51 - 60 of 120 results for: HISTORY

The Enlightenment as a philosophical, literary, and political movement. Themes include the nature and limits of philosophy, the grounds for critical intellectual engagement, the institution of society and the public, and freedom, equality and human progress. Authors include Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hume, Diderot, and Condorcet.

The years stretching from roughly 1880 to end of the First World War were marked by profound social upheaval and an intense burst of creativity. This seminar will focus on the major cultural movements and big ideas of the period. Topics covered include the rise of mass culture and cinema, the origins of psychoanalysis, anti-Semitism and Zionism, new anxieties about sexuality and the 'New Woman,' anarchism, decadence, degeneration, and Dada - with cameos from Bernhardt, Freud, Klimt, Nietzsche, Toulouse-Lautrec, Wilde, Zola, and other luminaries of the age.

(Same as LAW 441.) This seminar will explore major topics in European legal history from ancient Rome through the present: Roman law, canon law, feudalism, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century constitutionalism, modern natural law, the age of absolutism and the rise of the centralized, administrative state, the structure of Old Regime law and society and the radical changes brought about by revolution, the German historical school of jurisprudence, and the rise of the European Union and a new culture of international human rights. In exploring these topics, we will focus on certain core, recurring themes that continue profoundly to shape the world in which we live. These include the sources and nature of law (positive law vs. custom), the relationship between law and society, and the relationship between law and history. Classroom discussion will focus on selected primary- and secondary-source texts that we will read as a group. nnThis course is cross-listed with LAW441. The course will be limited to 12 SLS students with 10 additional slots held for students enrolling in HISTORY338E.

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.

Few places have been as heavily romanticized and mythologized as Paris. To many observers, Paris and its attractions serve as icons of modernity itself. By engaging with fiction, film, journalism, painting, photography, poetry, song, and other media, we¿ll trace how different people at different times have used Paris as both backdrop and main protagonist, and we'll consider how the city itself has incorporated and rebelled against such representations. The scope of our inquiry will stretch from the late 18th century to the present, covering a host of topics, figures, and sites: from the French Revolution to the protests of May '68, from Baudelaire to Hemingway, from the Impressionists to the Situationists. Taught in English

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.

Ideas about vision and hearing in science and culture from 1790 through 1910. The development of sensory physiology in the wake of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, including Maine de Biran, Goethe, Helmholtz. Treatments of the senses in different spheres of culture and the arts: Baudelaire's flâneur, Impressionist painting, sound-reproduction technologies, the musical avant-garde, early cinema. Case studies include Cézanne, Debussy, and Russolo. Focus is on the complex relationships between science and culture and the role of the senses in the formation of the 'modern' subject. HISTORY241E/341E must be taken for 4 units.

Why does Egypt fascinate us? From Napoleon¿s invasion to Katy Perry¿s latest music video, we have interpreted ancient Egyptian history and mythology for centuries; in fact, this obsession dates back to the Egyptians themselves. This seminar explores Egyptomania from the Pharaonic period to the 20th century. Topics include: ancient Egypt, Greek historians, medieval Arabic scholars, hieroglyphic decipherment, 19th century travel, 20th century pop culture, and how historians have interpreted this past over the centuries.

Colonialism set in motion profound transformations of African societies. These transformations did not occur immediately following military conquest, nor did they occur uniformly throughout the continent. This research seminar will focus directly on the encounter between the colonial state and African societies. The seminar will examine problems of social transformation, the role of the colonial state, and the actions of Africans. Following four weeks of collloquim style discussion, students then embark on independent research on the encounter between one colonial state and its constituent African societies.