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| Fall 2010 Seminar Descriptions |
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(As of 3 September 2010)
HIST W4045 Rome: A
Pre-Industrial Metropolis (CLOSED)
Instructor: Marco
Maiuro
Day/Time: W
11-12:50
Field: Ancient*
Ancient Rome from the 1st century BCE to the beginning of
the 5th Century AD had about one million inhabitants. This demographic density
is an exceptional feature among all preindustrial societies, equaled by London
only at the beginning of the nineteenth century.. After a short theoretical
introduction to the subject of urbanism in pre-industrial societies and in particular
in the classical period, the seminar will focus on three issues: the
demographic trend of the city, the grain and water supply and the actual
organization of water and grain distribution, and the role of the imperial
court and government in building activities, feeding the people and assuring
basic administrative services. Special attention will be paid to quantitative
aspects of the social and economic history of the city. A wide range of sources
will be examined: literary and juridical texts, inscriptions, archaeological
and topographic evidence.
--
HIST W4083 Crime
and Punishment in the Middle Ages (OPEN)
Instructor:
Neslihan Senocak
Day/Time: F
2:10-4
Field:
Medieval*
How a society defines crime, and how it deals with the
criminals tells us a lot about the moral values, and the political and economic
structure of that society, as well as its internal conflicts, superstitions,
and fears. Often supposed to be a barbaric community of ignorant unruly men
governed by greedy kings and popes, the medieval society in the popular culture
is often an inspiration to the grotesque representations of violence and
torture. Even an intellectual like Michel Foucault did not hesitate to advance
a theory of medieval punishment, albeit a terribly wrong one, as one that
focuses on the body and spectacle.
This course is designed to trace the origins of the modern criminal
legislation and practices to the Middle Ages, some of which were jury trial,
public persecution, and prisons. How did these practices come about, and under
which social conditions? The focus of the course will be on violent crimes,
such as murder, robbery, assault and suicide, and some particularly medieval
crimes like sorcery, blasphemy and sodomy. The geographical scope will be
limited to England, Italy and France. The class discussions are expected to
take the form of collective brainstorming on how the political powers, social
classes, cultural values, and religious beliefs affect the development of
criminal legislation and institutions. Whenever possible the weekly readings
will feature a fair share of medieval texts, including trial records, criminal
laws, a manual for trying witches, and prison poetry.
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HIST BC4119
Capitalism and Enlightenment (OPEN)
Instructor: Alexander
Bick
Day/Time: M
2:10-4
Field: Early
Modern Europe*
Capitalism and Enlightenment examines the intersection
between the intellectual and the economic changes brought about by the
formation of capitalism and the emergence of the Enlightenment. We trace how
some of the most prominent (and not-so-prominent) Enlightenment thinkers
reacted and responded to changes in property relations, commercial patterns,
imperial expansions, poverty conditions, luxury consumption, and money. The
seminar will also discuss the eighteenth-century debates about the real or
perceived intensification of selfishness and greed unleashed by the growth of
commerce.
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HIST W4133 The
Seven Years’ War in Global Perspective (OPEN)
Instructor: Christopher Brown
Day/Time: W 11-12:50
Field: Modern
Europe, US
This research seminar explores the causes, course,
and consequences of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), the first world war in
modern history. With nearly one million battlefield deaths and fighting
on four continents, the conflict transcended the national and imperial
categories that traditionally have been used to evaluate it. The seminar,
as a consequence, will consider the war globally, as it involved the peoples of
North America, South Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, West Africa, and the Philippines,
and in transnational perspective, including its military, diplomatic,
political, cultural, economic, and social aspects. The principal
assignment for the course will be a twenty-five page paper grounded in primary
source research.
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RELI W4170 Popes
and the Papacy, 300-1300 (CLOSED)
Instructor:
Robert Somerville
Day/Time: T
4:10-6
Field: Medieval*
Seminar on episodes in papal history from Late Antiquity
to the Avignonese papacy. Readings in both primary and secondary sources in
English translation.
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ANHS W4177 Caste,
Religion, and Tradition in Indian Society: An Anthropological History (CLOSED)
Instructors: Janaki Bakhle and
Valentine Daniel
Day/Time: T
2:10-4
Field: South
Asia
How did Western
scholars/missionaries/anthropologists/colonial officials understand the strange
world of India they found themselves in?
The religion was unrecognizable by the terms of a Western understanding:
it was not congregational, confessional, or recognizably scriptural. Culturally, Indian society was deeply
hierarchical, divided by a system called “caste” which was both scriptural and
not. Furthermore, religion
and caste contributed centrally to the understanding of “culture” a term
invoked interchangeably with “tradition.”
The divide between caste, religion, and culture, at the same time the
difficulty of implementing that divide baffled Western scholars and
missionaries of the late medieval period, but also later (19th
century) colonial officials and anthropologists. Knowledge about India was centrally produced by these
various gatherers and compilers of information on India, and in this course we
begin with early accounts of missionary activities, and will work our way
through the writings of political theorists, sociologists, anthropologists, in
order to arrive at an understanding of the interdisciplinary and
anthropological history of India.
--
HIST W4223
Personality and Society: 19th Century Russian Thought (OPEN)
Instructor:
Richard Wortman
Day/Time: M
4:10-6
Field: Modern
Europe
A seminar reviewing some of the major works of Russian
thought, literature, and memoir literature that trace the emergence of
intelligentsia ideologies in 19th- and 20th-century Russia. Focuses on discussion of specific texts
and traces the adoption and influence of certain western doctrines in Russia,
such as idealism, positivism, utopian socialism, Marxism, and various
20th-century currents of thought.
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HIST W4227 Empire
and Nation: Nationality Issues in the Russian Empire (CLOSED)
Instructor:
Serhiy Bilenky
Day/Time: M
2:10-4
Field: Modern
Europe
This senior seminar deals with nationalist challenges and
nationality policies in imperial Russia. Particular emphasis will be placed on
the imperial policies vis-à-vis national peripheries (primarily Poland,
Ukraine, the Baltic, and Volga region) as well as religious minorities
(particularly Jews, Roman Catholics, and Muslims). We will also analyze the
relationship between the imperial government and Russian nationalism. The gap
between nation and empire in Russia will be considered. The main chronological
focus of the seminar is the long nineteenth century, the late eighteenth-the
early twentieth centuries.
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HIST W4227 HIST W4235 Central Asia: Imperial Legacies,
New Images (OPEN)
Instructor:
Gulnar Kendirbai
Day/Time: T
6:10-8
Field: East
Asia, Middle East
This course is designed to give an overview of the
politics and history of the five Central Asian states, including Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan starting from Russian
imperial expansion to the present. We will examine the imperial tsarist and
Soviet legacies that have profoundly reshaped the regional societies’
and governments’ practices and policies of Islam, gender,
nation-state building, democratization, and economic development.
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HIST W4326 History
of Ireland, 1700-2000 (CLOSED)
Instructor: Susan
Pedersen
Day/Time: T
11-12:50
Field: Modern
Europe
This seminar provides an introduction to key debates and
historical writing in Irish history from 1700. Topics include:
the character of Ascendancy Ireland; the 1798 rising and the Act of
Union; the causes and consequences of the famine; emigration and Fenianism; the
Home Rule movement; the Gaelic revival; the Easter Rising and the civil war;
politics and culture in the Free State; the Northern Ireland problem; Ireland,
the European Union, and the birth of the “celtic tiger.”
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HIST W4352 Europe
in the Cold War (OPEN)
Instructor: Nancy
Collins
Day/Time: M
11-12:50
Field: Modern
Europe
This seminar is dedicated to studying the historical
developments of Europe in the Cold War, from the immediate aftermath of the
Second World War until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the
Soviet Union. We will examine the major shifts in contemporary European history
as they relate to Cold War conflicts and competitions, including the Yalta and
Potsdam meetings; Marshall Plan reconstruction; the workings of NATO; the
Prague Spring; non-proliferation movements; and Eurocommunism trends. We will
consider a wide range of historical perspectives, including but not limited to
political, geographic, economic, cultural, and military frameworks.
--
HIST BC4360
London: From “Great Wen” to World City” (CLOSED)
Instructor:
Deborah Valenze
Day/Time: W
2:10-4
Field: Modern
Europe
A social and cultural history of London from the Great
Fire of 1666 to the 1960s. An examination of changing experience of urban
identity through the commercial life, public spaces, and diverse inhabitants of
London. Topics include seventeenth-century rebuilding, literary culture, street
life, epidemic disease, gender identities, colonial influences, war, and
redevelopment.
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HIST W4381 Visions
of International Order (CLOSED)
Instructor: Mark Mazower
Day/Time: T
11-12:50
Field: Modern
Europe, US
The seminar will attempt to offer a historical context
for evaluating contemporary discussions of the role of the UN and the nature of
international relations. It will cover the formation and metamorphoses of the
United Nations itself, exploring in particular its role in the Cold War and in
the decolonization process. We will look too at why some international
organizations [the IMF] appear to have flourished while others failed. Among
the topics to be covered are the changing role of international law, sovereignty
and human rights regimes, development aid as international politics, the
collapse of the gold standard and its impact. We will end by looking at the
politics of UN reform, and new theories of the role of institutions in global
affairs, and ask what light they shed on the future of international governance
now that the Cold War is over. Students will be expected to read widely in
primary as well as secondary sources and to produce a research paper of their
own.
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HIST BC4423
Origins of the Constitution (CLOSED)
Instructor: Herbert
Sloan
Day/Time: W
11-12:50
Field: US
An examination of the creation of the Constitution;
consequences of independence; ideological foundations; the Articles of
Confederation and the Critical Period; the nationalist movement and the
Convention; anti-federalism and ratification; the Bill of Rights. Readings from selected secondary and
primary sources, including The Federalist.
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HIST W4485
Politics and Culture in Cold War America (CLOSED)
Instructor: Alan
Brinkley
Day/Time: R
2:10-4
Field: US
An examination of the years from the end of World War II
to the beginning of the 1960s, focusing on three areas: the Cold War, the “Affluent Society,”
and the “Haunted Fifties,” It includes both works of history and works of literature.
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HIST BC4542
Education in American History (CLOSED)
Instructor:
Nancy Woloch
Day/Time: T
11-12:50
Field: US
The role played by educational institutions, educational
ideas, and educators in American history. Themes include changing attitudes toward
schooling, influential theories of learning, the link between education and
social mobility, and the tension between equality and liberty in the American
educational experience.
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AMHS W4574 America
Through Sight and Sound to 1877 (CLOSED)
Instructor:
Steven Mintz
Day/Time: W
4:10-6
Field: US
This course uses audio and visual evidence to explore
major themes in American history from early colonization through
Reconstruction. Major themes
include visual perceptions of the early American landscape and its
transformation; contested representations of African Americans, Native
Americans, and Mexicans as expressed through visual imagery; shifting attitudes
toward childhood, death, the family, and gender as revealed through art and
material artifacts; the visual
history of slavery, the sectional crisis, the Civil War, and Reconstruction;
the evolution of African American, Irish, and Mexican American musical
traditions to 1877 and what their songs reveal about these peoples’ lives and
values; and the construction, transmission, and contestation of historical
memory in popular audio and visual media.
--
HIST W4588
Substance Abuse Politics in African-American History (CLOSED)
Instructor: Samuel
Roberts
Day/Time: T
4:10-6
Field: US
Through a series of secondary- and primary-source
readings and web-based writing assignments, students in this seminar course
will explore one of the most controversial aspects of twentieth century public
health history: drug policy and its relationship to social movements and urban
political economy. Readings are
primarily historical and sociological, and the principal focus is heroin from
its emergence in the 1950s through the crack cocaine era. Topics of discussion
include print and visual media representations; racism and the war on drugs;
the Rockefeller Drug Laws; methadone, syringe provision, and harm reduction;
the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC); and urban politics. Harlem and East Harlem, New York City
will be of particular interest in this course.
Students will also further develop their research and
collaborative work skills. There
will be training sessions in using several social science research databases.
HIST W4588 is part of the larger Harlem Health History
Project (HHHP), an ongoing research and teaching project examining the history
of health research, institutions, access to care, politics, social movements,
and professional organization in the Harlem, New York City, community.
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HIST W4597 Memory and American Narratives of the
Self (OPEN)
Instructor: Eric
Wakin
Day/Time: R
4:10-6
Field: US
In this seminar we will use readings from the
interdisciplinary study of memory (theory) to examine published and unpublished
American letters, diaries, and autobiographies (practice). With regard to
memory, we will be concerned with what is remembered, what is forgotten, and
how this process occurs. We’ll explore concepts including collective/shared
memory, commemoration, documentation, trauma, nation, autobiography, nostalgia,
etc., and we’ll test this theory against written narratives of the self. The
goals of the seminar are to explore theoretical concepts of memory, apply them
to written examples of memory, and to develop proficiency in the use of these
skills inside and outside an academic environment. This is a history course and
many of the narratives we will read are American 19th-century texts.
These will include, but not be limited to, those on the experience of the Civil
War. The course requires participants to commit substantial time outside of
class working with unpublished materials in Columbia’s Rare Book &
Manuscript Library for assignments and as part of a final project.
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HIST W4610 Jews and the Mediterranean in Antiquity
(OPEN)
Instructor:
Seth Schwartz
Day/Time: M
2:10-4
Field: ANC
What can history
and ethnography of the Mediterranean World teach us about the ancient Jews and
how can the experience of the ancient Jews be used to criticize and refine
modern ideas about Mediterranean culture? We will examine selected ancient
Jewish texts from a critical 'mediterraneanist' perspective.
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HIST BC4651 Jewish
Immigration: NY, London, Paris, Buenos Aires (CLOSED)
Instructor:
Jose Moya
Day/Time: W
2:10-4
Field: Modern
Europe, US, Latin America/Caribbean
Examines Jewish immigrant experience in New York, Buenos
Aires, London, and Paris, c.1880-1930.
Focus on the Old World origins of the arrivals, the formation of
neighborhoods, ethnic institutions, family, work, cultural expressions, and
relations with the rest of society.
Based on readings and primary research (newspapers, letters, songs,
photographs, etc.).
--
HIST W4718
Theories of Islamic History (CLOSED)
Instructor:
Richard Bulliet
Day/Time: W
9-10:50
Field: Middle
East
Unlike European history, which divides into generally
agreed upon eras and is structured around a clear narrative of religious and
political events from Roman times down to the present, the broad sweep of
Islamic and Middle Eastern history appears in quite different lights depending
on who is wielding the broom. Theories of Islamic history can embody or conceal
political, ethnic, or religious agendas; and no consensus has gained headway
among the many writers who have given thought to the issue. The study of
theories of Islamic history, therefore, provides a good opportunity for history
majors to explore and critique broad conceptual approaches. A seminar devoted
to such explorations should be a valuable capstone experience for students with
a special interest in Islam and the Middle East.
One or two works will be read by the entire class each
week, and two students will be assigned to lead the discussions of the week's
readings. Grades for the course will be based half on class participation and
half on a 15-page term paper devoted to a topic approved by the instructor.
--
HIST W4668 Economic History of Iberia, Iberian America,
and the Atlantic World (OPEN)
Instructor: Rafael
Dobado
Day/Time: M
11-12:50
Field: LAC
This course will emphasize the various aspects of Iberian
American in the Atlantic world since the very beginning of its existence. From
1492 until the 1820s, Iberian America took part in a complex set of economic
interactions based on coerced and free exchanges of germs, people, goods,
institutions, techniques and money between Africa, the Americas and Western
Europe. Asia's direct and indirect
contacts with Iberian America and the Atlantic world will be highlighted as
well. While colonialism has been
emphasized in the literature as the explanatory factor behind the economic
development of Iberian America, this course will also pay attention to internal
factors, such as the diverse regional geography and the pre-Columbian
legacies. The consequences of
independence and of globalization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
will be examined too in this economic history of the varied trajectories
experienced by that heterogeneous group of countries (i.e. Argentina versus
Guatemala or Cuba) that made up Iberian America.
HIST W4768 Writing
Contemporary African History (OPEN)
Instructor: Gregory
Mann
Day/Time: R 2:10-4
Field: Africa
An exploration of the historiography of contemporary
(post-1960) Africa, this course asks what African history is, what is unique
about it, and what is at stake in its production.
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HSEA W4839 Family
in Chinese History (OPEN)
Instructor: Robert
Hymes
Day/Time: M
4:10-6
Field: East
Asia
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HSEA W4860 Culture
and Society in Choson Korea, 1392-1910 (OPEN)
Instructor: Ja
Hyun K Haboush
Day/Time: T
1:10-3
Field: East
Asia
Major cultural, political, social, economic and literary
issues in the history of this 500-year long period. Reading and discussion of
primary texts (in translation) and major scholarly works. All readings will be
in English. Major Cultures Requirement: East Asian Civilization List B.
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HSEA W4884
Economic History of China (CLOSED)
Instructor: Madeleine
Zelin
Day/Time: W
4:10-6
Field: East
Asia
A close
examination of China's early modern economic development set against the
background of major debates in the field of world economic history and within
the field of modern Chinese history. The time frame for this course is
approximately the late 18th to the early 20th century.
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HIST W4900
Historian’s Craft (CLOSED)
Instructor:
Elizabeth Blackmar
Day/Time: T
2:10-4
Field: Theory
(may not count towards breadth requirement)
Intended for history majors this course raises the issues
of the theory and practice of history as a discipline. Considers different approaches to the
study of history and offers an introduction to research and the use of archival
collections. Special emphasis on conceptualization of research topics,
situating projects historiographically, locating and assessing published and
archival sources. This course may be taken as an alternative to fulfill the
requirement for Introduction to History for majors planning to write a senior
essay. Enrollment limited to twelve students, with priority to history majors.
(This course may be
taken as an alternative for fulfilling the "HIST W2901 Historical Theories
and Methods" requirement for majors planning to write a senior thesis.)
HIST W4911
Medicine and Western Civilization (OPEN)
Instructor:
David Rothman
Day/Time: M
4:10-6
Field: Modern
Europe/US
This seminar seeks to analyze the ways by which medicine
and culture combine to shape our values and traditions. To this end, it will
examine notable literary, medical, and social texts from classical antiquity to
the present.
HIST BC4913
Madness to Prozac: The Sciences of the Self in the Modern Era (CLOSED)
Instructor:
Michal Shapira
Day/Time: W
11-12:50
Field: Modern
Europe/US
This seminar will explore the emergence of sciences of
the self in the West from the late eighteenth century to the twenty-first
century. We will concentrate especially on psychiatry and psychology and how
they have shaped and remade modern selves. Using interdisciplinary scholarship
from history, critical theory, sociology, and psychology, we will examine
topics such as the birth of modern psychiatry and psychology; theories of
madness; the rise of the asylum; colonial psychiatry; sexology; the medicalization
of gender and ethnic difference; the emergence of neurosis and trauma;
psychoanalysis and talking cure; hysteria; shell shock and post-traumatic
stress disorder; human sciences and the welfare state, and the rise of the
“Prozac Nation.”
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