Stanford University Explore Courses

HISTORY 337C: Street History: Learning the Past in School and Out (EDUC 356)

Interdisciplinary. Since Herodotus, history and memory have competed to shape minds: history cultivates doubt and demands interpretation; memory seeks certainty and detests that which thwarts its aims. History and memory collide in modern society, often violently. How do young people become historical amidst these forces; how do school, family, nation, and mass media contribute to the process?

Last offered: Spring 2009

HISTORY 337F: 20th Century British History through the Hoover Archives (HISTORY 237F)

From the rich resources of the Hoover Institution, the students in this course will select a particular archive (war posters, politician, spy, literary figure, diplomat, etc. etc.) to investigate, to write about,discuss in class, and, it is hoped, present in an exhibition at the Hoover, learning museum skills along the way as well as the history of Britain in the 20th century.

Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5

Instructors: Stansky, P. (PI)

HISTORY 337K: Speed and Power in the Twentieth Century (FRENCH 237K, HISTORY 237K)

Europeans living in the 20th century witnessed an unprecedented (and, to many observers, frightening) acceleration in the pace of everyday life, wrought by the introduction of a host of new travel technologies. Focusing on the metropolises of Europe, this seminar will explore the various ways that trains, planes, and automobiles have shaped modern urban life. We'll also look at how 20th-century artists and writers have treated the interrelated themes of speed and power in their work.

Terms: Win | Units: 4-5

Instructors: Braude, M. (PI)

HISTORY 338A: Graduate Colloquium in Modern British History, Part I

Influential approaches to problems in British, European, and imperial history. The 19th-century British experience and its relationship to Europe and empire. National identity, the industrial revolution, class formation, gender, liberalism, and state building. Goal is to prepare specialists and non-specialists for oral exams.

Last offered: Winter 2015

HISTORY 338B: MODERN BRITISH HISTORY PART II

Themes include empire and racism, the crisis of liberalism, the rise of the welfare state, national identity, the experience of total war, the politics of decline, and modernity and British culture.

Terms: Aut | Units: 4-5

Instructors: Satia, P. (PI)

HISTORY 338G: Ethnography of the Late Middle Ages: Social history and popular culture in the age of the plague (HISTORY 238G)

During the late Middle Ages, as Europe was recovering from the devastation of the Black Death, political reorganization contributed to a burst of archival documentation that allows historians richly detailed glimpses of societies in transition. We will be reading selected scholarly articles and monographs covering such topics as persecution, prechristian cultural remnants, folk theologies, festival cultures, peasant revolts, heresy, and the advent of the diabolic witch.

Last offered: Winter 2015

HISTORY 339F: Empire and Information (HISTORY 239F)

How do states see? How do they know what they know about their subjects, citizens, economies, and geographies? How does that knowledge shape society, politics, identity, freedom, and modernity? Focus is on the British imperial state activities in S. Asia and Britain: surveillance technologies and information-gathering systems, including mapping, statistics, cultural schemata, and intelligence systems, to render geographies and social bodies legible, visible, and governable.

Last offered: Autumn 2005 | Repeatable for credit

HISTORY 339H: Modern European History in a Global Age

How scholars can write the history of modern Europe in a way that integrates global and transnational perspectives. Discussed the methodological challenges and merits of various approaches and reviews relevant theoretical and interdisciplinary models for how this can best be done. Topics include globalization, migration, internationalism, colonialism, post-colonialism, modern warfare, and the media.

Last offered: Autumn 2009

HISTORY 340: The History of Evolution (BIO 340, HISTORY 240)

This course examines the history of evolutionary biology from its emergence around the middle of the eighteenth century. We will consider the continual engagement of evolutionary theories of life with a larger, transforming context: philosophical, political, social, economic, institutional, aesthetic, artistic, literary. Our goal will be to achieve a historical rich and nuanced understanding of how evolutionary thinking about life has developed to its current form.

Terms: Win | Units: 4-5

Instructors: Gordon, D. (PI) ; Riskin, J. (PI)

HISTORY 341K: Technology in Modern American Culture (AMSTUD 241K, HISTORY 241K)

This class displays the significance of technology in American culture by examining two principal technologies and their implications for politics, business, leisure, and social interaction, as well as for other technological systems. As starting points, we consider how computing systems and atomic weapons emerged at particular moments in history, including how their developments were intimately connected. This contextual approach leads us to the related study of topics within the histories of space travel, nuclear power, amateur electronics, and the Web.