221 - 230 of 788 results for: HISTORY

( 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.

In 1978, Afro-Columbian artist recorded his hit song "Rebelión," including lines such as "esclavitud perpetua," a reference to the 1455 Romanus Pontifex Papal Bull, and lines like "No le pegue a la negra," which evince a slave resistance based on a bond of kinship and affection. This is an introductory course in Caribbean history with a focus on labor and rebellion. In this course, we will discuss slave revolts and revolutions in the Caribbean from the beginning of the Transatlantic Slave trade through present-day labor strikes in the Caribbean. Using Caribbean resistance music as the backdrop to many of our discussions, this course will engage with the metaphors and motifs found in riotous iconography, such as the machete (i.e. "El machete de Maceo," in Celia Cruz's "Guantanamera"). Revolts covered include the 1500s slave revolts in Quisqueya, the Haitian Revolution, the 1843 La Escalera conspiracy in Cuba, the 1831 Christmas Rebellion in Jamaica, the Cuban Ten Years War, Little War, and present-day labor strikes in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. We will review and study historical records, as well as take in archival and musical sources. No prior knowledge in Caribbean history is required.

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.

( 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.

(Same as 81B. 181B is 5 units; 81B is 3 units.) This course introduces students to major themes in the modern history of the region linking the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds. No prerequisites or prior knowledge of the Middle East is required. We will begin with the Eurasian context that produced the Safavid and Ottoman empires and quickly move to the rapid transformations of the nineteenth century and imperial dissolution of the early twentieth. Twentieth-century themes include mass migrations, genocides, colonial occupations, nationalisms, revolutions, socialist and Islamist movements, and the role of American policy in the region. The course concludes with placing ongoing anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian liberation movements in regional and global perspective.

The History of Islam and Muslim peoples from 600-1500. Topics include Muhammad and his community; the early Arab conquests and empires; sectarian movements; formation of Islamic belief, thought, legal culture and religious institutions; transregional Sufi and learned networks; family and sexuality; urban, rural and nomadic life; non-Muslim communities; the development of Mediterranean and Indian Ocean trade; relations with Byzantium, the Latin West, China; the Crusades and the Mongols.

( History 183A is 5 units; History 83A is 3 units.) In the early eighteenth century, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, introduced Ottoman smallpox inoculation to western medicine. But over the next two centuries, Ottoman scientific, cultural, and geopolitical strength disintegrated, while western Europeans colonized much of the globe and industrialized at home. How and why did this happen? This course explores this period of wrenching social change and transformation, and asks how the Enlightenment, with its calls for universal human rights and democracy, existed alongside crimes against humanity such as the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust. We inquire into ethical dilemmas from diverse perspectives to better understand the contested heritage of our modern world. Bringing western and non-western philosophy into conversation with history, we study the changing structures of Ottoman and European societies in the context of industrialization, repeated cycles from monarchy to democracy to dictatorship, and the growth of radical strains of Islam as a social protest and revolt against European dominance.

(185B is 5 units; 85B is 3 units.) Jews: How to understand them? A religious faith, yet many - perhaps most - are not religious. A ubiquitous presence in contemporary life yet numbering barely more than the population of Tokyo. Viewed widely as speaking in one resounding voice yet divided along political and cultural lines, not the least of which regarding attitudes toward the State of Israel. How to identify the ties that have bound Jews together and - as often as not - tear them apart? Why the persistence of antisemitism? Are anti-Zionism and antisemitism one and the same? Does the recent Jewish past provide guidelines for the future, or a hopelessly distorted map?Class sessions will be conducted in an interplay between open-ended discussions and lectures regarding these and other pressing, perplexing issues.

(Same as HISTORY 87. History majors and others taking 5 units, register for 187.) Explores the contested politics of these societies in modern times. Topics include controversies surrounding the meaning of revolution, state building, war, geopolitics, Islamic law, clerical authority, gender, an Islamic economy, culture and ethnic, national and religious identities from the 1940s to the present. Assignments will focus on primary sources (especially legal documents, poetry, novels, and memoirs) and films.