681 - 690 of 788 results for: HISTORY

The course addresses a major topic in today's world: populism. The visibility it has acquired grants an inquiry into its nature, and its history. We will tackle the key problem of the definition of populism and will focus on its historical and political character. We will discuss the defining features and conditions for the emergence of historical cases of populism through a cross-disciplinary perspective. On the base of this discussion, the course address historically relevant cases of populism in the Americas, combining case analysis with comparative analysis, inclusive of current examples. This will allow for a deeper understanding of the diversity, complexity, and components of an often-misunderstood phenomenon and often misused concept.

Students will work with the Stanford Immigration and Asylum Lab to conduct research on conditions in Mexico and Central America to support people seeking U.S. asylum. With the guidance of historians and attorneys, students will analyze publicly available information on violence, corruption, discrimination, and other relevant country conditions to corroborate the lived experiences of asylum-seeking clients. Through collaborations with local nonprofit legal services providers, students will contribute country conditions research for expert testimony to support the asylum cases of people who have fled persecution. Guest lecturers will include legal practitioners, a former immigration judge, and other experts on U.S. asylum and Latin America. Through this work, students will gain critical research skills and an understanding of the U.S. asylum system, its implications in the Americas, and contemporary human security issues in the region, while meaningfully impacting people in need of protection.

This course explores the histories of refugees and asylum seekers to the United States and helps students learn how people seek asylum by working on the legal cases of current asylum seekers.

This colloquium explores how the environment and natural resources have shaped Latin America and the Caribbean geopolitically, socially, and culturally as a distinct world region from the colonial period to the present. First, we will learn what historical ecology is and how it differs from and overlaps with environmental history in Latin America and the Caribbean. Second, we will read, discuss, and write about several monographs exploring topics (water access, capitalist commodities, and the role of animals) in various countries. Finally, we will apply what we learned from the region south of the United States to a local case study at Stanford, which was part of New Spain and Mexico before the United States conquered half of Mexico, including California, in 1848.

Course description coming soon.

This course explores the historical problem of how authority and community (in both the political and religious sense) were defined and challenged in the early Islamic period. Chronological topics covered include: the political, cultural, and religious world of Late Antiquity into which Muhammad was born; the crystallization of a small community of believers who supported Muhammad's message of radical monotheism and aided him in the conquest and conversion of the Arabian Peninsula; the problems of legacy and leadership in the community of the faithful after Muhammad's death; the Arabo-Islamic conquests beyond Arabia during the 7th and early 8th centuries and the establishment of the first Islamic empire under the rule of the Umayyad clan; the Sunni/Shi'a split (and further splits in Shi'ism); the revolution of 750 A.D. and overthrow of the Umayyads by the 'Abbasids; the flourishing of a sophisticated world of learning and culture under the 'Abbasids; and the waning of the 'Abbasids empire in the tenth century and political reconfiguration of the Islamic lands.

The seminar focuses on Ottoman-Turkish texts in various genres - political and moral treatises, histories, legal canons and court records, imperial decrees and fiscal documents, travelogues, private letters and novellas - gathered from archival sources, manuscripts and printed primary material from the 16th to 19th centuries. Students will be introduced to various paleographical and codicological skills. The seminar explores Ottoman-Turkish manuscripts in the Special Collections at Stanford Library. Knowledge of Turkish and Ottoman-Turkish is required.

This course surveys major themes in the English-language historiography of the modern Middle East from the second half of the twentieth century to the present. The first half of the course will cover themes including modernization theory, Orientalism, political economy and the cultural turn. In the second half, students will read and discuss texts published in the past ten years.

What is Islamic law? What kinds of sources do we use to access Islamic law, and how has Islamic legal thinking and practice changed historically? This course introduces students to topics in Islamic law while addressing questions of continuity and change in the legal tradition from the medieval period to the present. The first part of the course will introduce aspects of substantive Islamic law, including criminal and penal law, family law, and the law of war. The second part will explore the diversity of Islamic legal traditions across chronological and geographic space, examining topics from classical jurisprudence to Ottoman constitutionalism, the encounter with colonialism and modern state iterations. No prior knowledge or prerequisites are required.