Course Listings
2022-23 Courses
HIST BC1062 Introduction to Later Middle Ages: 1050-1450. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Social environment, political, and religious institutions, and the main intellectual currents of the Latin West studied through primary sources and modern historical writings.
HIST BC1101 Introduction to European History: Renaissance to French Revolution. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Political, economic, social, religious, and intellectual history of early modern Europe, including the Renaissance, Reformation and Counter-Reformation, absolutism, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment.
HIST BC1302 Introduction to European History: French Revolution to the Present. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Ethics and Values.
Emergence of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary mass political movements; European industrialization, nationalism, and imperialism; 20th-century world wars, the Great Depression, and Fascism.
HIST BC1401 Survey of American Civilization to the Civil War. 4 points.
The major theological and social concerns of 17th-century English colonists; the political and ideological process of defining an American; the social and economic forces that shaped a distinctive national identity; the nature of the regional conflicts that culminated in civil war.
HIST BC1402 Survey of American Civilization Since the Civil War. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Examines the major intellectual and social accommodations made by Americans to industrialization and urbanization; patterns of political thought from Reconstruction to the New Deal; selected topics on post-World War II developments.
HIST BC1760 Introduction to African History: 1700-Present. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Corequisites: Students who take this course may also take Introduction to Africa Studies: Africa Past, Present, and Future.
Survey of African history from the 18th century to the contemporary period. We will explore six major themes in African History: Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World, Colonialism in Africa, the 1940s, Nationalism and Independence Movements, Post-Colonialism in Africa, and Issues in the Making of Contemporary Africa.
HIST BC1801 Colonialism and Nationalism in South Asia. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Introduction to South Asian history (17-20 c.) that explores the colonial economy and state formation; constitution of religious and cultural identities; ideologies of nationalism and communalism, caste and gender politics; visual culture; and the South Asian diaspora.
HIST BC2062 Medieval Intellectual Life, 1050 to 1400. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Development over three centuries of a language of the heart, of the intellect, and of the polity. Primary readings in devotional and courtly literature, university speculation, and political thought, discussed in their historical and cultural contexts.
HIST BC2101 HISTORY OF CAPITALISM. 3.00 points.
The aim of this course is to provide students with analytical tools to think critically and historically about the concept of capitalism. By studying how philosophers, economists, and political theorists have defined and described the concept of capitalism throughout its history, students will be provided with a set of terminologies and analytical frameworks that enable them to interrogate the various dimensions of capitalism
HIST BC2116 The History of Money. 3 points.
Examining the history of money and the history of ways of thinking about money. We investigate how different monetary forms developed and how they have shaped and been shaped by culture, society, and politics. Tracing money from gift-giving societies to the European Monetary Union, the focus is on early modern Europe.
HIST BC2180 Merchants, Pirates, and Slaves in the Making of Atlantic Capitalism. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Examines how the Atlantic Ocean and its boundaries were tied together through the flow of people, goods, and ideas. Studies the cultures of the communities formed by merchants, pirates, and slaves; investigates how their interactions and frictions combined to shape the unique combination of liberty and oppression that characterizes early modern capitalism.
HIST BC2230 Central Europe: Nations, Culture, and Ideas. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
The making and re-making of Central Europe as place and myth from the Enlightenment to post-Communism. Focuses on the cultural, intellectual, and political struggles of the peoples of this region to define themselves. Themes include modernization and backwardness, rationalism and censorship, nationalism and pluralism, landscape and the spatial imagination.
HIST BC2255 Democracy and Dictatorship: Italy, the Balkans, and Turkey Between the Two World Wars. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
The course examines the social, economic and political impact World War I had on the Balkans, Italy, and Turkey. In particular, the growing influence of fascism from its birthplace in Italy to its emergence in various forms throughout the Balkans will be the central theme in the course.
HIST BC2305 Bodies and Machines. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Situates key scientific and technological innovations of the modern era in their cultural context by focusing on the interactions between bodies and machines. Through our attention to bodily experience and material culture, we will explore the ways in which science and technology have shaped and been shaped by the culture of modernity.
HIST BC2567 American Women in the 20th Century. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC II).
A consideration of women's changing place in modern America; the "family claim"; women in the workplace; educational expansion; the battle for suffrage; social reformers; the sexual revolution; women in the professions; the crisis of depression and war; the feminine mystique; and the new feminism.
HIST BC2321 Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Culture of Empire. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Examines the shaping of European cultural identity through encounters with non-European cultures from 1500 to the post-colonial era. Novels, paintings, and films will be among the sources used to examine such topics as exoticism in the Enlightenment, slavery and European capitalism, Orientalism in art, ethnographic writings on the primitive, and tourism.
HIST BC2374 France in Modern Times, 1789-Present. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Explores the history of modern France in its wider European Mediterrean and imperial contexts. Major themes include: republicanism and rights; revolution and reaction; terror and total war; international rivalry and imperial expansion; cultural and political avant-gardes; violence and national memory; decolonialization and postcolonial migration; May '68 and temporary challenges to the republican model.
HIST BC2380 Social and Cultural History of Food in Europe. 3 points.
Prerequisites: Previous course in history strongly recommended.
Course enables students to focus on remote past and its relationship to social context and political and economic structures; students will be asked to evaluate evidence drawn from documents of the past, including tracts on diet, health, and food safety, accounts of food riots, first-hand testimonials about diet and food availability. A variety of perspectives will be explored, including those promoted by science, medicine, business, and government.
HIST BC2388 Introduction to History of Science since 1800. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
How has modern science acquired its power to explain and control the world? What are the limits of that power? Topics: the origins of scientific institutions and values; the rise of evolutionary thought and Darwin's impact; the significance of Einstein's physics; ecology and environmental politics; the dilemmas of scientific warfare.
HIST BC2401 The Politics of Crime and Policing in the US. 3 points.
This course will examine the historical development of crime and the criminal justice system in the United States since the Civil War. The course will give particular focus to the interactions between conceptions of crime, normalcy and deviance, and the broader social and political context of policy making.
HIST BC2408 Emerging Cities: 19th Century Urban History of the Americas and Europe. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC II).
Urban history of 19th century cities in Europe and the Americas. First, we study the economic, geographic, and demographic changes that produced 19th century urbanization in the Western world. Second, we examine issues of urban space: density, public health, housing conditions, spatial reforms, and the origins of the modern city planning.
HIST BC2413 The United States, 1940-1975. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Emphasis on foreign policies as they pertain to the Second World War, the atomic bomb, containment, the Cold War, Korea, and Vietnam. Also considers major social and intellectual trends, including the Civil Rights movement, the counterculture, feminism, Watergate, and the recession of the 1970s.
HIST BC2423 The Constitution in Historical Perspective. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Development of constitutional doctrine, 1787 to the present. The Constitution as an experiment in Republicanism; states' rights and the Civil War amendments; freedom of contract and its opponents; the emergence of civil liberties; New Deal intervention and the crisis of the Court; and the challenge of civil rights.
HIST BC2440 Intro to African American History. 4 points.
Major themes in African-American History: slave trade, slavery, resistance, segregation, the "New Negro," Civil Rights, Black Power, challenges and manifestations of the contemporary "Color Line."General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
HIST BC2457 A Social History of Columbia University. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Traces the University's history from 1754 to the present; will focus on institutional interaction with NYC, governance and finance, faculty composition and the undergraduate extra-curriculum; attention also to Columbia professional schools and Barnard College.
HIST BC2466 American Intellectual History Since 1865. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Examination of the major ideas engaging American intellectuals from Appomattox to the present, with special attention to their institutional settings. Topics include Darwinism, the rise of the professoriate, intellectual progressivism, inter-war revisionism, Cold War liberalism, and neoconservatism.
HIST BC2482 Revolutionary American 1763-1815. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
How did thirteen diverse British colonies become a single boisterous but fragile new nation? Historians still disagree about the causes, motives, and meanings surrounding the founding of the United States of America. Major themes include the role of ideologies, material interests, global contexts, race, gender, and class.
HIST BC2567 American Women in the 20th Century. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC II).
A consideration of women's changing place in modern America; the "family claim"; women in the workplace; educational expansion; the battle for suffrage; social reformers; the sexual revolution; women in the professions; the crisis of depression and war; the feminine mystique; and the new feminism.
HIST BC2570 Alma Mater: A History of American Colleges & Universities. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: NONE
The founding, growth, and present condition of American colleges and universities, with particular attention to the social history of Columbia University. Issues of governance, faculty rights and responsibilities, student activism and the public perception of institutions of higher learning will be considered.
HIST UN2661 Modern Latin American History (Latin American Civilization II). 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Explores major themes in Latin American history from the independence period to the present. It will trace economic, political, intellectual, and cultural trends. Particular attention will be given to the enduring issue of social and racial inequality and the ways that the interactions of dominant and subordinate groups have helped shape the course of Latin American history.
HIST BC2664 Reproducing Inequalities: Families in Latin American History. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Explores changing structures and meanings of family in Latin America from colonial period to present. Particular focus on enduring tensions between "prescription" and "reality" in family forms as well as the articulation of family with hierarchies of class, caste, and color in diverse Latin American societies.
HIST BC2676 Latin America: Migration, Race, and Ethnicity. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Examines immigrations to Latin America from Europe, Africa, and Asia and the resulting multiracial societies; and emigration from Latin America and the formation of Latino communities in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere. Analyzes the socioeconomic and discursive-cognitive construction of ethno-racial identities and hierarchies, and current debates about immigration and citizenship.
HIST BC2681 Women and Gender in Latin America. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Examines the gendered roles of women and men in Latin American society from the colonial period to the present. Explores a number of themes, including the intersection of social class, race, ethnicity, and gender; the nature of patriarchy; masculinity; gender and the state; and the gendered nature of political mobilization.
HIST BC2682 Modern Latin American History. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
See W3661 Modern Latin American History (Latin American CivII). Explores major themes in Latin American history from independence to the present, with a special focus on the evolution of socio-racial inequality, political systems, and U.S.-Latin America relations. We will discuss not only "what happened" in Latin America's past, but how historians know what they know, the sources and methods they use to write history, and the theoretical frameworks they employ to interpret the past.
HIST BC2803 Gender and Empire. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Examines how women experienced empire and asks how their actions and activities produced critical shifts in the workings of colonial societies worldwide. Topics include sexuality, the colonial family, reproduction, race, and political activism.
HIST BC2840 Topics in South Asian History. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Some background in non-Western history is recommended.
Examines caste and gender as an important lens for understanding the transformations of intimate life and political culture in colonial and post-colonial India. Topics include: conjugality; popular culture violence, sex and the state; and the politics of untouchability.
HIST BC2855 Decolonization: Studies in Political Thought and Political History. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
This course will take the historical fact of decolonization in Asia and Africa as a framework for understanding the thought of anticolonial nationalism and the political struggles that preceded it, and the trajectories of postcolonial developmentalism and the contemporary new world order.
HIST BC2865 Gender and Power in China. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
This course explores the power dynamics of gender relations in Chinese history and contemporary society. Specifically, we seek to understand how a range of women--rulers, mothers, teachers, workers, prostitutes, and activists--exercised power by utilizing available resources to overcome institutional constraints.
HIST BC2978 20th Century Cities: Americas and Europe. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: None
Urban history of 20th century cities in the Americas and Europe. Examines the modern city as ecological and production system, its form and built environment, questions of housing and segregation, uneven urban development, the fragmentation of urban society and space. Course materials draw on cities in the Americas and Europe. General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC).
HIST BC2980 World Migration. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC II).
Overview of human migration from pre-history to the present. Sessions on classical Rome; Jewish diaspora; Viking, Mongol, and Arab conquests; peopling of New World, European colonization, and African slavery; 19th-century European mass migration; Chinese and Indian diasporas; resurgence of global migration in last three decades, and current debates.
HIST BC3062 Medieval Economic Life and Thought ca 1000 to 1500. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Traces the development of economic enterprises and techniques in their cultural context: agricultural markets, industry, commercial partnerships, credit, large-scale banking, insurance, and merchant culture. Examines usury and just price theory, the scholastic analysis of price and value, and the recognition of the market as a self-regulating system, centuries before Adam Smith.
HIST BC3119 Capitalism and Enlightenment. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Traces the lively debates amongst the major European Enlightenment figures about the formation of capitalism. Was the new market society ushering in an era of wealth and civilization or was it promoting corruption and exploitation? Particular emphasis on debates about commerce, luxury, greed, poverty, empire, slavery, and liberty.
HIST BC3323 The City in Europe. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preference to upper-class students. Preregistration required.
A social history of the city in Europe from early modern times; the economic, political, and intellectual forces influencing the growth of Paris, London, Vienna, and other urban centers.
HIST BC3324 Vienna and the Birth of the Modern. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Examines Vienna from the 1860s through the 1930s as the site of intellectual, political, and aesthetic responses to the challenges of modern urban life. Through readings in politics, literature, science, and philosophy, as well as through art and music, we explore three contested elements of personal identity: nationality, sexuality, and rationality.
HIST BC3327 Consumer Culture in Modern Europe. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
The development of the modern culture of consumption, with particular attention to the formation of the woman consumer. Topics include commerce and the urban landscape, changing attitudes toward shopping and spending, feminine fashion and conspicuous consumption, and the birth of advertising. Examination of novels, fashion magazines, and advertising images.
HIST BC3332 The Politics of Leisure in Modern Europe. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Transformations in the culture of leisure from the onset of industrialization to the present day. Relations between elite and popular culture and the changing relationship between the work world and the world of leisure will be among the topics considered in such settings as the department store, the pub, the cinema, and the tourist resort.
HIST BC3360 London: From Great Wen to World City. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Social and cultural history of London from the Great Fire of 1666 to the 1960s. An examination of the changing experience of urban identity through the commercial life, public spaces, and diverse inhabitants of London. Topics include 17th-century rebuilding, immigrants and emigrants, suburbs, literary culture, war, and redevelopment.
HIST BC3368 History of the Senses. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Examination of European understandings of human senses through the production and reception of art, literature, music, food, and sensual enjoyments in Britain and France. Readings include changing theories concerning the five senses; efforts to master the passions; the rise of sensibility and feeling for others; concerts and the patronage of art; the professionalization of the senses.
HIST BC3391 Senior Research Seminar. 8 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
4 points each term.
Prerequisites: Open to Barnard College History Senior Majors.
Individual guided research and writing in history and the presentation of results in seminar and in the form of the senior essay. See Requirements for the Major for details.
HIST BC3402 Selected Topics in American Women's History. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Critical examination of recent trends in modern U.S. women's history, with particular attention to the intersection of gender, sexuality, class, and race. Topics will include: state regulation of marriage and sexuality, roots of modern feminism, altered meanings of motherhood and work, and changing views of the body.
HIST BC3403 Mexican Migration in the US. 3 points.
Examines the history of Mexican migration in the United States since the end of the XIX century. The course will analyze the role played by U.S. immigration policy, the labor demands of U.S. employers, the social and economic conditions of Mexico, and the formation of Mexican immigrant communities.
HIST BC3423 Origins of the Constitution. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
An examination of the creation of the Constitution; consequences of independence; ideological foundations; the Articles of Confederation and the Critical Period; the nationalist movement and the Convention; anti-federalism and ratification; and the Bill of Rights. Readings from selected secondary and primary sources, including The Federalist.
HIST BC3444 Freedom Dreams: Struggles for Justice in the U.S. and Beyond. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC II).
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
This course will interrogate freedom as a conceptual categroy and explore how the meaning and practice of freedom has been deployed in different historical moments. We will consider how gender, race, sexuality, slavery, colonization, work and religion influenced thinking about individual and collective notions of freedom.
HIST BC3456 The Craft of Urban History. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
This seminar introduces students to the key issues and the interdisciplinary practice of modern urban history. Readings draw from the scholarly literature on 19th and 20th century cities from across Europe and the Americas. We explore economic, spatial, ethnographic, and cultural approaches to studying modern cities.
HIST BC3479 Colonial Gotham: The History of New York City, 1609-1776. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
How did a tiny Dutch outpost become a bustling colonial urban society and a major port in the British Empire? New York City's first two centuries offer more than just "pre-history" to the modern metropolis. Topics include frontier wars, slave conspiracies, religious revivals, conflicts between legitimate and contraband economies.
HIST BC3491 Making Barnard History: The Research Process. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Introduction to historical research through a range of the historical sources and methods available for a comprehensive history of Barnard College. Will include a review of the secondary literature, the compiling and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data through archival research, the conduct of an oral history interview, and the construction of a historical narrative.
HIST BC3500 Maids and Madams: Nannies, Maids, and Care Workers in a Global Economy. 4 points.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Preregistration required.
Examines construction of home as private space and gender expectations defining reproductive labor as "women's work." Emphasis on US, but also explores global patterns of race, labor and migration, shifting notions of "Rights" and citizenship as well as domestic workers' strategies of resistance in a context of labor and feminist organizing.
HIST BC3504 19TH CENTURY NYC:A SPATIAL HISTORY. 4.00 points.
History of 19th-century New York City with a focus on spatial history. We explore three major themes, including the city’s rapidly changing built environment, its social environment, and urban metabolism. Methodologically, we focus on spatial analysis, especially historical Geographic Information Systems
HIST BC3546 The Fourteenth Amendment and Its Uses. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
The role of the 14th Amendment in shaping the modern American Constitution; theories of judicial review; the rise and fall of economic due process; the creation of civil liberties; the civil rights revolution; and the end of states' rights.
HIST BC3549 A History of Violence: Bloodshed and Power in Early America. 4 points.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Coercion, war, rape, murder, and riots are common in American History from the European invasion to the Civil War. How did violent acts transform early American societies? Readings are a mix of primary sources and scholarship. First and second year students are welcome with permission.
HIST BC3580 MISSISSIPPI SEMESTER: CHILD CARE, RACE,. 4.00 points.
This upper-level seminar brings together a small group of students for intensive study about the history of welfare using Mississippi as a case study. The course involves several components: theoretical and historical reading about the evolution of the welfare state, specific analysis of welfare in Mississippi, an eight-day trip to Mississippi to map the availability of child care for welfare recipients and conduct interviews with users and providers of low-income child care centers, and post-trip analysis/digitizing of the data and writing of op-eds. The course is designed in conjunction with a local advocacy organization, Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative
HIST BC3592 Maritime History Since the Civil War. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor and prior course in 19th - 20th century European/American History. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Critical consideration of the maritime aspects of American life and culture since the Civil War: rise of American sea power; peaking of American maritime commerce and labor; historic seaports and coastal areas as recreational resources; marine science and environmentalist concerns in shaping recent American maritime policies. Seminar will make extensive use of the web for resources and communication.
HIST BC3666 Origin Stories: Race, Genealogy, and Citizenship. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Explores historical constructions of heredity, origins, and identity in the modern world in terms of family/genealogy; race/ethnicity; and citizenship. Drawing on evidence from diverse societies around the globe, considers how science, law, and culture define origins and how definitions have changed over time. Interdisciplinary focus ranges across history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies.
HIST BC3669 Inequalities:Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Latin America. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required. A general background on Latin America recommended but not absolutely required. Course limited to 15 students.
Latin America has long been characterized by extreme and enduring inequalities - of class, income, race, and ethnicity. Examines patterns of inequality from different disciplinary perspectives, both historically and in the present. Examines not only causes and solutions but how scholars have approached inequality as an intellectual problem.
HIST BC3672 Perspectives on Power in 20th Century Latin America. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Examination of recent Latin American historiography concerns with power in the context of 20th-Century Latin America. Focus on such diverse topics as the Mexican Revolution and migrant culture in Costa Rica, labor mobilization in Chile and the dirty war in Argentina. Themes include the relationship between popular culture and the state; the power of words and the power of symbols; structure and agency; the role of the law; the relationship between leaders and followers; and the intersections of gender, race, and power.
HIST BC3763 Children and Childhood in African History. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
This course focuses on the history of childhood and youth in African societies and how young people as historical agents have impacted the social histories of their communities. How did young Africans live in past times? What forces shaped understanding of their status as children or youth? How have major historical processes such as colonialism, industrialization, apartheid, and liberation, neocolonialism, and neoliberalism impacted and been impacted by children and youth in Africa? What roles have young people themselves played in the making of African histories? These questions will be explored in course readings, discussions, and students' original research projects.
HIST BC3771 Critical Perspectives on the Mobilization of Race and Ethnicity on the Continent and in the Study of Africa. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Sophomore Standing.
Critically examines the relationship between social difference and narratives and practices of power in historical and contemporary African publics. Race and Ethnicity are the key axes of social difference that will be examined. Other axes of difference such as gender, sexuality, class, caste, generation and nationality will also be examined through points of intersection with race and ethnicity.
HIST BC3788 Gender, Sexuality, and Power from Colonial to Contemporary Africa. 4 points.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
This course deals with the scholarship on gender and sexuality in African history. The central themes of the course will be changes and continuities in gender performance and the politics of gender and sexual difference within African societies, the social, political, and economic processes that have influenced gender and sexual identities, and the connections between gender, sexuality, inequality, and activism at local, national, continental, and global scales.
HIST BC3791 Lagos: From Pepper Farm to Megacity. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Examines the many Lagoses that have existed over time, in space, and in the imagination from its origins to the 21st century. This is a reading, writing, viewing, and listening intensive course. We read scholarly, policy-oriented, and popular sources on Lagos as well as screening films and audio recordings that feature Lagos in order to learn about the social, cultural, and intellectual history of this West African mega-city.
HIST BC3805 Caste, Power, and Inequality. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Draws on the experiences of life and thought of caste subalterns to explore the challenges to caste exploitation and inequality.
HIST BC3830 Bombay/Mumbai and Its Urban Imaginaries. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Explores the intersections between imagining and materiality in Bombay/Mumbai from its colonial beginnings to the present. Housing, slums, neighborhoods, streets, public culture, contestation, and riots are examined through film, architecture, fiction, history and theory. It is an introduction to the city; and to the imaginative enterprise in history.
HIST BC3861 Body Histories: The Case of Footbinding. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
The deceptively small subject of footbinding provides a window into the larger family dynamics and sexual politics in Chinese history and society. Explores the multiple representations of footbinding in European travelogues, ethnographic interviews, Chinese erotic novels and prints, and the polemics of modern and feminist critiques.
HIST BC3866 Fashion in China. 3 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
This course challenges the long-standing association of fashion with the West. We will trace the transformation of China's sartorial landscape from the premodern era into the present. Using textual, visual, and material sources, we will explore: historical representations of dress in China; the politics of dress; fashion and the body; women's labor; consumption and modernity; industry and the world-market. We will also read key texts in fashion studies to reflect critically on how we define fashion in different historical and cultural contexts. Our approach will be interdisciplinary, embracing history, anthropology, art, and literature. Field(s): EA
HIST BC3870 Gender and Migration: A Global Perspective. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC II).
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required. Sophomore Standing.
Explores migration as a gendered process and what factors account for migratory differences by gender across place and time; including labor markets, education demographic and family structure, gender ideologies, religion, government regulations and legal status, and intrinsic aspects of the migratory flow itself.
HIST BC3879 Feminist Traditions in China. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Background in Women's Studies and/or Chinese Studies helpful, but not necessary. Sophomore standing. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Explores the intellectual, social and cultural grounds for the establishment and transmission of feminist traditions in China before the 19th century. Topics include pre-modern Chinese views of the body, self, gender, and sex, among others. Our goal is to rethink such cherished concepts as voice, agency, freedom, and choice that have shaped the modern feminist movement.
HIST BC3886 Fashion. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: At least one course in a Non-U.S. Area in History, Literature, Anthropology, Film Studies or Art History. Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Investigates the cultural, material and technological conditions that facilitated the development of "fashion systems" in early modern Europe, Japan and contemporary Asian diasporic communities. In the global framework, "fashion" serves as a window into the politics of self-presentation, community formation, structure of desires, and struggles over representation.
HIST BC3901 Reacting to the Past II. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Ethics and Values.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 20. Preregistration required. Reacting I, a First-Year seminar, is recommended.
Collision of ideas in two of the following three contexts: "Rousseau, Burke and Revolution in France, 1791;" "The Struggle for Palestine: The British, Zionists, and Palestinians in the 1930s," or "India on the Eve of Independence, 1945".
HIST BC3903 Reacting to the Past III: Science and Society. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Not offered 2008-09. \nPermission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
HIST BC3904 Introduction to Historical Theory and Method. 4 points.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required. Preference to JUNIOR and SOPHOMORE Majors. Fulfills General Education Requirement (GER); Historical Studies (HIS); Reason and Value
Confronts a set of problems and questions attached to the writing of good history by examining the theories and methods historians have devised to address these problems. Its practical focus: to prepare students to tackle the senior thesis and other major research projects. The reading matter for this course crosses cultures, time periods, and historical genres. Fulfills all concentrations within the history major.
HIST BC3905 Capitalism, Colonialism, and Culture: A Global History. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of Instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
From Indian Ocean worlds of the seventeenth century, to Atlantic world slavery, to the establishment of colonies in Asia and Africa during the nineteenth century, colonization was critical to the development of metropolitan ideas regarding politics and personhood. This seminar will examine these histories, along with emerging constructions of race and gender, as precursors to debates about human rights and humanitarianism in the twentieth century.
HIST BC3907 Edible Conflicts: A History of Food. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Conflicts emerging from the production and consumption of food from prehistoric to modern times. Settled agriculture and the significance of geography and social stratification in determining food consumption; ideologies of social status and "taste" in Europe; impact of knowledge about health and hygiene on European dietary habits; drink in diets and social life; dining out in European culture; role of transport and technology in consumer culture; food and the welfare state; mass production and globalization of food.
HIST BC3909 History of Environmental Thinking. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preference to upper-class students. Preregistration required.
A consideration of how experiences of the natural world and the meaning of "nature" have changed over the past three centuries. Follows the development of the environmental sciences and the origins of environmentalism. The geographical focus will be Europe, with attention to the global context of imperialism.
HIST BC3910 Global Politics of Reproduction: Culture, Politics, and History. 4 points.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Comparative, cross-cultural examination of social organization and historical construction of human reproduction, with emphasis on 20th century. Topics include role of states and local and transnational "stratification" of reproduction by race, class, and citizenship; eugenics; population politics; birth control; kinship as social and biological relationship; maternity; paternity; new reproductive technologies.
HIST BC3953 Anarchism: A Global History. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Explores the historical development of anarchism as a working-class, youth, and artistic movement in Europe, North and Latin America, the Middle East, India, Japan, and China from the 1850s to the present. Examines anarchism both as an ideology and as a set of cultural and political practices.
HIST BC3973 20th Century Cities: Americas and Europe. 4 points.
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Urban history of 20th century cities in the Americas and Europe. Examines the modern city as ecological and production system, its form and built environment, questions of housing and segregation, uneven urban development, the fragmentation of urban society and space. Course materials drawing on cities in the Americas and Europe.
HIST BC3999 Transnational Feminism. 4 points.
BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Examines the theory and practice of transnational feminist activism. We will explore the ways in which race, class, culture and nationality facilitate alliances among women, reproduce hierarchical power relations, and help reconstruct gender. The course covers a number of topics: the African Diaspora, suffrage, labor, development policy, colonialism, trafficking, consumerism, Islam, and the criminal justice system.