from a number of disciplines that historicize the categories of religion and secularity, this course will examine the political function of the religious and the secular as conceptual and regulatory categories in the 19th century. Colonial administrations, for example, employed the conceit of secularism to neutralize religious difference while individuals and communities attempted to reform and modernize local traditions as “religion” in order to navigate global hierarchies. We will begin with a historiographic and theoretical survey, covering topics that include the academic creation of “World Religions,” the politics of conversion within the British Empire, and the discourse of Orientalist spiritualism. The second half of the course will apply these historiographic and theoretical concerns to East Asia and Japan in particular. Requirements will include two topical essays and one longer paper entailing modest research. Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 15 students. Not open to first-year students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Maxey.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Fall 2015, Spring 2019

325 War, Occupation, and Genocide: The Experience of World War II in Europe

(Offered as HIST 325 [EU] and EUST 325) Seventy years on, World War II remains a point of rupture, an “hour zero,” in histories of Europe, Germany and the modern world. Rather than fading into the memories of our past, the Second World War has grown in the public imagination, spurring a deluge of films and books on the experiences of combat, loss and survival. Considered the most total conflict of world history, World War II wrought unparalleled destruction upon both soldiers and civilians across three continents. The Nazi regime turned the conflict into the most horrific war in European history, resorting to genocidal methods in their “war of annihilation” against European Jews. States harnessed levels of social mobilization and personal commitment to an extent not seen before or after. Through scholarly texts and original artifacts, this seminar explores the relationship between the destructive capacity of war and the effects on those who produce, are subject to, and must come to terms with its experience. The course focuses on the diverse experiences of the people who were involved in the war: soldiers on the battlefields; women mobilized into new roles at home and on the frontlines; children whose lives were shaped by new strategies of survival and/or given purpose by the war effort; colonial troops who both fought for Europe’s empires and against colonialism; European Jews who faced “impossible” choices in the path to genocide; and individuals for whom the war provided new opportunities to transgress boundaries of community surveillance, state and sexuality. The course will focus on topics including: the social, economic, ideological and sexual complexities of wartime occupation; population movement and displacement; domestic mobilization; and the Holocaust. Two course meetings per week.

Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Not offered in 2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2018

326 Diamonds (Guns and Money): An African History of a Precious Commodity

Diamonds (Guns and Money): An African History of a Precious Commodity

(Offered as HIST 326 [AF/TE] and BLST 326) Diamonds have a long history in global trade, and for centuries they were scarce enough to be among the most precious commodities. But in 1867 the discovery of diamonds in a remote part of the Cape Colony in southern Africa turned them into a commodity that helped to finance the construction of the British empire on the continent through conquest and African labor. The diamond industry that emerged also developed a mass retail market in the gem as a symbol of marital love and respectability, a marketing feat that masked the harsh realities of their production. More recent diamond discoveries in Africa and elsewhere have been implicated in enough revolts, secessionist movements, and arms deals to earn the label “conflict diamonds” for the gems coming out of those regions. We will trace the history of diamonds on the continent from their discoveries through the development of mining and labor systems, the creation of the global consumer market, and the use of diamonds as a source of revenue for aspiring empire-builders and revolutionaries. Two class meetings per week. Limited to 25 students.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Redding.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2020, Fall 2023

330 German Conservative Revolution and the Roots of the Third Reich

(Offered as HIST 330 [EU/TC] and EUST 330) This course will explore the thought and historical context of Germany’s radical rightwing intellectuals, who played a fateful role in the ideological formation of National Socialism in the wake of the Great War. These thinkers identified themselves with the oxymoronic and elusive title of a German “Conservative Revolution.” Defying traditional divisions between Left and Right, they opposed parliamentary democracy and royalist reactionary Wilhelminian conservatism, as well as Liberalism and Marxism. Beyond offering an important case study into the role, responsibility, and accountability of public intellectuals, this course will focus on the content and context of this group's radical conservative thought. Our discussion will highlight five fields of knowledge that they attempted to reshape: theology, legal thought, race biology, geography, and political philosophy. Once the National Socialist party took power, its relations with Conservative Revolutionaries was anything but simple: some Conservative Revolutionaries joined the Nazi party or collaborated with the Nazi state. Many others, however, dissented, and claimed that Nazism distorted their ideas. The posthumous legacy of these thinkers was equally ambivalent and unpredictable, while many sank into oblivion, some inspire and challenge not only contemporary rightwing movements and intellectuals, but also contemporary left. Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Admission with consent of the instructor. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor A. Gordon.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2018

336 Thatcher's Britain

(Offered as HIST-336 [EU] and EUST-336) As Prime Minister (1979-1990), Margaret Thatcher presided over a tumultuous and still deeply controversial era in British history. This course examines the key events of this decade, exploring the extent to which they constituted a “revolution” in British politics, society, and culture. Students will gain an understanding of the rise of neoliberalism and “Thatcherism” as an ideology and a set of policies that included privatization, free market economics, the attempted dismantling of the welfare state, and a renewed emphasis on personal responsibility. The course will also examine the opposition to these changes that arose from across British society, including from trade unions, the IRA, and the peace movement. Finally, students will consider the lasting effects of the Thatcher era in shaping the racial and class tensions that underlie Britain’s status as a post-imperial nation today. Course materials will predominantly focus on historical scholarship, but will also integrate the study of songs, memoirs, and films, both from the era and today. Class sessions will combine synchronous and asynchronous instruction and make use of Zoom breakout rooms to facilitate small group discussion and peer review.

January term. Limited to 15 students. Professor Boucher.

2023-24: Not offered

339 A Price for Everything: Making of a Market Society

(Offered as HIST 339 [EU^P] and EUST 329) This seminar reviews the various socio-cultural configurations of economic relations from the high medieval to the early modern era. Drawing on works from a range of disciplines, we focus on the intersection of market and culture, on how people have struggled to arrange and institutionalize market exchange, and how they have sought to make sense of those changing relations. The course is built around a basic question that is also a current debate: What can we and what can we not buy and sell? And why? To answer these questions, we first consider the foundational works that still govern our basic notions about the market society we live in. We then review several fields of our social lives that have been transformed through market exchange: What makes one good a gift and another a commodity? How can we set a price on the work we do? How did money make the world go around? Why am I often the sum of what I own? And what do these questions tell us about our relationship with each other and our things? We will consider both critical essays and historical case studies. The goal of the course is to gain a historical and critical perspective on the making of a market society, provide approaches for applied research, and allow us to be conscious participants in the contemporary transformation of our own society. Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 20 students. Not offered in 2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018

340 The Inquisition in Iberia and Latin America

[LA] The Inquisition is one of the most notorious institutions in world history, but it remains little understood. As part of their drive to unite the Spanish kingdoms under their rule, Ferdinand and Isabella secured papal permission to launch a nationwide Inquisition in 1478. Although charged with safeguarding Catholic orthodoxy from heresy, the Inquisition was in fact a state-run institution that worked from political and economic motives as well as religious ones. The Inquisition targeted tens of thousands of converted Jews and Muslims, Protestants, and others suspected of such crimes as blasphemy, sorcery, or sexual improprieties during its 350-year history. Yet, far from an arbitrary "witch hunt," the Inquisition was a thoroughly bureaucratic institution that operated according to rigidly defined rules and procedures. In reading and discussing some of the most important classic and current works, students will learn about the major historiographical controversies and debates on the Inquisition in Iberia and Latin America. In a series of short papers, students will analyze secondary readings as well as primary sources drawn from Inquisition records. Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 25 students. Not offered 2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2019

341 Mexican Rebels 

(See LLAS 341)

342 Marxism and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Latin America

(Offered as HIST 342 [LA] and LLAS 342) With one significant exception, Latin America’s major revolutions have been led by groups espousing one of three main currents of Marxist thought: Marxism-Leninism (Stalinism), Trotskyism, and Maoism. In this course, the student will master the basics of those theories through the reading and analysis of their primary texts. We will then consider case studies of Marxist-inspired revolutions in Bolivia, Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, and Peru. With the aid of lectures and further readings, the student will critically evaluate, in a series of papers, how Marxist theories were applied in practice in twentieth-century Latin America. One class meeting per week.

Limited to 18 students. Not offered 2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2018, Fall 2019

344 The Cuban Revolution, 1959–2009

(Offered as HIST 344 and LLAS 344) Sixty years after its triumph, the Cuban revolution continues to ignite controversy and to influence the politics of the Americas and beyond This course will provide an in-depth examination of the origins, course, development, and historical interpretations of the Cuban revolution over its first half-century. Its charismatic leader, Fidel Castro, will receive special attention, as will his closest collaborators: the honorary Cuban, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and Fidel's younger brother, Raúl. Among many other topics to be explored are the revolution's turn to Marxism-Leninism and the Soviet bloc; its contentious relationship with the United States; the creation and construction of a Cuban socialism; Cuba's special relationship with Africa; and the perennial efforts of Cuban émigrés to overthrow the revolution. We will conclude by considering the revolution's prospects in a post-Soviet—and now post-Fidel—world.

Not offered 2020-21.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2016, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2025

345 Gender and Sexuality in Latin America

(Offered as HIST 345 [LA/TS], LLAS 345, and SWAG 345) Popular mythologies of Latin America have historically relied on hyper-masculine archetypes, including the conquistador, the caudillo, and the guerrillero to explain the continent’s past, culture and political development. By contrast, students in this course will be asked to bring women, gender and sexuality from the margins to the center of Latin American history. In doing so, we will reevaluate four transformative historical moments: the Spanish conquest, the wars of independence, the emergence of industrial capitalism, and the proliferation of late twentieth-century political revolutions. Through an exploration of these key periods of upheaval we will assess how social conflict was frequently mediated through competing definitions of masculinity and femininity. In addition, this course will explore the ways in which women’s activism has been central to social and political movements across the continent. Furthermore, we will investigate how the domain of sexual practice and reproduction underpinned broader conflicts over racial purity, worker power, and the boundaries of citizenship in racially and ethnically diverse societies. The course will culminate in a final research paper on a topic chosen by the student. Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Hicks.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2016, Fall 2019, Spring 2021

346 Indigenous Histories of Latin America

(Offered as HIST 346 [LA/TE]  and LLAS 346) In this course, students will explore the cultures and civilizations of native peoples of Latin America from ancient times to the present.  Examining the Caribbean, Mesoamerican, Andean, and Amazonian regions, we will consider questions such as: What were the earliest cultures of the Americas like?  How did civilizations such as the Maya, the Aztecs, and the Inca confront the unprecedented challenges of the conquest?  How did indigenous peoples resist and forcibly adapt to centuries of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism?  What roles did native peoples  play in the new nations of the nineteenth century?  How have indigenous peoples pursued their own struggles for citizenship in the face of threats to their autonomy and the environment?  In a series of short writing assignments and a longer paper based on original research, students will explore secondary historiographies, analyze diverse primary sources, and discuss different historical methods in the study of the indigenous past and present. Two meetings per week.

Fall Semester. Enrollment limited to 15 students. Visiting Assistant Professor Lohse.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2020

350 Africa/Brazil

(Offered as HIST 350 [AF/LA/TE^CP] and BLST 309 [CLA/D]) One of the longest and largest migrations in world history was between Western Africa and Brazil; over the course of four centuries the slave trade displaced nearly six million Africans to the then-Portuguese colony. In this course, students will explore the material, cultural, intellectual, linguistic and economic exchanges that defined the relationship between Western Africa and Brazil from 1500 to the present. Through this history, students will consider how this unique connection spurred new forms of transatlantic consciousness and identity in Brazilian society. Our examination of the linked histories of Africa and Brazil will allow us to probe a number of questions: How does this history help us understand Brazil’s emergence as the world’s first self-described “racial democracy”? Who decides what is “modern”? How is race related to ideas of civilization, order and progress? What does “authenticity” mean? Does understanding black history outside of the United States challenge our ideas of how racial identities are created, experienced and maintained? And finally, is black consciousness universal? Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2020-21. Professor Hicks.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2017

351 The Immigrant City

(Offered as HIST 351 [US/TS] and AMST 351) A history of urban America in the industrial era, this course will focus especially on the city of Holyoke as a site of industrialization, immigration, urban development, and deindustrialization. We will begin with a walking tour of Holyoke and an exploration of the making of a planned industrial city. We will then investigate the experience of several key immigrant groups – principally Irish, French Canadian, Polish, and Puerto Rican – using both primary and secondary historical sources, as well as fiction. Students will write several papers on one or another immigrant group or a particular element of social experience, and a final research paper that explores in greater depth one of the topics touched upon in the course. The course will include students from Amherst College and Holyoke Community College and is open to all students, majors and non-majors. All students will engage in some primary research, especially in the city archives and Wistariahurst Museum, in Holyoke. Amherst College history majors who wish to write a 25-page research paper and thereby satisfy their major research requirement may do so in the context of this course. Classes will be held at both Amherst and Holyoke sites; transportation will be provided.

Enrollment is limited to ten students per institution. Admission with consent of the instructor. Not offered in 2020-21. Professors Couvares and Clinton (HCC).

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2018, Spring 2020

352 The Purpose and Politics of Education

(Offered as HIST 352 [US/TC/TS], AMST 352, BLST 351, and SOCI 352) Focusing on the United States, this course introduces students to foundational questions and texts central to the history of education and education studies. We will explore the competing goals and priorities Americans have held for primary, secondary and post-secondary education and ask how and why these visions have influenced – or failed to influence – classrooms, schools, and educational policy. We will pay particular attention to sources of educational stratification; the tensions between the public and private purposes of schooling; and the relationship between schooling and equality. In the first part of the course, students will reflect on how Americans have imagined the purpose of self-education, literacy, public schooling, and the liberal arts. Among the questions we will consider: What do Americans want from public schools? Does education promote liberation? Has a liberal arts education outlived its usefulness? How has the organization of schools and school systems promoted some educational objectives in lieu of others? In the second section of the course, we will concentrate on the politics of schooling. Here, we will pay particular attention to several issues central to understanding educational inequality and its relationship to American politics, culture, and society: localism; state and federal authority; desegregation; and the complicated relationship between schooling and racial, linguistic, class-based, gender, and ethnic hierarchies. Finally, we will explore how competing ideas about the purpose and politics of education manifest themselves in current policy debates about privatization, charters, testing, and school discipline. Throughout the course, students will reflect on both the limits and possibilities of American schools to challenge and reconfigure the social order. Course assignments will consist of a mix of short papers and analytical reading exercises. Students will have the opportunity to participate in the Education Studies Lecture Series, "Education, Crisis, and Belonging." These conversations will explore the possibilities afforded by this contemporary moment of crisis to examine the purposes and promises of education. One class meeting per week.

Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Moss and Visiting Professor Luschen.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2025

355 Race and Educational Opportunity in America

(Offered as HIST-355 [US, TS] and BLST-355) This interdisciplinary seminar blends African American history; urban history; and the history of education to explore the relationship between race, schools, and inequality in American society. In 1935, W.E.B. Du Bois credited the creation and expansion of public education in the South to African Americans’ educational activism in the aftermath of slavery. And yet, race has historically delineated access to public schooling, and by extension, economic, political, and civic equality. In this course, we will ask how and why race and educational opportunity have structured and subverted civic inclusion, racial justice, and socio-economic equality.  We will focus on African Americans’ efforts to secure literacy, schooling, and higher education, with an emphasis on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

In the first part of the course, we will consider why Americans created a public school system and how race influenced the formation of this critical social institution. Next, we will query how African Americans debated the relationship between education and liberation, particularly after Reconstruction and during the Long Civil Rights Movement. Here, we will focus on African Americans’ legal and grassroots efforts to advance school desegregation, and the backlash against its implementation in northern and southern cities. Along the way, we will assess the meaning and value of integration, and ask how, why, and to what extent school desegregation has promoted and subverted equal opportunity. Then, we will explore how policy makers have attempted to use education as a social welfare institution, particularly in an effort to redress segregated housing and unequal labor markets. We will trace the relationship between public schools and evolution of the welfare state, and reflect upon the power and limitations of Americans’ unique dependence on schooling to equalize opportunity. Finally, we will consider how race continues to inform contemporary reform efforts including school choice, Afro-centric education, and school discipline, among others. Course assignments will consist of weekly responses; two short papers; and one longer essay designed to allow students to delve into some aspect of the course in depth. This course can be used to complete the seminar requirement in History, upon consultation with the instructor.

Spring semester. Limited to 15 students. Professor Moss.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2021

358 The Local and Global 1970s

(Offered as HIST 358 [US/TS]) Often overshadowed by the long 1960s and the conservative ascendancy in the 1980s, the 1970s provides an important transitional moment for the United States, one that arguably linked local experiences to global dynamics and social movements in unprecedented ways. It was also a decade fraught with contradictons. On the one hand, Americans experienced widespread disillusionment with the power of the federal government to promote and protect the minority from the majority. Historians seeking to understand the collapse of the welfare state or the origins of white resistance to civil rights' initiatives most often point to the 1970s as the time when the Supreme Court abandoned school desegregation, and the federal government shifted the burden of the social welfare system onto the market, state and local governments, and onto poor people themselves. And yet, the 1970s also saw an explosion of progressive social activism, as the women's movement, the gay rights movement, and the environmental movement, among others, all came into their own. This was also a time of U.S. retreat and military overextension, and a time of new hegemonies of human rights regimes and multinational corporations. This course asks students to consider how connecting the local with the global can help us better understand and resolve these apparent contradictions. How does our understanding of American politics, society, and culture change depending upon our point of view? What are the possibilities and limitations of global and local methods of inquiry? How might historians more fruitfully combine sub-disciplines to understand the ways in which Americans experienced and engaged with their historical realities as members of local, national, and global communities? One class meeting per week.

Limited to 25 students. No offered in 2020-21. Professors Moss and Walker.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Fall 2017, Fall 2022, Spring 2025

360 Revolutionary America

[US^P, TS] This course examines the revolutionary era of American history (1750–1800), a period defined by a radical transfer of state power from elite aristocrats to common men. Yet largescale power differentials persisted, evidenced by the enslavement of African Americans, the removal of Native Americans, the subjugation of women, and the harsh laboring conditions of poor whites. The course examines the many contradictions of this important era. We will ask the following questions: Who built America? What were the causes of the American Revolution? How were ideals such as "liberty" and "freedom" conceptualized? Did the lives of ordinary people change after the war? What did African American resistance to slavery and inequality look like? What were the prospects for women's economic, educational, or political advancement? The main course texts include social and cultural histories of the period as well as primary sources such as newspapers, memoirs, and pamphlets. Includes class meetings in the Amherst College Archives and Special Collections and the Mead Art Museum. Two meetings per week.

Limited to 18 students. Not offered 2020-21. Professor Manion.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2017, Spring 2019

362 National Security Decision Making

[US] This course will afford students the opportunity to experience the process of national security policy-making through role-play and intensive interaction mediated by visitors with extensive White House experience and direct involvement in significant strategic decisions. The first part of the course will explore the national security decision-making process instituted under the National Security Act of 1947, its subsequent evolution, and the varied roles that national security advisors have played. The second part will focus on specific challenges that would trigger National Security Council meetings at various levels in the “real world,” ranging from acute crises to chronic problems that might create a crisis in some plausible future. Over the course of the seminar, students will rotate through the different roles, so that each participant will come to grips with the full range of factors that shape policymakers’ choices and, ultimately, national security policy. One class meeting per week.

Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Not offered in 2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2017, Spring 2018

367 State, Society, and Economy in Late Imperial China, 1368–1911

(Offered as HIST 367 [AS/TE] and ASLC 367) This seminar introduces students to the major historical scholarship and debates on the state, society, and economy in China during the Ming-Qing era, the last two imperial dynasties. The purpose of the course is to not only familiarize students with important issues in late imperial Chinese history, but also engage them in representative work by successive generations of scholars in order to understand how historical interpretations (including theoretical orientations, methodology, and use of sources) have developed over time. We will focus on the following key topics: the respective features of the Ming and Qing imperial states; frontier expansion and ethnic statecraft; the structure of local government and rural control; the law in society; heterodoxy, collective violence, and peasant rebellion; the evolution of the Chinese family and lineage system; the nature of the Chinese “gentry” and the foundations of their power; civil examinations and their role in fostering social mobility, elite reproduction, and stable imperial rule; commercial expansion and the rise of an urban culture; the role of merchants in society, the organizations of commerce and industry, and “sprouts of capitalism”; cities and the debate over whether a “civil society” or “public sphere” existed in late imperial China; the flow of silver and China’s participation in the early modern global maritime trade; and the rival approaches to understanding that most controversial of topics, the late imperial Chinese economy and the “Great Divergence” debate. All of these topics have provoked intense debates and fostered an important and growing body of scholarship. This is a reading intensive and writing attentive course. Requirements include short response papers, book reviews, and topical essays. Two class meetings per week.

Limited to 25 students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Qiao.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2018

368 The Frontier Regions in Chinese History

(Offered as HIST 368 [AS] and ASLC 368) This seminar examines the role of various frontier regions and borderlands in the long span of Chinese history. Ever since the ancient times, the development of agricultural communities, dynastic states, and Sinitic cultures in China was deeply intertwined with the fate of the societies on its borders such as Mongolia, Manchuria, Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, and the mountainous southwestern regions. In this course, we will read both classic and cutting edge scholarship on China’s frontier regions and critically engage a number of major historiographical issues in Chinese history such as empire building, frontier expansion, borderland society, cross-cultural trade, environmental changes, the construction of ethnicity, and Chinese nationalism. At the end of the course, students will not only learn about the history of China’s frontier regions, but also gain deep insights into China’s persistent problems in its borderland areas.

Some knowledge of Chinese history and culture is helpful but not necessary to do well in this course. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Qiao.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2020, Spring 2023, Fall 2024

369 Merchants, Money and Markets: The Making of Commercial Societies in Early Modern Europe and China

(Offered as HIST 369 [AS/TE] and ASLC 369) In the last decade, historians have become increasingly interested in the history of capitalism.This seminar introduces students to classic and cutting-edge history scholarship on the organization and culture of the marketplace in the early modern world, with particular focuses on Western Europe and China, as both places witnessed explosive growth and the creation of commercial societies. We will examine a wide range of historical issues, such as the political economy of empires, the social status of the merchant class, the networks of trade diasporas, the culture of business communities, the legal framework of commerce, the infrastructure of long-distance trade, the financial instruments of transactions, and the organizations of business enterprises. Throughout the course, we will together ponder two of the most intriguing questions of human history: What are the origins of modern capitalism? Why did the societies in China and Western Europe take on divergent paths of development? No prior knowledge is assumed or required. This course is reading-intensive and writing-attentive. Writing assignments include three 6-page essays, and annotated bibliography, and a 12-page final essay. Two course meetings per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Qiao.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2020

370 Japan's Empire in Asia, 1868–1945

(Offered as HIST 370 [AS/TE] and ASLC 370) Japan, the only non-Western colonial empire to emerge during the second half of the nineteenth century, shaped itself and East Asia through imperialism. This course engages that history by paying attention to shifts in scholarly approaches to empire. We will consider, for example, how theories of imperialism and post-colonialism apply to Japan and East Asia. Then tracing the chronological rise and collapse of Japan’s empire, we will consider how the complex circulation of people, goods, ideas, and practices shaped Japan, as well as the colonial modernities of Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria. 

This is an upper-level history course that explores interpretive approaches to Japanese imperialism. It will be offered both in-person on campus and online for those studying remotely. Assignments focus on historiographic analysis and comparison in the form of short papers and discussion presentations, culminating in a researched essay and a digital presentation on a topic of your choosing. Two class meetings per week.

Enrollment limite to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Maxey.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2015, Spring 2019, Fall 2020

374 WWII and Japanese Americans

(See AMST 374)

380 Women of Color and the Emergence of U.S. Third World Feminist Left

(Offered as HIST 380 [US/TE/TS], AMST 380 and SWAG 380) This research seminar investigates the history of Asian American women and other women of color solidarities and activisms in the emergence of the U.S. Third World Feminist Left during the 1960s and 1970s. This movement saw ending imperialism and colonialism as a necessary part of their fight against racism, sexism, and capitalism in the United States and beyond and drew inspiration from Third World feminism and decolonization activities.  Third World feminism posits that women's activisms in the Third World do not originate from the ideologies of the First World and specifically centers Third World women's radicalism in their local/national contexts and struggles.  Organizations such as the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA) in New York City, which grew out of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), brought together Black, Puerto Rican, and Asian American women in the socialist fight to end imperialism, sexism, capitalism, and racism.  The images of revolutionary Third World women engaged in anti-colonial struggles in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, especially during the Vietnam War era, inspired U.S.-based feminists of color and helped them embrace leftist Third World solidarity politics.  Utilizing the rich archival sources found in the Sophia Smith Collection (TWWA records, Miriam Ching Yoon Louie papers, National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum papers) as well as the Triple Jeopardy newspapers found in the Marshall I. Bloom papers at the Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, students will have an opportunity to work collaboratively to produce a substantial research project.

Enrollment limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Visiting Lecturer Kim.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2020

381 Global Transgender Histories

Offered as HIST-381 [TC, TS] and SWAG-381. This seminar will explore the histories of transgender identities, activism, and communities around the world. Some questions to be engaged include: What concepts have been used to understand gender variant, expansive, and nonconforming people throughout history? How have war, violence, and legacies of colonialism, enslavement, and exploitation shaped the terms and conditions by which people of transgender experience and expression understood themselves and were perceived by others? How have transgender people advocated for self-determination, legal rights, and medical care? How has the transgender rights movement intersected with the civil, disability, women’s, and the LGBTQ rights movements? Students will work with primary sources such as newspaper accounts, legal codes, medical journals, religious texts, memoirs, and manifestos as well as pathbreaking historic studies of transgender people in China, England, Germany, Iran, Thailand, and the United States.

One class meeting per week. Limited to 18 students. Spring Semester. Professor Manion

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2021, Spring 2022

389 Ottoman Modern

(Offered as HIST-389 [ME/TE] and ASLC 389) The Ottoman Empire underwent a process of intense reform in the nineteenth century. Reformers were determined to strengthen their countries’ sovereignty vis-à-vis increasingly aggressive European imperial powers and embarked on a series of measures designed to improve their economies, political institutions and militaries. Reformers were also concerned to generate a new public, and develop modern citizens imbued with new civic, political, literary and artistic sensibilities. Europe served as one important source of inspiration for Ottoman reformers. Reformers were in conversation with European modernity, even as they were in conversation with their own traditions. This course explores the complex relationship between preservation and change, between admiration and rejection, both of Ottoman and European ideas, institutions and cultures that characterized the nineteenth-century reform process. We will move beyond the oversimplification and distortion inherent in the paradigm of “adoption vs. rejection” and instead seek to conceptualize the complex relationship of the Ottoman Empire with Europe, and with the Ottomans’ own traditions, as a process of translation from the "traditional" to the "modern." The course focuses on the construction of an Ottoman Modern through an examination of literature, art, ideas and institutions. Conducted as a reading seminar. Two 80-minute class sessions per week.  

Class time is devoted to discussion. Class discussion will be held in person (if possible) AND online for those who are unable to be on campus. There is substantial preparation for discussion to be done before class, in the form of readings (available online and on the course Moodle site) and occasional power point lectures to watch. Assignments consist of frequent response papers, as well as more formal papers. Students may choose to fulfill the history department seminar paper requirement with this course. 

Enrollment is limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Ringer.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2021, Spring 2023, Fall 2024

390, 490 Special Topics

Independent reading course.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

392 Inside Iran

(Offered as HIST 392 [ME/TC/TE] and ALSC 359) This seminar explores contemporary Iran from a historical and interdisciplinary perspective. The aim of the course is both to provide an overall understanding of the history of Iran, as well as those key elements of religion, literature, legend, and politics that together shape Iran's understanding of itself. We will utilize a wide variety of sources, including Islamic and local histories, Persian literature, architecture, painting and ceramics, film, political treatises, Shiite theological writing, foreign travel accounts, and U.S. state department documents, in addition to secondary sources. Two class meetings per week.

Recommended requisite: a survey course on the modern Middle East. Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Ringer.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022

393 Early Islam: Construction of an Historical Tradition

(Offered as HIST 393 [ME^P] and ASLC 355) This course examines in depth the formative period of Islam between c. 500-680. Using predominantly primary material, we will chart the emergence, success, and evolution of Islam, the Islamic community, and the Islamic polity. The focus of this course is on understanding the changing nature over time of peoples’ understanding of and conception of what Islam was and what Islam implied socially, religiously, culturally and politically. We concentrate on exploring the growth of the historical tradition of Islam and its continued contestations amongst scholars today. This course will familiarize students with the events, persons, ideas, texts and historical debates concerning this period. It is not a course on the religion or beliefs of Islam, but a historical deconstruction and analysis of the period. This class is writing intensive. Two class meetings per week.

Admission with consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 15 students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Ringer.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Fall 2014, Spring 2017, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2023

402 Wine, History and the Environment

(Offered as HIST 402 [c/TC] and ENST 402.) Wine is as old as Western civilization. Its consumption is deeply wedded to leading religious and secular traditions around the world. Its production has transformed landscapes, ecosystems, and economies. In this course we examine how wine has shaped the history of Europe, North Africa, and the Americas. Through readings, scientific study, historical research, and class discussion, students will learn about such issues as: the environmental impact of wine; the politics of taste and class; the organization of labor; the impact of imperialism and global trade; the late nineteenth-century phylloxera outbreak that almost destroyed the European wine industry; and the emergence of claims about terroir (the notion that each wine, like each culture, is uniquely tied to a place) and how such claims are tied to regional and national identity. Through class discussion, focused research and writing workshops, and close mentoring, each student will learn about wine while designing and executing an independent research project. We will also get our hands dirty with soil sampling, learn the basics of sediment analysis in the laboratory, and have a go at fermentation. Two meetings per week.

Limited to 20 students. This is a research seminar open to juniors and seniors. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor López and Professor Martini.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2023

411 Commodities, Nature and Society

[TE, ^C] Participants in this seminar will explore the environmental and social histories of nine commodities: sugar, silver, silk, coffee, tobacco, sneakers, microchips, units of bandwidth, and the human body. Each of these commodities represents a complex array of linkages among producers, consumers, and intermediaries over time and space. Readings draw upon the disciplines of history, ecology, anthropology, and geography to place these commodities in their social, environmental, and spatial contexts. One of our aims is to understand the changing roles of natural systems and the divisions of labor that underlie the long-term processes of globalization. One class meeting per week.

Limited to 15 students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Melillo.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2013, Spring 2015, Spring 2020, Spring 2022, Fall 2024

419 On Nationalism

[^C/TE] Nationalism–by far the most powerful political idea of the past 250 years–has transformed human history the world over. By positing a new form of human identity, it has liberated and enslaved, built and destroyed. Most importantly it persisted by presenting itself as a natural fact of human life. Studying nationalism, therefore, is an act of self-exploration, whether we regard ourselves as national or not. Yet, though nationalism has shaped the modern age, people strongly disagree on its most basic concepts: What are nations? When did they emerge? What is their future? This research seminar will begin with a systematic and comparative study of the key theories of nationalism, seeking to understand both their claims and historical contexts. From this theoretical foundation, the seminar will explore case studies from different epochs and continents. Further: more than focusing on nationalism’s impact on politics, our case studies will illustrate nationalism’s impact on gender norms and class, on religion and philosophy, on culture and the arts. Finally the course will culminate in individual student research projects, consisting of a 25-page research paper and a final presentation as part of a mini-conference event. One class meeting per week.

Not open to first-year students. Limited to 15 students. Enrollment requires attendance at the first class meeting. Fall semester. Professor A. Gordon.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2025

421 Where in the World is Europe? Decolonial, Transnational, and Domestic Perspectives (1500-1800)

(Offered as HIST-421 [TC, TE, EU, ^C, ^P], and as EUST-421) Early Modern History has recently been challenged by a wide variety of theoretical perspectives that seek to decentralize and decolonize our understanding of this time period and its global effects. In this seminar, we will discuss some of these theoretical frameworks and their methodological challenges. We will begin by investigating a variety of encounters in the imperial contact zone, then move into a discussion of various “domestic” topics relating to the Italian Renaissance, German Reformation, and the French ancien régime, and end with an account of the Haitian and French Revolutions. Topics might include: Aztek Catholic feather art; Jesuit Brahmins in India; Ethiopian resistance to Catholicism; Kongolese saints; queer and linear temporalities; racialized bodies; global mapping; Venetian feminists; the German peasant war; Protestant iconoclasm; French salon culture; alchemy; mass possessions. Students will write a 25-page research paper that qualifies for the major requirement; non-majors will write a 15-page research paper. The class will be conducted over zoom, with extensive in-person office hours for on-campus students.

Spring semester. Enrollment limited to 18 students. Visiting Professor Sperling.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2021

425 European Economic Take-Off in Global Perspective, c. 1050–1750

(Offered as HIST 425 [EU^P] and EUST 425) The history of the pre-modern European economy is usually understood as the singular and exceptional rise of the first modern economy. Yet recent research in economic history and shifts in the world economy have provided new perspectives to reconsider the rise of the European economy. From this long-term and global viewpoint, the story of Europe’s economic take-off becomes the remarkable story of a backwater that became mainstream. How was Europe able to reposition itself from a periphery of the Eurasian economy to a central node of the global economy? What drove Europeans further and further into the East and how did their incursions disrupt or adapt to previous trade networks and practices? How did the exports and imports of Europe change as their relation to the world economy changed? By considering these questions, the course will revisit the familiar histories of the Commercial Revolution, the travels of Marco Polo, the Age of Discovery, the East India Companies, the Atlantic System, and the road to the Industrial Revolution. Using the analysis and synthesis of modern historians, we will situate the economic take-off of Europe in the context of the transformation of the world economy. Utilizing past travel logs, eyewitness reports, business contracts, customs receipts, and other non-narrative sources, students will complete a research paper that tackles one of these histories and casts them in new light. One class meeting per week.

Not open to first-year students. Limited to 18 students. Not offered in 2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Spring 2018

430 Renaissance Bodies

(Offered as HIST 430 [EU^P/TC], EUST 430 and SWAG 430) "Renaissance Bodies" investigates the ways in which early modern sciences and the figurative arts of the Renaissance collaborated to represent body-centered visual knowledges ranging from the "secrets of women" to scientific "monstrosities." The course also examines the ways in which Catholicism enhanced body-centered, sensual and visual forms of devotion. Discussions center on the eroticization of male, female, and queer bodies in a variety of discourses and visual rhetorics. A particular focus is on the representation of black bodies before the onset of modern racism. Case studies will include Eckhout’s "ethnographic" portrayals of African slaves and the native inhabitants of Brazil; Chiara di Montefalco’s miraculous relics; Elena Duglioli’s career as a spontaneously lactating saint; the cultural history of the dildo; Elena/o de Cespedes’s life as a transman; Sarah Bartmann as fetishized object of desire; male prostitution; and anatomical wax figures.

Not offered 2020-21. Visiting Professor Sperling.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2020

432 Gender, Class, and Crime: The Victorian Underworld

(Offered as HIST 432 [EU/TC/TS] and EUST 432) Victorian Britain was a nation of contrasts. It was at once the world’s foremost economic and imperial power, the richest nation in Europe, and the country where the consequences of industrialization–slums, poverty, disease, alcoholism, sexual violence–took some of their bleakest forms. In an era of revolution, Britain enjoyed one of the most stable political systems in Europe; yet it was also a society plagued by crime and by fears of popular unrest, the place where Marx predicted the worker’s revolt would begin. This seminar explores the complex world of the Victorians through a focus on what contemporaries termed the “social problem”: the underclass of criminals, paupers, and prostitutes who seemed immune to reform. Themes will include political liberalism and the Poor Law, imperialism at home and abroad, industrialization and urbanization, sanitation, hygiene, and disease control initiatives, shifting cultural understandings of gender and class, and Jack the Ripper. Students will be expected to write a research paper on a topic of their choice. One class meeting per week.

Not open to first-year students. Limited to 18 students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Boucher.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2015, Spring 2019

436 Race, Gender, and Sexuality in U.S. History

(Offered as HIST 436 [US/TC/TS] and SWAG 436) This course introduces students to critical theories of difference in thinking and writing about the past. We will read major works that chart the history of the very concepts of race, gender, and sexuality. We will explore how these ideas were both advanced and contested by various groups over the years by reading primary sources such as newspaper articles, personal letters, court records, and organizational papers. Movements for women’s rights, racial justice, and LGBTQ liberation have dramatically shaped these debates and their implications. In particular, feminist theory, critical race theory, and queer theory provide powerful arguments about how we formulate research questions, what constitutes a legitimate archive, and why writing history matters. Students will learn to identify and work with an archive to craft a major research paper in some aspect of U.S. history while engaging the relevant historic arguments about race, gender, and/or sexuality.

Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Manion.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2025

444 Unmixing Peoples: Ethnic Cleansing in History

[ EU/AS/US/TE/TS/C] What is ethnic cleansing? How did various historical actors (from medieval Mongols to modern colonial settlers to nationalists and Communists) decide to remove – and sometimes exterminate – entire peoples? Did ethnic cleansing exist throughout human history, or is it a distinctly modern phenomenon? How did specific historical processes, such as settler colonialism, state and nation-building, ideological and military conflicts contribute to ethnic cleansing? Finally, what is the relationship between modern human sciences and population politics and ethnic cleansing? This research seminar will explore different instances of ethnic cleansing and discuss under what circumstances peoples are unmixed. We will study a variety of materials, such as witness accounts, victim and perpetrator narratives, official reports, as well as analytical and historical studies of ethnic cleansing. Each student will select a case study and write a research paper of 25 pages.

Limited to 18 students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Glebov.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2019, Fall 2021

445 Living the Revolutionary Utopia: Reconfiguring the Russian Empire as the Soviet Union, 1917–1920s

(Offered as HIST 445 [EU] and RUSS 345) The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the end of the dynastic imperial regime and the onset of the new, unprecedented attempt to create a utopian society of universal equality and justice. It was also the beginning of the bloody and brutal Civil War and foreign intervention. Yet the Russian Revolution as a modernist project of remaking the social order and human nature had a much longer history as it developed since the nineteenth century in politics, science, literature, and arts. Following the Revolution, the Bolshevik reordering of state, society and empire developed along with and conflicted with the futuristic project of global transformation of the old world. What Soviet life would look like and how the Soviet multiethnic empire should be built became highly contested projects. This seminar introduces students to the new research into the elaboration, implementation, domestication, taming, or overcoming of revolutionary utopianism and futurism. Studying secondary and primary sources, we will explore how people created new forms of life, moral, knowledge, gender order, postcolonial arrangements, and new state institutions. Students will produce a research paper based on primary sources, including those at the Amherst Center for Russian Culture. One class meeting per week.

Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Not offered in 2020-21. Five College Professor Glebov.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2017, Spring 2019

455 The Long Civil Rights Movement

(Offered as HIST 455 [US] and BLST 331 [US]) This course will explore the temporal, ideological and cultural dimensions of the American Civil Rights Movement. Following 1954’s Brown vs Board of Education decision, a diverse social movement of students, preachers, working people, activists and intellectuals challenged—and eventually dismantled—Jim Crow segregation in the American South. How did this happen? To answer this question, we will examine the origins of the movement, its institutional dimensions, its key figures, and its intellectual underpinnings. In addition, this course will trace the afterlife of the movement, assessing its national and global reverberations, as well as its relationship to the Black Power movement. As a research seminar, this course will culminate in the production of a 25-page research paper based on an analysis of primary sources related to the movement. This course will involve work in a range of online archival sources, making it accessible to those students learning remotely. One class meeting per week.

Not open to first-year students. Fall Semester. Visiting Assistant Professor Hickmott.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2016, Fall 2020, Spring 2022

459 America and Vietnam

[US/TE] This seminar will trace the path and nature of the United States' involvement in Vietnam from World War II to the fall of Saigon in 1975 and its aftermath. It will examine U.S. policy in the context of Cold War foreign relations and how U.S. policy responded to the decolonizing Third World and the perceived danger of communist expansion and control in Southeast Asia. The seminar will explore the various pressures and influences on American policymakers, the nature of the war, and its effects on Vietnam and the United States. It will also stress Vietnamese perspectives on the conflict and analyze how Vietnamese history and culture shaped interactions with the United States, the Soviet Union and the global community. Finally, the course will spend significant time on the conflict's broad impact on U.S. society and popular culture, as manifested through music, film, and literature. One class meeting per week.

Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Walker.

460 Intelligence and U.S. National Security Policymaking

[US] The purpose of this course is to provide an overview of the role and effectiveness of intelligence in forming and executing national security policy in the U.S. Government. It will include three major components: (1) a survey and assessment of the intelligence enterprise, its organization, and major functions, to gain insight into how the intelligence community works, and into its ethos and organizational culture; (2) an examination of the impact of intelligence collection and analysis on the policy community and of the interactions between the policy and intelligence communities from both their perspectives; and (3) review of case studies to gain deeper insight into intelligence community/policy making community dynamics in the “real world.” One class meeting per week.

Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Not offered in 2020-21.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018

461 History of Jerusalem

This course will cover the history of Jerusalem from approximately 1000 BC to the present. Using primary sources as much as possible, we will focus on the religious, cultural, and strategic significance of the city as well as the evolution of its physical and human geography over time. One class meeting per week.

Not offered in 2020-21. Limited to 15 students.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2019

462 Hawaiʻi: Capital of the Pacific World

[US/TE] This seminar approaches the Hawaiian Archipelago as a focal point for examining the environmental, cultural, and economic processes that crisscrossed the Pacific Ocean from the maritime settlement of Polynesia to the present day. As a realm of vibrant cultural development prior to European contact, a hub of missionary and whaling activities, a coaling station for transpacific steamships, a front line in the Second World War, a zone of diasporas during the post-war era, and an epicenter for Pacific Islander social revitalization, Hawaiʻi has much to offer our understanding of globalization and its varied histories. Participants will use translations of Hawaiian-language materials to augment course readings and to open a window into a range of Native Hawaiian viewpoints that remain largely invisible from the historical record. One class meeting per week.

Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Melillo.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2019

470 Key to Modern China: The History of Shanghai from 1840 to 2010

(Offered as HIST 470 [AS/TC] and ASLC 470) The rise of Shanghai as a cosmopolitan modern city in the nineteenth century and the vicissitude of its fortune in the twentieth century closely paralleled China’s modern history–in fact, many of China’s most important modern transformations first took place in the metropolis. Shanghai was the largest treaty port with the first foreign concessions in China, and thus emerged as the primary conduit for western ideas and culture. It witnessed the rise of China’s first bourgeoisie and urban middle class, and along with them, a modern consumer culture, popular media, modern aesthetics and new forms of art. It was also the origin of the workers’ movement and communist revolution and where the Chinese Communist Party held its first meetings. During the Mao era, Shanghai was not only the preeminent industrial city in the country, but also a major political center where the cultural revolution was plotted. Thanks to its key role in China’s modernity, the history of Shanghai has generated a substantial and impressive body of scholarship over the past few decades. In this research seminar, we will examine the various scholarly approaches to Shanghai’s history and grapple with a number of important theoretical and historiographic issues that are central to the study of modern Chinese history. In this seminar, we will develop research and writing skills in order to conduct a research project. This course requires some familiarity with modern Chinese history, but command of Chinese language is not necessary. Assignments include research exercises, short response papers, presentations, a research prospectus, and a final paper. Students wishing to fulfill the seminar paper requirement may opt to write a research paper. One class meeting per week.

Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Not offered in 2020-21. Professor Qiao.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2019

477 The History and Memory of the Asia-Pacific War

(Offered as HIST 477 [AS/TE/TS] and ASLC 477) The fifteen years of war conducted by Japan—variously referred to as the Pacific War, the Great East Asian War, the Fifteen-year War, World War II, and the Asian-Pacific War—continue to shape the politics and diplomacy of Asia. This seminar examines how the experience of war during the 1930s and 40s are captured in the memory and history of Japan, East Asia, and the United States. The principal questions guiding our discussions will be: What is the relationship between history and memory in our media-saturated world? How are the memory and history of war intertwined in both national and international politics?  What forms of memory have been included and excluded from dominant historical narratives and commemorative devices? What role can the academic discipline of history play in these controversies? The goal of the seminar will be to immerse ourselves in a critical conversation and to produce self-directed research projects.

 This is a research seminar that will combine historiographic readings and discussions with assignments designed to help you define and execute your own research project. That project will culminate in a seminar paper that will satisfy the History major requirement. The course will be offered in-person on campus and online for those who are studying remotely. We will identify and work with digital archives online to deal with the limited access to physical archives on and off campus. 

Limited to 15 students. Not open to first-year students. Fall semester. Professor Maxey.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Fall 2010, Fall 2014, Spring 2018, Fall 2020

488 Riot and Rebellion in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa

(Offered as HIST 488 [AF/TE] and BLST 321 [A]) There were numerous rebellions against the state during the period of European colonial rule. Violent resistance to state authority has continued to characterize political life in many post-colonial African countries. This seminar will examine the development of several outbreaks of violence in Africa in the colonial and post-colonial periods to explore critical historical questions in a comparative context. We will look at the economic, social, religious, and political roots of these disturbances. Rebel groups and the states challenged roiled societies and reconstituted social identities, while legends and rumors swirled around rebellions and their leaders. We will focus on insurgencies and their origins, including spiritual and religious beliefs, disputes over land and labor, and fights against colonial and post-colonial authoritarian states. We will discuss the problems historians face in researching revolts whose strength often stemmed from their protean character. The seminar will study specific revolts, including the Herero Revolt and subsequent genocide in German-controlled South-West Africa in 1904-1907; the first (1896-1897) Chimurenga (revolts) in Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe; the Mau Mau revolt in colonial Kenya, the Black Consciousness Movement and the student revolt in Soweto, South Africa in 1976; and the Holy Spirit Movement and the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda in the 1990s. The seminar's goal is to engage students in a scholarly conversation about resistance to colonial and authoritarian rule in Africa and the resort to violence as a means of forcing political change. Students will also learn how to frame a research question and engage in researching a historical topic based on primary sources. Requirements include active participation in class, the completion of several short graded and ungraded written assignments, and the final 20 to 25-page research paper on an individually chosen topic. The successful completion of the research paper will satisfy the Research requirement for the History major. Two class meetings per week. 

Limited to 15 students. Not open to first-year students. Spring semester. Professor Redding. 

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2015, Spring 2017, Fall 2019, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023

493 Turkey: From Ataturk to Erdogan

(Offered as HIST 493 [ME/TC/TE/TS] and ASLC 493) Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk" looms large in Turkish historical memory. As a national hero and Turkey’s first President from 1923 until his death in 1938, Ataturk symbolizes a shift from empire to republic, from subject to citizen. He is remembered for promoting the secularization, democratization and Westernization of Turkey. Turkey’s current President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has now served as head of the Turkish Republic for nearly as long as Ataturk. Supporters point to Erdogan's policies of democratization as the fulfillment of Ataturk’s intentions, while his opponents argue that Erdogan is deliberately dismantling the foundations of Ataturk’s secular and western-oriented republic. This seminar focuses on how these two leaders are variously imagined and claimed, as a window onto contemporary debates surrounding secularism and the place of religion, nationalism and minority rights, the tensions between authoritarianism and democracy, and the ways in which competing visions of the Ottoman past surround alternative constructions of Turkey’s future. Two course meetings per week.

Limited to 18 students. Not open to first-year students. Preference given to students who have taken HIST 191. Spring semester. Professor Ringer.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Spring 2017, Spring 2019, Spring 2021

494 Istanbul

(Offered as HIST 494 [ME], ANTH 431, and ASLC 494) At different points in its nearly 2000-year history, the city now known as Istanbul has been the capital of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires. Alternately branded as a “global city” and selected as the “Cultural Capital of Europe,” Istanbul continues to thrive as a complex urban landscape of intersecting economies, histories, and ideas. Over its long history, millions of people and multiple communities have called Istanbul their home—each shaping the city with distinct visions of the past and longings for the future. As innumerable identities (communal, religious, national, ethnic) have been both claimed and erased to serve a variety of political, economic, and social ideologies, Istanbul stands today as a city where the meanings of space and place are contested like few others. This seminar explores the connections between contemporary politics and society in Turkey through the contested histories of space and place-making in Istanbul, with special attention to the varied historical legacy of architecture of the city. Two 80 minute class meetings per week.

The seminar will culminate with a 12-day trip to Istanbul, Turkey. All students enrolled in the course are expected to participate in the trip. The trip will begin immediately after the final exam period, departing on May 12 and returning on May 23. The cost of the trip will be covered by the College.

Recommended requisite: Prior course work in Middle East studies. Limited to 12 Amherst College students. Open to sophomores and juniors. Admission with consent of the instructors. Enrollment is by written application only, with an interview process to follow. Not offered in 2020-21. Professors Dole and Ringer.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Spring 2018

498, 498D, 499, 499D Senior Departmental Honors

Culminating in one or more pieces of historical writing which may be submitted to the Department for a degree with Honors. Normally to be taken as a single course but, with permission of the Department, as a double course as well.

Open to juniors and seniors. Fall semester. The Department.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2025

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