New Courses, Spring 2008

The French Revolution - 25056 - HIST 0970W - S01

Explores the French Revolution and its various interpretations as an introduction to the practice of history. Through a close examination of documents and images, this course invites students to develop their own interpretation of this cataclysmic event and its legacy.

Time	Days	Where	Instructor
4:00-6:20	Thurs.	Rockefeller Library, Rm 412	Caroline Boswell

Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern Europe - 25054 - HIST 1100 - S01

Through an exploration of attitudes towards crime, this course will shed light on the mentalities of early modern men and women. Includes an examination of state trials, popular shaming rituals, witchcraft confessions and representations of crime in print and image. Through its examination of crime, this course will address the process of state formation, religious reform and secularization during the early modern period.

Time	Days	Where	Instructors
1:00-1:50	M,W,F	Smith-Buonanno, Rm G18	Caroline Boswell

Discipline and Punish: Authoritarianism in Southern Europe in the 20th Century - 25117 - HIST 1110 - S01

This course is an interdisciplinary analysis of Southern European countries with an authoritarian tradition: Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece. The course adopts a cross-national analysis of these countries and deals with several restrictive state policies, such as censorship, its effects and the different responses to it. The course analyzes the ideology and tactics that were adopted in order to enforce law and order against the backdrop of economic crises, political instability and social strife. The course draws on a vast number of theoretical studies on 'bureaucratic authoritarianism', as compared to 'fascism'. A later part of the course analyzes the regimes' evolution and their inner transformations.

Time	Days	Where	Instructors
1:00-1:50	M,W,F	Sayles Hall, Rm 104	Konstantinos Kornetis

History of Chinese Political Thought - 24792 - HIST 1380 - S01

This course explores key topics in the history of Chinese political thought. The chronological scope spans the ancient Zhou Dynasty all the way to the 20th century, with a focus on periods of dynastic transition. Chinese thinkers forged a sophisticated tradition of thinking about fundamental political problems such as bureaucratic centralization and local responsiveness, civil recruitment, government transparency, political economy, foreign relations, class conflict, and values like prosperity, stability and justice. We will look at how formative texts dealt with these topics in various historical periods from the classical and imperial eras. In the final part of the course, we will study how traditional ideas shaped China's experience of modernity in the 19th and 20th centuries, and how new forces of the modern world reshaped tradition. Some background in Chinese history is recommended.

Time	Days	Where	Instructor
2:30-3:50	Tu.Th.	Smith-Buonanno, Rm 101	John Delury

From Morocco to China: Frontier Societies, Cultural Brokers, Multiple Identities in Portuguese Empire - 22435 - HIST 1950F - S01

This course focuses on the study of social and cultural forms of hybridism within the Portuguese early modern empire. By exploring the interaction between Portuguese soldiers, merchants and missionaries and a variety of littoral societies stretching from Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa to Brazil and maritime Asia, the course will discuss both profile and role of those middlemen and cultural brokers that easily moved between distinct cultural worlds and thus assumed composite identities.

Time	Days	Where	Instructors
10:30-11:50	T., Th. .	Wilson Hall, Rm 306	Jorge Flores

Moving Boundaries: Inequalities, Histories and the Making of Post-Colonial South Asia - 22443 - HIST 1970O - S01

This new advanced history seminar will combine readings and discussions with visiting scholars, writers and activists to critically examine the making of national and cultural boundaries of postcolonial South Asia - but with the goal to substantially rethink them. With a historical attention to the Watson Institute’s broad thematic of ‘inequality’, we will interrogate the inequalities cast by rural poverty, environment, religion, caste and ethnicity and the remarkable contestations of people in the region that have challenged state power, and reshaped South Asia’s postcolonial history.

Time	Days	Where	Instructors
3:00-5:20	Mon.	Watson Inst., Rm 116	Vazira Zamindar

Medicine and Colonialism in the Atlantic World: A View from the South - 24277 - HIST 1970U - S01

This seminar examines the role of disease, medicine, and health in the history of the Atlantic World. Our analysis will be centered on events that took place in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa, during the era of European colonial expansion (1490-1940). In these four and a half centuries, the West became the dominant force in global geopolitics and Western medicine emerged as the hegemonic form of healing worldwide. This seminar explores the complex relationship between these two historical developments.

Time	Days	Where	Instructors
3:00-5:20	Wed.	Wilson Hall, Rm 204	Adrian Lopez-Denis

Consumer Culture in the United States - 25274 - HIST 1971B - S01

This seminar will examine the history of consumer culture in the United States, with readings spanning the colonial era through the present. We will focus on how the culture of the U.S. has encouraged and shaped the development of consumer culture, and how the growing power of that consumer culture has, in turn, influenced American culture and life.

Time	Days	Where	Instructors
4:00-6:20	Tues.	Wilson Hall, Rm 104	Thomas Jundt

Pirates to Poppies: American and the China Trades - 25211 - HIST 1971D - S01

Beginning with the earliest days of colonial settlement in North America, we will examine the passionate and competitive fascination with the Celestial Empire and its importance to American economic and cultural development. Early-modern European economies turned on Chinese demand for silver and domestic demand for alluring Chinese commodities. From the incessant search for a fabled Northwest Passage to the tea that sparked the Revolution to the United States’ deep involvement in smuggling drugs into China, Americans actively participated in this global commerce while struggling to define themselves as Western not Eastern. Prized trade goods and art were central to the China trade, so this course develops a critical methodology for material and visual culture analysis in recovering lost histories of America’s earliest East-West relations.

Time	Days	Where	Instructor
4:00-6:20	Tues.	Smith-Buonanno, Rm G18	Caroline Frank

Ethnic Women's Histories –24786 - HIST 1971J - S01

By comparing literature written by and about women of different ethnic backgrounds, this seminar considers how African American, Asian American, Jewish, Chicana/Latina, and Native American women of varying social locations and generations understood their ethnicity in relationship to their lives in America, as well as the historian's task uncovering that relationship. The goal of the course is to engage with the concept of "sisterhood" and to dissect how this rhetorical device brings women together and divides them by failing to fully take into account the historical ways in which different backgrounds influenced women's identities and choices.

Time	Days	Where	Instructor
3:00-5:20	Wed.	Salomon Center, Rm 203	Keren McGinity

China's Early Modern Rise - 24791 - HIST 1971M - S01

This seminar explores the transformation of the East Asian order in the early modern period, focusing on the fall of the Han Chinese Ming dynasty and rise of the Manchu-led, multi-ethnic Qing empire. The course will consider explanations for the collapse of the Ming state offered by modern historians as well as 17th century observers. We will use an early Qing political theorist's work to analyze the "constitutional" structure of Qing local government. We will then turn to case studies (Taiwan and "Xinjiang") in how the Qing consolidated regional control through military, political and ideological means. Finally we will assess the economic implications of China's early modern rise. Throughout the course, students will be exposed to the leading works in the field of Chinese historiography, and will have the opportunity to debate the most hotly contested questions facing historians today. Some background in Chinese history is recommended.

Time	Days	Where	Instructor
4:00-6:20	Tues.	Smith-Buonannol, Rm 103	John Delury

"Failed" Enlightenment? Persistent Myths in Balkan Nationalisms – 25118 - HIST 1972C - S01

Introducing major events and trends in the history of the Balkans from the late eighteenth century to the present, this course focuses on the emergence of die-hard cultural myths that cemented a sense of 'community' and fueled political nationalism. The course highlights the constant interaction between historical discourses and collective representations of the past. Topics include the Ottoman Empire as the 'quintessential inhibitor', the theories of Falmereyer and Roseler as a threat to the Greek and Rumanian Nation, a reconsideration of Balkan banditry, the 'Macedonian Question', the Battle of Kosovo and Serb and the Balkans as a projection of the repressed Western 'Other'.

Time	Days	Where	Instructor
4:00-6:20	Thurs.	Wilson Hall, Rm 103	Konstantinos Kornetis

Perceptions of the Other and Ethnographical Writing in Early Modern Portugal - 25042 - POBS 1600Q - S01

Focuses on the privileged situation of Portugal as far as the knowledge of extra-European cultures in early modern Europe is concerned. The course examines agents, instruments and mechanisms of information gathering and diffusion of the "outer world" in Europe via Lisbon. The most important topoi of these Portuguese ethnographical representations will be discussed through a close analysis of a wide range of contemporary texts and visual records. Conducted in English.

Time	Days	Where	Instructor
4:00-6:20	Thurs.	Wilson Hall, Rm 303	Jorge Flores

Crime, Justice and Punishment in Modern Japan - 25060 - EAST 1950D - S01

This seminar explores the practices and ideologies associated with the pursuit of justice, state-sanctioned punishment for wrongdoing, and social order in modern Japan (late 19th century to the present). In order to bring these practices and ideologies to light, we will examine precedent-setting criminal and civil trials within their historical contexts, and draw as well on both popular culture (film and fiction) and the rich scholarship on law and legal history in Japan. The course is intended for advanced undergraduates comfortable with the seminar format and workload. There are no specific prerequisites for admission to the seminar, but all things being equal, preference will be given to students with a background in the study of Japan and/or Japanese history.

Time	Days	Where	Instructor
3:00-5:20	Wed.	Wilson Hall, Rm 105	Kerry Smith