History Department

Explore problems in the history of globalization. Learn how contemporary problems and opportunities of globalization reflect long-term processes marked by patterns, interruptions, and continuities even within radical change. Asia, Europe...

Offers comparative introduction to understandings of medicine, science, and technology in different historical contexts. Explore differences over time and space to better understand what is particular to our own conceptions of knowledge...

Focuses on the words and actions of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela, in order to understand the politics and ethics of non-violent civil disobedience across the world; considers local and global forces that...

If race is a fiction, then why do black men and women suffer disproportionately in the hands of medical practitioners? Last year the CDC stated that black mothers are four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. This...

Examines the way sports have been tied to and expressed ideals of manhood and womanhood, race, class, and nation. Topics will vary but include boxing, Title IX, football, Olympics, baseball, etc. Instructor: Deutsch

Crime and the City from Dickens to The Wire. Compares representation of crime and the city in two key "texts": Charles Dickens's “Oliver Twist” and the HBO television series, “The Wire.” Juxtaposes the social and political contexts to...

The Atlantic Slave Trade. CCI, CZ, R The development of the slave trade from the fifteenth century to its abolition in the nineteenth century; organization and mechanics, impact on Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Instructor: Gaspar....

The Caribbean, 1492-1700. The Caribbean region from the arrival of Columbus (1492) to the emergence of sugar and slavery as powerful shapers of society and culture, by 1700. One course.

The New Nation: The United States, 1800 to 1860. Examines the transformation of the new republic into a nation, focusing on the development of political institutions, the market economy, western expansion, and conflicts over slavery and...

The Modern Regulatory State. Interdisciplinary inquiry into the origins/evolution of modern regulatory institutions in Western Europe and North America, along with the more recent rise of global regulatory bodies. Examines conceptual...

“There are silver and gold in the mountains and ravines of California [,]” William H. Seward declared in March 1850 as he exhorted fellow senators to ratify the giant new military colony’s statehood. “The granite of New England and New...

Explores the manner in which terrorism has been depicted in literature. Emphasis on novels written primarily by Russian writers in the 19th and early 20th centuries when that country experienced waves of political violence unmatched...

Maritime Predation and European Imperial Expansion in the Atlantic Basin, 1492-1730. Exploration of the origins, development, and decline of privateering and piracy as systems of maritime predation in the Atlantic basin during the period...