Spring 2009
HSTY 218 Jews in Early Modern Europe—Weiss
TR 2:45-4:00 PM
This course surveys the history of Jews in Europe and the wider world from the Spanish expulsion through the French Revolution. Tracking peregrinations out of the Iberian Peninsula to the British Isles, France, Holland, Italy, Germany, Poland-Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire and the American colonies, it examines the diverse ways Jews organized their communities, interacted with their non-Jewish neighbors and negotiated their social, economic and legal status within different states and empires. What role did Jews play and what symbolic place did they occupy during a period of European expansion, technological innovation, artistic experimentation, and religious and political turmoil? What internal and external dynamics affected Jewish experiences in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? Through a selection of inquisitorial transcripts, government records, memoirs and historical literature, we will explore topics such as persecution, conversion, messiaen, toleration, emancipation and assimilation.
Offered as HSTY 218 and JDST 218, ETHS 218.
HSTY 234 France and Islam—Weiss
M 4:00-6:30 PM
This seminar examines French encounters with the Muslim world from the Middle Ages to the present. Over the last millennium, France has viewed Saracens, Moriscos, Turks, Berbers, and Arabs with admiration and fear, disdain and incomprehension. Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, French soldiers battled in the Holy Land; for several hundred years after that, France and the Ottoman Empire exchanged diplomats, traders and slaves. The colonial occupation of Algeria that began in 1830 ended violently in 1962. By then, the empire that struck back had also come home through large waves of immigration. Today, the social and economic status, religious affiliation, political significance and cultural impact of French citizens of North African descent are the subject of burning national debate. Taking a long view on Franco-Muslim relations, the course will explore such topics as the Crusades, Mediterranean piracy and captivity, Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, the Algerian War of Independence, the "veil affair," riots in the suburbs of Paris and World Cup soccer.
Offered as ETHS 234, HSTY 234.
HSTY 291 Asia Pacific War—Butler
W 5:00-7:30 PM
How did a seventeen year old Indonesian perceive the Japanese occupation in World War II? How did that experience differ for a Thai college student? In this course, we will investigate the societies of occupied East and Southeast Asia from the perspective of those who experienced it directly. We will use memoirs, oral histories, fiction, visual material, and military reports to understand the perceptions, motivations, and emotions that drove individual action, and situate that action within the framework of violence. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the cultures involved in the Asia Pacific War, and develop critical skills through analysis of specific issues in class discussion and written exercises and essays. History and Asian Studies credit.
HSTY 318 History of Black Women in the US—Haiderali
M 2:00-4:30 PM
This course explores the history of Black Women in America from the late nineteenth century to the present. Although History 318 begins after slavery's demise and moves chronologically through women's negotiations of “freedom” in America, this course also explores the ways that raced, classed and gendered assumptions about Black women remain rooted in slavery. While policy and formal politics cannot be ignored, History 318 underscores the heterogeneity of “Black Women” by highlighting social and cultural understandings of this history. It examines Black Women's history through visual and filmic representations; autobiography, fiction, and other creative expressions; women's activism and feminism; the politics of the body, beauty and complexion; interracial, hetero-and same-sex sexualities; intraracial class relations, and the politics of identity.
Offered as ETHS 318, HSTY 318, and WGST 318.
HSTY 338 History of the American West—Wlasiuk
TR 4:30-5:45 PM
The US West has meant many things throughout American history—early explorers called it the Great American Desert, railroad boosters lured settlers to it by promising to make the arid land bloom into an agricultural Eden, urban immigrants looked to its limitless stretches of land as an escape from industrial labor, children read dime novels that glorified its heroes, and millions of tourists celebrate its raw beauty by visiting Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon. The West has also been home diverse native societies for thousands of years, Asian immigrants who viewed it as an eastern frontier, women who struggled to feed their children in an arid land, and Latin Americans, whose ancestors often preceded the entry of White Americans. This course introduces students to the themes, questions, and debates central to the study of the American West by drawing in primary source material and scholarly interpretations. The goal of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the human history of the American West and the ability to express that history in clear, passionate writing and in-class discussion.
HSTY 342 Water—Broich
W 2:00-4:30 PM
Seminar participants will explore the history of the meaning of water—that is, the social, cultural, and political significance placed on water by individuals and governments in different times and places.
They will also examine how humans have acted upon water, and how it has acted upon humans, with great consequences for human life. This seminar focuses on the history of water in the context of science, technology and society; public health; political science; and environmental history. Case studies will be drawn from a wide chronological and geographical range; from the ancient world to Renaissance Italy, nineteenth century India, modern Britain, Egypt, and the U.S. The course provides a wide perspective on the themes of the history of human-water interactions, but will also focus closely on some critical cases. Seminar participants will write a sophisticated research paper on the topic of their choice in the environmental history of water.
Offered as: HSTY 342, HSTY 442, POSC 342, POSC 442.
HSTY 376 Ritual and Magic in China—Butler
MW 12:30-1:45 PM
While the modern West approaches “magic” and the occult as categories separate from that of religion, these traditions in China intertwined with each other, ultimately leading to “scientific” invention far in advance of the West. This course investigates the concepts of ritual, magic and the occult in China by analyzing cross-cultural definitions, and then examining the Chinese content of their origins and syntheses through history. How did contemporaneous Chinese commentators regard sorcerers, for instance? Who called upon shamans and what exactly do shamans do? We begin with Chinese cosmologies and the nature of the soul, move into the traditions that these engendered—alchemy, divination, sorcery, exorcism and shamanism—then explore these themes as found in Daoism, Buddhism and popular practices. The course thus encourages the interpretation of such traditions from various perspectives: their originators, their commentators and the modern-day analyst. Sophomore standing. No background in Chinese history required. History, Asian Studies, and Religious Studies credit.
HSTY 387 Growing Up in America—Sentilles
TR 2:45-4:00 PM
Children have been growing up in the United States since it was declared independent, in 1776, but how adults conceive of (and therefore legislate and interpret) children and childhood constantly changes to fit current circumstances. The experiences of children themselves have varied not only in terms of race, class, gender, and religion but also depending on specific events (ie, coming of age during the Civil War versus the Civil Rights movement) or geography (ie, growing up in rural Hawaii vs. urban New Jersey). We cannot cover all of those histories in one course, so this seminar course instead focuses on exploring the interplay of ideas about children and the expressed or historical experiences of children. When the puritans and plantations members (slave, bonded and free) came to the Atlantic shore, they brought with them particular ideas about what is meant to be a child, and to experience childhood. They encountered already established residents who also had ideas about childhood. How did those concepts adjust/meld/contrast over time, and how do we see those ideas reflected or reshaped by actual experiences? This course engages particular lines of inquiry: How and why do understanding about what is "natural" for children change over time? How do variables like race, class, gender, etc., uphold effects the manifesting of such concepts? What is the role of the state in children's lives and how has that changed over time? What is the impact of mass culture on modern childhood?
