History (HIST-GA)

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

Introduction to the theoretical and methodological issues involving archives, historical documentation, and historical resources. Focuses on the history of records and record keeping, development of archival theory, appraisal, arrangement and description, reference, legal and ethical issues, and current trends in the profession.

The Digital Archives course addresses the role of archivists across the life-cycle of digital archives and articulates challenges, best practices, and standards associated with the appraisal, acquisition, storage, and provision of access to digital archives. Students design basic workflows for the accession and ingest of digital archives and identify risks and threats to the successful preservation of digital archives in various file formats. The course also enumerates important considerations in institutional policies and plans related to collection development, intellectual property rights, preservation, and overall sustainability.

Introduces students to the theories, practices, and problems involved in editing and publishing historical documentary editions. Students develop their own documentary editions complete with prefatory material, transcriptions, annotations, and calendars. Focuses especially on project leadership and includes an electronic edition component.

Study of the transition from a maturing to a late society in Europe and the United States. Examines economic pressures, technological developments, entrepreneurial policies, ethnic and national subcultures, and emergence of urban and state institutions as they relate to the social history of the working class, the labor movement, and class consciousness.

Focuses on the ideas, techniques, and complexities of creating digital history texts and web sites. Introduction to the digitization process, with an emphasis on standards and best practices for creating digital projects in an archival or public history setting.

Analyzes monographs in the field, drawn from all geographical areas, dealing with major theoretical issues.

History and anthropology became separate disciplines in the mid-nineteenth century when the emergence of a consciousness of progress caused history to become the study of developed societies liable to rapid transformations, as distinct from the investigation of so-called primitive societies. After a divorce of two centuries the two disciplines are converging once again. The purpose of this colloquium is to identify, analyze and assess the role of anthropological concepts and methods in examining the cultures and societies of the medieval west.

Examines how the major developments in modern European history from the Enlightenment and state formation to the post-1945 era were manifested in ?peripheral? and ?small? European nation-states by using Greece as a case study.

The theme of the colloquium, materiality, is concerned with the tangible stuff of medieval lives, with those materials -animal parts, vegetable fibers, metal, stones, clay, wood, that were used and processed into finished objects -comestibles, clothing, homes and monuments, artifacts and ornaments, images and the media of written and visual communication. As they emerged from raw materials, things affected social relations and cultural perception, enabling action and provoking reaction. We will consider, for example, the effects of pageantry, with its elaborate display of culinary, heraldic, and sartorial splendor, in asserting and maintaining chivalric claims to dominance. We will examine recent archeological findings to understand the ways accessories to clothing enabled peasants to resist and re-fashion the identities imposed upon them by medieval elites.

Approaches to the theory and practice of early modern and modern state formation. An early emphasis on political philosophy and critical theory yields to a focus on historical case studies from across Europe and the European colonies.

Surveys major literature and historiographical issues in the early modern field.

Considers both the political and intellectual history of Europe?s division between Eastern Europe and Western Europe, from the 18th century to the present. Course material includes travel Considers both the political and intellectual history of Europe?s division between Eastern Europe and Western Europe, from the 18th century to the present. Course material includes travel writing, mental mapping, the Iron Curtain, and the history of the European Union.

This readings colloquium assays current thinking on the historical relationship between the family and the state while exploring the varied understandings of this relationship that colonial peoples of North America?Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans?brought to the process of nation building.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

Interplays the specific cultural-historical context of interwar Europe (in particular France in the late Third Republic and Weimar Germany, but also to a lesser extent Austria, Italy, and early Soviet Russia) with trends of philosophical, literary, and political writing of the period. Certain themes or figures will guide the choice of texts, e.g. authority, subjectivity, violence, sovereignty.

Surveys major literature and historiographical issues in the colonial Latin American field

Surveys major literature and historiographical issues in the modern Latin American field

This course explores the literature of field for various topics throughout history; the specific field and topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

Explores the transformation of France from the Old Regime monarchy of the late eighteenth century to the early Third Republic of the 1870s. We will focus first on the French Revolution, its origins, dynamics and consequences. We will then study the political, social, and cultural conflicts that help explain why the French went through three more revolutions--in 1830, 1848, and 1871--before establishing a stable form of republican government. We will also devote time to social and cultural history, and especially to recent literature on working-class formation, gender relations, and the peasantry.

Explores main themes of and principal approaches to European women?s history from the late 18th century through World War II. Readings focus on Britain, France, Germany, and Russia.

Examines black women?s conceptions of, and presence in, the public or political realm from the antebellum era through the 1960s. Investigates the ways in which black women defined the public and political.

This course explores the disjunction between the history of arguably the most important Jewish neighborhood in America and the subsequent memory culture which developed after its demise.

Over the course of recent years seminars under the ?Topics? rubric have focused on the history of American Judaism, the history of Jewish women in America, and post-World War II American Jewry.

This comparative course looks at the historical experiences of Jewish women in both Europe and the United States, focusing on work, education, family, communal activism, among other toThis comparative course looks at the historical experiences of Jewish women in both Europe and the United States, focusing on work, education, family, communal activism, among other topics.

This course will investigate the history of Soviet Eurasia from the First World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Themes include the tensions of Soviet empire and nation-building; global geopolitics; ideology, dictatorship, and state-building; and the pursuit of non-capitalist modernity—social, economic, cultural, political—in a capitalist world.

A thematic approach to the problem of continuity in modern Russian history, with an emphasis on the European context of ideology, state formation, economy, and culture.

Analyzes events and conditions leading to the Act of Union: Tudor conquest and colonization; Gaelic pushback; Ireland under the Stuarts; the Williamite War and formation of the Protestant Ascendancy; emergence of Irish nationalism; Ireland and the Enlightenment; 18th-century political, economic and societal transformations; Ireland in the age of revolutions.

This M.A. level course looks at the histories of these two immigrant groups to America in a comparative context, exploring the causes and nature of the migrations, patterns of settlement, work, family, popular culture, as well as American receptions of them.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course explores various topics throughout medieval history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

Analysis of the theory and practice of imperialism as it applied to Africa south of the Sahara; the theory and practice of colonial administration in British, French, and Belgian Africa; and the nature of the relationships between the independent African nations and their former colonial masters.

This course introduces students to the major themes, scholarly approaches, and sources for African history.

This course examines the ways in which those of African descent have either envisioned or enacted ways of transnational cooperation. The focus is admittedly political and limited in that it does not explore aesthetics, sports, etc. As a seminar, the idea is to consider several examples before students with time and opportunity pursue their own research.

20th-Century course surveys major literature and historiographical issues in the American field in the 20th century. Colonial Era course surveys major literature and historiographical issues in the American field in the colonial era.

Studies the tension between England and the American colonies in a political and social context. Other topics include revolutionary ideology, constitutional conflict, the War of Independence, the framing of new state government, and the debate over the federal Constitution.

Surveys the major literature and historiographical issues in the American field in the 19th century.

This course explores various topics throughout American history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course explores the history of science and technology.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

The general aim of this course is to study global interactions between various societies from 1300 to 1800, a period during which peoples from all continents encountered one another in conditions of both cooperation and collision. Topics include comparative notions of empire and colonial practices; the ideas and beliefs each society held about themselves and ?others? and the things and conventions that gave them such identities: language, color, ethnicity, kinship, religion, and so on. Throughout the course, students also study the structure of each society?s thought; the categories of analysis used in encounters with other societies; and how interactions and the language used to characterize others changed over time. Other topics include trade between various societies; the creation of colonial societies; slavery: evolution, concepts, and its influence in the creation of racial theories; diaspora in history and its influence in the various societies affected by migratory movements.

This course provides an introductory overview to the public history field in its diverse venues and manifestations. Through intensive reading, discussion, and writing, students consider how the field of public history came into being and how it has evolved; where and how history is made and consumed; and the intersections and collisions of academic history with commemoration and popular history-making.

Explores changing definitions of ?local? and ?community? in light of contemporary historical interpretations. Focuses especially on differing historical methodologies and their impact on collecting and public history projects, considering such topics as unconventional evidence, material culture, museum interpretation, historical sites, and historical societies.

Reviews efforts at dramatization and documentaries for radio, television, film, and print media. Considers the historical implications of media production and allows students to conceptualize projects and research in a variety of media formats.

Public historians build bridges between the work of academic historians and the interests of diverse public audiences. Through readings, media analysis, visits by working public historians, and project work, students explore intellectual, political, and pragmatic issues in public history. A semester-long project requires students to work collaboratively to conceptualize a public history project and write a complete funding proposal for it.

An introduction to the study of women and gender in history with a focus on the relevant historiographical trends, methodological developments, and approaches to research.

This course explores various topics throughout American social history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

Examines the major themes, developments, and dilemmas of educational history in the United States. How have historians defined and explored American education? What are the major achievements and weaknesses of the field?

Broad exposure to African American history. Begins with a historiographical introduction, describing the growth and development of the field, and moves to a major theme and period treatment ranging from ancient Africa to the civil rights movement. Provides an understanding of the field and a foundation for specialized course work and research.

This course explores various topics throughout African history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

A colloquium concerned with the ways in which the African diaspora has been (and is being) theorized; that is, the conceptual and methodological frameworks within which the African diaspora has been located, and by which the imaginary has been approached. Specifically, the field is considered in connection with and through insights provided by studies of the subaltern and cultural, theories of feminism and hybridity and creolization, black radical internationalism, etc.

This course explores various topics throughout Latin American history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

A colloquium on the formation and development of the African diaspora, uncritically defined as the dispersal of people of African descent throughout the world, by way of examining the most recent and influential literature on the topic. Care is given to consider works addressing the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean, as well as the Americas.

Introduction to historiography of postindependence Latin America. Focuses on topics such as the integration of Latin America into the world capitalist trade and investment system, evolution of rural and urban labor systems and movements, liberalism, nationalism, U.S.-Latin American relations, and revolutionary movements.

This course focuses on one of the most important and radical revolutions of the modern world. We begin with classic and more recent perspectives on the revolution itself in an attempt to understand its origins, character, course, and legacies in Haiti from the period of 1789 through the immediate post independence (1804) period. The second focus of the course is on the revolution?s repercussions and impact outside the borders of the French colony, throughout the Atlantic World. Third, we address the question of literary, cinematic, and academic representations of the revolution, its protagonists, and its legacies.

Introduction to the major themes and debates of colonial Caribbean history. Begins with the reading of general works on the Caribbean: selections from major texts and classic essays by historians, anthropologists, and literary critics arguing the case for the study of the Caribbean as a unit of analysis. From there, goes on to consider the central themes of the region and the period: slavery, capitalism, and emancipation; colonialism, revolution, and imperialism; nationalism and race. Themes are studied from a variety of approaches and perspectives, from very local microhistorical studies to comparative ones to more sweeping global treatments. Throughout, an attempt is mIntroduction to the major themes and debates of colonial Caribbean history. Begins with the reading of general works on the Caribbean: selections from major texts and classic essays by historians, anthropologists, and literary critics arguing the case for the study of the Caribbean as a unit of analysis. From there, goes on to consider the central themes of the region and the period: slavery, capitalism, and emancipation; colonialism, revolution, and imperialism; nationalism and race. Themes are studied from a variety of approaches and perspectives, from very local microhistorical studies to comparative ones to more sweeping global treatments. Throughout, an attempt is made to bridge the vertical lines that often separate the study of the different linguistic and imperial Caribbeans.

This reading-intensive colloquium on early modern China is intended for those who are already familiar with the outlines of early modern Chinese history. Participants will both engage in greater depth some of the major paradigms in Chinese history c1550-1900 and will gain a broad knowledge of recent historiographical debates.

An exploration of Italian colonialism from the late 19th century through the end of empire. Through readings of travel literature, films, and historical works, we address the meaning of colonialism within Italian history and culture, colonial racial policies and gender identities, and the legacies of colonialism in Italy and in its former colonies.

Fascism is back in the news today, with right-wing movements finding popularity in Europe and strongmen rulers finding favor. This interdisciplinary course gives us background to understand our contemporary world by examining Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship. We address Fascism’s culture of violence; biopolitics and demographic policy; imperialism and war; Fascist ideology and visual culture; gender roles; and anti-Fascism.

Italy from 1940 to 1945, with a focus on cultural and political responses to war and on how the war has been represented in memory. The course is thematic rather than chronological in nature; our sources include reportage, novels, archival documents, memoirs, and non-fiction and feature film as our sources. Ongoing themes will include the meanings of resistance and collaboration; the problematics of testimony, witnessing, and memory; the impact of war on gender roles and identities; and the representation of violence.

Introduces students to the major themes, scholarly approaches, and sources for Atlantic history.

In this seminar, students pursue independent research projects while meeting as a class to discuss research challenges as represented both by their own research and in common readings.

The course examines Islam?s multiple developments and expressions across the expanse of West Africa, from the seventh century through the present.

Explores the social, cultural, and political meanings and consequences of racial constructions, with attention to such topics as law, sex, gender, science, and empire. Interrogates North American racial systems in transnational contexts.

Seminar setting in which students consider a variety of issues and topics relating to their fieldwork sites and internship venues. Topics include public policy, historic site interpretation, digital humanities, current archival and museological theory, and leadership in cultural institutions. Students complete a 120-hour internship/practicum at a cooperating archives or public history site, arranged through the program director.

Fieldwork course that engages the historiographical, theoretical, and methodological issues involving oral history work. Includes a research and design component, as well as a project implementation module in which students conceive, interview, process, and present oral histories.

This course introduces students to the preservation of archival collections and cultural heritage materials. Beginning with an overview of the history of and the context for the preservation of cultural heritage, the course includes an examination of the composition of a variety of common archival materials, including paper, inks, photographs, magnetic media, and digital objects. The course is designed to introduce the student to preservation issues, such as conversation, holdings maintenance programs, rehousing techniques, reformatting, digital migration and conversion methods, selection for preservation, condition and needs assessment, proper use, handling and storage methods, environmental.

Traces the rise of modern bureaucratic organizations and their relationship to the documentary record. Examines the history of recordkeeping, the records and information needs of businesses, nonprofits, and governments, records management theory and practice, and current trends in administering electronic records programs.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course will survey techniques of visual reproduction, focus on cultivating the ability to identify visual genres, and explore how scholars from various disciplines use visual materials for research. We will study historical processes of reproduction, such as photography and printing techniques, but will also examine printed books, audiovisual materials, and digital files as visual objects. The course is directed at curators, archivists, public historians and others who need to be able to identify and understand these genres and formats. We will read works by scholars who utilize or study visual resources, and will work closely with visual documents from the collections of the Fales Library & Special Collections, as well as other archives in New York City.

Introduction to the theoretical and methodological components involved in the research process. Considers historiographical issues; develops an understanding of the archival and library environments, focusing on searching strategies and the use of automated techniques; and emphasizes framing research questions. Students complete a research paper with appropriate documentation and bibliography in their area of interest.

Capstone seminar in which students create final projects in the program with a substantial research and writing component. Projects may take the form of historical theses, exhibition designs, historical editing projects, web-based resources, or historic site interpretations. Class meetings allow students to focus on and discuss research issues.

This course is a meditation on West African social history, and spans periods from the earliest through the postcolonial. We will read a monograph a week, cutting-edge works that help to shape the field of African history as a whole, serving as portals into the historiographic and methodological issues that historians of Africa encounter. The idea is for students to acquire an understanding of how the literature has built upon itself, as well as the means (methods/approaches) by which histories of the continent have been researched and written. This is the craft of the historian, and to best way to learn that craft is to consider how it unfolds over the course of an entire œuvre.The course is intended to support student research, which in practical terms, the course is the completion of a term/research paper by the end of the semester.

This course explores the purposes of archival description and the place of description in the continuum of archival practice, especially its relationship to arrangement, discovery, and reference. The course exposes students to the application of archival description and introduces the tools used to create description: content and encoding standards, controlled vocabularies, and content management systems. The course also emphasizes the importance of understanding users and applying this knowledge to influence descriptive practice, local practice and implementation, and online discovery environments. Introduction to Archives is a prerequisite for this course.

A hands-on introduction to “doing history” in the digital age, this course focuses on the evolving methodologies and tools used by public historians to collect, preserve, and present digital sources. Students will become familiar with a range of web-based tools, such as Omeka, and learn best practices for digitizing, adding metadata, tagging, and clearing permissions. By evaluating existing digital history projects and discussing perspectives from leading practitioners, students will also consider the role of the general public as both audiences for, and co-creators of, digital history. The core requirement is a collaborative digital history archive and exhibit that will be developed throughout the semester on a selected historical theme.

This course will examine the relationship between gender, race, and ethnicity in the United States in the twentieth century.

Examines women?s experience in and contributions to medieval Europe and developments in gender formulations during the Middle Ages.

Interpretation of medieval history in the 20th century. Historiography and sociology of knowledge.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course explores various topics throughout European history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course serves as a dual orientation for MA students. First, it introduces about a dozen approaches and fields of historical research. Second, it introduces students to NYU and its History Department. By the end of the semester, students will have (1) expanded their historiographical literacy; (2) developed their ability to read and discuss unfamiliar work, and (3) reflected upon a range of questions and approaches that might inform their own future work

This one-semester seminar on early modern European imperialism is designed to give students interested in the history of early modern Europe, the Atlantic world, the history of Africa, and colonial Latin America a general understanding of the early modern ideologies and institutions that enabled Europe to colonize parts of Africa and the Americas. Throughout the semester, students examine several important topics: medieval precedents of early modern imperialism; theories of empire and monarchy; ideologies of conquest and colonization; models of conquest and colonial exploitation; and the relevance of race and slavery in understanding European influence in Africa and the Americas.

In *Religion at the American University* we will seek to understand the—sometimes confusing— place of religion in the 21st century university through an historical lens. · To understand the radically changed place of religion in the American college and university from the religious core of the colonial and early national university to today’s secular institution. · To understand tensions from the past that are reflected in 21st century higher education such as the perceived tension between religion and science (think battles over evolution) or struggles over the teaching of values vs. a more value-free approach to data. · To understand historical reasons for 21st century skepticism about the role of people of faith as chaplains or administrators or teachers. In pursuing this issue we will ask: Can religious faith and objectivity co-exist? Is there such a thing as objectivity? · To ask “where did the idea of a college chaplain or a religious life leader come from?” We know that in the clergy dominated colleges of the colonial era, the notion of a designated chaplain made no sense? When did this change? Why?

The focus of this course is the research and writing of gender history. Not only will we discuss the overlap and tensions between the fields of women’s history and gender history. We will also consider histories of sexuality and the body. Along these lines, we shall explore the methodological issues that arise in researching the history of gender, bodies, and/or sexuality.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course will explore the under-engaged topic of blacks in New York from its Dutch origins to the present. The process of racial formation and the mechanisms of racial domination in the early stages of the settlement were central to the northern colonial experience and to the founding of the United States.

Examines the institution of servitude and slavery in tropical Africa since classical antiquity. Studies master-servant relationships in selected precolonial African societies and the Atlantic slave trade and its impact on African political, social, and economic organization.

Examines 18th-century interrelated debates about the nature of citizenship and the civitas in revolutionary America, France, and Haiti.

Studies the social, political, and cultural history of the Civil War era and its legacies, with particular attention to race.

A seminar that emphasizes the historiography of what has come to be called the African diaspora, but in other eras was called something else, like pan-Africanism. Seminal works by Du Bois, Barnett Wells, Padmore, Casely Hayford, James, Blyden, Crummell, Cooper, etc., are examined.

This course explores various topics throughout American history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course explores the emergence of what is called the “Agrarian Question” as that question was related to the emergence of modernity (as a tendentially global economic, cultural, social, and political formation). The course begins with formative analyses of the problem of value (where and how is value produced?) and continues into the question of land, peasants, domestic and global revolution, modernization and development, race & labor, gender & reproduction, migration and ecological disaster/pandemics. The aim is to familiarize students with some basic theoretical/philosophical approaches and selected historical texts, as these articulate the agrarian question in modern terms. The course is intended to assist students in analyzing the agrarian question through a broad theoretical/historical/global perspective.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This colloquium will review major developments in the left since the early nineteenth century, focusing on left visions, social movements and political practices and the interaction of theory and practice. Readings focus on England, Germany, Russia as well as the U.S., India, Cuba and China.

Studies the culture of New York City in comparative perspective, particularly emphasizing the relation of political and economic modernization to the culture of modernity and artistic movements of modernism.

This colloquium views the Cold War as global conflict and focuses on Western and Eastern Europe and the "Third World" as well as on the U.S. and Soviet Union.

Examination of the Cold War from World War II to the fall of the Soviet empire in 1989.

Historiographic and analytic approaches to variable topics. Recent colloquia have included Historical Consciousness in Latin America; Age of Revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean; Race, Gender, and Nation; US-Latin American Relations; Historical Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in Latin America; Independence and Nationalism in the 19th Century. May also focus on the history of a particular country or subregion, such as modern Brazil, Central America, or the Caribbean.

Methodology research seminar in which students learn the basic techniques of isolating and conceptualizing a topic, develop their research skills in handling primary and secondary sources available in the New York area, and complete a coherent, pertinent research paper of about 25 pages, with appropriate documentation and bibliograp

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course provides the opportunity for closely advised research and writing on student-designed projects related to the history of empires. The course builds on readings and discussion in the reading course Empires, States, and Political Imagination (G57.3390). While the reading course is not a prerequisite for this research seminar, students should have some demonstrated knowledge of the history of at least one imperial setting and be in a position to formulate a research topic at the beginning of the semester. By the end of the semester, each student will have produced a major research paper based on primary sources in the format of an article to be published in an academic journal.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

In this capstone seminar course, students are expected to undertake an original research project that relates to either the archives or public history field. The final product may take several forms: 1) a 30-50 page, article-length, research paper that might be submitted for publication in an academic journal; 2) a public history or archives project, which has been worked out with a cooperating institution, that might result in such products as a consulting report, finding aid with recommendations for handling or treating particular types of material, or collections survey; 3) an online project that contextualizes a body of historical source material and brings it to broader public attention.

This course is a requirement for all students completing their MA in History. During their final semester, students write an MA thesis, expanding on their Proseminar paper. The thesis is conceived of as a historical article; this form means that the thesis should be suitable for submission for publication, and/or for use as a writing sample for future graduate applications. Students work directly under the supervision of a faculty thesis advisor.

This independent study provides students with the opportunity to work one-on-one with a faculty member to explore readings on a particular topic. This independent readings course is taken on a pass/fail basis.

This independent study provides students with the opportunity to work one-on-one with a faculty member to explore readings on a particular topic. This independent readings course is taken on a pass/fail basis.

This independent study provides students with the opportunity to work one-on-one with a faculty member to explore readings on a particular topic.

In this capstone seminar course, students are expected to undertake an original research project that relates to either the archives or public history field. The final product may take several forms: 1) a 30-50 page, article-length, research paper that might be submitted for publication in an academic journal; 2) a public history or archives project, which has been worked out with a cooperating institution, that might result in such products as a consulting report, finding aid with recommendations for handling or treating particular types of material, or collections survey; 3) an online project that contextualizes a body of historical source material and brings it to broader public attention.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course focuses on the comparative study of empires from the Romans to the present and on the variety of ways in which empire-states have established and constrained claims to rights, belonging, and power. The study of empire expands our debates over rights, citizenship, economic regulation, and accountability without letting them fall into a seeming gap between the nation-state and the global.

This graduate research seminar seeks to place the experience of American Jews into the context of the nation’s religious, ethnic, and racial diversity from the colonial period through the later part of the twentieth century. We will ask how the Jews’ concentration in the commercial sector, their whiteness in the eyes of the state, and the legacy of European anti-Semitism structured the Jewish encounters with other Americans. The Civil War, the era of mass migration, and the vast expansion of American industry, and the conquest of the North American continent will be considered. The Holocaust indeed functions as a watershed event, but the Great Depression and the New Deal, post-war suburbanization, the civil rights movement, and the turmoil of the late 1960s also proved formative. We will look at political developments but also literary, artistic and intellectual manifestations of how Jews constructed these other Americans, and conversely how these many others made sense of the Jews in their midst.

These courses are designed to introduce students to some of the basic methodological and interpretive issues involved in historical research. Based around a core set of readings, the course covers important books and articles that explicitly deal with questions of method, as well as examples of certain methodologies or schools of historiography in action. The goal of these courses is to help the student produce a research paper that is of potentially publishable quality and to reveal that the student is capable of doing graduate level research and writing

These courses are designed to introduce students to some of the basic methodological and interpretive issues involved in historical research. Based around a core set of readings, the course covers important books and articles that explicitly deal with questions of method, as well as examples of certain methodologies or schools of historiography in action. The goal of these courses is to help the student produce a research paper that is of potentially publishable quality and to reveal that the student is capable of doing graduate level research and writing

This course explores various topics throughout American history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course introduces graduate students to the compThis course introduces graduate students to the comparative study of law in empire. Readings and discussions address such topics as the definition of imperial sovereignty, conflicts over jurisdiction and rights, the role of legal discourse in imperial politics, and the relation between imperial law and international law. We will also explore various methodologies for the study of empire and law, including discussion of the use of case records and other legal documents and writings to analyze imperial history. The chronological and geographic sweep of the course is intended to encourage comparative analysis of law in empire, with most attention paid to the European colonial world between 1500 and 1900.

This year-long course overlaps with the Atlantic History Workshop colloquium, which meets regularly in the Department of History throughout the academic year. At the colloquium, participants discuss precirculated works-in-progress presented by visiting scholars or members of the colloquium. Students enrolled in this course attend every meeting of the colloquium and undertake additional activities assigned by the instructor.

This course explores Russian history.

Understanding the history of the American Civil War brings its present-day legacies sharply into focus. With race and slavery at the center, this course explores the Civil War, Reconstruction, and their aftermath, proceeding from two premises: first, that race and slavery were central to the causes and consequences of the war; and second, that the war and its legacies remain central to modern U.S. history. Over the course of the semester, we will follow multiple threads and trajectories, illuminating the experiences of northerners and southerners; African Americans, whites, and Native Americans; soldiers and civilians; men and women; rich, middling, and poor. In tandem with reading an array of scholarship, we will also reflect critically upon the ways in which the Civil War has been remembered and epresented in popular culture.

This course explores various topics throughout history; the specific topic of course content is variable year-by-year.

This course explores Eastern European history.