Course Listings

HIST BC1062 INTRO TO LATER MIDDLE AGES. 4.00 points.

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 EUROPEAN HISTORY 1500-1789. 4.00 points.

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 EUROPEAN HISTORY SINCE 1789. 4.00 points.

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 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1865. 4.00 points.

Themes include Native and colonial cultures and politics, the evolution of American political and economic institutions, relationships between religious and social movements, and connecting ideologies of race and gender with larger processes such as enslavement, dispossession, and industrialization

HIST BC1402 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN HISTORY SINCE 1865. 4.00 points.

Examines the major social, political, economic, and intellectual transformations from the 1860s until the present, including industrialization and urbanization, federal and state power, immigration, the welfare state, global relations, and social movements

HIST BC1760 INTRO AFRICAN HIST:1700-PRESNT. 4.00 points.

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 MEDVL INTELLEC LIFE 1050-1400. 3.00 points.

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 Women, Race, and Class. 3.00 points.

Using an intersectional framework, this course traces changing notions of gender and sexuality in the 20th century United States. The course examines how womanhood and feminism were shaped by class, race, ethnicity, culture, sexuality and immigration status. We will explore how the construction of American nationalism and imperialism, as well as the development of citizenship rights, social policy, and labor organizing, were deeply influenced by the politics of gender. Special emphasis will be placed on organizing and women's activism

HIST BC2321 COLONIAL ENCOUNTERS. 3.00 points.

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 BC2366 CLIMATE ＆ HISTORY: INTERSECTING SCIENCE, ENVIRONMENT ＆ SOCIETY. 3.00 points.

Climate change poses an imminent threat to the future of humanity and is a crucial feature of the Anthropocene, namely the age of anthropogenic transformations of the Earth’s environments on a global scale. How did we get here? History is fundamental to answer this question. This course examines the relationship between climate, scientific knowledge, and human societies. The class will first survey the role of climate as an historical actor of global history, rather than as the backdrop of political, social and economic events. In the second part of the course, we will examine the history of weather and climate science, as well as climate change denialism. The class offers a wide range of case studies around the world of the tight relationship between climate and history. The instructor encourages all majors to register from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences

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 BC2375 Fascism in European History. 3.00 points.

What was Fascism? What kind of appeal did authoritarianism and dictatorship have in interwar Europe? How did the Fascist “New Order” challenge liberal democracies and why did it fail in World War II? What was the common denominator of Fascist movements across Europe, and in particular in Mussolini’s Italy, Salazar’s Portugal, Franco’s Spain, culminating in Nazi Germany? This class examines the history of Fascism as an ideology, constellation of political movements, and authoritarian regimes that aimed at controlling the modernization of European societies in the interwar period. Thus, the course focuses in particular on the relationship between politics, science and society to investigate how Fascism envisioned the modernity of new technologies, new social norms, and new political norms. The class will also explore Fascism’s imperialist goals, such as the calls for national renewal, the engineering of a new race, and the creation of a new world order

HIST BC2380 HISTORY OF FOOD IN EUROPE. 3.00 points.

Prerequisites: Previous course in history strongly recommended.
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 PLTCS CRIME＆ POLICING IN U.S.. 3.00 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 BC2405 Spatial History of 19th-C NYC. 4.50 points.

Spatial history of New York City in the 19th century. Students explore key topics in New York City spatial history in lectures, and learn historical-GIS skills in a co-requisite lab (instead of a discussion section). They will use newly constructed GIS data from the Mapping Historical New York project, and conduct spatial history assignments

HIST BC2425 Spatial History of 19th-C NYC Lab. 0.00 points.

This is the co-requisite lab for HIST BC2405 Spatial history of New York City in the 19th century. Students explore key topics in New York City spatial history in lectures, and learn historical-GIS skills in this lab. They will use newly constructed GIS data from the Mapping Historical New York project, and conduct spatial history assignments

HIST BC2402 Science and Society: From Galileo to Climate Change. 3.00 points.

This course explores the intersection of scientific ideas and society in three historical contexts: the trial of Galileo by the Roman Inquisition in early 17th-century Europe, which examined the validity and implications of Galileo’s ideas on motion physics and astronomy; 2) the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which sought an international accord to limit carbon emissions; and 3) the problem of obesity, diet, and cholesterol as debated by the CDC, USDA, and the U.S. Congress during the 1990s. Because this course will be offered in an online format, it uses multiple active-learning strategies to promote student interaction and engagement

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 UNITED STATES 1940-1975. 3.00 points.

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 AFRICAN-AMERCN HISTORY. 3.00 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 BC2477 RACE, CLASS, AND POLITICS IN NEW YORK CITY. 3.00 points.

The objectives of this course are: to gain familiarity with the major themes of New York History since 1898, to learn to think historically, and to learn to think and write critically about arguments that underlie historical interpretation. We will also examine and analyze the systems and structures--of race and class--that have shaped life in New York, while seeking to understand how social groups have pursued change inside and outside of such structures

HIST BC2482 REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA, 1763-1. 3.00 points.

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 BC2500 Poverty, Race, and Gender. 3 points.

This course will begin with a theoretical overview of the relationship between race, gender and poverty.  We will look at definitions and sources of economic inequality, emerging discourses of poverty in the early 20^th century, and changing perceptions of “the poor” over the course of American history. We will examine race and gender segmentation in the labor market, racial and gender conflict in the union movement, ideological foundations of the welfare state, cultural constructions of single motherhood, political debates about the “underclass,” as well as contemporary campaigns to alleviate poverty.  Our goal is to think critically about discourses of poverty and welfare as well as antipoverty, labor and feminist organizing.

HIST BC2549 EARLY AMERICA TO 1763. 3.00 points.

This course examines the three critical centuries from 1492 to 1763 that transformed North America from a diverse landscape teeming with hundreds of farming and hunting societies into a partly-colonized land where just three systems empires held sway. Major themes include contrasting faiths, power relationships, and cultural exchanges among various Native, European, and African peoples.This course examines the three critical centuries from 1492 to 1763 that transformed North America from a diverse landscape teeming with hundreds of farming and hunting societies into a partly-colonized land where just three systems empires held sway. Major themes include contrasting faiths, power relationships, and cultural exchanges among various Native, European, and African peoples

HIST BC2567 Women, Race, and Class. 3.00 points.

Using an intersectional framework, this course traces changing notions of gender and sexuality in the 20th century United States. The course examines how womanhood and feminism were shaped by class, race, ethnicity, culture, sexuality and immigration status. We will explore how the construction of American nationalism and imperialism, as well as the development of citizenship rights, social policy, and labor organizing, were deeply influenced by the politics of gender. Special emphasis will be placed on organizing and women's activism

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 LATIN AMERICAN CIVILIZATION II. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

This course explores major themes in Latin American history from the independence period (ca 1810) to the present. We will hone in on Latin Americas “chronic” problems of social inequality, political polarization, authoritarianism, incomplete democratization, and troubled memory politics. The course covers economic, social, and cultural histories, and gives special weight to the transnational aspects of Latin American ideological struggles – from its dependency on Western capital to its ideological “inner Cold War” – and the way they influenced the subaltern strata of society. The section discussions are a crucial component of the course, and will focus on assigned historiography. While the lecture centers on constructing a cogent meta-narrative for Latin America’s modern era, in the section we will explore not only the historical “facts,” but will instead ask: how do historians know what they know about the past? What sources and analytic methods do they use to write history? And what ethical dilemmas do they confront when narrating politically-sensitive topics?

HIST BC2664 FAMILIES LATIN AMERICA. 3.00 points.

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. 3.00 points.

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. 3.00 points.

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. 3.00 points.

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. 3.00 points.

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 BC3130 Failed Empire: Sweden in the Early Modern World. 4.00 points.

The geopolitical map of the world was in flux during the seventeenth century. As Spain was losing its control over Europe and the Atlantic world, a number of ambitious small states on the periphery of Europe set their sights on achieving imperial glory. By mid-century, The Dutch Republic, England, and Sweden were the primary contenders. Each nation developed a sense of manifest destiny and dedicated scarce resources to establish an imperial presence, from which they could conquer the world. While the former two nations succeeded in creating vast empires, the latter enjoyed only a brief stint as a world power. This failure had nothing to do with a lack of effort or moral considerations. This course explores Sweden’s imperial efforts and investigates its failures. It examines how military, political, religious, commercial, and scientific endeavors contributed to Sweden’s quest for riches and prominence. The seminar begins by discussing Sweden’s sudden military success during the Thirty Years’ War and the consequent formation of a Baltic empire. We next investigate Sweden’s presence on the west coast of Africa, where it built fort Carlsborg, and the east coast of North America, where it founded New Sweden. While these ventures failed relatively rapidly, Sweden continued to pursue a colonial presence through trade and the acquisition in 1784 of St. Barthélemy, a colony from which they engaged in trade, including the slave trade

HIST BC3177 Capitalism and Climate Change. 4.00 points.

Current patterns of economic growth are no longer environmentally sustainable. Global industrialization and the associated transference of carbon from the ground to the air are leading to a rapid exhaustion of resources and a warming of the planet. These changes have triggered a set of dangerous climactic transformations that are likely to cause massive ecological disruptions and disturbances of food production systems. These changes, in turn, might have a profound impact on poverty, migration, and geopolitics. To better understand how we have arrived at the present predicament, this seminar explores the history of how social and economic theorists have conceptualized the interaction between the economy and nature. The focus will be on the concept of scarcity as a way of understanding the relationship between economic growth and environmental sustainability. The course begins in the Renaissance and traces the evolution of the nature/economy nexus to the present

HIST BC3301 Science and Fascism. 4.00 points.

In 1942, the American sociologist Robert Merton described modern science as an intellectual enterprise that can produce truthful and factual knowledge only if inspired by democratic values. Yet such concept contrasted starkly with the reality of science in the interwar period and World War II, at the peak of the clash between liberal democracies and fascist dictatorships. What was the role of science in the global conflict between liberalism and the fascist ‘New Order’? What did science and technology look like under fascism? This class examines the relationship between science and fascism in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Franco’s Spain, and Salazar’s Portugal. During the Great War (1914-1918), science and technology were enlisted as critical assets for the war effort and the international scientific community was shattered across national lines. The Great War proved the importance of the scientific organization of society and state-controlled scientific advancement. Fascism developed this lesson in the interwar period to pursue its nationalist and imperialist goal: the creation of a new world order. Thus, the seminar explores the entanglement between science, technology and fascism by examining a wide range of disciplines, such as physics, medicine, eugenics, statistics, demography, agronomy, and engineering. Focusing in particular on fascism’s central themes of race and empire, the course examines the relationship between state power and scientific expertise, the persecution of Jewish scientists in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and scientists’ critical competition in World War II ahead of the creation of the atomic bomb, which ushered in the new era of the Cold War

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 MOD EUROPE. 3.00 points.

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:'GREAT WEN'TO WRLD CIT. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
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 HIST OF SENSES ENG ＆ FRANCE. 4.00 points.

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 BC3370 Science, Environment and European Colonialism. 4.00 points.

Science and colonialism were driving forces in the making of the global and interconnected world where we live today. The history of “Western science” is deeply intertwined with Europe’s encounter with the world, as colonialism provided the laboratory for disciplines such as geography, natural history, medicine, and anthropology. The challenges and opportunities of new natural environments shaped the way Europeans explored, analyzed, and studied nature and society. The circulation of specimens, data, and scientific expertise made colonial governance possible. This course will introduce students to major themes regarding the relationship between science, colonial environments and European empires. Students will develop reading skills and will explore key topics in early and late modern European history, the history of science, and environmental history

HIST BC3391 RESEARCH SEMINAR IN HISTORY I. 4.00 points.

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 BC3392 RESRCH SEMINAR IN HISTORY II. 4.00 points.

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 BC3475 Covid-19 and Care Work: An Oral History Approach. 4.00 points.

In this seminar students will conduct oral histories of essential service and care workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis, develop a conceptual and theoretical framework for service and care work, and be trained in the art of oral history. They will interrogate the archive, discuss oral history as a methodological approach and historical source and will be trained in the technical skills of preparing a consent form, formulating questions, using recording equipment, and transcribing interviews. We will be collaborating with the Columbia Oral History Archive, the Columbia M.A. Oral History Program and IMATS. This course builds upon the instructor’s research and writing about care and domestic work. Students will examine the gendered and racialized history of the expanding service sector in the 20th century, interrogating the language of “care work” and what Arlie Hochschild called the emotional labor that is central to it. Students will analyze how the notion of care has become a form of coercion making it difficult for workers to establish boundaries or make demands

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. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
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 BC3495 Representing the Past. 4.00 points.

Examines the renderings of the past as conveyed by historians and by those seeking to "represent" the past, such as novelists, playwrights, filmmakers, ritualists, and artists. Analyzes the theoretical, philosophical, and evidentiary problems and possibilities inherent in various modes of historical narration and representation

HIST BC3500 Maids and Madams: Nannies, Maids, and Care Workers in a Global Economy. 4 points.

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 BC3505 Pandemic Tales: Curated Conversations with Migrant Workers. 4.00 points.

Pandemic Tales: Curated Conversations with Migrant Workers will work collaboratively with a New York City-based organization, Damayan. The course will chronicle the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on economically vulnerable Black and Brown communities. We will read about the history of Filipino migrant workers and be trained in the interview process. Our intention is to uplift the stories of undocumented migrant workers’ battles around housing and food insecurity and the collective efforts to provide support and care. Students will work with Damayan leaders in preparation for speaking to members who will share their stories of pain, hardship and resilience during the pandemic. From these stories we will work with Damayan to curate conversations about the impact of the pandemic on Filipino migrants and produce a webpage or podcast for Damayan’s use. This is a Barnard Engages course, supported by the Mellon Foundation, with the intention of fostering long-term relationships between Barnard college faculty and students and New York City-based community organizations addressing issues of poverty, immigration or labor rights. We will partner with Damayan Migrant Workers Association, an organization I have worked with for many years. A worker-run and directed organization, Damayan has been at the forefront of the effort to rescue and advocate on behalf of Filipino migrant workers. They were also involved in providing support for needy families when the pandemic hit. Our class project will be designed in collaboration with Damayan to assist them in their work. They have asked us to uplift the voices of the people severely impacted by the pandemic by curating conversations. There will be a joint public launch of our final product, which could be a webpage or a podcast. Because this is a community-directed project, students should be prepared for changes to the syllabus and end product. Much of the work for this course will be collaborative. Students will be working in teams and I will be working alongside students to produce the final product. In addition to the scheduled class times, there will be other scheduled meetings and/or workshops

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 FORCE＆POWER IN EARLY AMERICA. 4.00 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 BC3598 Black Left Feminism and Anti-Colonial Liberation Move. 4.00 points.

This course examines the theory and practice of transnational Black feminism in a context of radical anti-colonial movements. It examines the US Black Power movement, struggles for independence in the Caribbean, the British Black women’s movement, the anti apartheid movement, Black women’s migrant labor, and Black women’s struggle for independence in the Pacific, to consider how revolutionary moments nurtured feminist organizing and how Black feminists articulated and put into practice anti-colonialism, national independence, and radical transformation. We will examine the relationship between Black feminism, Marxism, grassroots organizing, and movement building, nationally and transnationally, from the 1940s-1980s

HIST BC3599 REMEMBERING SLAVERY: CRITIQUING MODERN REPRESENTATIONS OF THE PECULIAR INSTITUTION. 4.00 points.

The enslavement of people of African descent signifies a crucial historical and cultural marker not only for African-Americans but also for Americans in general. We will interrogate how and why images of slavery continue to be invoked within the American sociocultural landscape (e.g., in films, documentaries, historical novels, and science fiction)

HIST BC3658 JEWISH TALES FROM FOUR CITIES: THE IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE IN NEW YORK, BUENOS AIRES, PARIS, AND LONDON. 4.00 points.

Examines Jewish immigrant experience in New York, Buenos Aires, London, and Paris, c.1880-1930. Focus on the Old World origins of the arrivals, the formation of neighborhoods, ethnic institutions, family, work, cultural expressions, and relations with the rest of society. Based on readings and primary research (newspapers, letters, songs, photographs, etc.)

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 BC3670 SEEKING ASYLUM. 4.00 points.

Note: This course meets as a lecture but it is a seminar.

Prerequisites: NA This seminar explores the roots of and responses to the contemporary refugee crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. We examine the historical factors that are propelling people, including families and unaccompanied minors, to flee the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala); the law and politics of asylum that those seeking refuge must negotiate in the U.S.; and the burgeoning system of immigration incarceration that detains ever-greater numbers of non-citizens. The course is organized around a collaboration with the Dilley Pro Bono Project, an organization that provides legal counsel to detainees at the countrys largest immigration detention prison, in Dilley, Texas

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 BC3692 ANARCHISM: A GLOBAL HISTORY. 4.00 points.

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 BC3761 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH IN AFRICAN HISTORY. 4.00 points.

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 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 BC3770 African Communities in New York, 1900 to the Present. 4.00 points.

This class explores the history of voluntary migrations from Africa to the United States over the course of the 20th century. This course is designed as a historical research seminar that is open to students with prior coursework in African Studies, Africana Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, or History. Thematically the course dwells at a point of intersection between African history, Black History, and Immigration History. As part of the Barnard Engages curriculum, this class is collaboratively designed with the Harlem-based non-profit organization, African Communities Together. The aim of this course is to support the mission of ACT by producing a historically grounded digital advocacy project. The mission of ACT is to empower immigrants from Africa and their families to integrate socially, advance economically, and engage civically. To advance this mission, ACT must confront the reality that in the current political moment new legal, political, and social barriers are being erected to the integration, advancement, and engagement of African immigrants on a daily basis. As immigrants, as Black people, as Africans, and often as women, low-income people, LGBT people, and Muslims, African immigrants experience multiple intersecting forms of marginalization. Now more than ever, it is critical that African immigrants be empowered to tell their own stories—not just of persecution and suffering, but of resilience and resistance

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 BC3776 MAPPING AFR MIGRATIONS. 4.00 points.

*In this course, we will be studying African migrations to Africa, and within the continent, in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will be reading scholarly works on spatial history, African migrations, and ‘Back-to-Africa’ movements. *We will also be analyzing primary sources on African migrations, which shall form the bases of a series of digital scholarship workshops. These workshops will cover mapping with ArcGIS, translating qualitative knowledge into quantitative data, and effective digital storytelling

HIST BC3788 GENDER,SEXUALITY,POWER,AFRICA. 4.00 points.

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 the Pepperfarm to the Megacity. 4.00 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Lagos: The City Is… the unofficial capital of Nigeria the go-slow capital of the world Rem Koolhaas’ planning mystery George Packer’s mega-city nightmare Above all, as social scientist Margaret Peil once said, Lagos: The city is the people. At last count, over 15 million people to be (in)exact which makes Lagos the second most densely populated city in Africa. How does a city like Lagos come into being? What are its origins? What is its history in regional, continental, and global context? How does it ‘work’ and what work does it do for our understandings of cities, urbanization, urbanism, colonialism, globalization, trans-nationalism, and the spatial factor in Africanist historical analyses? This course examines the many Lagoses that have existed over time, in space, and in the imagination from the city’s origins to the 21st century. This is a reading, writing, viewing, and listening intensive course. We will be reading 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.

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 BC3823 RACE/RACISM/ANTIRACISM: STUDIES IN GLOBAL THOUGHT. 4.00 points.

RACE/RACISM/ANTIRACISM: STUDIES IN GLOBAL THOUGHT Recent protests against racial violence erupting across the United States have demanded that the United States address systemic injustice entrenched in its national history. The Black Lives Matter movement has extended still further, inciting communities across the globe to raise their voices against discrimination and inequality. Rather than viewing the United States— and the north Atlantic, more generally— through an exceptionalist lens, this seminar draws on the strong transnational resonance of the Black Lives Matter movement and the compelling responses of global communities across distinct demographics and colonial histories to decenter the historical origins of race thinking and provincialize its conceptual centrality as a first step in understanding its reach and relevance as a global signifier of “difference” today. How might we develop critical studies of race and racism that are truly global and extend beyond the historical experience of the North Atlantic, and North America in particular? Might we consider the concept history of race, commonly associated with the Atlantic World and plantation slavery as a form of historical difference proximate to other practices of social hierarchy and distinction across the modern world? How can scholarship that addresses questions of black vitality, fugitivity and Afropessimism engage productively and rigorously with questions of colonial servitude and postcolonial sovereignty that emanates from anticaste thought, ideas of Islamic universality, Pan-Africanism, or heterodox Marxisms? An exercise in comparative thinking, this seminar will function as an interstitial home for intellectual engagements in both the Global South and North, excavating linkages between injustices perpetrated through divisions of race, caste, and minority status, as well as the conceptual innovations born from struggles against them. We are explicitly focused on the relationship between worldmaking and concept formation. Questions of historical comparison and conceptual convergence are important. So, too the forms of sociopolitical solidarity and political utopias that have arisen as a consequence of struggles against enslavement and imperialism. Every seminar session will open with a twenty-minute discussion about political and social historical contexts. However, this is a course focused on the close and careful reading of ideas and concepts in a manner similar to courses in the history of ideas and/or political thought

HIST BC3825 RACE, CASTE, AND THE UNIVERSITY: B. R. AMBEDKAR AT COLUMBIA. 4.00 points.

B. R. Ambedkar is arguably one of Columbia University’s most illustrious alumni, and a democratic thinker and constitutional lawyer who had enormous impact in shaping India, the world’s largest democracy. As is well known, Ambedkar came to Columbia University in July 1913 to start a doctoral program in Political Science. He graduated in 1915 with a Masters degree, and got his doctorate from Columbia in 1927 after having studied with some of the great figures of interwar American thought including Edwin Seligman, James Shotwell, Harvey Robinson, and John Dewey. This course follows the model of the Columbia University and Slavery course and draws extensively on the relevant holdings and resources of Columbia’s RBML, [Rare Books and Manuscript Library] Burke Library (Union Theological Seminar), and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture among others to explore a set of relatively understudied links between Ambedkar, Columbia University, and the intellectual history of the interwar period. Themes include: the development of the disciplines at Columbia University and their relationship to new paradigms of social scientific study; the role of historical comparison between caste and race in producing new models of scholarship and political solidarity; links between figures such as Ambedkar, Lala Lajpat Rai, W. E. B. Du Bois and others who were shaped by the distinctive public and political culture of New York City, and more. This is a hybrid course which aims to create a finding aid for B. R. Ambedkar that traverses RBML private papers. Students will engage in a number of activities towards that purpose. They will attend multiple instructional sessions at the RBML to train students in using archives; they will make public presentations on their topics, which will be archived in video form; and stuents will produce digital essays on a variety of themes and topics related to the course. Students will work collaboratively in small groups and undertake focused archival research. This seminar inaugurates an on-going, multiyear effort to grapple with globalizing the reach and relevance of B. R. Ambedkar and to share our findings with the Columbia community and beyond. Working independently, students will define and pursue individual research projects. Working together, the class will create digital visualizations of these projects

HIST BC3830 BOMBAY/MUMBAI AND ITS URBAN IMAGINARIES. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
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 BC3842 Subaltern Urbanism: South Asia. 3.00 points.

This course asks how spatial politics intersect with economic inequality and social difference. The course draws on the convergent yet distinct urban trajectories of cities in the global South (Bangalore; Bombay/Mumbai; Lahore; New Delhi; Dhaka) as an enabling location for exploring broader questions of comparative and global urbanism from an explicitly South-South perspective. That is, we ask how distinct yet connected urban forms might force us to alter our approaches to the city; approaches that are largely drawn from modular Euro-American paradigms for understanding urbanization as coeval with modernity, as well as industrialization. We do so in this seminar by focusing on people and practices—subaltern urbanity (and on those whose labor produced the modern city), as well as on spatial orders—the informal or unintended city—to ask the question: “what makes and unmakes a city?” How might questions about built form, industrialization, capital flows, and social life and inhabitation that takes the perspective of “city theory from the Global South” shed new understanding on the history of the city, the extranational frames of colonial modernity, and the ongoing impact of neoliberalism? How can we rethink critical concepts in urban studies (precarity, spatial segregation, subalternity, economies of eviction, urban dispossession) through embedded studies of locality and lifemaking?

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 BC3864 Feast/Famine: Food Environment China. 4.00 points.

Food has always been a central concern in Chinese politics, religion, medicine, and culture. This course takes an ecological approach to the provision, preparation, and consumption of food in Chinese history, from the Neolithic times to the post-socialist era today. In examining Chinese approaches to soil fertility, healthy diet, and culinary pleasures, we explore alternative food systems for a more sustainable future

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＆ MIGRATN:GLOBAL PERSPC. 4.00 points.

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 INTRO HISTRCAL THEORY＆ METHOD. 4.00 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.

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 INDEPENDENT STUDY. 1.00-4.00 points.

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