See primary department (NELC) for a complete course description.

See primary department (NELC) for a complete course description.

See primary department (NELC) for a complete course description.

The United States was not inevitable. With that assumption as its starting point, this course surveys North American history from about 1500 to about 1850, with the continent's many peoples and cultures in view. The unpredictable emergence of the U.S. as a nation is a focus, but always in the context of wider developments: global struggles among European empires; conflicts between indigenous peoples and settler-colonists; exploitation of enslaved African labor; evolution of distinctive colonial societies; and, finally, independence movements inspired by a transatlantic revolutionary age.

See primary department (STSC) for a complete course description.

This course will explore the origins, the history and, most importantly, the literary and cinematic art of the struggle that has endured for a century over the region that some call the Holy Land, some call Eretz Israel and others call Palestine. We will also consider religious motivations and interpretations that have inspired many involved in this conflict as well as the political consequences of world wars that contributed so greatly to the reconfiguration of the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and after the revelations of the Holocaust in Western Europe. While we will rely on a textbook for historical grounding. the most significant material we will use to learn this history will be films, novels, and short stories. Can the arts lead us to a different understanding of the lives lived through what seems like unending crisis?

This course concentrates on the economy of Europe in the Early Modern Period, 1450-1750. It was a time of great transition. Europe developed from an agriculturally-based to an industrially-based economy, with attendant changes in society and culture. From subsistence-level productivity, the European economy expanded to create great surfeits of goods, with attendant changes in consumption and expectation. Europe grew from a regional economic system to become part--some would say the heart--of a global economy, with attendant changes in worldview and identity. Economic intensification, expansion, globalization, and industrialization are our topics, therefore. Beginning with economic organizations and practices, we will consider how these changed over time and influenced society and culture. The course takes as its point of departure the experience of individual, working men and women: peasants and artisans, merchants and landlords, entrepeneurs and financiers. Yet, it argues outward: from the particular to the general, from the individual to the social, from the local to the global. It will suggest ways in which the economy influenced developments or changes that were not in themselves economic, shaped, and deflected economic life and practice.

This course will survey the major political, economic, social and intellectual trends in the making of modern Japan. Special emphasis will be given to the turbulent relationship between state and society from 1800 to the present.

World War One was the primordial catastrophe of twentieth-century history. For all who passed through it, the Great War was transformative, presenting a profound rupture in personal experience. It was a war that unleashed an unprecedented outpouring of memoirs and poetic and fictional accounts written by participants. In its wake, it also produced new forms of public commemoration and memorialization – tombs to the unknown soldier, great monuments, soldiers’ cemeteries, solemn days of remembrance, and the like. On the centenary of World War One’s outbreak, this course will explore the war through the intersection of these processes of personal and public memory. The first ten weeks will be devoted to shared readings on these themes. In the remaining weeks, students will pursue independent research projects investigating the literature of the Great War or aspects of public or private commemoration. Please note: This is not a seminar in military or diplomatic history, but rather an exploration of personal experiences of the War, representations of experience, and the cultural and political dimensions of memory.