HISTORY 18S: Pirates, Captives, and Renegades: Encounters in the Early Modern Mediterranean World
In this course, we will study how mobile subjects, such as (barbary) pirates, slaves, captives, renegades, merchants, and dragomans shaped the history of the early modern Mediterranean. By studying a range of primary sources, including official documents, chronicles, travel accounts, autobiographical texts, objects, and visual materials, we will analyze how people living on the Mediterranean's European, Asian, and African littorals experienced and influenced interactions between regional powers, such as the Italian city states, Spain, Portugal, France, Morocco, and the Ottoman Empire. In order to analyze these accounts, we will employ various historical methods and evaluate what is at stake in understanding cross-cultural/religious encounters and exchanges in the Mediterranean world during the early modern period.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 20A: The Russian Empire, 1450-1800
(Same as
HISTORY 120A. 20A is 3 units; 120A is 5 units.) The rise of Russian state as a Eurasian "empire of difference"; strategies of governance of the many ethnic and religious groups with their varied cultures and political economies; particular attention to Ukraine. In the Russian center, explores gender and family; serfdom; Russian Orthodox religion and culture; Europeanizing cultural change of 18th century.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Kollmann, N. (PI)
;
Pushel, L. (TA)
HISTORY 20N: Russia in the Early Modern European Imagination
Critically assesses European travelers' travel accounts of Russia in comparison with what was really happening in Russia at the time; explores the phenomenon of travel writing. Write2, Freshman Seminar; requires frequent oral presentations, major research paper and building of a website based on paper research.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-SI, Writing 2
HISTORY 21: The History of 2021
How can we understand the events, ideas, and conflicts that have featured in the news cycle during the past year? "The History of 2021" offers historically informed reflections on this year's momentous events, providing an opportunity to understand our world in its historic context. Each week will feature a different History faculty member speaking on a major news topic of the year, showing what we can learn by approaching it from a historical perspective. The course is open to all students (newcomers and history veterans alike) who want to reflect on the challenges and opportunities of 2021, and who are curious to consider how studying history can offer a deeper and richer understanding of tumultuous times.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 1
HISTORY 23N: The Soviet Union and the World: View from the Hoover Archives
This course seeks to explore the Soviet Union's influence on the world from 1917 to its end in 1991 from a variety of perspectives. Hoover Institution archival holdings will be the basic sources for the course.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 23S: Sex and Socialism
Among the major promises made by socialism and communism was the liberation of women from an imperialist, capitalist, and patriarchal world. How did these promises hold up in the face of the realities of revolution and state formation? This course explores the relationship between gender, sex, and sexuality within the state socialist polities of the 20th century. Topics include diversity in barricades and workplaces, motherhood and reproductive rights, medicine and sexology, incarceration and state violence, and homosexuality and gender non-conformity.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 24B: The Balkan World: History, Politics, Literature (HISTORY 124B, REES 224C, SLAVIC 224B)
The Balkans is a region that is often marginalized, even though throughout modern history it has stood at the crossroads between East and West and has been the locus of the major developments of the 19th and 20th centuries - the site of Great Power competition, the first de-colonization movements, the rise of the modern nation-state, the outbreak of the First World War, Nazi occupation and resistance, genocides, the rise of emancipatory communist regimes that have challenged the hegemony of the Soviet Union, the leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and a challenge for democratization and western-based military intervention. Today the Balkans are a region where the European Union, Russia and the China vie for control. This course draws on a range of primary and secondary, literary, historical and policy sources as well as a range of scholars from a variety of disciplines to explore the significance of the Balkans to global affairs in historical and contemporary contexts. Section
REES 224C is offered for graduate student enrollment.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Lawton, D. (PI)
;
Lazic, J. (PI)
HISTORY 24N: Stalin's Terror: Causes, Crimes, Consequences
This course explores the period of Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union from 1928 until 1953 and focuses on what the Russians called "the repressions." This includes, the war against the kulaks, the Ukrainian famine (Holodomor), the operations against the nationalities, the Great Terror, the deportation of the "punished peoples," the expansion of the Gulag (prison camp system), the Leningrad Affair, and the Doctors' Plot. The origins of these events are still controversial, as are their impact on the development of the Soviet Union. Scholars also continue to argue about the numbers of deaths involved. Students will discuss the arguments about Stalin's crimes using newly available documents, memoirs, literary sources, and other materials. We will visit the Hoover Archives, view the poster and film collection there, and discuss the period with archivists. Viewing films and documentaries, we will also reconstruct the lives of the people faced with the daily threat of denunciations and arrest. "Life has become better comrades; living has become happier..." was an often repeated slogan during the period of Stalin's terror. We will examine how that slogan translated into reality.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 25: America at 250 (AMSTUD 25, HISTORY 250)
This summer marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This course brings together over two dozen faculty from across the university to explore how the concerns and values expressed in that document have played out across U.S. history, tying the nation's origins to its present. Class sessions will involve a combination of lectures, panel discussions, and opportunities for questions. Open to undergrads and graduate students from all schools and fields.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 1
Instructors:
Gienapp, J. (PI)
;
Karlan, P. (PI)
HISTORY 25N: Electric Dreams: Technology, Politics, and the Modern Imagination
What do societies dream of when they build machines? What visions of power, order and freedom have been wired into the infrastructures of modern life? This course explores how technology has shaped, and been shaped by political ideals and social imaginations from the nineteenth century to the present day. Moving between historical case studies and speculative futures, we will examine the utopian and dystopian dreams that animate technological systems, and the forms of authority and inequality they produce. We will begin in the nineteenth century with the "March of Intellect" cartoons and the first steam-powered fantasies of progress. We will consider how factories, railways, and telegraphs helped construct modern states and new kinds of citizens. From there, we will trace how everything from Cold War cybernetics and Soviet centralization to Silicon Valley libertarianism recoded political life through algorithms and data. Throughout the course we will ask: what kinds of knowledge count
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What do societies dream of when they build machines? What visions of power, order and freedom have been wired into the infrastructures of modern life? This course explores how technology has shaped, and been shaped by political ideals and social imaginations from the nineteenth century to the present day. Moving between historical case studies and speculative futures, we will examine the utopian and dystopian dreams that animate technological systems, and the forms of authority and inequality they produce. We will begin in the nineteenth century with the "March of Intellect" cartoons and the first steam-powered fantasies of progress. We will consider how factories, railways, and telegraphs helped construct modern states and new kinds of citizens. From there, we will trace how everything from Cold War cybernetics and Soviet centralization to Silicon Valley libertarianism recoded political life through algorithms and data. Throughout the course we will ask: what kinds of knowledge count as expertise? Who decides how a system should function and for whom? Technology will be treated as a central force in shaping what modernity is and what has been promised. We will explore how ideas of rationality, control, futurity, and innovation have been embedded in everything from computer systems to climate models. At the same time, we will examine the cultural and emotional dimensions of technological change, in particular its illusions, enchantments, and unintended consequences. This is a course about the politics of machines, but also about the humans that dream them into being. We will draw on sources from history, science and technology studies, film, art, poetry and fiction. By the end of the course, you will be able to think critically about how technological systems operate as social systems and how they govern, imagine, and rewire the world around us. Whatever your background, this course invites you to trace the electric dreams and the discontents at the heart of modern life.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Hunter, J. (PI)