History (HIST-UA)

In this course we study the history of empires by examining materials produced by people who lived in them. Each week we will read and analyze one or two "primary sources.” These will include reports by officials, petitions by subjects, histories by local scholars, short stories by writers, and court cases. Specialists in the history of each empire under consideration will participate in some of the discussions. “Contextual readings” will be assigned to accompany the documents, and instructors will provide recommendations for further investigation of each week’s “voices.” Our goal is to explore the possibilities for working out from the perspectives of imperial subjects toward understanding imperial polities and their effects.

Eustace, Hodes, W. Johnson. Offered every year. 4 points. Main currents of American historical development from the precolonial epoch to the Civil War. Analysis of the country's economic and political growth, intellectual traditions, and patterns of social development. Historical development, not as a series of discrete events, but as an unfolding process. Topics: Puritanism, mercantilism, the colonial family, the War for Independence, political party systems, the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian eras, free labor and slavery, Native American cultures, attitudes of race and gender, westward expansion, the industrial revolution, sectionalism, and the Civil War.

Course examines developments in U.S. society within a global historical context. Topics: urbanization; industrialization; immigration; American reform movements (populism, progressivism, the New Deal, and the War on Poverty); and foreign policy. Beginning with the post-Civil War expansion of the U.S. into the American West, the course traces U.S expansion and increasing global influence through the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Cold War, Gulf Wars, and the War on Terror. Emphasizes broad themes and main changes in U.S. culture, politics, and society.

This course introduces students to European history since 1750. It proceeds chronologically and thematically, integrating politics, ideas, society, and culture. Topics include the Enlightenment, French Revolution, industrialization, nationalism, imperialism, feminism, mass politics, communism, fascism, world wars, the Cold War, decolonization, and globalization. Readings feature such writers as Mary Wollstonecraft, Sigmund Freud, Frantz Fanon, and Simone de Beauvoir, and lectures make ample use of visual materials including visual arts, animations, newsreels, and film clips. The course assumes no prior knowledge, and welcomes students from all majors, schools, and years.

"""The social, political, and cultural forces that shaped Jewish life in post-1945 Europe. Topics include reconstruction of Jewish communities, repression and anti-Semitic campaigns in the Soviet Union and Poland, the impact of Israel, emigration and migration, Jewish-Christian relations, assimilation and acculturation, and reactions to the Holocaust. """

This course concentrates on the culture, society, and politics of Renaissance and early modern Europe. The course explores several critical topics and themes, including the Italian and Northern Renaissance, the age of religious reform and religious wars, Europe’s “discovery” of other worlds and cultures, the origins and development of national states, the scientific revolution, the European enlightenment, and the origins of the French revolution.

Wikileaks and Edward Snowden reveal the dark side of the secret world just as the actions of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine remind us of why we need good intelligence. Since World War II ushered in the modern espionage era, secret intelligence and intelligence services have shaped the course of international history. This course introduces the student to the great sweep of world history from 1939 to 2015 through the lens of the role played by spies, code-breakers, saboteurs, intelligence analysts and the organizations for which they worked. How much did all of this secret stuff matter? Why did countries set up organizations to undertake spying and covert action? Have these activities made them, especially the US, more or less secure? And what has been the cost to private individuals of these activities? Although the focus will mainly be on the activities of US, Russian (Soviet) and British intelligence, the class will also explore cases involving Chinese, Cuban, French, German, Iranian, Israeli, Jordanian, Saudi and Vietnamese intelligence.

This course explores the history of the city from ancient Athens to eighteenth-century Paris. Throughout history, cities have been among the most complex forms of social organization. In the premodern period, many cities were also important political players with a high degree of autonomy; some cities even pursued imperial ambitions. This course explores change and continuity in premodern urban history: we will, for instance, discuss the decline or stagnation of once-powerful city-states; the rise of cosmopolitan metropolises; and the commercial ties that often linked these cities to one another. Throughout, special focus will be given to the patterns and rhythms of everyday life as well as to aspects of urban planning and environmental history.

This course will focus on the comparative study of empires from ancient Rome and China to the present and upon the variety of ways in which empires have inspired and constrained their subjects' ideas of rights, belonging, and power. By tracing a major theme across a long period of time, it serves as an introduction to the field of history. It introduces students to the analysis of sources that is an essential element of the discipline, and its coverage of different regions and time periods will allow students to see further areas to explore in subsequent history courses. Readings will include scholarship on the Roman, Chinese, Mongol, Ottoman, Habsburg, Russian, French, British, German, and American empires, as well as primary sources produced by people living in imperial polities.

Offered every year. 4 points. Describes and analyzes the history of World War II chronologically from 1939 to 1945. This course is not simply a study of battles; all aspects of the war, from the great civilian and military leaders to the common soldiers, are discussed, as are social, cultural, and economic changes on the various home fronts. Illustrates personalities and events through slides, contemporary literature, photos and posters, and the music of the time.

Africa, the ‘Dark Continent’ of the euro-American imagination, was long portrayed as a land without history. In this course we debunk the myths, exploring African civilization and culture in the centuries before European colonialism. We will examine how ecology, slavery and the slave trades, and Africa’s place in Atlantic and Indian Ocean networks shaped medieval Mali, the Swahilli Coast, the South African cape colony—and the world. There are no prerequisites for this course.

This survey introduces some of the major topics in the history of Africa since 1750. While prominent figures and major events will be covered, the course emphasizes the experience of people who have remained “in the background” of African history. To do this, we will study academic histories alongside autobiographical testimonies, fiction by African writers, music videos, and podcasts. The course begins with the diverse political, social, and cultural conditions that shaped the lives of people in Africa prior to and during the nineteenth century—particularly experiences of enslavement, migration, and the spread of Islam. The second section shifts to the impact of European imperialism and African responses to the imposition of colonial rule. The third part of the course explores the movements that brought about the end of formal colonial rule and apartheid in South Africa between the 1950s to 1990s. In the closing weeks, we will examine the trajectories of post-colonial African societies, including contemporary roles of ethnicity and religion, the place of African economies in the world, struggles around gender and sexuality, and changing health and environmental realities.

Sponsored by Steinhardt. Central themes, issues, and controversies in American education. What is the purpose of “school”? How did schools begin in the United States, and how have they evolved across time? How do children learn? How are they different from each other, and why and when should that matter? How should we teach them? And how should we structure schools and classrooms to promote learning?

The goal of this course is to provide a background to the plethora of techniques proffered by the humanities and social sciences in studying the history of science, technology, and medicine from ancient Greece to the present. This course will include lectures, student presentations, and lively discussions.

The key events you read about in your morning twitter feed or on your favorite news sites are usually not unique in world affairs. They have a background, a context, that makes them more understandable and often more interesting. History is about everything that happened before you started reading this course description. And thinking historically means trying to make sense of the new in the context of what human beings have done before. In this lecture series, NYU's historians take you on a behind the scenes tour of current events you thought you knew, with the goal of making you a better observer and analyst of news about the world around you.

Global Asia defines Asia as a space of perpetual globalization. Asian societies, cultures, and political economies have always been shaped by complex dynamic historical processes that expand human connectivity and transform territorial formations of power and authority. Globalization has thus defined Asia as a dynamic natural and human environment from the far West to the far East, and all around the old Silk Roads and Indian Ocean, from ancient times to the present. This course explores Global Asia over two millennia up to the onset of industrial capitalist modernity, in the nineteenth century.

Global Asia reveals Asia as a space of perpetual globalization, of dynamic mobility and changing territorial order, with no fixed boundaries, spanning Arctic and Tropics and regions all around the Silk Road and Indian Ocean, from the Black Sea to the Bering Sea, from the Mediterranean to the South Pacific, from Africa to Fiji, extending around the globe, after 1500. This course explores Asia’s role in making the modern world. We focus particularly on the mobilities that form global capitalism inside territories of empire and national states. The goal of the course is to enable students to read the present in long-term perspective and appreciate Asia’s historic role in contemporary globalization.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Pandemics have travelled long distances to infect people in territories connected by routes of mobility since ancient times. Pandemic mortality and morbidity have provoked political, social, and cultural change; they have stimulated all kinds of intellectual activity, from medicine to philosophy, poetry, polemics, and folklore. This lecture and discussion course surveys the world history of pandemics and provides students opportunities for specialized research and creativity, including participation in the development of a course website. We focus primarily on the spatial, social, political, cultural, and economic aspects of pandemics, their Asian connections, and their entanglements with empire, capitalism, and globalization.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Major developments in the history and culture of the Jews from the 16th to the 20th centuries, emphasizing the meanings of modernity in the Jewish context, differing paths to modern Jewish identity, and internal Jewish debates over the relative merits of modern and traditional Jewish values.

topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

This seminar will examine the human life cycle as it was experienced and interpreted by men and women of medieval Europe. Age was, then as now, a significant dimension of individual lives, and our study of specific age groups, --children, teenagers, youth, adults, and the elderly-- will expose the effect age had on the course and on the representation of life, and the ways that this effect differed with geographic location, religion, gender, ethnicity, economic status, and social rank. There was therefore diversity in the patterns of life cycles, and in the prospects that stages of life held for medieval men and women. In this sociological model of the medieval life cycle, we will consider age as an aspect of social identity.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Identical to V65.0111. Bedos-Rezak, Griffiths. Offered every other year. 4 points. Europe in the early Middle Ages was created out of a mixture of ingredients: the legacy of the Roman Empire; the growth and development of Christianity; invading peoples who settled within the boundaries of the former Roman Empire; and the clash of competing languages, religions, and legal systems. This tumultuous time forged a new entity, medieval Europe, whose development, growing pains, and creative successes this course examines. Uses the records and artifacts of the period itself as central elements for investigating the period.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Covers the period from the late 11th century to the close of the 14th century. Major topics and themes: the explosion of energy in the 12th century and the expansion of Europe on all levels, geographic (including the Crusades) as well as intellectual; development of agriculture and cities; the diversity that gave rise to our university system; movements of reform and dissent; and the waning of the Middle Ages.

Sponsored by Italian Studies. Memory devices reached a peak of refinement during the Italian Renaissance; they aimed to organize knowledge and were intended as tools for creative output. Examines their impact on the literary production of the time, highlighting the interdependence between textual and visual codes. Focuses on the heretic philosopher and cosmologist Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition in 1600, who conceived his imposing mnemonic system as an inner mirror of the infinite universe.

Identical to MEIS-UA 660. Offered every other year. This course focuses on the territories around the Mediterranean Sea, once united by the Roman Empire, after their division into three major cultural zones: Latin Christendom, Byzantium, and Islamic dynasties. Despite linguistic and religious differences, the people of these zones were in constant interaction with each other. Focusing on the period from roughly 900-1600, this course traces these interactions through primary sources translated from Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and the languages of Western Europe, alongside material culture.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Studies the impact of disease at critical points in American history. Considers the great epidemics that devastated our nation, as well as scientific breakthroughs in epidemiology, antiseptic practice, vaccines, and antibiotics that tamed the scourge of cholera, polio, typhoid fever, and influenza. Examines how the battle against disease revolutionized philanthropy and medical research in the United States, as well as the consequences and cultural impact of disease upon different segments of the American population. Ends with current diseases yet to be fully understood or conquered, such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and Zika.

A comparative study of the capitals of the most powerful empires of the Mediterranean from antiquity to the modern period. Topics: the role of cities as stages for the projection of imperial ideology, the position of religion within the cities, professions, neighborhoods, women, minorities and marginals, revolts, disease and healthcare, and entertainment.

This course examines Britain and the British Isles from the end of the Wars of the Roses (1487) through the Glorious Revolution (1688). Although modern Britain is often characterized as an unusually stable society and polity, the early modern period was dominated by civil wars, schism, and revolution. Topics include Henry VIII and the Reformation; Elizabeth I and European politics; imperialism in the Americas and South Asia; gender and family; popular culture and everyday life; England, Scotland, and Ireland; the Civil War and Commonwealth; Restoration art and drama; and the “Glorious Revolution” and ascendance of Parliament.

Developments and themes in British history since 1688. During this period, Britain emerged as the world’s first industrial nation and a primary imperial power, fought two world wars partly in an effort to maintain that position, and unevenly accommodated the changed realities of the late 20th century. Situates the social and political history of Britain within wider European and global contexts.

Germany’s twentieth century has been described as a shattered past. Twice in the first half of the century Germany brought war to Europe. Between 1933 and 1945 the virulently racist Nazi regime murdered millions of Jews, Poles, Roma, homosexuals, and other groups. After 1945 Germany was a main site in the Cold War, the German nation separated by a wall and divided into two rival states. Yet since 1945 West Germany developed, in many ways, into a model of stability, democracy, and prosperity. Today reunited Germany is a functioning democracy, a central player in the European Union, a proponent of multilateralism and human rights in international affairs, and a pioneer in environmental policy. How can we make sense of Germany’s complex and contradictory experience in the 20th century? This course will be a mixture between a lecture and a discussion seminar. Over the course of the semester we will explore German history from World War I to the present by focusing on four interconnected themes. First, we will examine Germany’s rocky road from an authoritarian political culture to one that is liberal and democratic. Second, we will investigate the origins of the Holocaust, as well as the traumatic legacy this disaster had on Germans after 1945. Third, we will explore Germany’s recurring penchant for modernity, in economic as well as cultural matters. Finally, we will look at how Germany’s relationship with Europe and the world has evolved from an aggressive imperialism to more subtle techniques of achieving foreign policy goals through transnational cooperation and economic pressure. By engaging with a variety of sources—memoirs, government files, film, and literature—students will learn how Germans have understood themselves, the challenges facing their society, and their place in the world.

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Prerequisites and topics vary by semester.

This course explores the symbiotic relationship between New York City and the Irish from the 18th through the 20th centuries, as well as the impact of political, social, and cultural changes in Ireland and America on a transnational population. Factors beyond race and language, which help define and preserve ethnic group identity, as well as the city?s role in the creation of a pseudo-Irish identity that is disseminated on both sides of the Atlantic, are also explored. Readings are broadly drawn from immigration, urban, and social history. Primary documents, literature, and film are also used as texts.

The emphasis of this course varies by semester and is designed to allow flexibility in course offerings from visiting scholars and specialists in particular fields. Past examinations have included imagery and ideology of Irish nationalism, Irish American popular folk culture, and the Irish in America.

Examines the English conquest of Ireland from the reign of Elizabeth I to the last meeting of the Irish Parliament. Key themes include the plantation of Ireland with settlers from England, Scotland, and Wales, the decline of the Gaelic political order and culture, the religious reformation and Counter Reformation, Ireland as a site of English and European wars, the imposition of a penal code, and the vain attempt to rebel against British rule in the late 18th century resulting in the Act of Union, which disestablished the Irish Parliament in Dublin.

Examines the period from the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland to the achievement of partial independence in 1922. Topics covered include the Union and its aftermath; the growth of nationalism in 19th-century Ireland; the Great Famine of 1845-1851 and its long-term economic, social, and political consequences; the shaping of modern Ireland; Fenianism and the Land War; the Irish cultural revival; the policy of Home Rule and Unionist reaction; the 1916 Rising; and the War of Independence.

This course explores the impact of Irish immigrants on American popular culture. Focusing on ports of entry and urban centers of entertainment and migration over the past two centuries, the course looks at the ways in which the Irish and Irish-Americans have shaped American entertainment in the realms of music, dance, drama, film, recording, literature, festivals and sport. In addition, the course delves into issues of race surrounding the American reception of the early Irish immigrants through imagery and media depictions.

Until a few decades ago, Greek history began with Homer and dealt narrowly with the Greek world. Thanks to archaeology, the social sciences, and other historical tools, the chronological and geographical horizons have been pushed back. The history of the Greeks now starts in the third millennium B.C. and is connected to the civilization that lay to the east, rooted in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Traces Greek history from the Greeks? earliest appearance to the advent of Alexander.

This course covers the history of Western medicine and medical thought, from antiquity to the present. It familiarizes students with basic questions and concepts in the history of medicine, models for understanding the historical development of medical thought; the varied historical relationships between medicine and other healing practices such as religion, alchemy, and homeopathy; the influence of culture and politics on the development of medical thought; and the role that the emergence of a medical profession characterized by formal training and a coherent scientific viewpoint played in the development of Western societies.

In the sixth century B.C., Rome was an obscure village. By the end of the third century B.C., Rome was master of Italy, and within another 150 years, it dominated almost all of the Mediterranean world. Then followed a century of civil war involving some of the most famous events and men?Caesar, Pompey, and Cato?in Western history. The course surveys this vital period with a modern research interpretation.

In the spring of 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was murdered by a group of senators disgruntled with his monarchic ways. However, Caesar?s adoptive son and heir, Octavian, was quickly on the scene and in little more than a decade managed to establish himself as Rome?s first emperor. About three centuries later, Constantine the Great would rise to imperial power and with him came a new state religion?Christianity. This course examines the social and political history of the Roman empire from the time of Augustus to that of Constantine and also closely observes the parallel growth of Christianity.

Just as the United States received more immigrants than any other country, Ireland and Italy are among the classic nations of emigrants. Why did so many people leave Ireland and Italy? What were the economic, political, religious, and personal motivations? How were people able to leave in such large numbers, given their poverty? Where did they go? How did they travel? And what effect did they have on the societies where they settled, especially the United States, which attracted more than five million Irish immigrants and more than five million Italian immigrants?

Focuses on the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, the Mediterranean, Europe’s Atlantic coast, and the Baltic Sea. The 17th and 18th centuries saw long-distance commerce move to the center of state policy, and in the 19th century bred exploitive colonial systems buoyed by trade. Global war traumatized international trade in the 20th century but ultimately gave rise to our world of supertankers, giant container ships, global air freight, and monetary transfers at the speed of light.

Continuation of the history of ancient Greece from the age of Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C. until Emperor Augustus consolidated the Roman hold over the eastern Mediterranean in the first century B.C. These three centuries saw the relationship between Rome and the Near East become most meaningful. Examines Alexander's conquests, the states established by his successors (Ptolemies of Egypt and Seleucids of Syria), and the increasing intervention of Rome.

The chief purpose of this colloquium is to explore the manifold aspects of medieval magic. Spanning the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim western world, we will consider tales and legends of the supernatural and the ways that medieval people accepted and implemented otherworldly powers, in everyday life, and through a variety of practices: beliefs in fairies and miracles; the cults of holy men and women; astrology and fortune-telling; alchemy; folk medicine, including remedies and healing spells; death, burial customs, and vampires; allowing the devil fields of action, such as the imagination, sorcery, and witchcraft. Both learned and popular medieval cultures reserved a place for the practice of magical arts. There was, however, a differentiated sociology of magic, for rural folk, urbanites, aristocrats, women, and clerics, all engaged with their own brands of belief and participation, which were in turn variously accepted or rejected by official authorities. The history of medieval magic intersects that of repression and persecution.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

The three centuries from 1400 to 1700 were marked by massive transformations on a religious, political, and intellectual-artistic level. At the same time the period saw wars and bloodshed on an unprecedented scale. The geographic focus is on the Holy Roman Empire (i.e. the German lands and the Low Countries), France, and England. Main topics: The “Northern Renaissance,” the Reformation, and the Wars of Religion.

Topics vary by semester

Nineteenth century Europe was the birthplace of economic liberalism. The gold standard, the night watchman state, and the writings of the classical economists laid the foundation for a golden age of laissez-faire capitalism centered on the nation-state. More than a century later Europe is known as the pioneer of the welfare state, the host for an experiment in fascist and communist economics, and the center for a supra-national process of economic cooperation: the European Union. This course traces the evolution of European capitalism during the twentieth century, from laissez-faire to welfare state economies. Throughout the semester we will study the key themes and turning points that shaped Europe’s economic development: the Great Depression, the world wars; alternative ways of organizing economic life under fascism and communism; the stagnation and crises of the 1970s; and finally Europe’s ongoing project of economic integration.

This course investigates the relationship of cinema and war around the world from the early 20th century to the present. From the Italo-Turkish War for control of Libya (1911-1912) onwards, film has been integral to shaping public consciousness of military events as they unfold and the public memory of wars after the guns have fallen silent. The course looks at both feature films and non-fiction: we will watch government propaganda, commercial entertainment films and independent documentaries. Topics to be addressed include representations of violence and the enemy; the aestheticization of violence and war as spectacle; how changes in military technology have generated new modes of witnessing; the war film as history film. Case studies include the two World Wars, civil wars, colonial conquest and anticolonial struggle, Vietnam, the Israel-Palestinian conflict; and the Arab Spring.

The specific subjects treated in this colloquium according to student need and instructor interest.

Topics will vary from semester to semester.

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Covers a topic in urban history. Topics vary by semester. Does not satisfy the capstone seminar (HIST-UA 4xx) requirement for majors.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Covers a topic in medical history. Topics vary by semester. Does not satisfy the capstone seminar (HIST-UA 4xx) requirement for majors.

This survey introduces the history of imperial China, from the first emperor of a unified China (200 BCE) to the collapse of the last dynasty in 1912. In addition to stories about great men and political changes, this course guides students to understand social changes and cultural identities through the experience of people from different classes. This course will introduce entry-level theories about the history of technology, gender, material culture, and basic debates about modernity. It aims to show how cultural interactions, trade, and exchanges of technologies with surrounding cultures contributed to the configuration of Chinese culture. Primary and secondary sources are supplemented by visual materials and film screenings. There are approximately three billion people online across the globe. They may be checking their email, sending a Tweet, messaging on WhatsApp, reposting a news article on their Facebook page, talking on Zoom, watching or uploading a video on YouTube or TikTok, participating in one of many multi-player gaming worlds, or simply shopping. In the last decade or so anthropologists and media studies scholars have grown increasingly interested in the ways the internet and its participatory promise has embedded itself in our everyday lives. In this course we will read ethnographic and selected theoretical texts as well as scrutinize our own practices to engage with ongoing debates in anthropology and cognate disciplines around the growing global significance of the internet and its mediating technologies.

From the foundation of Constantinople in 330 to the end of the Iconoclastic controversy in 843. Traces the transformation of the Eastern Roman Empire into the medieval Byzantine Empire and examines political, social, economic, and cultural developments. Topics: the spread of Christianity, heresy, the rise of Islam, the collapse of Late Antique urban culture, the transition to the Middle Ages, and Byzantium as a major power in Europe and the Near East.

This course examines the history of the modern Western city by taking New York and Paris as comparative case studies. If Paris was the “capital of the nineteenth century,” as the philosopher Walter Benjamin put it, can New York be seen as capital of the twentieth? By trying to answer this question and others like it, we will examine the nature and meaning of modern urban life and its relationship to modernity in general. We will also consider why so many prominent observers have seen fit to compare Paris and New York. The reading and lectures for the course will cover the following topics, among others: urban development and redevelopment, nature and the built environment, monuments and their symbolism, politics and protest, poverty and inequality, migration and immigration, popular music and urban culture, and gentrification and its discontents. Readings will include both primary and secondary sources.

This course will explore how college campuses became centers of political protest and cultural change. Topics include socialist and feminist student activism in Progressive era; 1920s Black student revolts, campus cultural ferment; 1930s Old Left-led mass student movements: 1960s New Left, antiwar, SNCC and Third World Student Activism, CIA infiltration; post-60s PC struggles, divestment movements, gay liberation, curricular change, unionization, conservative student activism from 1950s segregationists through YAF in and beyond the 60s.

This course explores why the 1960s witnessed the greatest upsurge of student activism in American history. We will assess the impact 1960s student movements had on the university, race and gender relations, US foreign policy, and free speech. The backlash against Left student activism from anti-radical politicians, the FBI, and CIA will be probed, as will the rise of conservative student activism.

Topics vary by semester

America is not always the answer. This class offers an introduction to the many and varied fictions that have been produced by diasporic South Asians across the globe over the last 150 years: in Australia, Africa, Europe, Caribbean. Our exploration of the poetics and politics of immigration will attend to different types of traveller (inc. soldiers, students, athletes, medics, cosmonauts) and draw on a wide range of media (inc. literature, cinema and music). Particular attention will be paid to the diverse geographies of Asian migration - be they plantations, dance Floors, restaurants, call centres. Themes to be addressed include coolietude, globalization, the impact of 9/11 and techno-servitude.

The emergence of Spain as a political and economic superpower in the early sixteenth century bred waves of French, English, and Dutch contraband slave traders, seaborne raiders, freebooters, and privateers eager to thwart her attempt at hegemony and expropriate her wealth. The response of the early modern world to piracy is embedded in the “Law of Nations” and the “Law of the Sea,” progenitors of modern international law.

Topics vary by semester

Topics vary by semester

Topics will vary from semester to semester. Prerequisite: One History Workshop (HIST-UA 900, 901, 910, 911, 912, 913, 914, 915, 920, 922, 924, 929, OR 931)

The class introduces students to the growing historical and historically-minded literature on neoliberalism, querying the origins of the phenomenon, its regional variants, and the methodological challenges of studying an ongoing phenomenon as a complex historical process. The readings and discussion assess the virtues of the three major approaches to the phenomenon. First, a group of scholars have sought to provide a multi-causal historical explanation of neoliberalism, linking its emergence to transformations in the order of global capitalism, particularly the rise of finance capital and the expansion of extractive economies. Second, other scholars have emphasized the key role played by ideational shifts, especially the movement of once marginal economic theories forged in the 1930s into new prominence in the 1970s. A third group of scholars approach neoliberalism as a new political rationality, manifest in techniques of governance. We will assess these different interpretative approaches both on their own terms and in relation to specific regions of the world economy.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

In the seventeenth century, English, Dutch, and French empires took their place beside the Spanish and Portuguese imperial polities established in the sixteenth century. These empires would expand to embrace much of the globe by 1900. Empire building was a key context within which a new form of knowledge—political economy—emerged in Europe. In one sense the early modern antecedent of today’s economics, sociology, and international relations, political economy set the terms in which questions of power and prosperity were framed for most of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This course will explore the development of British and French political economy in an imperial context, focusing on key debates and controversies including seventeenth-century efforts to understand Dutch commercial success; eighteenth-century arguments about the centrality of empire to national wealth and power; and nineteenth-century critiques of colonial exploitation and metropolitan corruption entailed by empire and imperial expansionism.

The Capstone Seminar represents the culmination of the history major at NYU, in which students design, research, and write an original paper on a topic of their choosing. Writing British History introduces students to a variety of episodes in the historiography of modern Britain, from the wars against the French Revolution to Britain in the 21st century, including in each case a range of available primary sources that position students to contribute to that ongoing conversation.

This course is an exploration of what can loosely be termed “historical consciousness” or “historical imagination,” that is, a broad field of images, narratives, and interpretations of history. Sociological aspects of collective memory and specific depictions of the past play a central role in the course, but we will also consider broader notions of time, the way the historical process is conceived, and the future as a projection of history. Among the questions at the core of our inquiry will be: why history matters in Latin American and Caribbean culture and politics, and how interpretations of history reflect concerns in the present. As a research seminar, it will be run in workshop fashion with students designing a project, conducting and presenting their research, and writing an original piece of historical analysis based on primary sources.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Topics vary by semester.

This intensive reading course will examine the main themes in the history of US immigration from the American Revolution to the present. Topics include the origins of migration; forced migration and slavery; naturalization and citizenship; anti-immigrant sentiment (nativism); ethnicity and race; and the evolution of government policy. We will consider these topics in the context of historiographical debates concerning the foundation of the US and the three great waves of immigration that followed: largely Irish, British, German, and Chinese before the 1870s; predominantly Eastern and Southern European from the 1880s through the 1920s; and genuinely global from 1965 to the present.

Examines the Ottoman Empire from a world historical perspective. Beginning with the collapse of the Byzantine state and ending with the French Revolution, students gain an understanding of the Ottoman state and society and its responses to, and participation in, global trade, interstate warfare, and the cultural and political development of the modern world.

Identical to HBRJD-UA 180. Examines the history of Zionism and as an ideology and political movement from its origins in the 19th century to the present as reflected in the modern State of Israel. Topics include ideological foundations, the role of Herzl and the rise of political Zionism, the Balfour Declaration, early Jewish settlements in Palestine, Zionism as a cultural focus for diaspora Jewry, the Arab-Zionist encounter, modern Israeli society, and contemporary critiques of Zionism.

Starts with an overview of contemporary China, then concentrates on social, intellectual, and environmental issues. The specific areas of inquiry change with changing circumstances. The reading load is heavy, and students are asked to write frequently.

This seminar examines the rise and demise of the Japanese empire in the making of modern Asia. As the world’s territory was divided between the colonizers and colonized during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Japan’s case was unusual. The country started out as a victim of imperialism in the nineteenth century, but became an aggressor in the twentieth, ruling over other Asian people. We will situate the Japanese empire vis-à-vis the rest of Asia and pay particular attention to the circulation of goods, ideas, people and practices across imperial boundaries, which shaped both the empire and the countries that surrounded it. Topics will include: the formation of the modern imperialist global system; colonialism, “colonial modernity,” colonial identities, and colony-metropole relations; collaboration and the anti-colonial movements; regional migration; empire and total war; and decolonization.

Prerequisite: One non-language course in a relevant discipline or field at NYU. China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR, 1966-1976) was one of the most important political and cultural events of the twentieth century. Many studies of the GPCR remain partial, disorganized, and highly polemical, but there has been an explosion of new work on the topic for students to explore. Intended for students who have at least some background in the study of Chinese history, literature, or culture.

Surveys main political, social, economic, and intellectual currents of the 20th century. Emphasis on historical background and development of current problems in region. Topics include imperialism, nationalism, religion, Orientalism, women, class formation, oil, the Arab-Israeli crisis, and the Iranian revolution.

Survey of the conflict over Palestine from its origins in the late 19th century until the present. The purpose of this course is to examine the evolution of this ongoing struggle in its historical context and then try to understand why the various parties to the conflict thought and acted as they have.

Emphasizes historical problems in Japan?s economic development, their challenge to political and social institutions, and their role in shaping foreign policy. Focuses on Japan?s transition from an agrarian economy to commercial capitalism, from hierarchical social organization to constitutional authority, and from isolation from the rest of the world to involvement with Western culture and diplomatic relations. Traces Japan?s development into an industrial giant fully engaged in world affairs.

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China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR, 1966-1976) was one of the most important political and cultural events of the twentieth century. Many studies of the GPCR remain partial, disorganized, and highly polemical, but there has been an explosion of new work on the topic for students to explore. Intended for students who have at least some background in the study of Chinese history, literature, or culture.

The revolution made Mao as much as Mao made the revolution. We investigate Mao’s thought and theories, as well as his revolutionary practice, not as biographical artifacts but as products of and contributors to the revolutionary situation in China and the world in the 20th century. We end with Mao’s afterlives. This is a reading- and writing-intensive course.

This seminar examines the history of Japan from the perspective of its relationship with China, Mongolia, and Russia. We will look at some of the native developments and foreign influences which most affected the course of Japanese history. We will trace first the function of the concept of “China” in ancient, medieval and early modern Japanese polity and culture, as well as the concept of “Russia” in modern Japanese domestic and foreign policy, and in political, intellectual, and cultural sphere. Since 1890s, Japan aggressively moved to northeast China, clashing with Russia and Mongolia. The seminar will compare between the different imperial formations (Japanese–Chinese–Russian empires), their colonial practices, the regional power dynamic throughout the twentieth century, and the role of “Mongolia” in Japanese continental policy. In examining these issues we will consider a variety of sources including contemporary accounts (both Japanese and foreign), legal and political documents, fiction, historical monographs, and films.

Focuses on a particular aspect of Islamic, Ottoman, or modern Middle Eastern history, with an emphasis on historiographical and comparative issues. Intended primarily for advanced undergraduates in Middle Eastern studies and in history, but other students may register with permission of the instructor.

Specific topics vary from time to time and may include Women and Gender in Chinese History; Rebellion and Revolution in China, 1683-1864; The Manchus in China; Urban China; American Wars in Asia; China in Revolution, 1949-Present; China After Mao; Maoism and China.

Covers a topic in intellectual history. Topics vary by semester. Does not satisfy the capstone seminar (HIST-UA 4xx) requirement for majors.

This course is concerned with historians as autobiographers, and autobiographers as historians. Critically and thoughtfully reading a range of works that combine history with personal experience, we will explore the ways in which scholars and writers invoke autobiography in the writing of history, and the ways in which autobiographers serve as historians. Around the seminar table, we will pay attention to research, sources, evidence, method, argument, interpretation, intention, audience, memory, style, and voice. Students will also make their own forays into history and autobiography, sharing their work and reflecting on one another’s efforts. Although our readings focus mainly on United States history, students’ own writings can focus on history anywhere in the world.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

This course traces the history of “students” (in the 1920s and after, often overlapping with the category of “youth”) and protest in modern China, from the established culture of memorials/ petitioning in the waning years of China’s dynastic system through to the umbrella and “be water” uprisings in Hong Kong (2014, 2019). We will consider the many ways in which students/youth and protest have been enmeshed in social, political, and cultural movements and how forms and practices of protest have developed in tandem with and in opposition to state power, in alliance with or apart from other social constituencies.

Empires in Eurasia have produced ever-expanding spaces of mobility and ever-changing territorial order, spanning the Arctic and Tropics and regions all around the Silk Road and Indian Ocean, from the Black Sea to the Bering Sea, from the Mediterranean to the Pacific, from Africa to Fiji. This seminar explores the role of Mongol Eurasia’s very long globalization. We study the core Mongol period -- 250 years from the birth of Chinggis Khan (1162) to the death (1405) of Timur-i-Leng (a.k.a. Tamerlane, the last great steppe warrior ruler, married into a Chinggisid lineage) – inside the history of Asia’s circulatory system, from the seventh to the seventeenth century. We therefore explore Mongol empires inside imperial histories spanning all of medieval Eurasia, and we end the course by considering how those medieval centuries shaped the modern world.

Topics will vary from semester to semester.

In 1957, Ghana became the first sovereign nation in Africa to declare independence from colonial rule. Dozens of African nations soon followed suit. While people across the continent and the world celebrated the end of empire, not everyone agreed about what Africa’s new nations should look like. What did national sovereignty mean in practical terms? How would citizens of nations with boundaries created by European colonizers develop a sense of shared identity and destiny? Would political decolonization bring an end to the economic inequalities of the colonial era? Through weekly discussions of primary sources, monographs, and novels—and through the pursuit of individual research projects—members of this seminar will grapple with how Africans constructed their world and their future in the aftermath of colonial rule.

From the Silk Road to the Belt and Road Initiative, China has always been connected and intensively interacted with the world. From the 15th to the 18th centuries, China witnessed a series of developments that connected to the making of the modern world in the West. This seminar aims to discuss the dynamics of Chinese history in the early modern period from a global perspective. The class is organized thematically, focusing on connections and encounters in trade, commerce, science, technology, environment, diseases, food, migration, and capitalism. By situating early modern China in world historical time, this seminar encourages students to examine the formation of modernity in Chinese terms and in a global context.

This course examines how notions of race, racism, conservation, and the environment have emerged in dialogue and debate with one other in diverse historical contexts. We will draw primarily on case studies from Indigenous and Black communities—in Africa, North America, Latin America, Oceania, and the Caribbean. We will explore some of the following questions. How did European imperialism in Africa and the Americas transform landscapes and notions of ethnic belonging? What forms of expertise have Indigenous and Black communities cultivated about the natural world? How did the making of national parks valorize some uses of nature and criminalize others? What is the relationship between redlining and toxic exposures in the urban US? How has resistance to mining projects transformed political activism among Indigenous communities?

Explores the social, political, economic, religious, and cultural development of Jewish life in America from the middle of the seventeenth century through the present and also explores the impact of America—its culture, social structure, economic profile, and place in the world—upon the Jews who lived there. Also asks how the Jewish experience did or did not differ from that of others in a diverse America and from that of Jews in other places.

The expansion of the modern economy over the past 200 years is unprecedented and awesome. Liberals, socialists, Marxists, Keynesians, and supply-siders alike recognized this capacity, and together they overturned the Malthusian propositions of old. They provided the toolkits into which we reach when we redress economic crises and seek sustained improvement. We thought our way out of crisis after 1945 and 1973, after some spectacular failures in the 1930s. Arguably we are failing again today, with much of the industrialized world hovering between recession and tepid growth and enormous inequalities. This course lays out the schools of thought and makes economics accessible to anyone who makes the effort.

No prerequisites are required for this course. While global citizens have long been concerned about conserving and rationing our use of fossil fuels, the same cannot be said for an even more precious resource–water. Only in the last few years have government agencies, NGOs, and the market begun to tackle the problem of dwindling water resources. The current statistics and projections are dire. If we do not come up with new technologies to conserve water and use it more efficiently, more people will be without clean water or enough food. The United Nations estimates that by 2030 as many as 4 billion people will not have access to enough water for their basic needs. During the course of this semester we will read about both contemporary issues that affect us as well as look at the historical context in which these problems developed. We will focus on the United States, in particular the American West and New York City. We will use these case studies as a launching point for looking comparatively at issues that touch on problems in the Middle East, China, and Africa.

This lecture course will provide an introduction to the history of the place that we now know as the U.S. West. A vast and varied region stretching from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean, the West has both been characterized by its diversity and bound together by a shared regional identity and history. Beginning with the eve of European expansion in the 17th century, but concentrating on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this course will focus on the historical processes that have defined the West and its place within the United States. Debates over access to land, natural resource management, federal power, racial and ethnic diversity, and the public good are central to western history. Using films, monographs, memoirs, letters, and articles, we will explore the struggles for land, resources, identity, and power which have characterized the West and its role in the nation, as well as the relationship between the western past and the myths and stories that have secured the region’s prominent place in the American imagination.

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This course examines the political, cultural, social, and intellectual history of the US between 1954 and 1974. It considers the civil rights movement, national politics, liberalism and the rise of the New Right, the debate over Vietnam, student radicalism, sexual liberation and feminism, black and Latino power, the counterculture, the urban crisis, and white resistance. The course emphasizes the transformation of liberalism, the resurgence of conservatism, and the tensions between integration and separatism, between libertarianism and communitarianism that shaped the social movements of the sixties.

Survey of the experience of African Americans to 1865, emphasizing living conditions, treatment, images, attitudes, important figures and events, and culture using a chronological and topical approach. Topics include African way of life, initial contact between Africans and Europeans, slave trade, early slavery, freedom and control in slave society, abolitionism, slave resistance, free blacks, and gender.

Survey of the experience of African Americans from the Civil War to the present, including themes such as freedom and equality, migratory movements, cultural contributions, military participation, civil rights activism, black power, and contemporary conditions. Topics include the Reconstruction, white supremacy, black thought and protest, Washington and Du Bois debate, rise of the NAACP, World War I, the Harlem Renaissance, communism, World War II, civil rights, black power, black nationalism, and blacks and Reagan.

"Identical to MEDI-UA 651, MEIS-UA 650. The Ottoman Empire, renowned for its enduring presence in world history, held sway over vast regions spanning Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa for over six centuries. This course embarks on a comprehensive journey, tracing the empire's evolution from its origins as a frontier principality in Anatolia in the 14th century to its tumultuous trajectory through the centuries as a global powerhouse, ultimately culminating in its dissolution in the 20th century following the conclusion of World War I. As we delve into the course material, we will explore how the Ottoman Empire's political, economic, and social structures underwent profound transformations, shaping the lives of its diverse inhabitants. Simultaneously, we will contextualize the Ottoman imperial experience within the broader global context, considering its enduring impact on Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, both past and present. Topics encompass pivotal areas such as state and identity formation, military encounters, technological advancements, environmental considerations, urban and rural life, religious and ethnic diversity, gender roles, family structures, legal systems, and developments in fields ranging from science to art and architecture. Throughout the semester, we will enrich the learning experience with complementary materials, including movies, documentaries, fictions, and field trips, to gain a holistic understanding of the Ottoman Empire's multifaceted history and legacy."

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Mitchell. Offered every year. 4 points. Explores varieties of African American women's experiences (including class, ethnicity, sexuality, region, and generation). Endeavors to go beyond the black/white binary by considering black women's relationships to both intraracial and broader communities. Additionally, assesses how gender, race, and class have influenced black women's work, activism, political involvement, and creative output in the United States. Takes an interdisciplinary approach by drawing from history, memoir, sociology, feminist theory, film studies, legal theory, and the popular press.

In this course, we will explore how visual representations of war in various media and genres have influenced, challenged, and, in ways, transformed national identity and citizenship in the United States. As such, the course should make clear that war films do more than tell stories and entertain audiences. Films convey the social values and the mores of the period in which they are produced and address attitudes not only toward war, but also toward topics closely associated with war, such as the morality of fighting, the justness of war, the definition of heroism, and the responsibility of the individual to exhibit ethical behavior.

This seminar is designed to explore the ways of narrating the history of the United States that are not wholly contained within the territory of the United States. It seeks to identify histories larger than the United States within which the history of America is embedded and entangled, with the aim of rethinking the basic narrative of American history. Themes range from immigration and economics to culture and politics in their global and transnational aspects. The course focuses on readings and discussion.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Examines the connections between gender, racial ideology and history of medicine to consider the range of ways that reproduction—medically, culturally, and experientially—produces and troubles racial ideology. In this course we will explore issues in the history of race and reproduction, focusing primarily (though not exclusively) on North American contexts. Cross-cultural breadth will help us to consider the relationship between biological experiences (which are often portrayed as universal) and socio-cultural context. While questions about biology will be central to this history, we will also locate biology within a wider set of issues around social reproduction and the practices of motherhood. Through our readings we will consider how different disciplinary orientations (social history, medical anthropology, feminist theory, art history, etc.) help us to illuminate and problematize the connections between technologies and politics of biology and difference.

By approaching autobiography as equally sociological, historical, and literary, this course facilitates a better understanding of the genre and opens new means of communication between disciplines in unraveling the meanings of human expression and experience. Sociological and historical issues raised by the materials are considered in tandem with the formal and stylistic means through which those issues are shaped in the works at hand.

This course investigates how a visual medium (film), subject to the conventions of drama and fiction and a popular activity/institution (sport), often associated with frivolity, violence, and puerility, might be used as serious vehicles for conceptualizing and analyzing the past.

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This course will focus on US foreign policy in Asia since 1945. The ways US global interests and concerns sought to shape Asian realities (and were shaped in turn by them) will be the touchstone for examining the Cold War in Asia. We will examine the following topics: the occupation of Japan and early US global economic visions; the US and the Chinese revolution before the Korean War; the Korean War and the isolation of China; the Vietnam War and the Kennedy/Johnson years; Nixon’s global geopolitical vision and his policies towards Vietnam, China, and Japan; Carter and the meaning of human rights diplomacy in Asia; Reagan and the Asian issues involved in an intensified Cold War against Russia; George H. W. Bush and Asia’s place in “a New World Order”; and finally, the Clinton and George W. Bush years. Throughout the course, we shall examine key declassified National Security documents, interpreting their meaning and language, while carefully assessing the arguments used to justify American policy.

Topics vary by semester.

Focus on the American War in Vietnam. Begins by examining Vietnamese cultural and national identity and the impact of French colonialism and then examines: the war of 1946-54 between the French and the Viet Minh; the early American OSS links with Ho Chi Minh and the Truman administration's deepening commitments to the French; the policies of the Eisenhower administration, from Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Conference in 1954 to the decision to back Ngo Dien Diem; the deepening commitment of the Kennedy administration; the escalating war of the Johnson years; and the end of the war under Nixon and Ford. Concludes with legacies and interpretations of the war.

Introduces students to the colonial origins of the Latin American region and the ways they have shaped the present. It follows the unfolding and demise of a new social order under European rule, over a period spanning from the 16th-century conquest through the early 19th-century wars of independence. Specific topics include Inca and Aztec worlds; Indian-European confrontations; the Catholic Church and popular religiosity; patriarchy and honor codes; racial dynamics and slavery; the development of capitalism; anticolonial struggles; imperial rivalry; reform; decline; and colonial legacies.

Topics vary by semester

A comparative survey of Latin American social, economic, cultural, and political history from 1800 to the present.

This course is a general introduction to the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS). The course will introduce students to the central questions and debates of NAIS, including but not limited to Indigenous hidden histories and oral histories; comparative indigeneities; questions of ‘discovery’ and colonialism; the politics and representations of lands, massacres, and museums; and questions of law, gender, and sexuality. It begins by asking students to consider the history of the field and weaves throughout questions about the complicated and contested terrain of the term Indigeneity. It ends with discussions about decolonizing research and Indigenous survivance and futures, thus preparing students to consider theories and methodologies they will encounter in more advanced courses for the NAIS minor. By the end of the semester, students will have gained both historical and ethnographic perspectives on how NAIS and other forms of representation help us to know and reproduce ourselves and ‘Others’; the different questions of historical trauma and survival that affect Indigenous communities today and how institutions continue to hold a significant role in constructing, controlling and circulating Indigenous cultural heritage and representations of the past. The course begins by recognizing and locating the history and continued presence of Native American Lenape people here in Mannahatta. It then uses this as a point of departure reaching beyond Native North America to the histories, politics, and experiences of Indigenous populations in an international and hemispheric context.

This course offers an introduction to one of the core regions of Latin America from preconquest to modern times. Course themes include Andean regional and cultural identity; ecology and peasant agriculture; native society and the Inca; colonialism, nationalism, and race; global commodity production (from silver to coca) and economic dependency; Indian and working-class political struggles. The Peruvian novelist and ethnographer Jos? Mar?a Arguedas is taken as an exemplary figure whose life, work, and death provide a focus connecting diverse elements in the course.

Cuba was one of the first territories colonized by Spain and among the last to secure its independence. It was among the last territories in the hemisphere to abolish slavery, yet home to the first black political party in the Americas. Its struggle for independence from Spain helped usher in an age of U.S. imperialism. It is the hemisphere?s first and last socialist state. This brief description hints not only at the complexities of Cuban history but also at its significance for international histories of nationalism and imperialism, race and slavery, the Cold War and socialist revolution. This course serves as an in-depth examination of that complex and fascinating history. The course focuses in depth on the major themes that have shaped modern Cuban history in the 19th and 20th centuries: race and slavery, nationalism and imperialism, reform and revolution. Particular attention is paid to the revolution of 1959.

Historical investigation of the evolution of Nazi policies toward Jews; of Jewish behavior in the face of those policies; and of the attitudes of other countries, both within and outside the Nazi orbit, for the situation of Jews under the rule of the Third Reich.

Proceeds from two premises: first, that race and slavery were central to the causes and consequences of the Civil War; and second, that the war and its legacies remain central to modern U.S. history. We 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. We also reflect critically upon the ways in which the Civil War has been remembered and represented in popular culture.

Nationalism is a major political, social, and cultural phenomenon of the modern world. This course explores the emergence and circulation of ideas of nationhood and national belonging in diverse yet interlinked regions, including present day Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia and South-East Asia, and Europe. The course opens with a set of general readings that help establish the larger historical and analytical issues at stake. The central questions and themes of the course include: How did ideas of nationhood and national belonging emerge within and across regions? What was the relation between empire and nation? Did nationalist movements alter the meaning and significance of collective identities based on religion, gender, or class? How were concepts of nation, territory, and economy placed together in different nationalist movements? Do contemporary processes of global economic change signal the fading of nationalisms and nation-states?

Topics vary from term to term.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Offered every term. 4 points. At least one workshop is required for the major, usually taken in the sophomore or junior year and before an advanced seminar. Broadly speaking, this is a course in the historian's craft, and it gives students an opportunity to learn about the discipline of history. The goal is not to impart a specific body of historical knowledge but to give students an understanding of the skills and methodologies of the professional historian. Students learn how to pose researchable questions, how to do the detective work necessary to gather evidence, how to analyze varieties of evidence, and how to present their findings before an audience of their peers. Students learn how to critique historical arguments and interpretations, as well as create their own. Recent topics have included Health Environments, Labor History, Age of Enlight-enment, Consumption and Consumer Cultures, and The African American Experience in Times of War.

We selectively explore: (a) competing claims about the origins and nature of money; (b) different evaluations of its moral significance; (c) the place of money in the commercial expansion that occurred across large parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa in the second millennium; and (d) a survey of key moments in the transformation of money's form, function, and regulation from the sixteenth through the twentieth century.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

In this workshop, we will examine France during the Middle Ages (500-1500CE), even though historians have been hard put to find that France had a coherent identity prior to the 13th century. Traditional scholarship has stressed the role of kings in achieving unification by imposing statehood upon the territorial lords who had ruled over a society long termed feudal by influential historians (such as Marc Bloch). Modern scholars have challenged the very concept of feudalism, but do acknowledge the need to recognize France’s earlier regional units of rule, culture, and society in re-assessing the transformations of power and of economic and social structures that resulted in the late medieval emergence of France as a state. Also instrumental in this process were ideologies, myths, symbols, linguistic traits, artistic creativity, and attitudes toward those encountered either as neighbors (England, Empire, Iberian Peninsula) or as others (Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Asians), all of which all gradually fostered a self-awareness of national identity.

This course explores the history of light and the night from the ancient to the modern period. Before electrification, light was a precious resource: the course surveys its importance in domestic life and urban space, its economic and scientific uses, as well as technological and architectural attempts to control and maximize lighting levels. It also probes how light symbolism was invoked in a range of different political and religious discourses. At the same time, the course explores the ‘dark side’ of the topic: the history of the night, a time traditionally associated with a multitude of dangers, real and imagined.

From 1815 to 1914, the nation state gradually imposed itself as the model of political organization in Europe. We will examine the various forms adopted by these national constructions and how they were accompanied or gave rise to nationalist movements and ideologies that took extreme forms during the Second World War.

This is a workshop class in the Department of History. We will focus on developing the “unnatural” skills of thinking historically. This requires you to apply the five C’s of historical thinking (causality, change over time, complexity, context, and contingency) to one specific event: the 15 April 1989 Hillsborough Disaster or Tragedy (henceforth just Hillsborough). This is the unlawful death of ninety–seven fans of Liverpool Soccer Club at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield. We will listen to, read, and watch sources, evaluating and using these sources as well as others discovered in research to make historical arguments, and then you will create thoughtful, well–grounded, and scholarly essays.

This research seminar invites students to think through WWII in East Asia in three stages: its causes; the course of conflict, and finally its consequences into our day. Our perspective is on the ideological dimension of the war as it was not simply about territory, but about conflicting ideas on how states should organize lives of their citizens. We will explore how the war tested communism, fascism, socialism, and liberal democracy, and with what consequences. Our focus will be the research and writing process, beginning with the feasibility of research topics, developing a sound argument with good evidence, and continuing to work together on historiography, methodology, analysis, and writing. Research topics could include issues of imperialism, planned economies, total mobilization, massive destruction, the coming of the atomic age, the end of European and Japanese colonialism, and the advent of the Cold War.

Prerequisite: permission of the director of undergraduate studies. Open only to junior and senior history majors. Offered every term. 4 points per term. Enables advanced and qualified students to work on historical projects for credit for up to 12 hours per week in approved agencies or archival centers.

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Students work one-on-one with their faculty director to complete and defend their senior thesis. A grade of at least A-minus on the thesis is required to receive honors in history.

Prerequisites: junior or senior standing and permission of the instructor and the director of undergraduate studies. Students may not take more than one independent study course per term. No more than two may count toward the major. Instructors are limited to two independent study students per term. Offered every term. 2 or 4 points per term.

Prerequisites: permission of the instructor and the director of undergraduate studies. Students may not take more than one independent study course per term. No more than two may count toward the major.

A survey of Europe from 1789 to the present. Investigates the political, social, economic, and cultural developments that shaped and continue to shape the modern age. Emphasis is on the evolution of the nation-state, on industrialization and its impact on society and politics, and on the intellectual responses to the rapid changes these developments inspired. Topics include Europe and the French Revolution; the rise of the nation-state, 1848-1914; the impact of totalitarian ideologies on 20th-century Europe, and Europe today.

Description: The key events you read about in your morning twitter feed or on your favorite news sites are usually not unique in world affairs. They have a background, a context, that makes them more understandable and often more interesting. History is about everything that happened before you started reading this course description. And thinking historically means trying to make sense of the new in the context of what human beings have done before. In this lecture series, NYU's historians take you on a behind the scenes tour of current events you thought you knew, with the goal of making you a better observer and analyst of news about the world around you.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

This course explores the origins of Islam and the development of its rituals and doctrines to the 21st century. It assumes no previous background in Islamic studies. Students will learn about topics such as the Koran and the Prophet, Islamic law, the encounter of East and West during the Crusades, and Islam in Britain. They will find out how Muslims in different regions have interpreted and lived their religion in past and present. Readings will include not only scholarly works but also material from primary sources, for example the Koran, biographies and chronicles. The course consists of a combination of lectures, seminar discussions, field trips and includes other media, such as film.

Wielding nearly unlimited authority over the lives - and the after-life – of millions of Europeans, the Catholic Church was by far the most important political, as well as cultural, power of the Middle Ages. The only global institution of this era, the Church was at the same time able to nourish strong local roots: its cardinals and popes came from all over the continent and dealt with international politics at the highest level, while priests and friars brought home to the people a faith tied to the neighborhood church and confraternity, and personified by a saint’s shrine and relics.Through a combination of lectures, students’ presentations, films and site visits, this course will explore selected aspects of the Medieval Church’s history: its often rocky relations with the other supreme power of the time, the Holy Roman Empire; the rise of monasticism and its different versions; the spread of heretical movements and their repression by the Inquisition; sainthood, and how “heavenly” women and men could serve to articulate very earthly ideologies on state, society, gender roles.

This course presents an overview of the political, social, and cultural history of Italy from roughly 1300 to 1600. Its aim is to provide students with a basic understanding of the forces and processes that shaped the states and the societies of the Italian peninsula in an era of extraordinary changes: from the developments of urban civilization and the rise of humanism in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century, to the political and religious crisis of the late Quattrocento and early Cinquecento, and finally to the establishment of a new balance of power and a new cultural climate in the course of the sixteenth century.

This course examines the growth and importance of London from the Roman invasion of 43 AD to the present day. Students will learn about London’s changing economic and political role, and will understand how London grew to dominate the commerce, industry and culture of England. They will find out how London became the biggest city the world had ever known, and how it coped (or failed to cope) with the social and environmental problems created by its enormous size. The classroom sessions will be divided between a lecture and a class discussion. From week two onwards the class will begin with a discussion of the topic or period covered in the previous week‚s lecture, in which students will be expected to use knowledge and ideas gathered from lectures and from their weekly reading. There will also be four walking tours of parts of London which relate to the period we are studying at a particular time.

The history of Germany in the twentieth century offers rich material to explore various approaches to organizing modern society. Beginning with Imperial Germany in 1900 and moving forward to today’s reunited Germany, we will look at different ways in which the relationship between the state and the individual, and relationship between politics, economy, and society developed over five different political systems. We will interrogate how these institutional arrangements were envisioned and structured and how they were experienced in everyday negotiations. In this course, principle narratives and events will be situated in a European and global context, allowing us to place the concept of German modernity in a comparative framework. Lectures will provide an overview of Germany in the twentieth century; readings and in-class discussions will explore different approaches to analyzing German history and society. During museum visits and walking tours, we will analyze contestations over the various attempts to integrate – both in concerted efforts to memorialize as well as to forget and erase – Germany’s oft-problematic pasts within the narrative of Germany’s present.

This course proposes an introduction to French history, politics ,and society from the French Revolution to the present. Attention is paid to the successive crises that have challenged France's stature, its national identity, and its republican model. Topics include the gradual consolidation of democratic political and social systems following the Revolution, and the continuities and contestations of that legacy as reflected in the rise of France as an imperial power, the Dreyfus Affair, two World Wars, and the loss of empire.

Lift your eyes as you walk down any street in Paris and you'll soon see a building adorned with thetricolore and the words Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Turn a corner and in the distance you'll see the Arc de Triomphe built to the glory of Napoleon's army or the Eiffel tower erected for the centennial of the fall of the Bastille. Even the metro stops, Concorde, Nation, République, Austerlitz, Iéna, echo with the memory of the years of the French Revolution and the First Empire. But what historic reality does all this evoke? What led some French people to overthrow their age old Monarchy, turn their backs on the Church and launch into a new era of Republican government? What caused others to resist such changes with all their might? And why did the experiment end within 10 years, giving way to military dictatorship and an Empire which spread French rule across Europe?This semester we shall explore these issues and others pertaining to the Age of the French Revolution & Napoleon through lectures, readings, discussions and site visits in and around the city of Paris.

The course will begin with an examination of the background to and condition of Europe in 1945. The outbreak of the Cold War and the division of Europe will be discussed as will the promotion of European unity, the establishment of NATO and the emergence of COMECON and the Warsaw Pact. The pressures leading to the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) will be considered together with the firm establishment of the democratic principle in Western Europe. The Suez Crisis and Decolonisation in Britain and France will be explored together with the corollary, the first application by Britain for membership of the EEC. The effect of President de Gaulle’s presidency on France, NATO and the EEC will be considered. The end of Stalinism in the USSR will be examined as will the first cracks in the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe in Hungary and Poland. This will be followed by a discussion of the merits and demerits of Khrushchev’s period in power, the U2 crisis and the construction of the Berlin Wall. The Prague Spring off 1968 will be discussed. The continued integration of Europe will be analyzed together with the impact of Ostpolitik in Germany. Brezhnev’s domination of the USSR and Détente in the 1970s will be examined. Following this, the forces that led to the triumph of Neo-Liberalism in Britain will be considered, as will the return of conservatism in Germany and the cohabitation of Mitterrand’s France. The re-launch of the European Community in the 1980s will be analysed. In Eastern Europe the Gorbachev era and the rise of Solidarność will be explored and the course will conclude with an examination of the disintegration of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany, the collapse of the Soviet state and the conclusion of the Maastricht Treaty.

This course introduces contemporary Italy in all its complexity and fascination. Reviewing politics, economics, society, and culture over the past two centuries, the course has a primary goal -- to consider how developments since the 1800s have influenced the lives and formed the outlook of today's Italians. In other words, we are engaged in the historical search for something quite elusive: Italian “identity”. Topics will include the unification of the country, national identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the First World War, and Italian fascism, World War Two and the resistance, the post-war Italian Republic, the economic "miracle", the South, the Mafia, terrorism, popular culture, and the most recent political and social developments, including Italy and the European Union. Lectures combine with readings and films (taking advantage of Italy’s magnificent post-war cinema).

The goal of this course is to introduce the students into nationalism studies and into a plethora of historical and present roots of national identities and manifestations of nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe. The course will examine how selected aspects of national histories have been used (and misused) in 19., 20. and 21. century to support/justify national political programs and leaders; specifically, how a romantic picture of national history influenced the development of national identity and what role its interpretation has had in political struggles and programs of Central and East European nations. The course focuses on forces that triggered many eruptions of ethnic hatred and atrocities in Central and Eastern Europe including Holocaust, post World War II expulsion of Germans, civil war in former Yugoslavia, and most recently the nationalist aspects of conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The course will focus on Ukraine and Russia, Poland, Hungary, former Czechoslovakia, present-day Czech Republic and Slovakia, on former Yugoslavia and on independent states on its territory, and it will motivate the students to formulate a positive and cooperative prospect for the region's future.

This course analyzes writing from 1845 to present, surveying African-American history and literature beginning with the writings of Frederick Douglass and the Harlem Renaissance writers that originate from Washington, DC's Howard University (Zora Hurston and Alain Locke). From this historical foundation, examines issues of race and caste from Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, that focuses on the death of Coates' Howard classmate at the hands of police. Also uses Washington, DC as a resource, visiting sites, including the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, Howard University, the National Museum of African-American Culture and History and the Martin Luther King Memorial Site.

This four credit course explores how the dynamics of migration have shaped identity and citizenship. By providing students with a range of theoretical approaches, the course will address questions of migration, national identity and belonging from a multidisciplinary perspective drawing from (amongst other fields): Sociology, History, Geo-Politics, Gender Studies, Black European Studies, and Cultural Studies. Taking the so called “refugee crisis” as a starting point, the course will pay particular attention to the figure and representation of the “migrant” going from Italian mass migration in the late 19th century to the migrants crossing every day the waters of the Mediterranean in order to reach Fortress Europe. Yet, a course on migration processes undertaken in 2017 Italy cannot limit itself to a purely theoretical framework. Migration means movements of people bringing along personal histories, families and cultural backgrounds. Furthermore the presence of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers reaching Europe is having a significant impact on the current social and political agenda of European government, as in the case of Italy. Therefore the course will include a series of fieldtrips aimed at showing students how immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers insert themselves into the labor market and society in Italy.

A history of Modern Imperialism from the beginning of the nineteenth century to post-Second World War decolonisation: with particular reference to the British Empire.

This course introduces students to anthropological approaches to the study of historical memory through one important and controversial topic in contemporary Spain: the effects and after-effects of the unburial of mass graves of civilians executed during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) as well as during the postwar years. Most of the exhumations occurring during the last 15 years are of mass graves containing Republican militants and sympathizers executed in what has been labeled by historians as politicide, genocide or even Holocaust. To understand contemporary engagements with this violent past, we will explore the main landmarks of the current exhumation campaign. This includes attention to the origins of these graves, their genealogy since the end of the Civil War, and especially the impact of the exhumed bodies on various milieus from the judicial system and forensic labs to popular culture and the arts.

Nineteenth century Europe was the birthplace of economic liberalism. The gold standard, the night watchman state, and the writings of the classical economists laid the foundation for a golden age of laissez-faire capitalism centered on the nation-state. More than a century later Europe is known as the pioneer of the welfare state, the host for an experiment in fascist and communist economics, and the center for a supra-national process of economic cooperation: the European Union. This course traces the evolution of European capitalism during the twentieth century, from laissez-faire to welfare state economies. Throughout the semester we will study the key themes and turning points that shaped Europe's economic development: the Great Depression, the world wars; alternative ways of organizing economic life under fascism and communism; the stagnation and crises of the 1970s; and finally Europe's ongoing project of economic integration.

Topics and prerequisites vary by semester.

This course will examine the philosophical origins, theoretical characterizations and historical and political evolution of fascist political movements in Europe. The course is comparative in method and scope concentrating on the common characteristics of all fascist regimes and neo-fascist political movements. Historically, the course will focus on the paradigmatic cases of the interwar period--Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany—and, especially, on the more unorthodox case of Francoist Spain, the only Fascist regime that survived WWII and into the Cold War era. Finally, we will survey the emergence of neo-fascist movements in contemporary Europe seeking to identify how they resemble, and differ from, their past precursors. The course is divided into three parts. Part I studies the philosophical roots of fascist ideologies in the European reactionary tradition while contextualizing its emergence as a political ideology, socio-political movement and regime type under the specific historical conditions existing in interwar Europe. Part II studies the most salient policies and historical evolution of the fascist political regimes that came into being during the XXth century in Italy, Germany and, Spain. In part III, we will reflect on the rebirth of neo-fascism in Europe, the continuing aesthetic attraction exerted by fascism in European politics and society and the lasting influence of fascism on certain democratic state policies such as interest representation (corporatism).

This course provides a general theoretical survey of the American Constitution, excepting its guarantee of individual rights, such as those enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The U.S. Constitution has endured for over two centuries as a touchstone for defining the U.S. as a sociocultural, economic, and political unit. As a textual and ideational construct, the Constitution continues to profoundly impact the fabric of American identity, political culture, and the socioeconomic actuality of those that reside under the (aegis of the) Constitution.

This survey course will focus on the historical development of U.S. federal authority and capacity over public lands and resources, including the germination and expansion of the idea of a coherent public interest with respect to air, water, forests, landscapes, and other environmental attributes. The course will address U.S. environmental policy through several lenses, including (1) a set of two introductory sessions in which students are introduced to key terminology, concepts, and orientations toward the domain of environmental policy; (2) a core series of sessions through which we survey how historical precedents have shaped contemporary U.S. environmental policies and programs. As we work through the semester, we will also review several contemporary, but still evolving, environmental policy topics (e.g., climate change, invasive species, fracking) in light of historical precedents.

To provide an understanding of the main immigration trends in Britain, France and Germany since 1850 To provide an understanding of the problems attending the social and political integration of immigrants in contemporary Western Europe To compare the experience and understanding of immigration in Europe with the experience and understanding of immigration in the United States To examine the ways in which the memory of immigration is represented in literature and contemporary culture.

A historical and political inquiry into the French system of relations with Francophone Africa from the ‘race to Empire’ in the 19th century to the current day. The main goals of the course are: to describe the historical development of French-African relations from the colonial to the post-independence era; to investigate the political, economic and cultural mechanisms of French influence in contemporary Francophone Africa; to understand the consequences for France of complex developments subsequent to colonialism, such as African immigration in France. Conducted in French.

This course will focus on the history of the culturally rich region of “Mitteleuropa” through analysis of the parallel evolution of Germany and the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. Mitteleuropa as a region produced such important figures as Franz Kafka, Gustav Mahler, Sigmund Freud, Theodor Herzl and Milan Kundera; historical personalities whose influence internationally is indisputable. We’ll delve into the history of the region and on the central role played by German politics and culture from the end of the 19th century, through the turbulent 20th century to the present day. Emphasis will be on the evolution of the concept of nationalism as well as on Germany’s foreign policy in the “concert of nations”, especially towards its Eastern neighbors. The aim is to achieve an understanding of the complex evolution of national entities and their interaction between the birth of the modern German state and the integration of the Visegrád countries in NATO and the European Union.

This course examines the relationship that developed between the Islamic world and the West and their historical impact on each other. The class surveys and analyses the historical relationship between these two regions from the rise of Islam through the early modern period and the advent of European colonialism to modern-day resurgence of traditional aspects of Islam. The course will focus on the Mediterranean as sphere of diplomatic, trade and cultural relations. Particular emphasis will be on periods that saw intensified interaction between the two civilizations. Examples of these are sessions on the Crusades in Syria, the westernisation-modernisation dilemma within the Ottoman reformist movement, the diplomatic battle fought on education between the Ottoman Sultan and the missionary schools, and the exchanges between European and Ottoman intellectuals towards the end of the 19th century.

The story of the archaeological discipline in the Land of Israel is strongly tied with the major developments that the region has undergone in the last two centuries. This course offers an overview of the history of archaeology in Palestine since the appearance of the first European travelers and missionaries in the mid-19th century, along the vibrant interest of collectors, forgers and robbers in the Promised Land, through the appearance of the first scientific excavations, the rise of the American biblical archaeology and its influence on local Israeli research. Special attention will be given to the way the newly born Israeli archaeology helped to establish the Zionist identity that wished to pass over two thousand years of Diaspora history; the methods by which the nascent Israeli archaeology connected new-comers to the land of the patriarchs and the manner by which Israeli scholars served state interests in the creation of the national Zionist ethos. The aftermath of the Six Days War and the increasing tension between the Bible and archaeology will be discussed in light of the intense debate over the historicity of the Exodus story, Joshua's conquests and the United Kingdom of David and Solomon. Finally, at the turn of the millennium, post-modern archaeology presented a new pluralistic view of the past. This multi-vocal framework will be used as a background for discussing the archaeology of otherness and minorities in 21st century Israel.

The course is a voyage through the fascinating and complex history and culture of the Italian South, from the first half of the Nineteenth Century to the present day. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach we will explore the rich patrimony of southern history, as well as the violence of a society with neither rules nor justice. In Italy and in Italian Studies, the 'Southern Question' evokes the powerful image of two profoundly different Italies. We will investigate the disparities between the North and the South, devoting special consideration to the origins, causes and the consequences of this divide as well as to the economic and political interests of the elite who ruled the country.

This course will take the students through the history and the various realities and challenges of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The course aims to introduce the fundamental historical trajectories of the conflict, and to present and analyze the conflicting narratives and perceptions of both Palestinians and Israelis over key moments and issues in its history. By so doing, we will pay specific attention to the respective histories of the conflict, as well as to the challenges that each side is encountering over the future of the conflict and possible solutions to it. Among other issues, the course focuses on key moments in the history of Palestine during the British mandate; the conflicting narratives over the 1948 war; Israel and the Palestinians between 1948-1967; the 1967 war and its implications on Israel and the Palestinians; the development of the Palestinian national movement; the first and second Intifadas and the challenges to the Oslo peace process. The course will address these issues through a variety of readings, primary sources and films. As a conclusion, the students will present their own reflections and analyses of various aspects of the history of the conflict and debate its future implications.

Explores Ghana's development in historic perspective from the colonial era to the recent postcolonial period. Provides an interdisciplinary history that is attentive to political economy, social relations, geography, and politics as they congeal in particular ways throughout Ghana's developmental trajectory. Traces the key forces at play in Ghanaian development through time, paying particular attention to the transformations prompted by the region's encounter with and incorporation into a global economy. Key historical moments will include the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the colonial era in light of their attendant reconfigurations of land, labor, and natural resources—as well as landscapes of power and politics. In the postcolonial period, examines the central epochs in the country's development trajectory, in relation to its rich political history and shifting global discourses of development and geopolitics, and considers such dynamics as Asian investment, urbanization, international development aid, and the discovery of oil. Field visits will complement class discussions and take advantage of our location in Accra. Ghana's specific developmental trajectory is viewed in contexts of wider African and global south developmental trajectories.

The course description for this Topics in History course varies depending on the topic taught. Please view the course descriptions in the course notes section below.

This course is designed to introduce students to some of the most important problems and debates about Latin American history, society and culture. Latin America is a complex region full of contrasts. Its population is both racially and culturally heterogeneous. Its many countries share some common cultural roots and political origins, but also have distinct histories. The structure of this course is primarily chronological but also thematic. We will start with the Conquest and its legacies and we will end with the problems that we experience today in big cities in Latin America. The course favors a multi-disciplinary approach, and therefore we will use a different array of materials including films, letters, photographs and essays. We will emphasize first hand accounts of the topics we discuss.

In this course we consider the controversies, ideals, and social conflicts that have motivated protest movements in France from the Revolution of 1789 to the present day. Taking as an approach the history of ideas, the course examines the intense debates over social justice and political representation that have moved people to action, from the idealistic Communards in the late 19th century, to the youth movements of the 1960s, or the “yellow vest” (gilets jaunes) and Black Lives Matter protests of a few years ago. Through a study of literary and philosophical texts, historical tracts, political posters, films and protest songs, we will deepen our understanding of these events and the passions they inspire. Includes visits in and around Paris. Conducted in English.

Power and culture are intimately interwoven in the social history and the material substance of modern Berlin. This interdisciplinary course explores the changing historical contours of the keywords of Kultur (culture), Geist (spirit), Technik (technology), Bildung (education), Arbeit (work) and Macht (power) and contestations over their meanings. Through applying an interdisciplinary approach that integrates literature, film, art, architecture, and philosophy, we interrogate how meaning is made individually and collectively. We will look at how relationships between individual identities, state power, and social norms were shaped in the context of recurrent political and economic crisis and rupture and ask how changing local, national, supranational, and global contexts influence how meanings are made. Paying attention to possibilities and constraints for negotiating the terms of everyday life and for conforming or resisting, we will trace how Berliners made and make sense of their lives and the world they participate in shaping.