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Modern America in Historical Perspective

Marxism, in its many varieties, has a long history in the United States and this course will study many dimensions of its presence and influence in the country. Marx himself wrote extensively about the U.S., and many in the 19th century avidly followed his writing and activism. We will then study the reception of Marxism in America in the 20th century in the socialist, communist and liberation movements. Marxism also influenced many intellectuals, artists, and writers. Activists in protest and revolutionary movements of many kinds, including the student movements of the 1960s, the Black power and other movements or minority and marginalized communities, international solidarity efforts, and the environmental and other contemporary movements. We will consider how Marxism has been understood, interpreted, used, and criticized through American history up through the 21st century.

Course description coming soon.

This seminar will examine women and their gendered experience of activism, organizing, living, and leading in the Modern Civil Rights Movement. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

What forces have driven the dramatic shifts in U.S. politics and society over the past half-century? This course explores the significant political developments of this era, one notable for declining faith in government, new rights claims by marginalized communities, growing partisan polarization, and widening inequality. We will trace the transformation of political parties and their ideological coalitions, examining social, economic, cultural, and technological changes influencing American political life. Topics include the evolution of 1960s social movements, the rise of modern conservatism, and the carceral state. We will also cover the AIDS crisis, the politics of globalization, healthcare policy, and rising immigration.

What is capitalism? An economic and social system that maximizes both individual freedom and social good? An exploitative arrangement dependent on the subordination of labor to capital? A natural arrangement guided by a munificent invisible hand? Or a finely tuned mechanism requiring state support? This class offers undergraduate and graduate students a forum to consider these questions by reading selected works by historians, sociologists, economists, and other thinkers. Together we will work our way through primary sources from the twentieth century, using them to examine how capitalism has been understood, conceptualized, defended, and attacked. We will study the history of debates about markets, the state, and social organization, taking capitalism as both an economic system and a culture. Permission number required to enroll. Please contact Professor Burns at jenniferburns@stanford.edu to request permission to enroll in the course.

This course introduces scholarship on Latinx history, a field of critical importance to U.S. History, American studies, Latinx studies, ethnic studies, Latin American studies, and African American history. In order to cover a plethora of Latinx experiences, it will focus on Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Central American, and other Latinx communities from the 1840s into present, though it does not adhere to a strict chronological time frame. This course attempts to show the hemispheric nature of Latinx history. It also emphasizes a notion of Latinidad as a contingent historical process. Key themes which survey its complexity include the nature and legacies of imperialism; the politics of peoplehood and citizenship; trans-border connections; the importance of race, class, and gender in defining politics and culture; the emergence of ethnic nationalisms; and the development of urban enclaves. In particular, our class will focus on linking these dynamics to present-day issues and debates.

The conquerors, missionaries, and historians who reflected on Iberian overseas expansion during the early modern period often asked themselves a crucial question: was there only one world or many? Were the Americas a 'New World,' unknown to the ancients, entirely detached from the rest of human history? Even after the invasion and occupation of the Americas, many European chroniclers continued to think that the world was divided into three parts - Europe, Asia, and Africa. In their descriptions of the Americas, they drew heavily on histories and travel reports pertaining to other epochs and locales, especially contemporary Asia and ancient Rome. At the same time, indigenous elites and mestizo authors in the Americas used 'Old World' history and news of distant conflicts to reflect on the immediacy of their historical experience. In this course, students will consider the ways in which diverse authors in New Spain (Mexico), Peru, and Brazil contemplated themselves in relation to remote times and places: from Greco-Roman Antiquity to Lutheran Germany, the Ottoman Mediterranean to the Apocalyptic End of Times. Students will analyze the many reflections, distortions, inversions, translations, uncanny resemblances, and strange parallel dimensions that resulted from these intellectual experiments. Primary sources include chronicles, poetry, theater, Afro-Catholic festivals, pictographic codices, feather mosaics, and maps. All texts offered in the original language and in English translation whenever possible. For graduate students and advanced undergraduates.

How did images maintain, construct, or transform political power during the conquest and colonization of Mexico? The creation and destruction of visual materials in this period had a complicated relationship with power. The pictographic codices that celebrated the expansive Aztec Empire were created after its fall; and the conquistadors' indigenous allies painted some of the most triumphalist narratives of the conquest. Friars accused indigenous peoples of "idolatry" both to justify the destruction of their images and objects, and to construct legal defenses of their humanity. Colonial authorities frequently claimed Afro-Catholic festivals were seditious. In light of such complexity, official histories that recount the top-down consolidation of royal and viceroyal power are suspiciously simple. What counter-narratives do images and other visual phenomena from this tumultuous period offer? This course introduces students to major texts from Colonial Mexico (royal chronicles, conquistadors' tales, letters, poems, festival accounts) alongside a fascinating trove of images (painted codices with Nahuatl texts, feather mosaics, and indigenous heraldry) and considers how experiences of images and spectacles were transformed into textual accounts ("ekphrasis" or the literary device of description). Taught in Spanish with accommodations for non-ILAC students who are still improving their language skills