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Barry Strauss, professor of history and classics, says that a glance at ancient Rome may help in trying to understand Putin and the subject of war crimes.
Stephen and Evalyn Milman Professor in American Studies
Director of Graduate Studies
American Studies Program, History
The lecture series will link the economic relationship between the northern and southern United States, following 'plantation goods,' in three talks by Seth Rockman, associate professor of history at Brown University.
Arts & Sciences China experts comment today as a U.S. national security advisor is expected to meet with a top Chinese diplomat; the first high-level talks between the two countries since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began.
Professor
Asian Studies, Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, History, Society for the Humanities
Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky spoke to the U.S. Congress on March 16 in a direct appeal for help as Russia continues its bombardment. The war might result in new forms of international cooperation, says Cristina Florea, assistant professor of history.
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Howard A. Newman Professor of American Studies and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow
American Studies Program, History, Latina/o Studies Program
In his new book, “The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium,” historian Barry Strauss offers a more accurate, nuanced narrative of the conflict and the fascinating personalities at its core.
Jonathan Metzl, the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry and the Director of the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University is the speaker.
HIST 1585 Sports and Politics in American History (also AMST 1585) (HA-AS, HST-AS) (HNA) Tuesday and Thursday: 1:25-2:40 (3-credits for FA25 only) Visiting Professor Kevin Baker This survey course will explore the relationship between sports and politics over the course of American history from the nineteenth century to the present. 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.
HIST 1800 Immigration in U.S. History (also AMST 1800, LSP 1800) (HST-AS) (SCD-AS) (HNA) Tuesday and Thursday: 11:40-12:55 Professor Maria Cristina Garcia This course examines immigration to the United States since the early national period. The course will consider the root causes of migration; its role in settler colonialism, nation-building, and empire; and the social, cultural and economic adaptation of various populations. We will also examine popular and political responses to immigration as reflected in legislation and policy, and film and the print media.
HIST 1850 Thinking about History with the Manson Murders (also AMST 1850) (HA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS) (HNA) Tuesday and Thursday: 10:10-11:25 plus discussion section Professor Claudia Verhoeven This course introduces students to historical theory and practice through the examination of a single criminal case: the Manson Murders. On August 9-10, 1969, ex-convict, musician, and charismatic leader Charles Manson is said to have 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 Beatles song). Today, these murders stand as the most infamous in twentieth-century U.S. criminal history and have spawned a veritable Manson Industry in the popular realm. This course analyzes 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 Hollywood, Vietnam, the Black Panther Party, and environmentalism? How do the Manson murders into the 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 sources including television and newspaper reports, trial transcripts, true crime writing, memoirs, interviews, novels, films and documentaries, podcasts and pop songs. (Image credit: wikipedia/commons)
HIST 1975 Caribbean Migrations I: Caribbean Arrivals (also ASRC 1975, LATA 1975) (HST-AS)(GLC-AS) (HGS) Tuesday and Thursday: 11:25-12:40 plus discussions Professors Ernesto Bassi and Gerard Aching This course is the first in a two-course sequence that studies the role of migration in the historical configuration of the Caribbean. This first part focuses on migrations to the Caribbean from the fifteenth century to the present. The course uses the arrival of numerous populations to the Caribbean as analytical lens to explore the role of new populations in shaping the social, political, racial, cultural, and economic landscape of the Caribbean. Through an analysis of the interactions among the many groups that peopled the Caribbean, the course offers students analytical tools to understand and develop their own interpretations of the historical development of the Caribbean, emphasizing processes of dispossession, racialization, colonialism, and resistance.
HIST 2133 Social Debates in China (also ASIAN 2283, CAPS 2133) (GB) (HA-AS, GLC-AS, HST-AS) (HAN) Tuesday and Thursday: 8:05-9:20 Professor Yue (Mara) Du In this sophomore seminar, we will explore cultural, political, and social debates in China’s transition from an early modern empire to a republic, and then from a vanguard of world revolution to a post-communist party-state. Through examining primary sources in various forms (treatise, speech, and film), we will focus on issues such as Confucianism, Western-inspired cultural and legal concepts, nationalism, communism, feminism, liberalism, as well as indigenous understandings and appropriations of imported -isms. The course is organized around four debates: those between constitutional reformers and revolutionaries at turn of the 20th century; between New Culture radicals and statist reformers in the 1920s and 1930s; between politicians who resorted to social and political revolutions to “save China” and writers who believed in the transformative power of “culture;” and between liberals and “leftist” intellectuals in post-1989 China; with an interlude addressing the 1960s and the 1970s, when dissenting voices were encouraged in some ways and brutally suppressed in others. Students will participate in four debates organized at the end of each 3-week section. Each student will submit four short response papers on the four social debates the course covers. In consultation with the instructor, each student will choose a social debate from modern China that is NOT addressed in the classroom, developing a historiographical paper as his/her final essay. There is no prerequisite, but pre-acquired knowledge in Chinese history and civilization is helpful.
HIST 2165 The Death of Democracy: Europe Between the World Wars (GLC-AS, HST-AS) (HEU) Tuesday and Thursday: 1:25-2:40 plus Independent Research Professor Cristina Florea What is democracy? What does it need to thrive? When does it die? How do anti-liberal, authoritarian regimes emerge? What makes them tick? In 1921, a British liberal announced that democracy had already been accepted as the normal and natural form of government. World War I had delivered Europe’s old monarchies and autocracies a fatal blow. Three massive continental empires had fallen apart, making way to parliamentary democracies everywhere from Germany to Poland and the Balkans. Yet by the 1930s, few of these democracies were still standing. In the east, a new political experiment had culminated in the rise of a Soviet Empire. In Germany, the democratic elections of 1933 enabled Hitler’s rise to power and the growth of a regime unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. In Italy, Mussolini stamped parliamentary democracy under his foot, proclaiming the victory of totalitarianism. A variety of authoritarian regimes arose in between these extremes. They formed alliances and battled each other: at first in the Spanish Civil War and then in World War II. In this seminar, we will closely examine the rise and fall of democracies and anti-democratic regimes in Europe between the two world wars, in order to understand how democracy and authoritarianism are related and what kinds of challenges democracies have faced - both in the past and at present.
HIST 2251 U.S. Immigration Narratives (also AMST 2251, LSP 2251) (HST-AS, SCD-AS) (HIST-HNA) Tuesday and Thursday: 2:55-4:10 Professor Maria Cristina Garcia Americans are conflicted about immigration. We honor and celebrate (and commercialize) our immigrant heritage in museums, folklife festivals, parades, pageants, and historical monuments. We also build fences and detention centers, and pass more and more laws to bar access to the United States. Polls tell us that Americans are concerned about the capacity of the United States to absorb so many immigrants from around the world. How often have we heard the laments “Today’s immigrants are too different. They don’t want to assimilate” or “My grandparents learned English quickly, why can’t they?” The assumption is that older generations ‘Americanized’ quickly but that today’s immigrants do not want to assimilate. Did 19th century immigrants really migrate to the United States to “become Americans”? Did they really assimilate quickly? Are today’s immigrants really all that different from the immigrants who arrived earlier? Why do these particular narratives have such power and currency? This seminar will explore these issues and help students discern fact from fiction.
HIST 2321 Introduction to Military History (also CLASS 2687) (HB) (HA-AS, GLC-AS, HST-AS) (HPE, HEU) Tuesday and Thursday: 11:40-12:55 Professor Barry Strauss An introduction to basic themes of military history, e.g., battle, strategy, tactics, war and society, as well as classic works, e.g. Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Clausewitz, Jomini. Recent theories in scholarship will also be emphasized.
HIST 2542 The Making of Contemporary Africa (also ASRC 2542, SHUM 2542) (HA-AS)(GLC-AS) (HGS) Tuesday and Thursday: 1:00-2:15 Professor Judith Byfield Most people learn about Africa through the media. However, media critics note that coverage is disproportionately skewed toward negative stories - poverty, war and corruption. While these factors are a reality for too many people on the continent, media observers note that too often the coverage lacks context and breadth. Furthermore, media outlets do not report positive developments even where they exist. This course will provide some of the depth and context necessary to understand events in contemporary Africa. The first two-thirds of the course will examine African social and economic history since the nineteenth century - Africa’s integration in the international economy, the rise of new social classes, the creation of the colonial state and the post-colonial state. Our primary examples will be drawn from East, West and Southern Africa to highlight both the similarities and differences of their historical development. The final third of the course will examine several contemporary issues in which scholars and journalists have attempted to address the weaknesses in general press coverage.
HIST 2562 Medicine and Healing in China (also ASIAN 2262, BSOC 2561, CAPS 2262, STS 2561) (HST-AS) (HPE, HAN) Monday and Wednesday: 1:25-2:40 plus discussion Professor TJ Hinrichs An exploration of processes of change in health care practices in China. Focuses on key transitions, such as the emergence of canonical medicine, of Daoist approaches to healing and longevity, of “scholar physicians,” and of “traditional Chinese medicine” in modern China. Inquires into the development of healing practices in relation to both popular and specialist views of the body and disease; health care as organized by individuals, families, communities, and states; the transmission of medical knowledge; and healer-patient relations. Course readings include primary texts in translation as well as secondary materials.