Summer 2023 Courses
Course Descriptions
115.02, 30196 ONLINE, Mikati - Summer II (July 10 - August 04)
Intertwined Histories: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This course presents an historical survey of pre-modern civilizations and cultures through a study of the role played by religion in the rise and shaping of cultures and societies. The primary focus will be on the historical environment and central traditions of three of the main world religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam and their near eastern environment from their inception to circa 1500 C.E.
115.03, 30095 MTWRF 8:30-12:00, Boucher - Maymester (May 15 - May 31)
Pre-Modern History: Imagining and Describing the Edge of the Known World. This course will survey the history of various societies from Antiquity to 1492. While the material will help you develop a basic understanding of the pre-modern world and its history, the course will focus on the following question: How did various societies at the time imagine and describe regions located on their geographic periphery? As this class will show, pre-modern descriptions of distant lands often reveal more about the societies that produced them than about the places they intended to describe. Whether they were Ancient Greek poets or Medieval Irish monks, for instance, authors injected in these descriptions the values, anxieties, and fantasies that were common in their cultures of origin. As such, these texts provide revealing insights about past societies and the only means to appreciate them is to understand them in the historical and cultural context in which they were written.
115.04, 30101 ONLINE, Mikati - Summer I (June 05 - June 30)
Intertwined Histories: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This course presents an historical survey of pre-modern civilizations and cultures through a study of the role played by religion in the rise and shaping of cultures and societies. The primary focus will be on the historical environment and central traditions of three of the main world religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam and their near eastern environment from their inception to circa 1500 C.E.
116.02, 30004 ONLINE, Ingram - Summer I (June 05 - June 30)
The U.S. and the World in the American Century. Why did American automaker Henry Ford spend millions to build a town in the Amazon rainforest? How did the U.S. and the Soviet Union go from being allies to enemies in the span of just a few short years? What was African decolonization and how can it help us to better understand the U.S.'s role in the Vietnam War? Each week in this course, we will tackle questions like these. Using lectures, books, archival materials, and active discussion sessions, we'll learn to think critically about the U.S.'s role as a global power from the late nineteenth century to the present.
116.03, 30114 ONLINE, Steere-Williams - Summer I (June 05 - June 30)
Epidemics and Revolutions: Disease in Modern Society. In this introductory course we will ask the fascinating historical question of how the social experience and cultural understanding of disease has shaped modern global history. We will explore how both chronic and infectious diseases have played a fundamental role in the development of modern modes of governance, public health, modern technologies, and a global economy. We will also examine how disease illuminates social attitudes about class, race, and colonialism in the period from the Enlightenment to the present. Using diverse examples such as cholera outbreaks in Europe, bubonic plague in India, syphilis in Africa, yellow fever in North America and the Caribbean, and HIV/AIDS across the globe, this course demonstrates that the historical analysis of disease is integral to understanding both ‘modernity’ and ‘globalization’.
116.04, 30139 ONLINE, Ingram - Summer II (July 10 - August 04)
The U.S. and the World in the American Century. Why did American automaker Henry Ford spend millions to build a town in the Amazon rainforest? How did the U.S. and the Soviet Union go from being allies to enemies in the span of just a few short years? What was African decolonization and how can it help us to better understand the U.S.'s role in the Vietnam War? Each week in this course, we will tackle questions like these. Using lectures, books, archival materials, and active discussion sessions, we'll learn to think critically about the U.S.'s role as a global power from the late nineteenth century to the present.
116.05, 30392 ONLINE, Ingram - Maymester (May 15 - May 31)
The U.S. and the World in the American Century. Why did American automaker Henry Ford spend millions to build a town in the Amazon rainforest? How did the U.S. and the Soviet Union go from being allies to enemies in the span of just a few short years? What was African decolonization and how can it help us to better understand the U.S.'s role in the Vietnam War? Each week in this course, we will tackle questions like these. Using lectures, books, archival materials, and active discussion sessions, we'll learn to think critically about the U.S.'s role as a global power from the late nineteenth century to the present.
118.07, 30785 MTWRF 8:30-12:00 & ONLINE, Slater - Summer II (July 10 - August 04)
Gender, Race, and Sexualities in the Rise of Western Civilization, 1750-Present. Over the course of the semester we as a class will be discussing the role of women, gender, race, and sexualities in relation to the rise of the Enlightenment and ideas of equity. The focus will be on gendered and racial liberties. Studying the various roles of women and their relationships to men provide a unique lens through which to understand the application of Enlightenment philosophy on Europe and North America. The breadth of this course prohibits depth in all areas, but we will specifically engage questions related to politics, society, culture, the arts, and war, as well as the history of modern sexualities. This class is intersectional, so we will also be addressing issues of class and race consistently. There will be graphic and sensitive material. You will be expected to engage a variety of works and ideas, contributing your own ideas and observations.
210.01, 30233 TR 8:30-12:00, Poole - Maymester (May 15 - May 31)
Terror in the Aisles: The Horror Film and 20th Century America. What frightened audiences about Frankenstein in 1931 when most don't find it the least bit frightening now? Did Jaws help American's forget Vietnam? What does 9/11 have to do with zombie film? Would Get Out have been so popular without the Black Lives Matter movement? This class examines 20th c. American history and horror films by thinking about how such movies intersect with a variety of America traditions, folklore and ideas about monsters. Students are to think critically about these films as primary historical sources and what they reveal about key events, cultural ideologies and moral panics in the American historical experience.
241.01, 30762 STUDY ABROAD, Olejniczak - Summer II (July 10 - August 04)
Special Topics: Great Britain and Europe since 1914. Click here for details.
250.01, 30770 ONLINE, Cropper - Summer I (June 07 - July 07)
Special Topics: The New Scramble for Africa: A History of International Development and Aid in Africa. This course explores the history of globalization and international development and aid in Africa. It starts with the European Scramble for Africa in the late nineteenth century, and it offers a critical analysis of the colonial state’s ambition to “uplift” the continent through the development of extractive economies and the “civilizing mission.” It then traces how legacies of colonial rule have continued to undermine the economic development of African nations and have resurfaced through neo-colonial and neo-imperial projects. Surveying the recent interest in what historian Frederick Copper calls “the past of the present,” the course will incorporate a variety of disciplinary, methodological and epistemological perspectives. Topics to be explored include: decolonization; migration and urbanization; the politics of gender and sexuality; conceptualizations of development, globalization and neo-liberalism; popular culture; health and medicine; and belief and religion. Course materials will include historical monographs, ethnography, fiction, memoirs, and visual media and films. This course aims to provide students with theoretical and methodological tools to narrate contemporary history.
Colonial America. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the colonial period of North America from the earliest contacts between Europeans and Native Americans to the American Revolution. Particular attention is paid to the interaction of Indians, European and African peoples and cultures, the rise of British dominance, the internal development of the Anglo-American colonies, and the events that led to the colonial rebellion and the American Revolution. The goal is to understand the racial, ethnic, gendered, class and regional diversity of American colonial society as well as to understand the colonial period in its own terms rather than as a prelude to United States history. Classes will be structured with a formal lecture (usually accompanied by PowerPoint multimedia) followed by discussion of primary and secondary source readings.