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'Utopia' has always been a realm of dreamers and intellectuals. But between 1917 and 1991, the political leaders of the Soviet Union actually built their socialist utopia, brick by brick. They constructed cities in a matter of months, moved whole factories by train, and even tried to reverse the course of rivers. This class aims to explore how infrastructure, as policy and in implementation, impacted the political, geographic, economic, social, and environmental history of the USSR. We will examine maps, architecture, propaganda, newspapers, and films to figure out how socialism was `built' and what the consequences were.

The dead are not with us anymore, but they are just as present. In the past two-hundred and fifty years, the European continent has undergone extensive political, cultural, and social change. Using the dead as vehicles for analysis, this course moves along chronological and thematic axes to explore how modern Europe has understood itself through its dead. How did societies commemorate or forget the bodies at the time of death, and what does that mean for the living and how they live their lives? This course will not only look at the bodies historically, but their legacies today. How do societies remember the dead, and how has their meaning changed amidst the background of a volatile European geopolitical climate? What can their contemporary memories suggest about the state of Europe today?

This seminar will explore the crucial role of the Columbia River in the past, present, and future of the Pacific Northwest. Topics will include the lives and legacies of the indigenous peoples that Lewis and Clark encountered more than two centuries ago; the historic fisheries that attracted thousands of Chinese and, later, Scandinavian workers; the New Deal's epic dam-building initiatives beginning in the 1930s; the impact of the Manhattan Project's plutonium bomb development at Hanford Atomic Works in WWII; and the twenty-first-century server farms dotted across the Columbia Plateau. We plan to visit with local water managers, farmers, ranchers, loggers, Native American fishermen, and energy administrators, as well as elected officials and environmental activists, to examine the hydrologic, meteorologic, and geologic bases of the river's water and energy resources, and the practical, social, environmental, economic, and political issues surrounding their development in the Pacific Northwest region. The Columbia River and its watershed provide a revealing lens on a host of issues. A transnational, multi-state river with the largest residual populations of anadromous salmonids in the continental US, it is a major source of renewable hydroelectric power. (The Grand Coulee dam powerhouse is the largest-capacity hydropower facility in the US; nearly 50% of Oregon's electricity generation flows from hydropower; in Washington State it's nearly two-thirds, the highest in the nation.) The river provides a major bulk commodity transportation link from the interior West to the sea via an elaborate system of locks. It irrigates nearly 700,000 acres of sprawling wheat ranches and fruit farms in the federally administered Columbia Basin Project. We will look at all these issues with respect to rapid climate change, ecosystem impacts, economics, and public policy. We will begin with classroom briefings on campus, in preparation for the two-week field portion of the seminar. We plan to then travel widely throughout the Columbia basin, visiting water and energy facilities across the watershed, e.g., hydro, solar, wind, and natural gas power plants; dams and reservoirs with their powerhouses, fish passage facilities, navigation locks, and flood-mitigation systems; tribal organizations; irrigation projects; the Hanford Nuclear Reservation; and offices of regulatory agencies. We hope to meet with relevant policy experts and public officials, along with several of the stakeholders in the basin. Over the summer students will be responsible for assigned readings from several sources, including monographs, online materials, and recent news articles. During the trip, students will work in small groups to analyze and assess one aspect of the river's utilization, and the challenges to responsible management going forward. The seminar will culminate in presentations to an audience of Stanford alumni in Portland, Oregon.

Join two Stanford professors for a week of immersive, expert introduction to humanities research. This intensive, one-week course introduces rising sophomores to the excitement and wonder of humanities research, along the way preparing you for independent research projects, for working as a research assistant for a Stanford professor, or just for the next step in your Stanford career. No humanities background is necessary. Think of this class as humanities research in a nutshell: over 5 days, we'll take a deep dive into some of the most important methods and questions driving scholarly research in the humanities. Our laboratory will be the Special Collections Library at Stanford, where we'll conduct hands-on research in ancient and modern books, maps, objects, and manuscripts, from ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets to materials from San Francisco's Chinatown. We're also planning a field trip to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Over the week, we'll teach you how to formulate a solid research question; how to gather the evidence that will help you to answer that question; how to write up research results; how to critique the research of your fellow students; how to deliver your results in a public setting; and how to write a really great grant proposal. Students who complete this course become eligible for follow-up student research grants during their next year. So if you have a larger project in mind - a capstone project, or even a senior thesis idea - this course can help set the stage for that next step. Learning Goals: Introduction to humanities research methods; Conceptualization of a major humanities research project; Skills and familiarity with working with archival materials; Oral presentation skills.

What is resistance and what did it entail in Nazi-occupied Europe? What prompted some to resist, while others accommodated or actively collaborated with the occupiers? How have postwar societies remembered their resistance movements and collaborationists? This seminar examines how Europeans responded to the Nazi order during World War II. We will explore experiences under occupation; dilemmas the subject peoples faced; the range of resistance motivations, goals, activities, and strategies; and postwar memorialization. Select cases from Western, Eastern, and Mediterranean Europe.

Visions of the ideal society are a mainstay in the European imagination, from Plato's Republic to Charles Fourier's phalanstère. Yet utopianism has always been maligned as idealistic, impracticable, or naïve, while its proponents accused variously of hypocrisy, totalitarianism, and abject failure. Nowhere more so has the utopian impulse been felt than in early modern Britain during the age of imperial, scientific, and industrial revolution. This course asks how British writers imagined better futures, starting with Thomas More's genre-defining Utopia and ending with the utopian socialists and communitarian experiments of the early nineteenth century. We will ask what utopias can tell us about the societies which imagined them, and appraise their lasting legacies in political thought, social science, and critical theory. Covering themes such as empire, capitalism, gender, enlightenment, and socialism, we will engage with a range of primary sources, including literary texts, cartographic images, political and scientific tracts, and letters, aided by secondary literature from the history of political thought, literary history, the history of science, and theory.

(Same as HISTORY 133A. 33A is 3 units; 133A is 5 units.) English society and state from the Wars of the Roses to the death of Elizabeth. Political, social, and cultural upheavals of the Tudor period and the changes wrought by the Reformation. The establishment of the Tudor monarchy; destruction of the Catholic church; rise of Puritanism; and 16th-century social and economic changes.

(Same as HISTORY 133B. History majors and others taking 5 units, register for 133B.) From the accession of King James I in 1603 to the death of Queen Anne in 1714: a brutal civil war, the execution of one anointed king, and the deposition of another. Topics include the causes and consequences of the English Revolution, the origins of Anglo-American democratic thought, the rise and decline of Puritanism, and the emergence of England as an economic and colonial power. (Como)

What made fascism so attractive and so powerful in 20th century Europe and throughout the world? How did the Stanford community respond to this political ideology that burst onto the scene in the 1920s and engulfed the world in war in the 1940s? Could fascism have another "moment" - in the present or in the future? Students will consider these and other questions in this course, which will discuss the various definitions and theories of fascism and the major fascist movements of the interwar period (primarily Italian Fascism and German Nazism), as well as how the Stanford community responded to them. The course will not just focus on the military and political aspects of fascism, as is traditionally taught, but also social and cultural aspects of fascism, as well. We'll also consider how different groups experienced and reacted to fascism, based on racial background, religious affiliation, gender identity, and sexual orientation. This discussion-based course will also include hands-on archival work in Stanford Special Collections and Hoover Institution Library & Archives.