The Department of History thrives on its close relationship with many other departments, centers and area studies programs in the humanities and social sciences at Cornell. The faculty includes more than a dozen prize-winning authors as well as winners of Cornell’s prestigious teaching and advising awards.
Cornell University Humanities Scholars traveled to Washington, D.C. to advocate for increased National Endowment for the Humanities and National Archives funding, meeting with congressional offices to highlight the impact of humanities programs on education. Their two‑day trip underscored how federal support strengthens community partnerships, language programs, and public humanities initiatives benefiting campuses and local organizations nationwide.
HIST 4084 How to be Modern: Thinking with Max Weber (HST-AS, SSC-AS (HIST-HEU)
Wednesday: 2:00-4:30 plus Independent Research
Professor Nicholas Mulder
Max Weber (1864-1920) was the sharpest analyst of modernity: a condition marked by a global capitalist economic system, in which individuals are forced to specialize in a profession and calculate rationally without the comfort of religious belief but longing for objectivity in a world overtaken by relativism. But despite Weber’s influence he never produced a major programmatic book or school and left a fragmented body work across sociology, history, law, economics, religion, and philosophy. This reading- and discussion-intensive course examines Weber in the round, exploring both his empirical historical work and why any study of the modern human condition requires grappling with the issues that Weber identified: universalism and relativism, objectivity, rationality, specialization and vocation, transnational comparison, historical development, ideal-types, and motivation.
HIST 2154 Sex and Power in Jewish History (also JWST 2851, RELST 2154) (HST-AS) (HIST-HEU, HIST-HPE)
Monday and Wednesday: 2:30-4:15
Professor Olga Litvak
Jewish men and women in early modern Europe lived their lives within a gendered social order inherited from the Talmudic period. The relationship between sex and power remained fundamental to Jewish communal discipline until the eighteenth century. The explosion of vernacular publishing, increasing economic and geographic mobility and the coming of emancipation challenged existing gender norms and liberated Jewish desire - well, almost. As we will see, modernity has an ambiguous effect on Jewish sexual expression and Jewish sexual politics. It is not clear that the emancipation of Jewish men had the same emancipatory effect on Jewish women. Jewish patriarchy proved unexpectedly resilient. In this course, we will explore why - despite Judaism's reputation for liberal attitudes to sex - neither most Jewish men nor many Jewish women embraced the possibilities of personal liberation from a reproductive regime of rigid self-control and near compulsory heterosexual monogamy.
With the the Pentagon seeking $200 billion for the escalating Iran conflict, David Silbey, historian in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences, sees a typical escalatory pattern. He analyzes Strait of Hormuz closures, risks, and deployment options shaping U.S. defense policy.
HIST 1965 Introduction to African History (HST-AS) (HIST-HGS)
Monday and Wednesday: 10:10-11:25 plus discussion
Professor Rachel Sandwell
This course will offer a broad overview of African history from the development of early human societies to the modern era, and a critical introduction to how historians approach the writing of African history. We will think about the origins of the discipline and field of African history, the politics of history writing, and the many sites of historical thinking outside the academy. We will consider major events in the continent’s history, including the emergence of early societies and states; religious transformations; innovations in agriculture; the development of regional and global trade systems; slavery; colonization and decolonization; and African intellectual and artistic productions. The course will familiarize students with methods, concepts, and debates that are central to the field of African history.
HIST 1631 Sex, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800 (HST-AS) (HIST-HEU, HIST-HPE)
Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 9:05-9:55
Professor Rachel Weil
Why did wives who killed their husbands in early modern Europe get charged not with murder but with petty treason? Did rape victims ever get justice? Why did the witch craze happen when it did? Were female thieves treated with more leniency than male ones? This course considers sexualized crimes, crimes against women, and crimes that women were thought to frequently perpetrate—rape, witchcraft, infanticide, prostitution, crimes against masters and husbands—to see how law interacts with gendered relations of power and the policing of sexuality. We will discuss the reasons why some crimes were associated with women, and learn to analyze primary sources like trial records, news and ballads, and criminal autobiography that reveal cultural assumptions and significance.
Amorette Lyngwa, a doctoral student in history with a focus on modern South Asia from Shillong, India, studies the urban and social history of Shillong through a community-focused perspective.
History is valuable as preparation for graduate, professional, or law school and for any career that requires critical thinking and good writing; the reputation of the faculty for scholarship, teaching, and advising; and most of all, the intrinsic interest of the discipline.
Cornell's Department of History has a topnotch faculty covering a wide range time periods, geographic regions and methodologies. As a student in our program, you will also be able to work with members of the wider Graduate Field of History, which includes scholars whose main appointment is in other colleges and programs at Cornell but who are able to supervise dissertations of Ph.D. students in History.
The Cornell Public History Initiative (CPHI) works to stimulate and deepen dialogue among undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and their wider communities about the sedimented histories that shape our contemporary world.
