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( History 73 is 3 units; History 173 is 5 units.) This course is an introduction to the history of Mexican migration to the United States. Barraged with anti-immigrant rhetoric and calls for bigger walls and more restrictive laws, few people in the United States truly understand the historical trends that shape migratory processes, or the multifaceted role played by both US officials and employers in encouraging Mexicans to migrate north. Moreover, few have actually heard the voices and perspectives of migrants themselves. This course seeks to provide students with the opportunity to place migrants' experiences in dialogue with migratory laws as well as the knowledge to embed current understandings of Latin American migration in their meaningful historical context.

Avocado toast is one example of the mishmash of Mexican and U.S. foodways. American snacks fill the shelves of mom-and-pop shops across Mexico. How did we get here? This course explores the social, economic, and cultural processes by which Mexican and U.S. food systems grew entangled throughout the twentieth century, from the Mexican Revolution to NAFTA. We will anchor our analysis in questions of race, gender, class, and citizenship, following histories of Mexican food workers across two countries.

( History 74 is for 3 units; History 174 is for 5 units.) In September of 2014, 43 students from a Mexican teacher's college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero were abducted and disappeared via the actions of police and organized crime. This shocking human rights violation, as well as the violence and impunity it represented, were symbolic of the decline of the rule of law embodied by Mexico's drug war. How did the nation arrive at this crossroads? This course is an introduction to the history of Mexico from 1876 to the present. Through lectures, discussions, primary and secondary sources, film and documentaries, and written assignments, students will critically explore the events and people that shaped Mexico for over a century. From the Porfirian dictatorship, to the Revolution, to the PRI's "perfect dictatorship," this course analyzes socioeconomic and racial inequality, foreign intervention, urbanization and industrialization, technological innovation and environmental degradation, education and ideology, modernity and migration, culture and media, and the drug trade.

Movies are works of art meant to entertain, but they can also serve as a critique of the societies they depict and dramatize. Many science fiction films achieve this by envisioning a future where technology spirals out of human control and poses a threat to humanity. In this course, we will explore the historical context surrounding Artificial Intelligence technology and how science fiction movies have portrayed it from the late twentieth century (around 1970) to just before the release of ChatGPT in 2022, which triggered the current generative AI boom. The history and films we will examine are primarily set in the US-Mexico borderlands, encompassing northern Mexico and southern California, and explore issues such as immigration, labor conditions, health, war, and pollution, particularly as they intersect with AI, with an emphasis on cyborgs and robotics.

How are cities both reflections and drivers of globalization? Focusing on Mexico City from 1250 AD to the present, this course interrogates how cities are shapers and mirrors of increased global interdependence and interconnectivity. From its origins as the center of the Aztec Empire, to its position as a crucial link between Spain's American and Asian empires, and its current status as Mexico's capital, this course highlights Mexico City's underexamined role in world history to gain new insights on globalization.

The first half of the nineteenth century saw a cascade of Revolutions transform Latin America from a collection of colonies into independent and sovereign countries struggling for their own national identity. The invasion of the Iberian Peninsula by Napoleon in 1808, the forced abdication of the Spanish Royal Family and the escape of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil forever changed the course of Latin America. But the history of that region was not solely defined in Europe, and it was through their own agency that the people of Latin America set about the road to independence.In this course we will explore the history of Latin America in the years preceding, concurrent and following the many Wars of Independence that splintered the continent into many sovereign nations. Specifically, we'll focus on the cases of Mexico, New Granada (Colombia and Venezuela) and Brazil, to understand what was unique and what as shared among each of these. We'll learn about the colonial period, how the ideas of the enlightenment influenced revolutionary movements in Latin America, and what changes these revolutions brought to the people of Latin America. Using a wide range of primary and secondary sources, among them speeches, newspapers, books, paintings and movies, we'll attempt to understand the history of the Independence movements not only from the points of view of the colonial elite, but from the many other groups that constituted Latin American society, such as Indigenous populations and the many enslaved. Doing so we'll tackle the question: What did these Revolutions really mean to the day-to-day lives of Latin Americans?

In this course we will watch and critique films made about Latin America's 20th century revolutions focusing on the Cuban, Chilean and Mexican revolutions. We will analyze the films as both social and political commentaries and as aesthetic and cultural works, alongside archivally-based histories of these revolutions.

How did the French colony of Saint-Domingue become Haiti, the world's first Black-led republic? What did Haiti symbolize for the African diaspora and the Americas at large? What sources and methods do scholars use to understand this history? To answer these questions, this course covers the Haitian story from colonization to independence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Our course will center Africans and people of African descent, both enslaved and free, as they negotiated and resisted systems of racial and economic oppression in the French Caribbean. Our inquiry will critically engage with conceptions and articulations of human and civil rights as they relate to legal realities and revolutionary change over time, as well as the interplay between rights and racial thinking. Tracing what historian Julius Scott called the "common wind" of the Haitian Revolution, we will also investigate how the new nation's emergence built on the American and French Revolutions while also influencing national independence movements elsewhere in the Atlantic World. Priority given to history majors and minors; no prerequisites and all readings are in English.

( History 79C is 3 units; History 179C is 5 units.) This course explores the ethical challenges of the climate catastrophe from historical, social, economic, political, cultural and scientific perspectives. These include the discovery of global warming over two centuries; the rise of secular and religious denialism toward the scientific consensus on it; the dispute between "developed" and "developing" countries over the timing and amount of national contributions per the 2015 Paris Accord; climate justice as it intersects with race, ethnicity, class, gender, and nationality; and the "role morality" of various actors (scientists, politicians, fossil fuel companies, the media and ordinary individuals) in assessing ethical responsibility for the catastrophe and how to mitigate, adapt, or even geoengineer, it.