printer friendly pageHISTORY 237C: Building Modernity: Urban Planning and European Cities in the Twentieth Century (URBANST 152)
This seminar explores the history of urban planning in twentieth-century Europe. We will discuss visions of ideal cities and attempts at their implementation in the context of democratic and authoritarian systems as well as capitalism and socialism. Through case studies from eastern and western Europe--from Berlin in Germany to Nowa Huta in Poland--we will examine how broader historical trends played out in, and were shaped by, specific local circumstances. The seminar is intended for advanced undergraduate students.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 237G: Outer Space Exploration in Germany in the Twentieth Century (GERMAN 275)
Since the nineteenth century, Germans, like their counterparts around the world, have considered the meaning and the role of humanity in outer space. As space travel developed from a dream to a reality, and as Germany changed borders and political systems among empires, dictatorships, socialist states, and capitalist states, German interest in spaceflight remained, although the meaning found in the stars changed dramatically. This course considers Germans' dreams of and predictions for outer space travel alongside German technological developments in spaceflight. It includes the different German states throughout the century, including Weimar Germany, National Socialism, East Germany, and West Germany. The course looks at science fiction films and novels, newspaper reports, scientific developments, and German space engineering projects, which together demonstrate how and why space travel often found high levels of support in Germany. Students will engage in historical and cultural analysis through course readings, discussions, and assignments.nNOTE: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take this course for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 238C: Virtual Italy (ARCHLGY 117, CLASSICS 115, ENGLISH 115, ITALIAN 115)
Classical Italy attracted thousands of travelers throughout the 1700s. Referring to their journey as the "Grand Tour," travelers pursued intellectual passions, promoted careers, and satisfied wanderlust, all while collecting antiquities to fill museums and estates back home. What can computational approaches tell us about who traveled, where and why? We will read travel accounts; experiment with parsing; and visualize historical data. Final projects to form credited contributions to the Grand Tour Project, a cutting-edge digital platform. No prior programming experience necessary.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Ceserani, G. (PI)
HISTORY 238J: The European Scramble for Africa: Origins and Debates (AFRICAAM 238J, HISTORY 338J)
Why and how did Europeans claim control of 70% of African in the late nineteenth century? Students will engage with historiographical debates ranging from the national (e.g. British) to the topical (e.g. international law). Students will interrogate some of the primary sources on which debaters have rested their arguments. Key discussions include: the British occupation of Egypt; the autonomy of French colonial policy; the mystery of Germany¿s colonial entry; and, not least, the notorious Berlin Conference of 1884-1885.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 239D: Capital and Empire (HISTORY 339D)
This colloquium for advanced undergraduate and graduate students will investigate the political economy of modern empire, focusing on the British empire. Topics include the history of imperial corporations; industry and empire; the commodification of nature and life; racial capitalism; the formation of the global economy; the relationship between trafficking and free trade; and the relationship between empire and the theory and practice of development.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Satia, P. (PI)
HISTORY 239J: Work and Leisure in Nineteenth Century Britain (HISTORY 339J)
This course charts the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, empire, and social factors in Britons' lives at work and at home in the nineteenth century. Readings will explore trade unionism and Chartism, urban migration, consumer culture, print culture, organized sports, shows, rational leisure" and the development of exhibitions and public museums. Students will gain a sense of how Britons worked and played in a century that gave birth to pastimes and institutions that continue to shape our own.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 239T: What is Time?
At a basic level, history is the study of change over time. But the modern discipline of history, as it was formed during the Enlightenment, radically changed conceptions of time itself: from something at times understood as cyclical or directionless to something linear and teleological. Modern history then prompted further reconceptualizations of time: Capitalism introduced new ways of valuing time; the Darwinian revolution introduced a new scale of earthly time; the world wars dented faith in the idea that time passed in the direction of progress; and now climate change has altered conceptions of time in a new way. This course examines evolving understandings of the medium of the historian's craft: what is time? We will examine poetic, scientific, literary, and geographical conceptions of time and trace time's modern history: how colonialism and capitalism produced new experiences of time, and anticolonial and anticapitalist critiques of those experiences. Throughout, we will consider how this history should shape the way historians think about change over time, in terms of questions of scale, human experience, and disciplinary purpose.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 240: The History of Evolution (HISTORY 340)
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.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 241C: Histories of Attention and Mind Control
This course follows the history of attention from the Enlightenment and the rise of capitalism to Cold War controversies over mind control and recent debates on the attention economy and the ethics of technology. Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, which regulates what enters consciousness. In an age of information abundance, digital technologies compete to catch and direct our attention. Offering a historical perspective, the course readings trace how attention has been constructed, studied, commodified, and manipulated throughout the modern period by travelling across various regions including the Middle East, Europe, the Caribbean and North America. Consideration will be given to the training and altering of attention, to spectacle and the manipulation of attention, and to the shifting economies of attention. We will explore how practices such as mesmerism, hypnotism, and conjure became part of power relationships within social, racial, gendered, religious and cultural contexts, and how attention was made to reproduce different relationships of inequality between the industrial revolution and the advent of surveillance capitalism. The course is divided into three parts. It begins with introducing approaches to attention by historians, philosophers, and scholars of visual studies among others. Second is a more empirical analysis of how slavery, industrialism, advertising, cinema, science, and technology came together to shape modern theories of attention. The course then ends with several weeks on the current politics of attention and the attention economy.
Last offered: Spring 2021
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 242J: London Low Life in the Nineteenth Century
(
History 242J is an undergraduate course offered for 5 units;
History 342J is a graduate course offered for 4-5 units.) London began the nineteenth century as a city of one million, but was home to over six million people by the century¿s end. How did Londoners in the nineteenth century respond to the challenges and temptations of life in a growing metropolis? How did government and reformers try to influence and control city dwellers¿ behavior? This class seeks to answer these questions by exploring life in Britain¿s capital in the nineteenth century, using the digital database ¿London Low Life¿ as a guide. Contemporary street literature, night-life guides, pamphlets, broadsides, images, reformer¿s tracts, and public-interest journalism are some of the sources that will give us a window into vice, virtue, and daily life in London during a period of great uncertainty and change.
Last offered: Autumn 2020
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
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