Undergraduate Level Courses

This course offers historical perspectives on exchanges and confrontations between the worlds of Christianity and Islam from the seventh to fifteenth centuries C.E. It examines these encounters from the standpoint of imperial and caliphal centers of power, with a focus on the Byzantine, Carolingian, and Holy Roman Empires, and the Umayyad (Damascus and Cordoba), Abbasid, and Fatimid caliphates. The assigned readings will address four leading themes in studying the designated empires and caliphates. First, the political evolution of the respective ruling houses, with emphasis on their sovereign ideologies and rituals, claims to dynastic and religious legitimacy, and salient institutions of governance. Second, the structural foundations of the imperial caliphal economies, their distinct social strata and cultural norms, and their legal regulations concerning rank, sexuality, gender and race. Third, elite patronage of religious, artistic and scientific learning, the creation and dissemination of a courtly culture and art of living, and the imprint of dynastic rule on urban architecture and spaces. Finally, the range and patterns of Christian and Muslim interactions in the varying contexts of trade, translation, conversion, diplomacy, plagues, and war.

Nestled along the shores of its namesake lake, the Swiss city of Geneva stands as a testament to the complex interplay of historical forces and movements. From its pivotal role in establishing humanitarian principles to its status as the birthplace of key international organizations, Geneva embodies the constant tension and synergy between the local, national, international, and global. Through this syllabus, we embark on a journey to explore the myriad ways in which Geneva has influenced and been influenced by these intertwined narratives of nationalism, internationalism, humanitarianism, imperialism and anti-imperialism, scientific and economic development, and decolonization.

This class will introduce students to the tools that historians use to study and explain the past, and allow them to use those tools to investigate the American Revolution. We will begin with the movement of people, commodities, and ideas across the Atlantic Ocean, examine the cultural, political, social, and economic forces that shaped the North American Colonies and led to the War for Independence, and assess the impact of the Revolution on institutions, ideas, and individuals. Students will develop their own answers to key questions like When did the American Revolution begin? When did it end? What were its causes? What were its effects? What was “American” about it and what was “revolutionary” about it? What difference did it make to the rest of the world? What difference did the rest of the world make to it? What kind of revolution was it? Throughout, we will constantly ask ourselves how we know what we know, and how we draw conclusions about the past.

Beginning with the Gold Rush and the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and covering up through the tech and service economies of today, this course will explore how Asian American labor and American capitalism have shaped one another for the past 150 years. Themes of the course include: how categories of race and class interact with one another; how Asian American workers organized with one another and other segments of the working class across time and space; and what it means to take a transnational view on American labor history. This course will also introduce students to various elements of historical work and analysis: what are primary sources, and how we can identify them, locate them, examine them, and employ them in our analysis; how we construct an argument based on our evidence; how historians formulate the questions that guide their research and analysis; how to approach and understand the work of other historians in developing our own questions and analysis; how to present and employ historical evidence in our own writing; and so on. Throughout, we will seek to be always mindful of a fundamental question for all effective evidence-based analysis: how do we know what we know.

This is a course on the social and cultural history of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries. The course focuses especially on the African and Afro-descended populations of Rio from the 19th century to today. We work with music, paintings, photography, short stories, documentary films, and translated primary documents like letters and court cases to identify continuities and change over time in the richly diverse yet dramatically unequal city.

This course examines the changing meaning of work and the changing lives of workers over the course of U.S. history. It provides an introductory overview of this subject from colonial times to the present. Its purpose is to equip us to better grasp and grapple with the issues that define work and workers’ lives in the 21st century by providing deep historical context for understanding these issues.

A study of events in New York City in 1741. Was it a slave revolt, a popular revolt to overthrow the government, a conspiracy of thieves, and arsonists?

World II sections consider human history since about 1500 AD, focusing on the dynamics of global interaction. The class seeks to familiarize students with, and help them contextualize, historical processes and phenomena such as colonialism and imperialism, industrialization, modern population growth, nationalism and the rise of the nation-state, great power politics, and the emergence of modern science. Its goal is to explain how the world got to be the way it is, with a particular focus on how social and ethno-cultural identities have been shaped—and have in turn shaped—political, economic, and physical environments. In this course, we will explore the history of climate change over the past two centuries. We will examine how the Earth has warmed, and the different environmental manifestations of warming from region to region. We will study how scientists discovered that Earth was warming, and how influential skeptics quickly mobilized popular and political suspicion of this “inconvenient truth.” Finally, we will investigate the already significant present-day consequences of climate change for vulnerable societies in the Middle East, Africa, the Arctic, and Oceania.

NOTE: This course is one of many courses in the yearlong Core Pathway on Climate Change, open to all students. Each semester in the pathway consists of pairing two 1.5 credit 7-week courses focused on the complex problem of Climate Change. All courses in the Core Pathway on Climate Change are offered during the same timeslot TR: 2:00-3:15PM so that students can enroll in two over the course of the semester. To learn more about the courses and Core Pathways, visit www.corepathways.georgetown.edu.

Atlantic World draws together the histories of four continents, Europe, Africa, North America, and South America, to investigate the new Atlantic world created as a consequence of the Columbian encounter in 1492. The class traces the creation of this world from the first European forays in the Atlantic and on the coast of Africa in the fifteenth century to the first wars for colonial independence and the abolition of slavery. Topics include the destruction and reconfiguration of indigenous societies; the crucial labor migrations of Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans; and the various strategies of accommodation, resistance, and rebellion demonstrated by the many different inhabitants of the Americas. For College students all sections of HIST 1106 fulfill the core requirement in History for a broad introductory survey; these students complete the requirement by taking HIST 1099.

Pacific World focuses on the Pacific Ocean world, which has historically been regarded as a vast and prohibitive void rather than an avenue for integration. Yet over the last five centuries motions of people, commodities, and capital have created important relationships between the diverse societies situated on the “Pacific Rim.” This course examines the history of trans-Pacific interactions from 1500 to the present. It takes the ocean itself as the principal framework of analysis in order to bring into focus large-scale processes–migration, imperial expansion, cross-cultural trade, transfers of technology, cultural and religious exchange, and warfare and diplomacy. This “oceans connect” approach to world history brings these processes into sharp relief while also allowing for attention to the extraordinary diversity of cultures located within and around the Pacific.

From humble beginnings nearly 1500 years ago, to enormous power and prestige in the Middle Ages, to political decline and foreign occupation in the modern era, Islam has developed into a highly diverse, global tradition representing nearly one quarter of the world’s population. Yet it is most widely known through caricatures of terrorists and despots. This course examines that phenomenon. It focuses on the historical development of Muslim communities and their interactions with European and other powers. It emphasizes the impact of those interactions on Islam’s ideological and political developments. The interaction between religion and politics is a major sub-theme of the course.

Human greenhouse gas emissions are today causing Earth’s average temperature to rise more quickly than it has in the history of our species. Yet even before the industrial period, Earth’s climate was never stable. Natural forces set in motion preindustrial climate changes that may not have reached the scale of present-day warming, but still had profound consequences for societies the world over. In this course, we will explore one of the greatest of these climate changes: the global cooling that lingered from the thirteenth through the nineteenth centuries, and is today called the “Little Ice Age.” We will discuss how volcanic eruptions and fluctuations in solar activity lowered Earth’s average temperature, and how scholars have reconstructed these changes through time. We will investigate the human consequences of the Little Ice Age, and find lessons for our warmer future. In the process, we will learn about the discipline of environmental history, which draws from both the sciences and the humanities to explore how humanity has altered, and been altered by, the nonhuman world.

Note: This course is one of many courses in the yearlong Core Pathway on Climate Change, open to all students. Each semester in the pathway students MUST pair together two 1.5 credit 7-week courses focused in the area of Climate Change. The other courses for this semester can be found using the “core pathways” attribute or by visiting the core pathways website. All courses in the Core Pathway on Climate Change are offered during the same time slot TR: 2:00-3:15PM so that students can enroll in two over the course of the semester. To learn more about the courses and Core Pathways, visit www.corepathways.georgetown.edu. This class fulfills 1/2 a Core History survey requirement for College and SFS students.

This course examines the history of modern Africa from the 19th century to the present. We will explore major political, economic, social, religious and environmental changes on the continent, but we will also think about how historical knowledge is created and how historians assess evidence about the past.The first goal of this course is for you to acquire historical background to contemporary Africa. By looking at general patterns as well as specific places and events, we’ll examine some of the major themes in Africa’s recent history. We’ll study Africa’s role in the 19th-century global economy and the political and social impacts of this early globalization; European conquest of the continent and African resistance to European domination; the political and economic impact of colonialism; major cultural, social and religious changes of the early 20th century; and how independence from colonialism was achieved and what it meant. Then we’ll turn to the era of independent African nations and explore the historical context of some of the issues facing present-day Africa. We also will examine dynamics of age, gender, class, and ethnicity within African societies. And throughout the class, we will consider how Africans have acted to create their own history within the context of larger global and historical forces they do not control.A second goal of the class is for you to begin to think about the origins of knowledge: to ask how we know what we think we know. What do terms such as “African” and “European” mean in practice, and what do they obscure? How has “the West” created knowledge about “Africa,” and what are the implications of this? A third goal is to think and write like historians. We will ask questions and explore puzzles about the past. With Africa serving as the context, you will practice the art of historical analysis. Questions we will ask throughout this class include: Why did something happen when it happened and what were its consequences? How have unequal relations of power shaped the kinds of historical evidence we have today, and how can we interpret that evidence? To what extent can history explain the world we now share?

The course is introductory, has no prerequisites, and assumes no prior knowledge of China or its language. The organization of the course is basically chronological, but within that framework we will be approaching China from a wide range of viewpoints, taking up political, economic, social, religious, philosophical, and artistic developments. In this semester, we will cover the formation of China’s social, political, and intellectual culture and its development through various dynastic regimes, up through the end of the Ming Dynasty in the late 16th century. In addition, in this semester we will explore the historical roots of several claims made by the People’s Republic of China in the 21st century, including linkages with Xinjiang, Central Asia, and Tibet; the “Silk Road” origins of the 2013 “One Belt, One Road” project, and China’s aspirations for a blue-water navy. The course has two basic goals: (1) to present a basic introduction to the traditions and legacies of the history and culture of China, including conflicting, even contradictory, interpretations of these traditions/legacies; and (2) to use the specific study of China as a means for developing more general skills in the discipline of historical analysis.

The World I sections examine the history of the human experience from a global perspective. The bulk of the semester concerns societies and states from the time of ancient civilizations to about 1500 AD. The course pays particular attention to political, economic, and social changes, but also considers cultural, technological, and ecological history. The evolving relationship between human identities and their social and material environments forms one of the major points of analytical focus for this course. The overarching goal is to provide a general framework for the history of the world to help students understand the big picture, and to help them to contextualize what they will later study about history, politics, religion–in short, about the human experience. The Europe I sections offer an analysis of the major political, social, economic, diplomatic, religious, intellectual, and scientific developments in European Civilization to 1789.

This team-taught interdisciplinary seminar course is designed for first-year students interested in the opportunity for deeper study of particular themes and periods. Our main focus will be on careful reading of texts, active class discussion, and close attention to writing. Our main focus will be the cultural and historical developments of Europe, and to some degree of other parts of the world affected by Europe, in the eighteenth century, the era of the Enlightenment. In particular, we will consider the ways in which the political, scientific, economic, social, and religious developments of the period interacted with cultural and intellectual developments and expressions. Specific themes may include the relationship between religion and the state; the emergence of concepts of nationhood, citizenship, and representative government; the workings of the first truly global and consumer economy; and debates about the significance of race and gender. Throughout the eighteenth century, European thinkers, writers, and artists increasingly thought of themselves as “modern,” and at the same time also confronted cultural differences shaped by nation, class, race, religion, gender, and other factors. We will always try to highlight the interrelationships between historical and cultural developments, stressing especially the ways in which literature, music, drama, and the visual arts both responded and contributed to historical changes.

The modern Americas began when Europeans intruded around 1500, imagining rights to rule a hemisphere populated by diverse peoples. They provoked radical changes that transformed the hemisphere and the world, in ways they rarely planned or imagined. Before 1500, most native Americans lived in communities sustaining families and state powers; others remained independent, dispersed across vast regions. Europeans arrived carrying deadly diseases that nearly emptied the continent, while global trade links created unforeseen opportunities for profit. Chinese demand for silver led to Spanish American societies grounded in rebuilt indigenous communities. European demand for sugar brought forced removals of bound Africans to work plantations from Brazil through the Caribbean. In New England, British settlers pursued religious liberties and profits, sustaining themselves and Caribbean plantations; to the south, others bought Africans to raise rice and tobacco. And across vast interiors, Europeans met staunchly independent peoples who traded skins, furs, and more for tools, mounts, and arms to reinforce independence. Everywhere, European assertions, indigenous adaptations, and enslaved peoples’ resistance generated cultural innovations. From the 1770s, conflicts broke European empires: the U.S. began promising liberty and defending slavery; Haitian revolutionaries destroyed slavery and the plantation economy; plantation slavery expanded in Brazil and Cuba; while In New Spain, popular insurgents broke silver capitalism to rebuild lives on the land before Mexico began in 1821. Across continental interiors native peoples solidified independence.

A survey of East European peoples and states from the rise of the Medieval Kingdoms to about 1800. The course will trace the influence of the multi-national Jagiellon, Habsburg, Ottoman, and Romanov empires in the region. Topics will include: the formation of ethnically and religiously diverse societies, the role of noble democracy, and the influence of the Enlightenment and Romanticism.

Profound political, cultural and environmental transformations occurred in Europe between the fourth and the tenth centuries CE. As the Roman Empire gave way to “Dark Age” kingdoms, the ways of life of ordinary people and elites, within and beyond Rome’s former limits, forever changed. This course draws upon traditional historical sources as well as the material record (bones, buildings, soils and trees) to delve into the human and natural processes that defined the era. Diverse topics are addressed, from saints and popes, to barbarian migrations and recurrent plague, to multiculturalism and Christianization, to climate change and economic fragmentation. Although focused on Europe, the course also considers connections with Rome’s Byzantine and Muslim heirs.

This course will examine the medieval crusading movement from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries. We will attempt to integrate and understand the crusades from the three traditions directly affected by the movement, that of western Christian Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic Eastern Mediterranean. In addition the course will examine the important consequences on the Jewish communities both in Europe and in the Holy Land. While tracing the rise and fall of the movement, the course focuses on a variety of themes in this chronological context. We will certainly examine the origins of the crusading movement and what might cause thousands of men, women and even children to leave their established lives and undertake the arduous journey to Jerusalem. In addition, the course will also focus on the role of the Western church, the colonizing activities of the Franks in the Holy Land, the crusading orders and the popular crusading responses and legends, and then growing disillusionment with the crusades. Since the memory of the medieval crusades remains a touchstone for the modern discourse regarding the Middle East, we will look at a modern understanding of the crusades. The course will look at modern depictions of the Crusades in both film and literature to see how current popular culture understands or misinterprets the historic legacy of these events, including the recent films and of course the treatment of the crusading orders in modern literature. More importantly, however, we will examine the legacy of Crusades and how this affects current world events outside of the relatively unimportant aspects of popular culture. This course will help you to understand the importance of this historically defining movement, which in the minds of some is still an ongoing concern. There will be some reading in the primary sources, an emphasis on the art and architecture of the time, and a concern to examine the cultural clashes and accommodations between the Latin West and the Islamic East.

Modern Ireland: cultural Americana, Britannica, or Europeana? This course surveys the comparative transnational influences on the cultural development of modern Ireland, from the American Revolution to the European Union. It charts the social developments of ‘greater Ireland’ through an exploration of ‘island’ and ‘migrant’ cultures; examines Ireland’s relationship with political violence from enlistment in nineteenth-century British colonial campaigns in Egypt to the late twentieth-century IRA’s anti-colonial alliance with Libya; and evaluates the economic impacts of constitutional and cultural (dis)integration with America, Britain, and Europe, from the Act of Union to Brexit.

From the 1600s to the 1950s, France – as both a monarchy and a republic – governed many colonial and European empires, embracing (at different times) territories as diverse as Haiti, Algeria, Vietnam, India, and Canada. This course will trace the French Empire’s extraordinary rises and falls from its seventeenth-century origins to the era of decolonization in the mid twentieth-century. How did the French Empire come into being? Who ran it and how? How did French rule affect its colonial subjects overseas? And how did the French at home respond to imperial challenges and opportunities? Although the Age of Empires has gone, we will trace its political and cultural legacies as they are stamped across our world today.

What factors have influenced the U.S. government’s and Americans’ interactions with the rest of world? Who has shaped these encounters? What has the relationship been between these relations and U.S. domestic affairs? How have foreigners responded to U.S. actors and influence? We will analyze U.S. foreign relations, a broader category than simply foreign policy by examining the political, military, economic, religious, and cultural influence of the U.S. In particular, we will discuss the U.S. as a global power following World War II through topics such as the Cold War, the Vietnam Wars, human rights, and globalization. We will also consider the different ways historians have sought to explain U.S. foreign relations. This course focuses on trends and ideas, focusing on critical thinking and events rather than attempting a comprehensive account of U.S. foreign relations.

This course seeks to understand key themes and events in one of the more turbulent periods in modern American history. Topics will include (but not be limited to) the decline of industrial cities, the rise of the black freedom movement (both North and South), military intervention in Indochina and the movement opposing it, the significance of rock and roll and soul music, the New Left, the beginnings of movements for feminism and gay rights and environmental protection, the emergency of a powerful New Right, and the international context in which the American “60s” occurred.

This course takes a multidisciplinary and long-term approach to studying the history and nature of globalization. It shows that some long-term forces of globalization have been at play for centuries or millennia, and it questions how and why new, stronger forces of globalization were unleashed with the industrial revolution and the rise of modern finance. By adopting a very broad definition of economics, this course treats globalization largely as an economic phenomenon, without neglecting its social and cultural implications. No previous training in economics is required. Other disciplines that help shape this courses’ approach and content are History, International Relations, Finance, Geopolitics, and Current Events. This is a seminar course, which means that instruction is mainly discussion-based. The course also consists of many historical workshops – class periods in which students have the opportunity to engage with historical material hands-on, to discover and debate the meaning of the traces of the past. While the course is a broad overview in the style of a world history, it does not attempt to tell history as a single story, and it certainly does not attempt history only from a Western perspective.

Pirates have commanded historical attention and public fascination for centuries. We imagine tales of daring escapes on the high seas, talking parrots, and buried treasure. Fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers regularly adorn pirate garb, while people around the world participate in International Talk Like a Pirate Day. However, it is not always clear where mythical pirates end and historical pirates begin. This course seeks to separate historical pirates from our romanticized memory of them today. While real men and women have engaged in piracy across the world for centuries, this class focuses on the pirates in the early modern Atlantic and Caribbean who serve as the inspiration for our public memory of pirates today. This course spans from the rise of these pirates through the conclusion of what some call the “Golden Age of Piracy.” The illicit economy fueled by piracy provides insight into broader patterns within Atlantic history, such as the entangled nature of Atlantic empires, the interconnectedness of the legal and illegal Atlantic economies, and the limit of state authority. In this course, we will examine the actions of historical pirates, attempts to suppress them, and their enduring grasp on popular imagination.

This seminar focuses on the character, causes, and consequences of environmental change around the world since about 1900. Likely topics include historical approaches to climate change, climate politics, deforestation, biodiversity, air and water pollution, the roles of technology, population, energy use, environmentalism, etc. The scale of inquiry will vary from the local to the global, depending on topic and available readings. Students should expect to read approximately one book per week; to write about 6,000 words; and to lead discussion one week during the semester.

Mao Zedong – revolutionary visionary or tyrannical megalomaniac? Few historical figures have quite as divisive a legacy as the founder of the People’s Republic of China, yet there is no denying his impact on Modern Chinese History. Who exactly was Mao Zedong, though? How is he remembered today, and how has his legacy inspired activists in the 20th and 21st centuries, both in China and on the global stage? This course will examine Mao the man, Mao the myth, and Maoism the ideology to answer these questions.

This undergraduate seminar studies “places of memory” in modern China, or the sites, museums, monuments, and memories of the past. Integrating primary sources as well as interdisciplinary readings from anthropology, art history, cultural studies, and history, this course features case studies including the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, the Monument to the People’s Heroes, the Rent Collection Courtyard, and the ruins of Yuanmingyuan. These case studies will offer ways of thinking about official and unofficial history, and the role of the past in contemporary culture, society, and politics.

This course will chart the origins of the modern European left, starting with the foundation of the International Workingmen’s Association (commonly known as the First International) by Karl Marx in 1864, as well as the failure and legacy of the Paris Commune, the path charted by mainstream and radical leftists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the challenge posed by rising nationalism, and the reactions to and challenges posed by militarism, the First World War, and the communist revolution in Russia. Along the way we will discuss what it means to be on “the left” and the ways leftist politics evolved over time on various issues.

To the casual observer, few conflicts seem more clear-cut than the epic nationalist struggle that dominated the history of 20th century Ulster. At first glance, the players in this tragic conflict seem to divide quite neatly into two opposing camps: on one side—the devout Irish Catholic nationalist committed to the vision of a united Ireland freed forever from British rule; on the other—the unyielding British Protestant unionist clinging desperately to the last vestiges of colonial privilege and power. For those who subscribe to such a view, the solution to the crisis appears to be quite simple: Britain must withdraw completely and immediately from Ulster, and Ireland must unite. Closer scrutiny of the conflict in Ireland uncovers a complicated nexus of political, religious and economic factors that defy facile generalization and easy resolution. Rooted in over 800 years of acrimonious interaction between the Irish and the British, Northern Ireland’s bloody 20th century is anything but clear-cut. Through an analysis of music, popular films, and literature, this class will explore the cultural construction of the “Troubles” in 20th century Ulster and examine the historical, ethnic, psychological and social realities from which this culture of conflict ensues.

This seminar class focuses on the history of the city of Rome, from its foundation in ancient times through its contemporary role as the capital of Italy. Each week we will focus on a different period, and examine the history of the city, in terms of both the life of its population and the development of city buildings, neighborhoods, and structures. We will discuss political, economic, social, cultural, religious, intellectual, and other changes, with a special focus on the architecture and urban structures of the physical city itself. Rome is a place, but it is also an idea. Therefore, though the history of the city and its people will be our main focus, we will also discuss the image of Rome, the perception of the city by outsiders, its broader role in European and western culture, and the legacy of its history as the seat of antiquity’s greatest empire, the main center of western Christianity and of global Catholicism, and the capital of a modern European nation state. Please note however that this class will not offer an overall history of antiquity, of the papacy, or of the Christian church in general (or of modern Italy per se). The course aims thus to allow for a close analysis of specific themes and topics and of how they developed over a significant span of time. The course also has a methodological aim: to introduce students to the advanced use of primary sources and to further their understanding of historical thinking and analysis. Both class discussion and writing assignments will push students to hone their critical reading, writing, and analytical skills. In particular, we will try to understand how to read textual, visual, and other sources with an awareness of historical context and with attention to the specifics of genre, authorship, and audience.

After the United States and Haiti, Spanish and Portuguese America achieved political independence from European powers. In an age where monarchy was the dominant political formation of “civilized” countries, the new nations, with the exception of Brazil, chose a republican form of government. How to organize a country and create a nation from a colony? Who counted as a citizen? Who wanted to count as a citizen and how did they perceive their own roles within the new state? What territories could be included in the new state? All those questions and more were asked in the nineteenth century in Latin America as the different countries emerged from their colonial condition. Many of these issues, especially regarding the full integration of people as citizens into the nation-state persist into the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. This course will explore many of these questions, based on some of the new exciting research that has been published in the past decade. The course examines these issues through theoretical perspectives, biography, intellectual history, and the new cultural/political history.

Worker strikes have profoundly changed America over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Indeed, one can legitimately argue that many of the labor rights that today we take for granted in the U.S., were the result of workers putting their jobs (and sometimes, their lives) on the picket line. It is ironic that worker movements in the U.S. become most visible when workers strike, because for most workers, striking is both rare, and a last resort: it means that workers’ initial strategies to obtain their demands have failed. Yet for historians of work and workers, strikes are invaluable, as strikes are when private workplace grievances emerge from behind closed doors and become public. As such, strikes offer a clear window into the lives, struggles, and aspirations of striking workers – as well as serve as a useful barometer of the state of employer-worker power relations during the time of the strike.

This course will examine the long durée of Latinx social movements with an emphasis on the 20th century and into the present. The late 1960s ushered in a new period of mobilizations to organize around race, ethnicity, citizenship, class, gender, and sexuality. In this course we will look at how various Latinx communities throughout the US articulated their struggles, protest, and change in this broader context. We will take a comparative and relational approach to the study of this history. Topics will include immigrant mobilizations, transnational organizing, agrarian and farmworker movements, political representation, feminisms and reproductive rights, environmental justice, labor, cultural and social transformation truck, education, and urban social movements. Great attention will be paid to the broader legacies of the struggles and what they mean for contemporary social movements and organizing.

This course examines the influence of intelligence on U.S. foreign policy from 1914, when the First World War brought American entry onto the global stage, and will trace its evolution through a Second World War, a Cold War, and a War on Terror, to today. We will ask whether and how, and to what extent, intelligence impacted policy in some cases, and why, in others, it did not. In doing so, we will explore core themes of culture and emotion, the influence of sources, the efficacy of tradecraft and the phenomenon of intelligence failure, bureaucratic rivalries, and the relationship between American intelligence and the policymaker.

Russia and China: Imperial Encounters, 1619-1927 explores the encounter between Russia and China in an era when both states were ruled by powerful imperial dynasties: the Romanovs and the Qing. We’ll talk about how the two states traded, fought, spied on one another, and managed their mutual frontier–the longest land border in the world. By the end, we’ll see both empires overthrown by powerful, interconnected revolutionary movements, whose legacy continues to shape our world.

This course, offered as part of the Sonneborn chairship for 2023-2026, will be cross-listed with English and will be open to GU-Qatar students. It is the first year of a multi-year upper-level multidisciplinary seminar on the Indian Ocean. It is also the first of a two-course sequence focused specifically on the South Asian hub of the Indian Ocean world, and will include a trip to Kerala and Goa in the spring semester for enrolled students. Students who enroll in the fall are not required to take the full sequence but may wish to consider committing to the full two-semester sequence, including the trip.

In 1948, South African voters – a minority of the country’s population – elected a government on the platform of apartheid, a radical form of racial segregation. For much of the next half century, apartheid was official government policy and South Africa became a pariah to much of the rest of the world. This seminar delves into the historical roots of apartheid and what it meant for South Africans living it. We also will examine the resistance of South Africans of all races to apartheid, as well as the international anti-apartheid movement of the 1970s and 1980s. We conclude by exploring what might be called “apartheid’s afterlives” – the persistence of its social and economic structures in contemporary South Africa. Class readings will include a variety of historical documents and monographs; reading loads are substantial. Requirements include weekly discussion posts, student presentations, and a final research paper.

This course is aimed at establishing literacy in the Pacific Islands, their storied histories and their complex presents. It will take students through the Indigenous human geographies in the Pacific, the coming of Europeans and the establishment of spheres of influence through various economies and imperial activities. It will pay close attention to the causes and consequences of power shifts, the imposition of imperial powers and resistance to it as well as the movement of Asian people into the island Pacific as indentured plantation laborers from the mid-C19th. It will investigate the building of tensions that led to World War Two and what happened in its aftermath. From here the course looks at the reasons the Pacific Islands have returned to western focus as the frontline of climate change and more urgently still, driven by massive and recent Chinese attention as an extension of its Belt and Road Initiative. As well as paying close attention to perspectives from Washington, Canberra, Wellington, Paris and Beijing, this course will be Pacific focused, giving much attention to Pacific island actors, voices and perspectives, and framed around the urgent situation of the present.

This readings-and-discussion-focused seminar will explore how the November 1938 Nazi-organized assault on German Jewish communities and institutions, commonly known as Kristallnacht, was perceived and responded to across a range of places and contexts, from Germany itself to other countries in Europe, the United States, the Jewish community in Palestine, and beyond. Kristallnacht will thus serve as a window on the international history of fascism and anti-fascism, and on the global clash of ideologies, on the eve of the Second World War.

This course examines Islamic warfare from the earliest Muslim conquests through WWI. After discussing classical Islamic conceptions of war and peace, the course examines the early Muslim conquests, the Crusades, the Mongol invasion of the Islamic world, and the wars of the Mamluk, Ottoman, and Safavid Empires. In the second part of the course we consider topics such as land, naval, and siege warfare, military manpower and military slavery in Islam, war financing, military technology, weapons and tactics, logistics and provisioning, fortresses and border defense, and the impact of war upon societies. The last phase of the course studies military modernization attempts of the Ottoman Empire and Egypt in the nineteenth century, and the ultimate defeat of modernized Muslim armies by the combined forces of ethnic nationalism and Great Power imperialism. In this section we also consider the increased destructiveness of modern warfare for non-combatants and the displacement of civilian populations.

This seminar examines society and politics – including the role of gender, empire, nation, ethnicity, and race – in Palestine during the Ottoman period. The focus is on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

What is the context of Putin’s bewildering claim of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine in his current war? Why are the European celebrations of May 8 and May 9 – the end of WWII – a constant source of conflict inside societies in Eastern Europe? Why does the history of WWII create tension in the post-Soviet space, leading to jailed historians, protest movements, and diplomatic expulsions? Why has 20th century history remained such a gripping topic in peoples’ minds today, and how has it shaped contemporary relations between countries in the region? This course will help students to find answers to these and other challenging questions related to the unprecedented weaponization of history and memory in the region. Course listed as REES 4463 and JCIV 4630.

This 1-credit workshop course is a new requirement for all senior History majors who are not pursuing the Honors program (and thus are not enrolled in HIST 4998). It is offered in the Fall of senior year. The purposes of this course are to provide a common capstone experience to senior majors; to help them reflect on and highlight what they have learned in the course of their studies; to help them develop and present the skills they have gained; to assist them as they prepare either for further studies or for entering the work force; and to give them a chance to gain essential experiences in the presentation of their own work and accomplishments. Students will not need to prepare much new work for this course, but they will present work they have already done, offer reflections on it, and learn to present it in different ways.

Registration in the class requires department approval HIST 4998-4999 form a two-semester study of History as an intellectual discipline. Enrollment is by invitation of the Department. Fall: Readings and discussions with departmental faculty on the various methods, concepts, and philosophies of history, and the development of a research prospectus with a faculty mentor. Spring: Research seminar under the guidance of the mentor and Seminar Director. (Enrollment only by permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies). Students must commit themselves for the full two semesters.