Courses on the economic history of South Asia typically begin circa 1750, when European Company produced data series legible to economic historians first become available. This course departs from that trend, by beginning with the expansion of the Mughal empire and its deeply bureaucratized revenue system, along with the arrival of the British and Dutch East India Companies in the early seventeenth century. The course ends not in 1947 (with the decolonization of the subcontinent), but rather with the liberalization of independent national economies in the late twentieth century, which significantly altered the commercial landscape by permitting the entrance of foreign direct investment. We will analyze numerous economic and socio-political phenomena that played into commercial development and change across the subcontinent during this period, including: the organization and influence of colonial joint-stock companies; systems of land tenure; the role of ecology in affecting economic production and consumption; industrial growth and the rise of economic urbanism; labor organization and the significance of kinship and patronage; and the immense influence of the informal (i.e. “shadow” or “black”) economy, comprising some three-fourths of the South Asian labor force. The course will also introduce students to some of the theoretical literature in economic history scholarship. No prior knowledge of south Asia or economic history is required.

In the past decade, Brazil has emerged a leading global power. As the world's fifth-largest country, by size and population, and the ninth-largest by GDP, Brazil exerts tremendous influence on international politics and the global economy, seen in its position as an emerging BRIC nation and a regional heavyweight in South America. Brazil is often in the news for its strides in social welfare, leading investments in the Global South, as host of the World Cup and Olympics, and, most recently, for its political instability. It is also a nation of deep contradictions, in which myth of racial democracy -- the longstanding creed that Brazilian society has escaped racial discrimination -- functions alongside pervasive social inequality, state violence, political corruption, and an unforgiving penal system. This course examines six centuries of Brazilian history. It highlights the interplay between global events -- colonialism, slavery and emancipation, capitalism, and democratization -- and the local geographies, popular cultures, and social movements that have shaped this multi-ethnic and expansive nation. In particular, the readings will highlight Brazil's place in Latin America and the Lusophone World, as well as the ways in which Brazil stands as a counterpoint to the United States, especially in terms of the legacy of slavery and race relation. In this lecture, we will also follow the current political and economic crises unfolding in Brazil, at a moment when it has become all the more important to evaluate just how South America's largest nation has shaped and been shaped by global events.

This new course will explore multiple dimensions of Africa’s environmental history, drawing upon literature in the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. It is one component of a pilot project supported by Penn Global and directed by the instructor on ‘Local Histories of Climate Change in the Horn of Africa”, though we will cover topics and case studies from the entire continent. The course takes an historical perspective on environmental change in Africa, with an eye to engaging current debates on climate change and its impact on contemporary urban and rural communities. Students will read and discuss key works on the African environment, conduct their own literature reviews on selected topics, and prepare case studies of communities which have been impacted by severe climate events in the past half-century. The format combines lectures and seminar-style discussions, and we will draw upon the expertise of guest lecturers in a variety of disciplines which have contributed to the study of environmental change.

The course concentrates on the history of sexuality as it informed and shaped political and social change in the Middle East, and vice versa, in an engagement with global historical contexts. What does sexuality have to do with power, political rule, and mass movements in the modern Middle East? What can the study of sexuality and body politics teach us about colonialism and state formation over centuries of imperial rules and colonial regimes, as well as in the contemporary context of neoliberal capitalism? What is the relationship between studying LGBTQIA+ movements alongside with feminism and the use of sex and sexuality as an analytical category? This course will investigate selected themes such as modernity, nationalism, and colonization and connect them to harem lives, politics of veiling/unveiling, reproductive rights, race, polygamy, masculinity, and early modern concepts of same-sex desire in connection with modern queer thought and activism to ask questions about the preconceived notions about "Middle Eastern sexualities." The course focuses on discussing on some of the many roles that sex and gender politics have played in social and political change in the Middle East, while thinking about gender, history, and society comparatively and transnationally.

Where did the Nazis come from? Was the Weimar Republic bound to fail? Did the Treaty of Versailles or the Great Depression catapult the Nazis into power? What was the role of racism, of antisemitism? How did the regime consolidate itself? What was the role of ordinary people? How do we explain the Holocaust and what kind of a war was the Second World War?
Grappling with these and more questions, the first half of the course focuses on Germany’s first democracy, the Weimar Republic and its vibrant political culture. In the second half, we study the Nazi regime, how it consolidated its power and remade society based on the concepts of race and struggle. Discussions of race and race-making are crucial throughout the course. In the name of “racial purity,” the Nazi state moved ruthlessly against Germany’s Jewish population, cleansed German society of all “undesirable” elements, and waged a brutal war of extermination that aimed to racially reorder all of Europe. Thinking about Nazi racism and genocide, their origins and trajectories, in both its particular specifics and in a larger historical context is the main goal of this course.

Where did the Nazis come from? Was the Weimar Republic bound to fail? Did the Treaty of Versailles or the Great Depression catapult the Nazis into power? What was the role of racism, of antisemitism? How did the regime consolidate itself? What was the role of ordinary people? How do we explain the Holocaust and what kind of a war was the Second World War?
Grappling with these and more questions, the first half of the course focuses on Germany’s first democracy, the Weimar Republic and its vibrant political culture. In the second half, we study the Nazi regime, how it consolidated its power and remade society based on the concepts of race and struggle. Discussions of race and race-making are crucial throughout the course. In the name of “racial purity,” the Nazi state moved ruthlessly against Germany’s Jewish population, cleansed German society of all “undesirable” elements, and waged a brutal war of extermination that aimed to racially reorder all of Europe. Thinking about Nazi racism and genocide, their origins and trajectories, in both its particular specifics and in a larger historical context is the main goal of this course.

Where did the Nazis come from? Was the Weimar Republic bound to fail? Did the Treaty of Versailles or the Great Depression catapult the Nazis into power? What was the role of racism, of antisemitism? How did the regime consolidate itself? What was the role of ordinary people? How do we explain the Holocaust and what kind of a war was the Second World War?
Grappling with these and more questions, the first half of the course focuses on Germany’s first democracy, the Weimar Republic and its vibrant political culture. In the second half, we study the Nazi regime, how it consolidated its power and remade society based on the concepts of race and struggle. Discussions of race and race-making are crucial throughout the course. In the name of “racial purity,” the Nazi state moved ruthlessly against Germany’s Jewish population, cleansed German society of all “undesirable” elements, and waged a brutal war of extermination that aimed to racially reorder all of Europe. Thinking about Nazi racism and genocide, their origins and trajectories, in both its particular specifics and in a larger historical context is the main goal of this course.

Where did the Nazis come from? Was the Weimar Republic bound to fail? Did the Treaty of Versailles or the Great Depression catapult the Nazis into power? What was the role of racism, of antisemitism? How did the regime consolidate itself? What was the role of ordinary people? How do we explain the Holocaust and what kind of a war was the Second World War?
Grappling with these and more questions, the first half of the course focuses on Germany’s first democracy, the Weimar Republic and its vibrant political culture. In the second half, we study the Nazi regime, how it consolidated its power and remade society based on the concepts of race and struggle. Discussions of race and race-making are crucial throughout the course. In the name of “racial purity,” the Nazi state moved ruthlessly against Germany’s Jewish population, cleansed German society of all “undesirable” elements, and waged a brutal war of extermination that aimed to racially reorder all of Europe. Thinking about Nazi racism and genocide, their origins and trajectories, in both its particular specifics and in a larger historical context is the main goal of this course.

"God is dead," declared Friedrich Nietzsche, "and we have killed him." Nietzche's words came as a climax of a longer history of criticism of, and dissent toward, the religious foundations of European society and politics. The critique of religion had vast implications for the meaning of human life, the nature of the person, and the conception of political and social existence. The course will explore the intensifying debate over religion in the intellectual history of Europe, reaching from the Renaissance, through the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, to the twentieth century. Rousseau, Voltaire, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. These thinkers allow us to trace the varieties of irreligious experience that have emerged in modern European thought and their implications for both historical and philosophical understanding. Rather than drawing a straight line from belief to non-belief, however, we will consider how religion may linger even in “secular” thought and culture; and we will develop something of an “encounter” between critics and defenders of religion, such as Soren Kierkegaard and Martin Buber, to see how religious discourse evolved in response to the challenges of skepticism.

This class examines the emergence of the U.S. as a world power since 1898, and considers both the international and domestic consequences of U.S. foreign relations. In one respect, the twentieth century was a strange time to become a global empire: it was the period when colonial systems centered in Europe, Russia, Japan, and Turkey collapsed, and new nations emerged throughout Africa and Asia. This class explores the changing strategies of military, economic, and political intervention that the US pursued as colonization lost legitimacy. Within that framework, the class invites students to think about four questions: How did the idea and practice of empire change over the twentieth century? How did the United States and people within the US relate to new visions of independence emerging in Africa, Asia, and Latin America? How did global interactions both inform and reflect racial ideology in the United States? Finally, how did anti-imperialist arguments and movements change over the twentieth century?