Amorette Lyngwa

Student spotlight: Amorette Lyngwa

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.

Person sitting in a deep windowsill, reading a book

Your February 2026 reads

This month’s featured titles by A&S alumni and faculty include a look at the urban-rural divide, a biography of an anti-poverty activist, and a business guide for "winning dream jobs, awards, and elite opportunities.”

Two people sitting at a table, reading in a room full of books on shelves; the books are reflected on the surface of the table, creating a sense of immersion

Your December 2025 reads

This month’s featured titles include fiction from A&S alum Thomas Pynchon ’59, an award-winning poetry collection and a study of a small town.

Black and white photo of a tale covered with books for sale from "Ithaca House" press

New digital collections preserve, examine Cornell history

Newly published digital collections at Cornell University Library explore areas of Cornell history. Freely accessible online, the three new collections were digitized from materials held in Cornell University Library’s Rare and Manuscript Collections.

Brazilian troops in Italy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Expeditionary_Force#/media/File:Massarosaw.jpg

HIST 2213 World War II: History and Culture

HIST 2213 World War II: History and Culture (ETM-AS, HST-AS) (HTR) Tuesday and Thursday: 1:25-2:40 plus Independent Research Professor Ruth Lawlor What was the Second World War? How do people in different countries remember it today? In this class, we will explore the military, political, economic and cultural history of the Second World War—and the wars within wars—from the perspective of its diverse participants, including the national governments of the major belligerents, partisans, colonial soldiers, women snipers and soldiers, indentured laborers and combatants everywhere. Through an examination of secondary literature, novels, films and primary source, the class begins with the worldwide crisis of capitalism and imperialism in 1931 and concludes with the suppression of anti-colonial revolts across the so-called “revolutionary crescent” in the 1940s, culminating in the partition of the Korean peninsula in 1953.

European History Colloquium - Holly Case

European History Colloquium - Holly Case

Professor Holly Case from Brown University will be speaking at the European History Colloquium on Friday, October 17 at 12:20 at 115 Sibley Hall. Her lecture is titled "Slurry to Melody: On Bela Balazs, or, How History Makes Order out of Chaos". For a copy of the paper, email: cf476@cornell.edu

The Rome Colesseum with bust of Alexader the Great and Persepolis
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1872-0515-1; https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3875047; https://www.mcgill.ca/classics/files/classics/images/persepolis_bas-relief_101967.jpg

HIST 4345 Ancient Empires: From Persia to Rome, 550 BCE to 14 CE

HIST 4345 Ancient Empires: From Persia to Rome, 550 BCE to 14 CE (also CLASS 4645, NES 4345) (HST-AS, SCD-AS) (HPE, HEU) Thursday: 2:00-4:30 plus Independent Research Professor Talia Prussin This seminar explores how ancient empires developed and were administered as well as how the experience of empire in the modern world and the writing of its history in the ancient world are intertwined. Which ancient empires receive scholarly attention? How are those empires’ histories told—and do those histories change when we reflect on lessons from modern colonialism? In this course, we look at the Achaemenids and the Seleucids in Western and Central Asia as well as Carthage in Northern Africa and Western Europe to situate Classical Athens and the Roman empire within the history of ancient empires in the latter half of the first millennium BCE. Major themes will include ethnicity and identity among imperial elites, citizenship as power, and economic institutions as means of territorial control.

Waterfall
Image by PDPhotos from Pixabay

HIST 4243 Public History in Place: Interpreting the Environment

HIST 4243 Public History in Place: Interpreting the Environment (also SHUM 4243) (ALC-AS, HST-AS)  (HNA) Tuesday: 2:00-4:30 plus Independent Research Dr. Amanda Martin This class moves beyond the traditional disciplinary confines of academic history to examine museums, archival collections, parks, monuments, podcasts, op-eds, maps, and more as sites of historical inquiry, memory, and knowledge production. We will think critically about what it means to craft place-based and environmental history narratives for a “public” audience. Throughout the semester, we will also consider the following questions: Who counts as a historian? To whom are historians responsible when they conduct archival research and craft narratives? What makes history in/accessible? Who are the actors in environmental history (humans, or also non-human animals and plants)? This course will also reconsider what it means to write place-based histories by incorporating site visits (including a park, an archive, and a museum) into our coursework.

America and China Maps
Image generously created by Cornell Alumna Cici Jialei LIU'24

HIST 4076 History of US-China Relations, 1949-2025

HIST 4076 History of US-China Relations, 1949-2025 (also ASIAN 4076, CAPS 4076) (HST-AS, SSC-AS) (HAN) Tuesday: 2:00-4:30 plus Independent Research Professor Peidong Sun How did the U.S. and China reach this precarious moment? Are they on the brink of a hot war, or can diplomacy still prevent the worst? Is a cold peace even possible? This course critically examines the history of U.S.-China relations from 1949 to 2025, exploring the key diplomatic, economic, military, social, and ideological developments that have shaped bilateral ties. Beginning with early Cold War hostility (1949–1972), the Korean War (1950–1953), and the prolonged diplomatic estrangement (1953–1972), the course traces pivotal moments such as Nixon’s historic rapprochement (1972-1979), the cautious engagement of normalization (1979–1989), China’s economic rise and global integration (1990s–2008), and the evolving tensions of interdependence often described as ‘One Bed, Two Dreams’ (2008–present), shifting security dilemmas, and ongoing trade and technological competition. Special attention will be given to the contemporary landscape of strategic containment, rivalry, and the price of competition and cooperation. Through a multidisciplinary approach, students will analyze primary sources, academic literature, government reports, and firsthand accounts to assess how U.S.-China relations have evolved within a broader global context. Discussions will engage with pressing issues, including military tensions in the Indo-Pacific, economic decoupling, and the future trajectory of the bilateral relationship in an era of geopolitical uncertainty.

men kissing
Public Domain

HIST 3953 Cold War Europe

HIST 3953 Cold War Europe (GLC-AS, HST-AS) (HEU) Tuesday and Thursday: 2:55-4:10 plus Independent Research Professor Cristina Florea This course explores the Cold War's profound impact on Europe, examining how the continent became the primary battleground for competing ideologies and visions of world order in the aftermath of World War II. We trace Europe's transformation from wartime devastation to division along the Iron Curtain, analyzing the formation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the Berlin Crisis and construction of the Berlin Wall, and the development of distinct political, economic, and social systems in East and West. Topics include Marshall Plan reconstruction, Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe, European integration movements, popular uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, détente and Ostpolitik, dissident movements and human rights activism, and the cultural dimensions of ideological competition. Through primary sources, scholarship, and film, we examine how ordinary Europeans experienced life under surveillance states, consumer capitalism, and the constant threat of nuclear conflict. The course concludes by analyzing the peaceful revolutions of 1989, German reunification, and the Cold War's lasting impact on contemporary European politics, from EU expansion to current tensions with Russia.

Henry de la Beche, "A more ancient Dorset," watercolor 1830
Henry de la Beche, "A more ancient Dorset," watercolor 1830

HIST 2812 History of Scientific Images

HIST 2812 History of Scientific Images (also STS 2812) (HST-AS) (HPE, HEU) Tuesday and Thursday: 10:10-11:25 Professor Jeremy Schneider Science needs images. Natural history books contain drawings of plants and animals, physics books diagrams of atoms, and medical books depictions of the human body. But what makes these images “scientific”? Why aren’t they just a work of art? In this course students will examine the history of scientific images from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. We will investigate: When did science begin to value the use of images? What purpose were scientific images meant to serve? How have technologies of production changed over time? Students will uncover who the creators of scientific images are and examine how image-making has redirected the course of knowledge. The class is addressed to anyone interested in history, art, culture, and the sciences.

Terrorism, truck on fire
Image by kalhh from Pixabay

HIST 2690 History of Terrorism

HIST 2690 History of Terrorism (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (HEU) Tuesday and Thursday: 11:40-12:55 plus discussion Professor Claudia Verhoeven This lecture course examines approaches to the study of terrorism, especially in the global north. It will cover 1) the history of terrorism as it developed over the course of the modern era (in the process distinguishing terrorism from other forms of modern political violence, e.g. partisan warfare, state terror, etc.) and 2) the ways terrorism has been perceived, presented, and remembered by contemporaries and subsequent generations. Questions, therefore, will include the following: How has terrorism been approached by political theory, history, literature, etc.? How have these approaches constructed terrorism as an object of scientific investigation? How were terrorists perceived and represented by their contemporaries (in the press, literature, the arts)? How did terrorists represent themselves (in political pamphlets, autobiographies, fiction)? Readings will include archival materials, manifestos, memoirs, and novels, as well as classic pieces of political writing (e.g. Lenin, Schmitt, Arendt).

Angela Davis

HIST 2353 Civil Rights vs. Human Rights in the Black Freedom Struggle

HIST 2353 Civil Rights vs. Human Rights in the Black Freedom Struggle (also AMST 2353, ASRC 2353) (HST-AS) (HNA) Monday and Wednesday: 2:55-4:10 plus Independent Research Professor Russell Rickford This course explores the changing meaning of American freedom and citizenship in the context of the long struggle for black liberation. Relying on social and political history, it confronts the promise, possibilities, and limitations of civil rights and human rights in the twentieth century. We examine various “rights” discourses and their role in reconfiguring our legal landscape and cultural mores, molding national and group identity, bestowing social and moral legitimacy, shaping and containing political dissent, reinvigorating and redefining the egalitarian creed, and challenging as well as justifying the distribution of wealth and power in the U.S. We examine the attempts of subjugated groups to transcend narrow social definitions of freedom, and we confront the question of formal political rights versus broader notions of economic justice in a national and international context.

Autumn orange tree with a person lying under it, reading

Your September 2025 reads

This month’s featured titles include the latest by a National Book Award winner and a classical history of Jewish resistance to Rome.

Book cover: Unfiltered Regard for China

Politics gets personal for China scholar

Historian Peidong Sun began her new book “Unfiltered Regard for China: French Perspectives from Mao to Xi” amid profound personal upheaval: An exit ban from China and a move to France.

Ken Dryden, in hockey uniform.

Hockey legend Ken Dryden ’69 dies at 78

Ken Dryden ’69, the legendary Cornell men’s hockey goaltender who still holds the program record for career wins (76) and backstopped the Big Red to its first national championship in 1967, died of cancer Sept. 5.

Top