HIST314 - Victorian Britain: Spaces, Places, and Pests

Status
O
Activity
LEC
Section number integer
1
Title (text only)
Victorian Britain: Spaces, Places, and Pests
Term
2020C
Syllabus URL
Subject area
HIST
Section number only
001
Section ID
HIST314001
Course number integer
314
Registration notes
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Meeting times
TR 01:30 PM-03:00 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Alex Chase-Levenson
Description
In this course, we will examine the nooks and crannies of Victorian society. It was a period of squalor, but also innovation, devastating diseases, and crucial advances in public health and medical science. Its cities featured depressing slums and lurid crimes, but also new kinds of spectacles, entertainments, and commodities. It was, in many ways, as one of its greatest authors wrote, "the best of times, and the worst of times." Units under study will include "The Docks," "The Germs," "The Empire," "The Church," and "the Museum." We'll investigate killer diseases like cholera and typhus, dazzling buildings like the Crystal Palace, imperial wars and crises, and new scientific movements like Darwinism and mesmerism. Along the way, we will encounter proper and eminent Victorians as well as scandalous and marginalized ones. The aim will be to understand Victorian mentalities and ideas by looking at a diverse array of institutions and inventions. Readings will include novels, stories, pamphlets, essays, and cartoons as well as secondary literature. Classes will be a mixture of lecture and discussion, and no previous experience in British history is necessary.
Course number only
314
Use local description
No
LPS Course
false

HIST276 - Japan:Age of the Samurai

Status
O
Activity
LEC
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Japan:Age of the Samurai
Term
2020C
Syllabus URL
Subject area
HIST
Section number only
401
Section ID
HIST276401
Course number integer
276
Registration notes
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Meeting times
MW 02:00 PM-03:30 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
David Spafford
Description
This course deals with the samurai in Japanese history and culture and will focus on the period of samurai political dominance from 1185 to 1868, but it will in fact range over the whole of Japanese history from the development of early forms of warfare to the disappearance of the samurai after the Meiji Restoration of the 19th century. The course will conclude with a discussion of the legacy of the samurai in modern Japanese culture and the image of the samurai in foreign perceptions of Japan.
Course number only
276
Cross listings
EALC176401, EALC576401
Use local description
No
LPS Course
false

HIST275 - Faces of Jihad in African Islam

Status
O
Activity
LEC
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Faces of Jihad in African Islam
Term
2020C
Syllabus URL
Subject area
HIST
Section number only
401
Section ID
HIST275401
Course number integer
275
Registration notes
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Meeting times
TR 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Cheikh Ante MBAcke Babou
Description
This course is designed to provide the students with a broad understanding of the history of Islam in Africa. The focus will be mostly on West Africa, but we will also look at developments in other regions of the continent. We will explore Islam not only as religious practice but also as ideology and an instrument of social change. We will examine the process of islamization in Africa and the different uses of Jihad. Topics include prophetic jihad, jihad of the pen and the different varieties of jihad of the sword throughout the history in Islam in sub-Saharan Africa.
Course number only
275
Cross listings
AFRC274401
Fulfills
Cross Cultural Analysis
Use local description
No
LPS Course
false

HIST273 - Penn Slavery Project Res

Status
X
Activity
FLD
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Penn Slavery Project Res
Term
2020C
Subject area
HIST
Section number only
401
Section ID
HIST273401
Course number integer
273
Meeting times
CANCELED
Level
undergraduate
Description
This research seminar provides students with instruction in basic historical methods and an opportunity to conduct collaborative primary source research into the University of Pennsylvania's historic connections to slavery. After an initial orientation to archival research, students will plunge in to doing actual research at the Kislak Center, the University Archives, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the American Philosophical Society, the Library Company, and various online sources. During the final month of the semester, students will begin drafting research reports and preparing for a public presentation of the work. During the semester, there will be opportunities to collaborate with a certified genealogist, a data management and website expert, a consultant on public programming, and a Penn graduate whose research has been integral to the Penn Slavery Project.
Course number only
273
Cross listings
AFRC277401
Use local description
No
LPS Course
false

HIST261 - People's History of Pakistan

Status
X
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
People's History of Pakistan
Term
2020C
Subject area
HIST
Section number only
401
Section ID
HIST261401
Course number integer
261
Meeting times
CANCELED
Level
undergraduate
Description
This course asks what Pakistan's history would look like when told from the perspective of the most marginalized groups in the country. Such an approach would demand that we jettison state-centered narratives and geopolitical frameworks. Instead, the course prioritizes the ethical imperative to tell the history of a place by including the voices and experiences of its people. It explores questions about how the state might appear differently in such narratives, as also about the impact of colonialism on the nation-state and its oppressed. Over the semester, we will investigate the responses, resistances, and revolts of marginalized groups that are facing intensified and intersecting oppression in a global and national context of surveillance, militarization, and capitalist exploitation. This course explores these urgent questions about the forces shaping the global present through the histories of the region, women, peasants, displaced persons, labor, and students in Pakistan.
Course number only
261
Cross listings
SAST261401
Use local description
No
LPS Course
false

HIST258 - Extreme Heat: White Nationalism in the Age of Climate Change

Status
C
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Extreme Heat: White Nationalism in the Age of Climate Change
Term
2020C
Syllabus URL
Subject area
HIST
Section number only
401
Section ID
HIST258401
Course number integer
258
Registration notes
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Meeting times
M 02:00 PM-05:00 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Anne K Berg
Description
The Amazon is burning. The glaciers are melting. Heat waves, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, and droughts devastate ever larger swaths of the earth, producing crop failures, air pollution, soil erosion, famine and terrifying individual hardship. At the same, time the so-called Western World is literally walling itself off from the millions who are fleeing from disaster and war with what little they can carry. White militants chant "blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us," social media spreads memes and talking points about "white genocide" and "white replacement" and online ideologues fantasize about building white ethnostates. Are these developments connected? Is there a causal relationship? Or are these conditions purely coincidental? Increasingly, arguments about limits to growth, sustainability, development and climate change have come to stand in competitive tension with arguments for social and racial equality. Why is that case? What are the claims and underlying anxieties that polarize western societies? How do white nationalist movements relate to populist and fascist movements in the first half of the 20th century? What is new and different about them now? What is the relationship between environmentalism, rightwing populism and the climate crisis? And how have societies responded to the climate crisis, wealth inequality, finite resources and the threat posed by self-radicalizing white nationalist groups?
Course number only
258
Cross listings
ENVS258401
Use local description
No
LPS Course
false

HIST245 - Petrosylvania: Reckoning with Fossil Fuel

Status
O
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Petrosylvania: Reckoning with Fossil Fuel
Term
2020C
Syllabus URL
Subject area
HIST
Section number only
401
Section ID
HIST245401
Course number integer
245
Registration notes
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Meeting times
W 02:00 PM-05:00 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Jared Farmer
Description
Fossil fuel powered the making--now the unmaking--of the modern world. As the first fossil fuel state, Pennsylvania led the United States toward an energy-intensive economy, a technological pathway with planetary consequences. The purpose of this seminar is to perform a historical accounting--and an ethical reckoning--of coal, oil, and natural gas. Specifically, students will investigate the histories and legacies of fossil fuel in connection to three entities: the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the City of Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania. Under instructor guidance, students will do original research, some of it online, much the rest of it in archives, on and off campus, in and around Philadelphia. Philly-based research may also involve fieldwork. While based in historical sources and methods, this course intersects with business, finance, policy, environmental science, environmental engineering, urban and regional planning, public health, and social justice. Student projects may take multiple forms, individual and collaborative, from traditional papers to data visualizations prepared with assistance from the Price Lab for Digital Humanities. Through their research, students will contribute to a multi-year project that will ultimately be made available to the public.
Course number only
245
Cross listings
ENVS245401
Use local description
No
LPS Course
false

HIST242 - Life Stories in America, 1730-1830

Status
O
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Life Stories in America, 1730-1830
Term
2020C
Syllabus URL
Subject area
HIST
Section number only
401
Section ID
HIST242401
Course number integer
242
Registration notes
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Meeting times
T 01:30 PM-04:30 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Robert St.George
Description
This seminar explores the social and cultural history of America by focusing on the lives of specific individuals, ranging from Jesuit priests in early Quebec to Philadelphia politicians to Saramaka slaves to Maine midwives. One of the people in Philadelphia who we will discuss is Benjamin Franklin, Penn's founding father. As we examine biography and autobiography as two of history's most powerful narrative frames, we will concentrate on the spaces and places in the social landscape that shaped individual understandings of work, sense of self, gender, beliefs, and political power.
Course number only
242
Cross listings
ENGL242401
Use local description
No
LPS Course
false

HIST237 - Berlin: History, Politics, Culture

Status
O
Activity
REC
Section number integer
405
Title (text only)
Berlin: History, Politics, Culture
Term
2020C
Subject area
HIST
Section number only
405
Section ID
HIST237405
Course number integer
237
Registration notes
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
Meeting times
F 01:00 PM-02:00 PM
Level
undergraduate
Description
What do you know about Berlin's history, architecture, culture, and political life? The present course will offer a survey of the history of Prussia, beginning with the seventeenth century, and the unification of the small towns of Berlin and Koelln to establish a new capital for this country. It will tell the story of Berlin's rising political prominence in the eighteenth century, and its position as a center of the German and Jewish Enlightenment. It will follow Berlin's transformation into an industrial city in the nineteenth century, its rise to metropolis in the early twentieth century, its history during the Third Reich, and the post-war cold war period. The course will conclude its historical survey with a consideration of Berlin's position as a capital in reunified Germany. The historical survey will be supplemented by a study of Berlin's urban structure, its significant architecture from the eighteenth century (i.e. Schinkel) to the nineteenth (new worker's housing, garden suburbs) and twentieth centuries (Bauhaus, Speer designs, postwar rebuilding, GDR housing projects, post-unification building boom). In addition, we will read literary texts about the city, and consider the visual art and music created in and about Berlin, and focus on Berlin's Jewish history. The course will be interdisciplinary with the fields of German Studies, history, history of art, urban studies, and German-Jewish studies. It is also designed as a preparation for undergraduate students who are considering spending a junior semester with the Penn Abroad Program in Berlin. All readings and lectures in English.
Course number only
237
Cross listings
URBS237405, ARTH237405, COML237405, GRMN237405
Use local description
No
LPS Course
false

HIST237 - Berlin: History, Politics, Culture

Status
O
Activity
REC
Section number integer
404
Title (text only)
Berlin: History, Politics, Culture
Term
2020C
Subject area
HIST
Section number only
404
Section ID
HIST237404
Course number integer
237
Registration notes
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
Meeting times
F 12:00 PM-01:00 PM
Level
undergraduate
Description
What do you know about Berlin's history, architecture, culture, and political life? The present course will offer a survey of the history of Prussia, beginning with the seventeenth century, and the unification of the small towns of Berlin and Koelln to establish a new capital for this country. It will tell the story of Berlin's rising political prominence in the eighteenth century, and its position as a center of the German and Jewish Enlightenment. It will follow Berlin's transformation into an industrial city in the nineteenth century, its rise to metropolis in the early twentieth century, its history during the Third Reich, and the post-war cold war period. The course will conclude its historical survey with a consideration of Berlin's position as a capital in reunified Germany. The historical survey will be supplemented by a study of Berlin's urban structure, its significant architecture from the eighteenth century (i.e. Schinkel) to the nineteenth (new worker's housing, garden suburbs) and twentieth centuries (Bauhaus, Speer designs, postwar rebuilding, GDR housing projects, post-unification building boom). In addition, we will read literary texts about the city, and consider the visual art and music created in and about Berlin, and focus on Berlin's Jewish history. The course will be interdisciplinary with the fields of German Studies, history, history of art, urban studies, and German-Jewish studies. It is also designed as a preparation for undergraduate students who are considering spending a junior semester with the Penn Abroad Program in Berlin. All readings and lectures in English.
Course number only
237
Cross listings
URBS237404, ARTH237404, COML237404, GRMN237404
Use local description
No
LPS Course
false