Introduces students to different ways of thinking about Latin America's relationship with the world and how it has changed over time by tracing economic, social, political, and cultural factors over time, students will gain a good understanding of how Latin America impacts the world—and how the world impacts Latin America.
Since ancient times until the present, pirates have struck fear in the hearts of mariners and fascinated observers of the past. Were they bloodthirsty brutes or ‘social bandits’ whose swashbuckling underwrote an egalitarian, democratic lifestyle?
This course follows the pirate bands and privateers who flourished during the age of European expansion, from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, in the Caribbean, the Atlantic, and beyond. We will see how Henry Morgan, Blackbeard, and others were linked to early modern histories of empire, gender, the environment, political thought, slavery, and commerce.
Students examine how people lived in the MiddleAges, formed relationships, earned a living, as well as how they thought about food, love, violence, their bodies, and death. Primary sources allow access to medieval people’s experiences and secondary sources reveal scholars’ approaches to those experiences. This course emphasizes both discussion and writing as both are key conduits to advance learning, thinking, and communication.
This course introduces students to the history of West Africa since 1885. It starts with the 1885 Berlin Conference, when European powers arranged to partition Africa. Among other themes, the course explores the imposition of colonial rule, resistance to European colonialism, pan-Africanism in West Africa, transformations during the colonial period, decolonization, postcolonial nation-states, and women and gender in contemporary West Africa. A variety of primary and secondary sources, two novels, films and documentaries will enrich students understanding of the events and issues the course covers.
Women in American History (HIST 445) invites students to consider central questions about the history of women and gender in the United States across time and place, from the founding of the nation to the late-twentieth century. Our central questions will be:
- How did gender, along with race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and immigration status, shape women's place in the United States?
- How did women help to mold American politics, society and culture?
Historians have written approximately 16,000 books about Abraham Lincoln, but there is still so much to learn about the man in his historical context. Lincoln wrote in 1864, “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”
In this course, we examine the times in which Lincoln lived and how they helped make this famous American, focusing on the imperialism of the American republic, capitalist transformation, and the struggle over slavery and emancipation that caused and shaped the contours of the Civil War.
The U.S Civil Rights Movement course traces the history of the movement in the U.S from the early twentieth century and through the 1960. In addition to considering the scholarly debates within the field of Civil Rights and Black Power history, students will focus on activists, leaders and organizations that emerged to struggle for racial justice and Black liberation. We will use secondary and primary sources, film, music, oral history to interrogate the myths surrounding the movement and examine activists’ organizing strategies-from litigation and legislation to mass protest, cultural practice, economic self-help, and other expressions of self-determination. This course also examines the local regional, national, and global dimensions of Black liberation. Finally students will consider the impact of Civil Rights and Black Power Movement on future, Black-led protest, politics and culture.