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Course Criteria
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1.00 Credits
This is the first of a two-semester survey in European intellectual history. The fall semester will examine some of the major texts in Western thought from ancient Greece to the Renaissance. Emphasis will be placed on close analysis of the texts.
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1.00 Credits
Reversals of fortune have defined Russian history perhaps more so than for any other nation. Though the Russian Empire began the 19th century as an emerging European superpower that defeated Napoleon, it ended that same century as a backward state plagued by political, economic, and social strife that ultimately brought the Romanov dynasty to a revolutionary collapse. A similar trajectory describes the "short" Soviet 20th century, that began with the promise of a qualitatively new political order that sought to transform social relations and human nature and concluded with a spectacular implosion that some heralded as the end of history itself. This course will follow the story of how the Soviet Union emerged from the ruins of the Russian imperial order to become the world's first socialist society, the most serious challenge to imperialism, liberalism, and capitalism, and, arguably, modernity's greatest political experiment. We will cover the following topics: the emergence and fate of Russian national identity; the origins and dynamics of Russia's revolutions; the political, economic, and cultural challenges of the Soviet project; the role of the Party and ideology in politics and everyday life; the nationalities question and the challenges of governing a socialist empire; Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War and the rebirth of the nation (and nationalism); the emergence of the Soviet Union as a Cold War superpower; the country's historic attempts to reform (and the frequent failure of these attempts); and the dynamics of the system's collapse.
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1.00 Credits
This survey course explores the origins and developments of classical Chinese traditions from ancient times to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The goal is not comprehensive coverage of the vast number of events that shaped the evolution of the imperial state. Rather, students are exposed to key ideas and social practices that defined the historical consciousness of the Chinese people and that continue to give Chinese culture its unique values today. Confucius (551-479 BC) was the first of many Chinese thinkers to place historical consciousness at the heart of individual and cultural identity. Speaking in the first person (a rare event), he said in the ANALECTS: "I was not born knowing the past. I love the ancients and seek earnestly to know their way." The humility and the ambition of this statement will guide our inquiries in this survey class as we examine closely key texts and major thinkers who sought, quite literally, to live in the light of the past. Love of ancients is not a common theme in progress-oriented Western historiography. Students will, therefore, be challenged to examine their own cultural assumptions as we delve more deeply into Chinese history. Here, truth is not something to be scorned, theorized away, or assumed to coincide with current social practice. Confucius' aim of seeking earnestly for historical truth is a goal for students in this class as well.
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1.00 Credits
This course surveys the historical development of Islamic civilization from the time of the Prophet Muhammad to the rise of the "gunpowder empires" of the 16th century. Special emphasis will be placed on the unique cultural forms this civilization developed and the emergence of Islam as a world religion. This course primarily deals with the political, intellectual, and social history of the Muslim peoples of the Middle East and only secondarily with Islam as a system of religious belief.
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1.00 Credits
This course surveys the history, culture, and religion of the contemporary Middle East. Emphasis is on the historical roots of current problems. These include the Arab-Israeli conflict, Westernization versus Islam, U.S. involvement in the region, and the Sunni-Shia divide within Islam. In addition, issues of social change and cultural production in times of trouble will be discussed.
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1.00 Credits
This course will introduce students to important themes in the history of the United States during the "long" 19th century, from the early Republic to the World War I. These include continental expansion and U.S. imperialism, the creation of new markets, the development of agriculture and industry, the failure of slavery, and new currents of immigration. We will examine how enslaved and free people of many geographic origins contested the scope and significance of democracy, community, and nationhood through diverse expressions of support and dissent, protest, and reform.
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1.00 Credits
This course presents a broad survey of Latin American history in the post-independence period. After a brief overview of the colonial era and the wars of independence, the course explores the abolition era, neocolonialism, development of social and cultural pluralism, and 20th-century political movements, and contemporary crises. The required readings introduce students to major theoretical approaches to the history of the region; primary documents, maps, video clips, and drawings will be discussed in class.
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1.00 Credits
This course explores Jewish history from the 16th-century through in the modern era, reaching toward modern American and Israeli history and culture. The modern Jewish experience has often been characterized as an era of increasing participation of Jews in the civil society and was juxtaposed to the premodern era of the ghettos. This course will challenge these dichotomous stereotypes and introduce students to the complexity of the Jews' experience, their active involvement in the political and cultural processes that were taking place in the non-Jewish environment during both premodern and modern periods. As in HIST247, we will see Jews as a part of the social and cultural fabric rather than an "alienated minority" whose history is separate from that of their surroundings. We'll explore the transformations from what some called a traditional society defined by religious identities into a modern society of complex religious, ethnic, cultural, and political identities. We'll look at the acceptance of and resistance to the new ideas brought by the Enlightenment and explore the consequences of secularization of the society, including the rise of modern anti-Semitism; Jewish and non-Jewish nationalism; Zionism; questions of women, gender, and sexuality; migrations; and Jewish-Arab relations before and after the establishment of the State of Israel, and modern Jewish culture in America.
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1.00 Credits
This survey course seeks to give a firm historical grounding in the processes that led to Hitler's rise to power, the nature of the National Socialist regime, and the origins and implementation of policies of aggression and genocide. The basic premise of this course is that National Socialism was from the outset driven by a belligerent and genocidal logic. The course will therefore critically analyze the racial, eugenic, and geopolitical ideology of National Socialism and the policies of discrimination, conquest, economic exploitation, and extermination that followed from it. At the same time, the role of structural factors in explaining these outcomes will also be explored in great depth. We will analyze how German society was shaped by Nazism, considering conformity and opposition in the lives of ordinary people in both peacetime and war. The course seeks to impart an awareness of the complex of factors that produced a regime of unprecedented destructiveness and horror, and it aims to develop a critical understanding of the ongoing problems of interpretation that accompany its history. As important, we will consider the continued relevance of the legacy of National Socialism and the Holocaust to our evaluation of national and international affairs in the 21st century.
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1.00 Credits
Christianity is now the religion of 1.6 billion people, stronger in southern countries than in its long-time homeland of Europe. This course investigates the ways Christianity shaped, and was shaped by, contact with different world cultures and the ways the globalization of Christianity interacted with other global phenomena like imperialism, nationalism, and modernization. The focus will be on Catholicism and Protestantism in Asia and Africa, but students interested in other branches of Christianity, or other areas of the world, will be encouraged to write papers on the area of their interest.
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