Courses

Every year, the German city of Aachen awards the Charlemagne Prize to individuals who have promoted European unity. At a time when the value and existence of the European Union are increasingly questioned, we should perhaps look back at the medieval king from whom the prize takes its name. The legacy of Charlemagne and his dynasty, the Carolingians, has haunted us until the present day. In the present course, we will follow medieval Europe's most famous family from their rise in post-Roman Gaul to their supposed decline two centuries later. Our purpose is not simply to count kings and their famous deeds, but to unravel the social and cultural dynamics of the Carolingian period by surveying a variety of legal, historical, and religious sources.

Full details for HIST 1123 - FWS: The Birth of Europe? Culture and Society in the Carolingian Empire

How can we learn about the past? How do we tell stories about the past? How do we judge the truth of falsity of evidence? Writing History seminars introduce students to many different ways of interpreting and writing about the past, and to the wide range of sources that historians use: from diaries to tax rolls, from scraps of textile to films and advertisements. Topics and readings vary by section.

Full details for HIST 1200 - FWS: Writing History

Mao Zedong's famous portrait hangs over the entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing, a fitting symbol of his dominating presence in the history of modern China. But who exactly was Mao and how has he been perceived by others? A courageous revolutionary seeking the liberation of the oppressed masses? A bloodthirsty tyrant bent on self-exaltation and personal power? A savvy politician promoting the modernization of an ancient land? In this course we will probe the figure of Mao through a variety of readings, some by Mao, but most by others, ranging from Mao's physician to former Red Guards to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. And we will add our own perceptions to them by writing about Mao, the man and the myth.

Full details for HIST 1431 - FWS: Mao, China, and the World

This course studies the history of American capitalism. It helps you to answer these questions: What is capitalism? Is the U.S. more capitalist than other countries? How has capitalism shaped the history of the United States? Has it been a force for freedom, or is it a system of exploitation? What is its future? Through lectures, readings, and discussions, we'll give you the tools to win all your future arguments about capitalism, pro and con. And we won't even charge you the full market price.

Full details for HIST 1540 - American Capitalism

This course will explore the relationship between sports and politics over the course of American history since the 19th century.  Sports and politics have come together surprisingly frequently in the last two centuries and this course will take a "case study" method to examine particular episodes of politicized sports.  In the course of our investigations, we will the following questions: How do we define politics?  How have sports acted as a place for subversion and resistance? Conversely, how have sports reflected the power structure? No background knowledge is necessary.   Course materials will include memoirs, articles, and a variety of visual sources, including film and photography.   Course requirements will include a research paper.

Full details for HIST 1585 - Sports and Politics in American History

In 1868, samurai revolutionaries and their allies seized the reins of power and established a new capital they called Tokyo.  Against all odds, this fragile regime survived and made Tokyo a center of power that would transform both Japan and the world.  This survey of Japanese history explores the rise and fall of Japan as a modern imperial power; its foreign relations; its economic and scientific development from "feudalism" to futuristic technologies; and Japan's many modern revolutions, from the rule of the samurai to Westernization and democracy, from democratic collapse to fascism and World War II, and from Japan's postwar rebirth to the present.  We will examine not only big events but also everyday life, including gender and sexuality, family and schools, and art and popular culture.

Full details for HIST 1622 - The World of Modern Japan

An introductory survey to United States history since the Great Depression, this course explores the dramatic social, economic, and political transformations of the last century. It emphasizes domestic political developments, particularly the evolving notions of government responsibility for various social problems. Therefore, the course is especially concerned with the interactions between the state, popular movements, and people's daily lives.

Full details for HIST 1640 - U.S. History since the Great Depression

This course surveys modern Chinese history from 1644 to 1949. Time will be devoted to each of the three major periods: China's last empire, the Great Qing (1644-1911); the early Republic (1912-1927); and the Nationalist period (1928-1949). It guides students through pivotal events in modern Chinese history, and uncovers the origins and trajectory of China's painful transition from a powerful early modern empire to a country torn by civil unrest and imperialist invasion, and then from a newly-recognized "Great Power" in the post-World War II international order to a vanguard of the global communist revolution.

Full details for HIST 1920 - Modern China

A survey of the social, political, cultural and economic history of Latin America from roughly 1800 to the present. Primary aim is to develop a mental map of the history of Latin America - of prominent themes issues; of historical eras and trajectories. Given the vastness of Latin America, and its somewhat arbitrary composition as an object of study, the approach of the course is thematic and chronological rather than regional. We will pay attention to a number of more specific and interconnected themes: the development of, and relationship between, economies and processes of state formation; the complex roles Britain and the U.S. have played in the region, but always with an appreciation for how Latin Americans have shaped their own histories and those of the U.S. and Britain; the ways in which non-elites - slaves, workers, peasants, among others - have shaped history; the politics of the production of history; and Latin America's 'situatedness' in a broader world. Weekly readings include historical and theoretical works memoirs, speeches, documents and novels. 

Full details for HIST 1960 - Modern Latin America

Independent Study based supervised reading with history faculty.  Student must complete Independent Study Form with faculty supervisor for determining requirements and for permission to enroll through the online system (https://data.arts/cornell.edu/as-stus/indep_study_intro.cfm).  Student then work with their faculty supervisor throughout the semester for sucessful completion and grading of the agreed upon requirements.

Full details for HIST 2001 - Supervised Reading - Undergraduate

Educational historian Frederick Rudolph called Cornell University "the first American university," referring to its unique role as a coeducational, nonsectarian, land-grant institution with a broad curriculum and diverse student body. In this course, we will explore the history of Cornell, taking as our focus the pledge of Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White to found a university where "any person can find instruction in any study." The course will cover a wide range of topics and perspectives relating to the faculty, student body, evolution of campus, and important events and eras in Cornell history. Stories and vignettes will provide background on the current university and its administrative structure, campus traditions, and the names that adorn buildings and memorials throughout campus. Finally, the course will offer a forum for students to address questions on present-day aspects of the university.

Full details for HIST 2005 - The First American University

All past and present societies confront the fundamental problem of what should be done with those who violate society's rules and customs and why they should be punished. Despite its modern reputation for illogical violence and brutality, medieval Europe is no exception to this principle. Medieval societies held ideas about punishment and redress for offense and injury which while very different were no less complex than our own.

Full details for HIST 2105 - Crime and Punishment in Medieval Europe

This course examines Black spirituality, religion, and protest from an historical perspective, beginning with African traditions and Christianity during enslavement, which created resistance ideology and racial nationalism. Prophetic Christianity and church formation became primary political weapons after enslavement, particularly in the Age of Jim Crow, and foundationally led to twentieth century civil rights movements. While exploring these themes, the course will also analyze the complexities and contractions (i.e. Southern Baptist Convention, Nation of Islam and Black Lives Matter) inherent in resistance movements based on spiritual leadership.

Full details for HIST 2112 - Black Spirituality, Religion & Protest

China was and still is regarded in the Western world as a country without the rule of law. In this course, students examine recent scholarship that challenges this simplified understanding of the role of law in Chinese politics and society. It approaches law in early modern and modern China both as a state institution of governance and control, and as a platform that facilitates interactions and negotiations between state and society, between different social forces, and between different cultures. At the same time, this course guides students to develop projects of their own choice, either addressing legal issues or using legal sources, from tentative proposals to research papers based on their examination of original or translated primary sources.

Full details for HIST 2132 - Law and Society in Early Modern and Modern China

Does hatred have a history? Historians insist that Europe invented a tradition of hating Jews and Judaism; some go so far as to argue that the destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust was the culmination of a thousand-year-old prejudice against Jewish difference, cultivated not only by cranks and lunatics at the margins of European discourse, but by great luminaries with a reputation for progressive, even radical, opinions. In fact, the cultural problem of Jewish difference was implicated in both the destruction and the creation of European Jewry. In this seminar, we will examine exemplary works of Europe's famous anti-Jewish canon — such as Paul's letter to the Romans, Luther's "On the Jews and their Lies," and Marx's "On the Jewish Question" — in order to contextualize a mythology of Jewish "otherness" that enflamed the anti-Jewish imagination even when there were few Jewish "others" around to hate. We will also look at critical moments in Jewish history marked by the appropriation of anti-Jewish arguments in the name of Jewish social discipline and moral authority. Through the prism of provocative Jewish texts such as the Crusade chronicles, Mendelssohn's Jerusalem and Pinsker's "Auto-emancipation" we will explore some of the ways in which the "enabling violation" of anti-semitism both constrained Jewish existence and liberated Jewish self-consciousness, turning Europe into a home for Judaism as well as a Jewish "hell on earth."

Full details for HIST 2156 - Anti-Semitism and the Making of European Jewry

This seminar will explore some of the major political and cultural trends in the United States,  from the era of the Democratic New Dealer, Franklin D. Roosevelt, through the era of the conservative Republican, Ronald Reagan? This seminar will explore through primary source research and secondary readings  the key economic, political, and cultural characteristics and transformations of the period from 1930 though the turn of the century.  The course will examine the rise, persistence, and breakdown of the so-called "New Deal Order" and the crucial political shifts that we call the "Reagan Revolution." A key theme in this course will be the transformations and critiques of American liberalism and conservatism.

Full details for HIST 2220 - From the New Deal to the Age of Reagan

On August 9-10, 1969, ex-convict, aspiring rock star, and charismatic leader Charles Manson ordered his so-called Family to brutally murder a few of LA's rich, white, "beautiful people" and leave clues implicating black radicals. The idea was to trigger an apocalyptic race war he called "Helter Skelter" (after a song by The Beatles). Today, these murders stand as the most infamous in twentieth-century U.S. criminal history and as synecdoche for the "end of the Sixties." They have also spawned a veritable Manson Industry in the popular realm: there are now Manson books, movies, TV shows, documentaries, podcasts, websites, music, comics, t-shirts, and even a tourist attraction (the Hollywood "Helter Skelter" tour).  The seminar will analyze the history of the Manson murders as well as their incredible resonance in American culture over the past half century. Who was Charles Manson and who were the members of the Family? What was the Family's relation to the counterculture, to Hollywood, Vietnam, the Black Panther Party, and environmentalism? How might we fit the Manson murders into the long history of apocalyptic violence and terror? And what does it mean that the Manson murders have occupied our collective imagination for fifty years? To answer these and other questions, we will analyze a variety of sources including television and newspaper reports, trial transcripts, true crime writing, memoirs, interviews, novels, films and documentaries, podcasts and pop songs.

Full details for HIST 2274 - The Manson Murders

This course engages the rich cartographic record of colonial North America via an in-depth analysis of two dozen iconic maps.  Integrating visual and textual analysis, students will assess human representations of space across cultural boundaries, explore change over time in the mapmaking practices of indigenous peoples and various European intruders, and study the evolving relationship between cartography and power, attending particularly to the process by which mapping promoted a revolutionary new understanding of American geography as composed of the bounded territories of nation-states.

Full details for HIST 2391 - From Terra Incognita to Territories of Nation-States: Early American History in Two Dozen Maps

How did some intoxicating substances come to be illegal, while others are socially accepted? What is the role and responsibility of the state in managing the use and abuse of drugs and alcohol? This seminar examines the history of the nation's efforts to control and regulate intoxicants, with special attention given to why specific substances are criminalized and decriminalized at various points in history. It will focus on the relationship between social, economic, and political upheaval and campaigns to crack down on drugs. The course also investigates the growing trend to approach some drug and alcohol abuse as a medical problem and the rise of self-help societies and substance abuse rehabilitation. For example, we will examine state responses to opium use by middle class white women and Chinese immigrants during the 19th century, the passage and repeal of Prohibition, and the contemporary "War on Drugs."

Full details for HIST 2423 - Dazed and Confused: The Politics of Drug and Alcohol in US History

Much has been written about the so-called "Golden Age" of the Ottoman Empire, some based on documentary evidence, while other based on the fertile imagination of foreign diplomats, artists, and historians alike. In this seminar, we will explore the myths surrounding the Age of Suleiman the Magnificent, and the role they have played in the telling of the popular history of the Middle East, and the so-called "rise and fall" of Islamic civilization. How do seemingly innocuous stories about the decadence of the court, the loose morality of the "oriental" and the imagined Harem continue to impact our perception of the so-called "East" and in what way do they still define some of the very questions even contemporary researchers and journalists ask? Relying on a combination of popular history books, academic monographs, critiques of the genre of the "history of great men," and works of historical fiction, this seminar is meant to introduce undergraduate students interested in getting a sense of Ottoman popular history between 1500-1700, while being mindful of the power of storytelling in works of history and the perils of myth-making.

Full details for HIST 2460 - The Age of Suleiman the Magnificent

This course focuses on African American women in the 20th century. The experiences of black women will be examined from a social, practical, communal, and gendered perspective. Topics include the Club Woman's movement, suffrage, work, family, black and white women and feminism, black women and radicalism, and the feminization of poverty.

Full details for HIST 2512 - Black Women in the 20th Century

Why did a relatively poor, marginal island garner a reputation for rebelliousness and embark on radical (though often failed) experiments in toleration and democracy over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? This course explores the social, religious and political upheavals that rocked the British Isles, from the Henrician reformation to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Topics include: the relationship of puritanism to political radicalism; the trial and execution of King Charles I, anti-Catholicism as an ideology; the twinned threats of theocracy and Cromwellian military rule; the role of the press and public opinion in early modern politics, the struggle for and limits of religious toleration, and the relationship of revolutions in England to violence in Scotland and Ireland. Finally, we will look at how the memory of earlier revolutions shaped British responses to the American and French Revolutions.

Full details for HIST 2521 - England's Age of Revolutions, 1500-1815

In ancient Greece and Rome, government did little besides wage war and raise taxes, culture focused on war, warriors gloried in battle, and civilians tried to get out of the way. This course surveys the impact of war and the rarity of peace in the ancient world. Topics include: "why war?"; the face of battle; leadership; strategy, operations, and tactics; women and war; intelligence and information-gathering; diplomacy and peacemaking; militarism; war and slavery; the archaeology of warfare. Readings in translation include selections from Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Caesar, Livy, Tacitus, Josephus, and Ammianus Marcellinus. (pre-1800/non-US)

Full details for HIST 2560 - War and Peace in Greece and Rome

In the early twentieth century, a series of movements arose in the Middle East and South Asia, calling Muslims to return to Islam. Today, leaders and members of such groups –now known as Islamists –insist that one cannot live a fully Islamic life in the absence of an Islamic state. How and why did these movements come to focus on building an Islamic state? When did Islam come to be seen as indivisible from Politics, and what does it mean for Islam and Politics to be related? Are contemporary claims to Islam as the basis for political action consistent with the ways in which Muslims have understood their core texts historically? This course will introduce students to the study of Religion and Politics in Islamic History, beginning with the early Islamic community under the rule of the Prophet Muhammad, stretching through a period of rule that saw multiple Islamic Caliphates, and finally, reaching the present day. The bulk of this course, however, will focus on the diverse ways in which Muslims in the twentieth and twenty first centuries have laid claim to their religion as a template for political and social action. In particular, it will push students to consider how Muslim men and women live religion in their daily lives, whether through dress, prayer, or facial hair, and how these claims to religion shape political systems from the ground up.

Full details for HIST 2607 - Islam and Politics: Between an Islamic State and Daily Life

This course surveys modern U.S. history, from Reconstruction to the contemporary period. It will examine how race has been the terrain on which competing ideas of the American nation have been contested. From struggles over citizenship rights to broader meanings of national belonging, we will explore how practices, ideas, and representations have shaped political, cultural, and social power. A key concern for this course is examining how groups and individuals have pursued racial justice from the late-nineteenth century to the present.

Full details for HIST 2641 - Race and Modern US History

One thing many Americans think they know is their Indians: Pocahontas, the First Thanksgiving, fighting cowboys, reservation poverty, and casino riches. Under our very noses, however, Native American history has evolved into one of the most exciting, dynamic, and contentious fields of inquiry into America's past. It is now safer to assume, as Comanche historian Paul Chaat Smith has pointed out, that everything you know about Indians is in fact wrong. Most people have much to "unlearn" about Native American history before true learning can take place. This course aims to achieve that end by (re)introducing students to key themes and trends in the history of North America's indigenous nations. Employing an issues-oriented approach, the course stresses the ongoing complexity of Native American societies' engagements with varieties of settler colonialism since 1492 and dedicates itself to a concerted program of myth-busting. As such, the course will provide numerous opportunities for students to develop their critical thinking and reading skills.

Full details for HIST 2660 - Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong: Unlearning Native American History

This lecture class will explore the socio-cultural history of modern Egypt from the late 18th century to the 21st century "Arab Spring." We will explore Egyptian history under the Ottomans and the Mamluks, the unsuccessful French attempts to colonize Egypt, and the successful British occupation of the country. We will then examine the development of Egyptian nationalism from the end of the 19th century through Nasser's pan-Arabism to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. We will accomplish this with the aid of a variety of texts and media, including novels and films.

Full details for HIST 2672 - The History and Politics of Modern Egypt

It's bad enough to run up against a border: at least you know where you stand. The frontier, however -- that fuzzy, murky zone that envelops the border while making its precise contours invisible -- is far more ambiguous, dangerous ground to tread. People, ideas, and other contraband criss-cross it; men (and sometimes women) make their own law; cultures clash and conspire together. At the margins of Europe -- Ireland, Wales, Scandinavia, Poland, Germany, the Low Countries, Spain, Sicily, the Levant -- medieval people discovered what every Trekkie knows: final frontiers, spaces of both oppression and opportunity. This course will explore some of the exchanges, friendly and otherwise, that took place at the edges of the medieval world, seeding many of the most radical developments which shaped the modern world.

Full details for HIST 2742 - Cultures of the Middle Ages

This introductory course is a broad survey of the history of the Indian subcontinent from remnants of the Mughal empire through the end of the British empire into the postcolonial present. Prominent themes include the emergence of nonviolent protest, religious and regional identities, ethnic rivalries, social reform and the "woman question," deindustrialization, nationalism and the place of democracy and militarism in a region that includes two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. 

Full details for HIST 2750 - History of Modern India

This course considers how a small northern European kingdom acquired and then governed a vast global empire. Beginning with the navigators, pirates and settlers of the Elizabethan era, and ending with the process of decolonization after World War Two, we will explore the diverse character and effects of British imperialism in the Americas, in Asia, in Africa, and the Pacific, and consider the legacies of the British empire in the contemporary world. 

Full details for HIST 2760 - The British Empire

This course studies international humanitarian and human rights activities from their origins to the present.  The ideological and social roots of humanitarian thought and action receive attention, as does the often-overlapping, sometimes conflictual relationship between humanitarianism and human rights advocacy.  Case studies will include the anti-slavery movement, the activities of faith-based groups, biographical studies of pioneering individuals, and the international response to the creation of refugees and to various genocides.

Full details for HIST 2791 - International Humanitarianism

"Why no socialism in America?" Scholars and activists have long pondered the relative dearth (compared to other industrialized societies) of sustained, popular, anticapitalist activity in the United States. Sure, leftist movements in the U.S. have often looked and operated differently than those in other parts of the world. But many Americans have forged creative and vibrant traditions of anticapitalism under very difficult circumstances. This class examines socialist thought and practice in the U.S. from the 19th century to the present. We trace intersections of race, class, and gender while exploring the freedom dreams of those who have opposed capitalism in the very heart of global power.

Full details for HIST 2955 - Socialism in America

This course surveys the history of Imperial Russia, from its ninth-century Kievan beginnings to its rapid disintegration under the pressure of the First World War. Lectures will draw special attention to recurrent acts of revolutionary transformation that punctuate Russia's long tradition of "internal colonization." We will look at the creation of Russian culture, politics and society between the ninth century and the nineteenth as an exercise in empire-building — a project that originated with the enterprising princes of medieval Moscow, collapsed with the end of the Riurikid dynasty at the turn of the seventeenth century, spectacularly revived in eighteenth-century St. Petersburg, under the standard-bearer or the reforming Romanovs, Peter the Great, and eventually taken up by some of the most articulate representatives of a late-imperial intelligentsia whose dreams of Russian greatness were even more extravagant than those of the tsar. Topics for discussion include: the Russian translation of Greek Christianity, Russia's fraught relationship with Western Europe, the paradox of imperial modernization and the continual recourse, in Russian literary, musical, and visual cultures to an image of Russia as a frontier society without a state.

Full details for HIST 2970 - Imperial Russia

The twentieth century was a time of unprecedented change in China as the country's ancient imperial system collapsed and a new modern order began to emerge. This course will explore the myriad transformations that occurred during this remarkable century of revolution and renewal. Among the major changes that we will focus on are the fall of the Qing dynasty, the intellectual awakening of May Fourth, the rise of the Nationalist party-state, and key events of the Communist era, such as the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong and the capitalist reforms of Deng Xiaoping. The class will encourage historical reflection on China's engagement with the modern world in order to better understand the complex reality of China today.

Full details for HIST 2985 - Transformations in Twentieth Century China

Independent Study based supervised research with a history faculty member.  Student must complete an on-line Independent Study form with a faculty supervisor to determine requirements and for permission.  Students then work with their faculty supervisor throughout the semester for sucessful completion and grading of the agreed upon requirements.

Full details for HIST 3002 - Supervised Research - Undergraduate

This course will take the students through the age of reforms in the Ottoman Empire, the rising of nationalism, and the encroachment of colonialism in the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans, and the collapse of the empire. Emphasis will be placed on analyzing various historical narratives of ethno-religious nationalism using Turkey, Greece/Cyprus, and Lebanon, as case studies. 

Full details for HIST 3542 - The Ottoman Empire 1800-1922

We will consider two basic questions: did the ancient Greeks and Romans have a concept of race or racial identity? If not, what were the dominant collective identities they used to classify themselves and others? We will explore the causes and conditions that gave rise to collective identities that can be described as ethnic and (in some cases) possibly as 'racial' and how these identities worked in their given cultural and political contexts. We will start with Greek identity in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, then moving to Macedonian identity and the conquests of Alexander the Great, and finally, to the Roman world, where we will explore the question of race and ethnicity within the context of inclusive citizenship. In each of these cultural contexts, we will briefly focus on slavery, examining whether slave identity was at all racialized.

Full details for HIST 3802 - Race and Ethnicity in the Ancient World

Whether buying at a general store, shopping at a department store, or loitering at a mall, consumption has always formed an important part of the American experience. More than just commodities bought and sold, consumption is also about the institutions, social practices, cultural meanings, and economic functions that have surrounded the merchandise. This course will look at the changing meanings consumption has had for life, politics, and economy in the US over the past 300 years.

Full details for HIST 3870 - The History of Consumption: From Wedgwood to Wal-Mart

Surveys the modern history of Southeast Asia with special attention to colonialism, the Chinese diaspora, and socio-cultural institutions.  Considers global transformations that brought "the West" into people's lives in Southeast Asia.  Focuses on the development of the modern nation-state, but also questions the narrative by incorporating groups that are typically excluded.  Assigns primary texts in translation. 

Full details for HIST 3960 - Transnational Local: Southeast Asian History from the Eighteenth Century

This seminar is an introduction to the theory, practice, and art of historical research and writing. One key purpose of this course is to prepare students to work on longer research projects—especially an Honors Thesis. We will analyze the relationship between evidence and argument in historical writing; assess the methods and possible biases in various examples of historical writing; identify debates and sources relevant to research problems; think about how to use sources creatively; and discuss the various methodological issues associated with historical inquiry, analysis, and presentation.

Full details for HIST 4000 - Introduction to Historical Research

This course is designed to facilitate student's successful completion of their History Department Honors theses through regular deadlines and small group writing workshops.

Full details for HIST 4002 - Honors Research

There is an astonishing discrepancy between our perception of the Holocaust as a central event of the twentieth century and its marginal place in postwar culture.  It is during those years, nevertheless, that the destruction of European Jews aroused an intellectual debate whose philosophical, political, and literary contributions constitute landmarks for contemporary culture and criticism.  The course will explore the reasons for such a discrepancy, reconstructing the steps of the integration of the Holocaust into our historical consciousness.  It will analyze some of the most significant attempts to think such a trauma made by German-Jewish exiles (Arendt, Adorno, Anders), the survivors of the Nazi camps (Améry, Levi, Celan, Antelme), as well as the public intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (Sartre, Bataille, MacDonald, etc).

Full details for HIST 4233 - The Holocaust in Postwar Culture (1945-1961)

This course examines beliefs in magic and magical creatures, looking at how the occult organized all aspects of early modern life.  Scientists believed that magic could help them create gold, doctors practiced blood magic, and court magistrates sentenced Jews or elderly women to death for allegedly performing devilish rituals on small children. Through the course readings, both primary and secondary, we will analyze how the superstitious was mobilized within struggles between Catholics and Protestants, the nobility and the peasantry, and within emergent Enlightenment philosophy.  In particular we will discuss why witches or werewolves were imagined (and hunted) in the period, what that can tell us about the cultural climate of the time, but also how their meaning could morph into the familiar horror stapes of our own world.

Full details for HIST 4405 - Magic and Demonic Creatures between Reformation and Enlightenment

Strategic decision-making in World War II. The course will be organized into a "task force" addressing crucial problems faced by the European-American Allies in World War II: the invasion of northwest Europe, strategic bombing tactics, the rescue of European Jews, and coordination with the Soviet Union. Individual papers and presentations to the group and to panels at Cornell and in Washington, D.C. 

Full details for HIST 4460 - Strategy in World War II

What is a university, what does it do, and how does it do it? Moving out from these more general questions, this seminar will focus on a more specific set of questions concerning the place of race within the university. What kinds of knowledge are produced in the 20th- century U.S. university? Why is it, and how is it, that certain knowledge formations and disciplines come to be naturalized or privileged within the academy? How has the emergence of fields of inquiry such as Ethnic Studies (with an epistemological platform built on the articulations of race, class and gender) brought to the fore (if not brought to crisis) some of the more vexing questions that strike at the core of the idea of the university as the pre-eminent site of disinterested knowledge? This seminar will give students the opportunity to examine American higher education's (particularly its major research institutions) historical instantiation of the relations amongst knowledge, power, equality and democracy.

Full details for HIST 4551 - Race and the University

This seminar will analyze the transition between the late Roman empire and the barbarian kingdoms in western Europe from the perspective of how rulers, intellectuals, and common people understood legitimate and illegitimate political authority. The so-called "Dark Ages" (4th-7th centuries) were a vibrant period of creativity and reinvention. Class discussion will focus on primary source analysis, and how ethnic (Roman/Germanic), religious (Christian/non-Christian), gender, and other categories informed late antique notions of political authority. We will also discuss how notions of rulership were deployed to challenge emperors and kings. Knowledge of late antique and early medieval political ideas is crucial to understanding modern uses of the so-called "Western" past in current political debates.

Full details for HIST 4632 - Emperors, Kings, and Warlords: Political Legitimacy at the End of the Ancient World

During Europe's colonial era, the modern museum emerged as a site of cultural and scientific authority. This course investigates the history of imperial collections and collectors, with a focus on Britain and the East India Company in the nineteenth century. Examples of topics include: the "supply chain" for artifacts and knowledge resources; changing conceptions of intellectual property, ownership and access; household versus public versus for-profit collections; museums and the narration of social values and cultural identities; debates over the function or aims of museums and related institutions; the collections and the administration of the empire; the collections and the growth of the sciences; the postcolonial legacies of colonial collections.

Full details for HIST 4634 - Curating the British Empire

The people who invaded the isle of Britain after the withdrawal of Roman government in the early fifth century, and who dominated it until the establishment of Norman rule in the late eleventh century, are responsible for some of the best-known and most enduring legacies of the Middle Ages: Beowulf and Bede's Ecclesiastical History, the archbishoprics of Canterbury and York, Alfred the Great and Æthelred the Unready. This course examines the Anglo-Saxons in their early-medieval context, focusing especially on the cooperation between history and its sister disciplines – archaeology, literary criticism, and others – that is so vital for shedding light on this distant, opaque era. 

Full details for HIST 4761 - Anglo-Saxon England

Since World War II, over 4 million people have migrated to the United States as refugees. In this seminar we will examine some of these refugee migrations and the ways these migrations challenged our understanding of the United States as a "haven for the oppressed." We will examine the crafting of refugee/asylum policy, the role of nongovernmental actors in influencing policy, and the ways policy reflected foreign-policy interests and security concerns. The last weeks of the course will pay particular attention to climate refugees and asylum-seekers, and our changing definitions of who 'merits' protection in the United States.

Full details for HIST 4851 - Refugees

Chinese discourses have long linked the circulation of cosmic energies, political power, and bodily vitalities. In these models political order, spiritual cultivation, and health are achieved and enhanced through harmonizing these flows across the levels of Heaven-and-Earth, state, and humankind. It is when these movements are blocked or out of synchrony that we find disordered climates, societies, and illness. In this course, we will examine the historical emergence and development of these models of politically resonant persons and bodily centered polities, reading across primary texts in translation from these otherwise often separated fields. For alternate frameworks of analysis as well as for comparative perspectives, we will also examine theories of power and embodiment from other cultures, including recent scholarship in anthropology and critical theory.

Full details for HIST 4931 - Vitality and Power in China

It is a truism that early modern society was a 'patriarchal' one in which men had authority -- but how did that authority operate and what were its limits? How did the exercise of power between men and women intersect with religious, literary, legal and political institutions? We will approach these questions chronologically, examining the impact of the Reformation, the English Revolution, the Enlightenment, the rise of middle class and polite culture. We will also explore them methodologically and generically, with an eye to how different kinds of evidence and sources can produce different kinds of conclusions. Historians' hypotheses will be tested by analysis of primary sources.

Full details for HIST 4950 - Gender, Power, and Authority in England, 1600 to 1800

This seminar is devoted entirely to the writing of a substantive research paper, the dissertation prospectus, or fellowship proposal. Students will share research proposals, annotated bibliographies, outlines and portions of rough drafts. Class meetings will be devoted to discussing what students have produced, and general issues associated with constructing the dissertation prospectus and research papers.

Full details for HIST 6000 - Graduate Research Seminar

Full details for HIST 6006 - History Colloquium Series

There is an astonishing discrepancy between our perception of the Holocaust as a central event of the twentieth century and its marginal place in postwar culture.  It is during those years, nevertheless, that the destruction of European Jews aroused an intellectual debate whose philosophical, political, and literary contributions constitute landmarks for contemporary culture and criticism.  The course will explore the reasons for such a discrepancy, reconstructing the steps of the integration of the Holocaust into our historical consciousness.  It will analyze some of the most significant attempts to think such a trauma made by German-Jewish exiles (Arendt, Adorno, Anders), the survivors of the Nazi camps (Améry, Levi, Celan, Antelme), as well as the public intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (Sartre, Bataille, MacDonald, etc).

Full details for HIST 6233 - The Holocaust in Postwar Culture (1945-1961)

Topic: Religion and Authority in Late Antique North Africa. The seminar focuses on the structures of religious authority in the Christian church(es) of North Africa from the end of the second century to the end of the fifth century, and on their interactions with the socio-political structures of authority.

Full details for HIST 6300 - Topics in Ancient History

This seminar explores the international and transnational dimensions of the Black Power Movement, broadly defined. Beginning with an examination of transnationalism in the early 20th century, it examines the thought and political activities of African-American intellectuals and activists who crossed national boundaries, figuratively and literally, in the quest for black freedom. We will focus on the postwar era, particularly the 1950s through the 1980s, exploring transnationalism in the context of black feminism, Marxism, black nationalism, Pan Africanism, and other political traditions. We will examine the meeting and mingling of transnational discourses, ideologies, and activists in North America, the Caribbean, and Africa. 

Full details for HIST 6321 - Black Power Movement and Transnationalism

Topic:  Readings in the social history of modern Latin America. This course is an intensive readings seminar primarily for, but in no way limited to, graduate students preparing for minor and major fields in Latin American history. The seminar has three basic objectives:  1. to provide you with the opportunity to read and discuss works with which you should be familiar for your examination fields: this includes works considered seminal in the field;  revisionist works that challenge and/or expand such interpretations; and very recent works that hint at new directions in the field;  2. to delineate a number of the most prominent thematic emphases, methodological approaches, and debates characteristic of the field since the 1960s;  3. to situate these themes and methods in relation to broader developments in the discipline of history.  Undergraduate students welcome with permission of instructor. Graduate students from any fields and/or disciplines welcome.

Full details for HIST 6481 - Topics in Latin American History

This seminar will examine recent historical works that emphasize the global connectedness of early modern histories. We will read works in global history, as well as studies in the comparative or connected history of different regions of the world. Major themes for discussion will include cross-cultural encounters, mobility and travel, the growth of global commerce, and early modern empires.

Full details for HIST 6511 - Global Early Modernity

This seminar will analyze the transition between the late Roman empire and the barbarian kingdoms in western Europe from the perspective of how rulers, intellectuals, and common people understood legitimate and illegitimate political authority. The so-called "Dark Ages" (4th-7th centuries) were a vibrant period of creativity and reinvention. Class discussion will focus on primary source analysis, and how ethnic (Roman/Germanic), religious (Christian/non-Christian), gender, and other categories informed late antique notions of political authority. We will also discuss how notions of rulership were deployed to challenge emperors and kings. Knowledge of late antique and early medieval political ideas is crucial to understanding modern uses of the so-called "Western" past in current political debates.

Full details for HIST 6632 - Emperors, Kings, and Warlords: Political Legitimacy at the End of the Ancient World

During Europe's colonial era, the modern museum emerged as a site of cultural and scientific authority. This course investigates the history of imperial collections and collectors, with a focus on Britain and the East India Company in the nineteenth century. Examples of topics include: the "supply chain" for artifacts and knowledge resources; changing conceptions of intellectual property, ownership and access; household versus public versus for-profit collections; museums and the narration of social values and cultural identities; debates over the function or aims of museums and related institutions; the collections and the administration of the empire; the collections and the growth of the sciences; the postcolonial legacies of colonial collections.

Full details for HIST 6634 - Curating the British Empire

The people who invaded the isle of Britain after the withdrawal of Roman government in the early fifth century, and who dominated it until the establishment of Norman rule in the late eleventh century, are responsible for some of the best-known and most enduring legacies of the Middle Ages: Beowulf and Bede's Ecclesiastical History, the archbishoprics of Canterbury and York, Alfred the Great and Æthelred the Unready. This course examines the Anglo-Saxons in their early-medieval context, focusing especially on the cooperation between history and its sister disciplines – archaeology, literary criticism, and others – that is so vital for shedding light on this distant, opaque era.

Full details for HIST 6761 - Anglo-Saxon England

Since World War II, over 4 million people have migrated to the United States as refugees. In this seminar we will examine some of these refugee migrations and the ways these migrations challenged our understanding of the United States as a "haven for the oppressed." We will examine the crafting of refugee/asylum policy, the role of nongovernmental actors in influencing policy, and the ways policy reflected foreign-policy interests and security concerns. The last weeks of the course will pay particular attention to climate refugees and asylum-seekers, and our changing definitions of who 'merits' protection in the United States.

Full details for HIST 6851 - Refugees

Full details for HIST 6905 - Gender, Power, and Authority in England 1600-1800

Chinese discourses have long linked the circulation of cosmic energies, political power, and bodily vitalities. In these models political order, spiritual cultivation, and health are achieved and enhanced through harmonizing these flows across the levels of Heaven-and-Earth, state, and humankind. It is when these movements are blocked or out of synchrony that we find disordered climates, societies, and illness. In this course, we will examine the historical emergence and development of these models of politically resonant persons and bodily centered polities, reading across primary texts in translation from these otherwise often separated fields. For alternate frameworks of analysis as well as for comparative perspectives, we will also examine theories of power and embodiment from other cultures, including recent scholarship in anthropology and critical theory.

Full details for HIST 6931 - Vitality and Power in China

Surveys the modern history of Southeast Asia with special attentions to colonialism, the Chinese diaspora, and socio-cultural institutions. Considers global transformations that brought "the West" into people's lives in Southeast Asia. Focuses on the development of the modern nation-state, but also questions the narrative by incorporating groups that are typically excluded. Assigns primary texts in translation.

Full details for HIST 6960 - Transnational Local: Southeast Asian History from the Eighteenth Century

The Proseminar in Peace Studies offers a multidisciplinary review of issues related to peace and conflict at the graduate level. The course is led by the director of the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and is based on the Institute's weekly seminar series, featuring outside visitors and Cornell faculty. 

Full details for HIST 7937 - Proseminar in Peace Studies

Independent Study based supervised reading with a history faculty/field member.

Full details for HIST 8004 - Supervised Reading

Full details for HIST 8010 - Independent Study-PIRIP