581 - 590 of 788 results for: HISTORY

Explores theories of national myths and nationalism; identifies the founding myths of Russia and Ukraine and the medieval and early modern events they are based on. Extensive primary source readings. Focuses primarily up through eighteenth century, with some reading of nineteenth-century national statements.

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.

Open to medical students, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Traces the history of genocide in the 20th century and the question of humanitarian intervention to stop it, a topic that has been especially controversial since the end of the Cold War. The pre-1990s discussion begins with the Armenian genocide during the First World War and includes the Holocaust and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Coverage of genocide and humanitarian intervention since the 1990s includes the wars in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, the Congo and Sudan.

Formative issues in Russian history from Muscovy to the present: autocracy and totalitarianism; tsars, emperors, and party secretaries; multi-ethnicity and nationalism; serfdom, peasantry; rebellions and revolutions, dissent and opposition; law and legality; public and private spheres; religion and atheism; patterns of collapse. Class format will be discussion of one to two assigned books or major articles per class.

The goal of this course is to introduce graduate students to major recent works of history on the theme of "Europe and Empire." We will explore how Europeans' understanding of and engagement with the wider world changed during the period of industrialization, nation-building, imperial expansion, war, and decolonization. We will consider varieties of colonial expansion, the challenges posed by possessing (and losing) colonial territory, and how race, class, and gender in the empire in turn shaped European society and politics. As European imperial and colonial history in the modern period is very much a subject under constant review, the course will aim to identify and outline some of the major historiographical themes of the past while focusing on very recent scholarship that hints at new directions.

Overview of the history of the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews. Explores its causes, course, consequences, and memory. Addresses the events themselves, as well as the roles of perpetrators and bystanders, dilemmas faced by victims, collaboration of local populations, and the issue of rescue. Considers how the Holocaust was and is remembered and commemorated by victims and participants alike. Uses different kinds of sources: scholarly work, memoirs, diaries, film, and primary documents.

Open to medical students, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Examines the major famines of modern history, the controversies surrounding them, and the reasons that famine persists in our increasingly globalized world. Focus is on the relative importance of natural, economic, and political factors as causes of famine in the modern world. Case studies include the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s; the Bengal famine of 1943-44; the Soviet famines of 1921-22 and 1932-33; China's Great Famine of 1959-61; the Ethiopian famines of the 1970s and 80s, and the Somalia famines of the 1990s and of 2011.

Thematic & chronological approach to conflicts in the region 20th & 21st centuries: Balkan Wars, WWI, WWII, Yugoslav wars, & current Russo-Ukrainian War. Ways women in E. Europe involved in and affected by wars; comparison with women in W. Europe in the two world wars. Examines women during war as members of military services, underground movements, workers, volunteers, mothers of soldiers, subjects and supporters of war aims and propaganda, activists in peace movements, and objects of wartime destruction, dislocation, and sexual violation.

(Graduate students, enroll in 327B. Undergraduate students, enroll in 227B.) This colloquium investigates the processes of buying, making, and selling goods and services in Cold War Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. We will familiarize ourselves with a variety of approaches to writing the history of economic life and discuss to what extent they are applicable to state socialist systems. Our focus will not be on theories of socialism but on empirically grounded studies that allow for insights into how the system operated in practice and interacted with capitalism. We will, among others, explore the following questions: What was the role of the state in the economies east and west of the Iron Curtain? Are socialism and capitalism two incompatible systems? How did women experience and shape economic life after the Second World War? What had a greater impact on the economies of the region: Cold War politics or globalization?