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Fall 2012 Course Descriptions
HIST 110: WESTERN CIVILIATION I
This course surveys western history from the ancient Near East to the beginning of the modern world. It therefore covers both the ancient and medieval worlds and involves a wide geographic expanse, including Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Special attention will be given to the following themes: gender; law and justice; faith and reason; multiculturalism; and the degree to which all peoples have experienced western civilization equally. The political, economic, and technological history of the West will be covered, but particular emphasis will rest on western cultural, religious, and social history.
HIST 338: HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 1917-PRESENT
This class explores Russia’s dramatic experience with communism in the twentieth century. During the strife of the First World War, a radical socialist party came to power that attempted to transform a predominately rural and politically conservative empire into a workers’ state. Its first decade of revolutionary experimentation gave way to a massive project to industrialize the economy and modernize society from above. This Stalinist system produced numerous human tragedies, but also turned the Soviet Union into a global superpower after World War II. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union underwent great internal changes (abandoning the Gulag prison camps for instance), while externally asserting and imposing its political economy as an alternative to Western capitalism. A final reform effort in the 1980s known as perestroika resulted in the collapse of the entire country and its communist system in 1991. Celebrated in the West as a triumph of democracy and lamented in Russia by President Vladimir Putin as a “geopolitical tragedy,” the Soviet collapse continues to influence Russian and world history today.
HIST 352: POPULAR CULTURE IN JAPAN
This course explores the history of popular entertainment in Japan from the 17th century to the present, with particular attention to four themes: commerce; aesthetics; appropriation; and contestation. We will begin the term with a review of theories of the aesthetics and political economy of popular culture. Using historical and ethnographic scholarship as well as primary artistic sources, we will explore a variety of cultural media (literature, visual art, music, film, etc.) from the Edo period to the modern and contemporary eras. Our methodological emphasis is on learning about broad historical themes—such as class conflict, nation building, the formation of national, gender, and sub-cultural identities, imperialism, industrialization, and social marginality—using popular culture as a primary source. Another aim of the course is to develop critical media literacy.
HIST 386: HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIANISM
In March 2012, Kony 2012, a video condemning the brutality of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony went viral on YouTube. The sponsoring organization, Invisible Children, focused in particular on Kony’s targeting of children and urged viewer response. Within days, millions of young people took up the cause. Yet in addition to attracting support, the video campaign has attracted criticism and controversy.
Kony 2012 is just the latest spectacular chapter in a much longer history of humanitarian and human rights. This course will begin with the Kony video and seek to place its agenda, appeal, supporters and detractors in historical context. When and why did people start feeling empathy for suffering strangers at home and abroad? When did they begin to act on those feelings? Who were these advocates and who were those deemed in need of help? Where, why, and how was international humanitarian aid offered? What is the relationship between humanitarianism and human rights? When did a commitment to human rights begin? Is it a Western phenomenon or an expression of universal values? How did advocacy around human rights spread internationally? What roles have nation states, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) played in the process? What role have the “old” and “new” media played? Why are media portrayals of humanitarian need and human rights abuses often dominated by a focus on children?
HIST 369: WOMEN IN U.S. HISTORY
Explore the history of American women from the colonial period to the twenty-first century. Learn how and why women’s social, economic, and intellectual roles have changed over time. Discover the ways in which family circumstances, waged and unwaged labor, racial and ethnic identities, and migration have shaped women’s experiences. What did activist women pursue during the women's rights and feminist movements? What did their opponents want to prevent?
HIST 371: THE HUNT FOR “UNAMERICANS” IN U.S. HISTORY
Who has counted as worthy rights-bearing Americans and who hasn’t? Whose words are censored? Whose bodies are inspected, detained and tortured? Who is spied upon? This course investigates campaigns to designate groups as threats to America, including surveillance campaigns and denial of rights to those deemed “un-American” threats to U.S. society. Topics include the immigration, labor and race panics of the 19th and 20th century; the construction of a uniquely American public-private partnership for surveillance; repression of protest movements as un-American; the connections between U.S. warmaking and the construction of the tools of surveillance and repression at home, including the long term context for the response to 9/11. The course interrogates the common notion that the U.S. has limited freedoms only in times of dire national security threats, and seeks to understand how notions of “un-Americanism” became a normalized part of U.S. society.
HIST 429: NAZI GERMANY
This course explores the political, social, and cultural history of National Socialism. We begin with the historical context out of which National Socialism arose: the First World War, 1918/1919 Revolution, and Weimar Republic. We will then explore the origins, ideology, and organization of the Nazi Party; the role and leadership of Hitler; the Nazi Party’s assumption and consolidation of power; how Nazism achieved legitimacy among Germans; and the foreign policy goals of the Nazi Regime, including its objectives and conduct in fighting World War II. Special attention will be given to state efforts to create a racialized empire in German-occupied Europe via the segregation, sterilization, and murder of individuals and ethnic groups deemed alien to the Nazi Aryan ideal, as well as the Regime’s regulation of gender and sexuality. We will consider the Nazi war of aggression in Eastern Europe in relation to Stalin’s designs for Soviet expansion, and conclude by examining some of the postwar consequences of military defeat and occupation.
HIST 434: THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
After two and a half years of bloody and exhausting war, one of Europe’s largest empires dramatically fell. The collapse of the Russian monarchy in February 1917 quickly precipitated a series of events that led to the formation of the world’s first communist government. The Bolsheviks came to power in a maelstrom of war, social strife, protest, plots, intrigues, and a changing global political order. Their tumultuous experience in attempting to create a workers’ state helped define the terms of political debate worldwide in the twentieth-century.
Participants, observers, and historians have understood the Russian Revolution in multiple and contradictory ways. Was it a workers’ revolution? A Bolshevik coup led by Vladimir Lenin? The evil doings of that maniacal monk Rasputin? The revenge of rural society for generations of oppression? A cultural re-enactment of the French Revolution? The collapse and rebirth of a decrepit empire? The emergence of a new modern state forged in war? A propagandistic project of memory creation? All of these interpretations of the Russian Revolution depend on explicit or implicit analytical frameworks that assign significance to some evidence and patterns over others.
History 475/575: THE UNITED STATES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
This course examines American connections with South and Southeast Asia. After exploring early intellectual, trade, missionary, and other contacts with these regions, the course explores in depth the American acquisition and governance of the Philippine Islands, followed by the decision to grant the Philippines independence. The course next explores the rise of nationalistic sentiment in South and Southeast Asia and examines the American response. World War II advanced the nationalist cause, and it is here that one sees the immediate roots of independence for most of the countries in the region. The war in Vietnam also has its roots in Southeast Asian nationalism. The course pays much attention to the global Cold War and how this affected events in Southeast Asia and the American response to those events, including the War in Vietnam. The course then explores more recent developments, such as relations with Vietnam and Cambodia after the Cold War. The course concludes with an exploration of the American response to the important developments in Burma/Myanmar after the uprising in 1988 and the brutal crackdown that followed, the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, the imposition of American sanctions, and the American response to very recent and interesting reforms there.
