Summer 2013

This lecture offers a historical survey of the institution of slavery from antiquity to the present day, with particular attention to the place of human bondage, and coerced labor more generally, in broader processes of social, economic and political change. Topics include the experience of enslavement, the development of long-distance networks for the transportation of slave labor, the rise of the plantation complex, the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas, and the distinctive character of human bondage in the twentieth century. The places covered range from classical Greece and Rome, to early modern Antigua, to contemporary Thailand.

Nearly every country feels America's political, economic, and cultural influence. After all, the U.S. currently maintains more than 700 military bases in all corners of the globe. Many have called it the world's last remaining empire. For good or for ill (and sometimes both), America dominates international affairs. But it has not always been this way. Nor was it inevitable. This course explores the rise of American power since 1890. It looks at how and why the United States became a global power, why it became involved in certain wars and not others, and how it has influenced the rest of the world. Students will learn about the many factors shaping U.S. policy-not just presidents and diplomats, but also NGOs, businesses, intellectuals, and popular culture. By exploring the history of American foreign relations, students will also examine key problems of international politics-such as humanitarian intervention, global cooperation, non-state actors, and imperialism-that remain important to citizens today.

This lecture course will focus on "Europian" and "Indian" encounters via travelers, cartographies and texts. We will look specifically at a series of figures who "walked" over Orient and Occident and the ways in which they shaped forms of knowledge and the means to which their words served. We will examine representations of space in maps, as well as mapping efforts to locate hidden geographies in the Orient. We will examine the world of "knowledge-brokers" who facilitated interactions across political, theological and linguistic borders. In general, our effort will be to build a relationship between the experiential knowledge of space and landscape and the theoretical knowledge of space and landscape. To that purpose, the class will include a few coordinated walks. The course will focus on some specific walkers such as Thomas Coryat (1577-1617), Henry Blount (1602-1682), William Moorcroft (1767-1825), Dean Mohamed (1751-1851), Richard F. Burton (1821-1890), and Mirza Abu Taleb (1843-1911) . We will look at mapping practices of the colonial powers in India as well as America, and put them in conversation with the knowledge-brokers. We will read recent scholarship on the encounters (Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Giancarlo Casale, Vanita Seth, and others)

This course analyzes the theory and practice of military occupation from the early nineteenth century until the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. This course will consider political, legal, and military aspects of occupation through comparative examination of a series of case studies. "Occupation" will be used a conceptual category to examine diverse phenomena in nineteenth and twenty-century international history including the expansion and collapse of modern empires and the rise of national states. It will consider the role of international law in imperial expansion, changes in the definition of sovereignty, as well as the transformative uses of military occupation in engineering the modern state. In addition to course readings and seminar participation, students are required to write a term paper based upon original research of primary materials.

How has the United States participated in, and transformed, international society as it rose from a backwater colony to the world leader? This course surveys the history of U.S.engagement with the society of states and peoples that constitute the "international." It examines systematic ways in which Americans have approached two challenges: how to bring about peace and justice between states and how to govern what are today called "less developed" peoples. Federalist and hemispheric conceptions of international order, developed before the twentieth century, are used as a backdrop for understanding how the United States shaped the structure of international society once it became a great power and then superpower. The emphasis is on broad intellectual frameworks through which American foreign-policy elites have understood international society and their country's place in it, although attention will be paid to such topics as military intervention, international law and organization, and international political economy.

This lecture course focuses on what is generally considered the zenith century of ancient Greek civilization and culture, the era when the Greeks were at their peak of cultural and political innovation and productivity. In literature, the arts, philosophy, and medicine as well as politics, the Greeks of the 5th century, the height of the so-called Classical Age of Greece, produced ideas, innovations, and works that still continue to delight, inform, and influence western culture especially, but people throughout the world more broadly. This is the century in which, under the leadership of those two polar opposites Sparta and Athens, the southern Greeks defeated a vast invading force of the mighty Persian Empire, and in the flush of that unexpected victory they unleashed a burst of creativity with few if any parallels in world history. The focuses of Greek political life in this century were of course Athens and Sparta, and the center of Greek cultural and economic developments was Athens, so the course will necessarily focus extensively on those two states, especially on Athens, but the rest of Greece will be covered too. We shall be examining political, social, cultural, philosophical, and economic developments in our attempt to understand the life of Greece at this time, and its unique contributions to world history.

This course provides an intensive introduction to the relationship between Classical Hollywood and the broader cultural and political dynamics of America from the 1910s through the Cold War. Classical Hollywood, or the "studio system," designates the years roughly between 1920 and 1968, when a particular style, mode of production, and industrial organization characterized the motion picture industry both as a social and commercial institution as well as the vast majority of films it produced. During this era, different genres of Hollywood's movies targeted particular audience members and movies were not afforded the protection of free speech. This made Hollywood's products and personalities peculiarly reflective of, and vulnerable to, broader cultural anxieties. Students will become familiar with the internal history of the motion picture industry as well as how the nation's first mass cultural form of entertainment shaped and responded to outside historical shifts. This course also provides an introduction to the writing of history. Students will explore the character of historical research, particularly the identification, selection, and use of evidence. We will discuss common problems involved in historical narration, particular those related to issues of explanation and interpretation. During the second half of the semester, members will focus on putting these skills into practice by writing a research paper. Seminar participants will become practitioners of the historical craft and thoughtful critics of each other's work.

In this lecture course we will examine theoretical and historical developments that framed the notions of censorship and free expression in early modern Europe. The role of censorship has become one of the significant elements in discussions of early modern culture. The history of printing and of the book, of the rise national-political cultures and their projections of control, religious wars and denominational schisms are some of the factors that intensified debate over the free circulation of ideas and speech. Index, Inquisition, Star Chamber, book burnings and beheadings have been the subjects of an ever growing body of scholarship. We will analyze categories of prohibited speech such as political, religious, and offensive to civil society. We will look at the mechanisms of censorship: who served as censors? How consistently was censorship applied? How effective was censorship in suppressing unwanted expression? What were its unintended consequences? We will look at ways in which censorship triggered significant reaction, such as martyrdom or created a culture of dissimulation, such as marranism and nicodemism. Finally, we will ask whether early-modern censorship can be said to have had a constitutive role in the formation of modern culture.

This lecture examines how the American presidency evolved into the most important job on earth. It examines how major events in US and world history shaped the presidency. How changes in technology and media augmented the power of the president and how the individuals who served in the office left their marks on the presidency. Each class will make connections between past presidents and the current events involving today's Commander-in-Chief. Some topics to be discussed: Presidency in the Age of Jackson; Teddy Roosevelt and Presidential Image Making; Presidency in the Roaring '20s; FDR and the New Deal; Kennedy and the Television Age; The Great Society and the Rise of the New Right; 1968: Apocalyptic Election; The Strange Career of Richard Nixon; Reagan's Post Modern Presidency; From Monica to The War on Terror

Images of African-American women in U.S. popular culture often convey particular stereotypes regarding Black girlhood, womanhood, motherhood, and sexuality. This course presents an historically grounded counter-narrative to monolithic representations of African-American women. In this course we will examine key themes and topics in the history of African-American women's lived experiences within specific historical contexts. Topics include: the Middle Passage and the transatlantic slave trade; African-American slave culture(s) and communities; slave resistance; freedom struggles/movements during slavery; Jim Crowism in the post-Civil War era; the Black women's club movement; Civil Rights, Black Power,Pan-African, and Black Feminist movements; and contemporary realities of African-American women. We will analyze the complex intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality. We will discuss the scholarly work of historians who are consciously positioning racial, gendered, and class, dynamics at the crux of their work. As we discuss the efforts made by scholars to give voice to previously unheard perspectives, we will explore issues of representation (not only who represents whom in U.S. history, but also who and what remains unheard in the present day). We will approach the subject matter utilizing a variety of primary and secondary sources (e.g., slave narratives, slave ships' logs, ex-slave interviews, oral histories, speeches, essays, documentaries, and an autobiography). For this course, in addition to the midterm and final exam, students will write 2 (4-5 page) response papers during the course of the summer term. In addition to written assignments, small groups of students will co-lead class discussions on selected reading assignments.

The development of the modern culture of consumption, with particular attention to the formation of the woman consumer. Topics include commerce and the urban landscape, changing attitudes toward shopping and spending, feminine fashion and conspicuous consumption, and the birth of advertising. Examination of novels, fashion magazines, and advertising images.

This course examines the social history of the use of mind altering substances in the United States. In particular, we will focus on opiate addiction in the twentieth century, but some of the readings may also deal with alcohol, amphetamines, barbiturates, marijuana, and cocaine. Major themes include the medicalization of addiction; criminalization and the criminal justice system; sociological and historical perspectives; and gender, race/ethnicity, and class as influencing factors in regulation, law enforcement, cultural practices, and drug profile. Written work will consist of response papers and the analysis of oral histories.

This course will cover the period from the early nineteenth century to the present, considering how Turkey emerged out of the Ottoman Empire and what its political, social,and cultural evolution has been since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Geographically, we will discuss the area that is now Turkey, but also Southeast Europe as well as the Middle East in order to gain a comparative perspective on Turkey in the context of the many other Ottoman successor-states. Thematically we will discuss events such as: the Balkan Wars, the Ottoman entry into WWI, the Greek-Turkish War of 1918-1922, the rule of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the transition from single-party to multi-party rule in 1950, the series of coups d'etat between 1960 and 1980, and the post-1980 Republic.