printer friendly pageHISTORY 279B: Potatoes, Coca, and Tamales: Food in Latin American History
The history of Latin America is profoundly marked by the production, circulation, preparation, and consumption of food in its most different forms: as a staple food, drugs, ethnic dishes, drinks, etc. This course examines the cultural, social, economic, and environmental significance of food throughout the history of the region, from pre-Columbian times to the present. By selecting specific examples of ingredients, spices, dishes, cooking practices, and dietary habits, we will explore the role of new foods in shaping empires and global trading networks, the global circulation of Latin America's food commodities and internationalization of its cuisine, and food as an expression of identities based on race, class, gender, and nationality, linking them to major trends in the region's history. Students are welcome to explore themes of their interest related to the course topic in their assignments.
Last offered: Spring 2021
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 281D: Introduction to Islamic Law (HISTORY 381D)
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.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 282J: Disasters in Middle Eastern History
(
History 282J is an undergraduate course offered for 5 units;
History 382J is a graduate course offered for 4-5 units.) nnThis course explores the history of disasters in the Middle East from the early modern period to the mid-20th-century. We will trace the evolving meanings of disasters and misfortunes by focusing on critical moments -- plagues, fires, earthquakes, wars -- to examine how people have responded to these events, labeled them, and devised strategies to live with or forget them. The course readings follow the evolution of policies and norms together with the articulation of new forms of knowledge and expertise in the wake of catastrophe. Additionally, particular attention will be paid to how modern conceptions of disaster relate to older understandings of apocalypse, as well as to various strands of "disaster reformism," when rethinking tragedy and time helped assert radical agendas for reforming political, economic, social, communal, racial, and gender relations while remodeling social science and intellectual life. The course focuses on various trajectories of disaster thinking in Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Armenian, and Hebrew.
Last offered: Autumn 2020
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 282K: Refugees and Migrants in the Middle East and Balkans: 18th Century to Present (HISTORY 382K, JEWISHST 282K)
This course studies one of the most pressing issues of our day--massive population displacements--from a historical perspective. Our focus will be the Ottoman Empire and its successor states, including Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine. Questions include the following: When and why did certain ethno-religious groups begin to relocate en masse? To what extent were these departures caused by state policy? In what cases can we apply the term "ethnic cleansing"? How did the movement of people and the idea of the nation influence each other in the modern age?
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Daniels, J. (PI)
HISTORY 283F: Capital and Crisis in the Middle East and the World
(
History 283F is an undergraduate course for 5 units;
History 383F is a graduate course for 4-5 units.) How do economies change in times of crisis? How do economic crises intersect with pandemics, violence and environmental disaster to redefine the workings of capital? This course approaches these questions through critical reading in the histories of capitalism, crisis, and intersections between legal history and political economy, using the Middle East region as a starting point for the study of global phenomena. We will examine the ways in which constructions like race and ethnicity, gender, and the human/non-human divide have mediated the social and spatial expansion of capital in the region, especially through legal categories and instruments that transform rapidly in times of crisis. Temporally, we will focus our examination between two moments of economic crisis: the ¿long depression¿ of the late nineteenth century and the financial crisis of 2008. We will ground our historical reading in attention to current events, in particular the Middle East¿s ongoing experience of the pandemic-induced global financial crisis of 2020.
Last offered: Spring 2021
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 283J: Global Islam
(Undergraduates, enroll in 283J; Graduates, enroll in 383J.) Explores the history and politics of Islam in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas --- and of the novel connections that have linked Muslim communities across the globe in modern times.
Last offered: Summer 2021
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 284E: Contemporary Muslim Political Thought (HISTORY 384E)
This course aims to provide an intellectual history of contemporary Muslim political thought. It presents post-nineteenth century Muslim contributions to political thought. It is designed as a survey of some major thinkers from the Arab world to Iran and Southeast Asia, from Turkey to North America, who sought to interpret Islam's basic sources and Islamic intellectual legacy. Our readings include primary texts by Tahtawi, Tunisi, Afghani, Rida, Huda Sharawi, Qutb, Shariati, and Mernissi among other prominent figures. We will analyze recurring ideas in this body of thought such as decline, civilization, rationality, ijtihad (Islamic independent reasoning), shura (deliberative decision-making), democracy, secularism, Muslim unity, khilafah (caliphate and vicegerency), freedom, equality, and justice. We will discuss their current significance for the ongoing theoretical debates in Muslim political thought, Muslim intellectual history, and comparative political theory.
Last offered: Autumn 2019
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 284K: The "Other" Jews: Sephardim in Muslim-Majority Lands (HISTORY 384K, JEWISHST 284)
This course expands conceptions of Jewish History by focusing on overlooked regions such as North Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. Beginning in medieval Al-Andalus, the course follows the Jews of Spain and Portugal to other parts of the world and traces their stories into the 20th century. Topics include the expulsions from Iberia, the formation of a Sephardi identity, encounters between Sephardim and other communities (Muslim, Christian, and Jewish), life in the Ottoman Empire, networks and mobility, gender, colonialism, and the rise of the nation-state paradigm.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Daniels, J. (PI)
HISTORY 285C: The Immigrant in Modern America (JEWISHST 285C)
The 2016 presidential election propelled the topic of immigration to the center of public attention. This is not the first time, however, that questions of immigration and what it means to be an American have revealed deep divisions within the U.S. This course explores the reception of immigrants in modern America, including differing views toward immigration; how immigrants help shape ideas about the American nation; and the growth of state bureaucracy and policing apparatus as a response.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 285D: Vanishing Diaspora? Ruin, Revival, and Jewish Life in Post-Holocaust Europe (JEWISHST 285D)
This course explores the lives and fates of European Jews as they re-encountered, reimagined, and reconstructed their communities in the grim aftermath of World War II. Attending to a variety of national and ideological contexts, with a particular focus on Eastern Europe and the communist bloc, the course traces how Jews wrestled with their present and future in the wake of continent-wide calamity, the founding of the state of Israel, Soviet influence, Cold War geopolitics, the collapse of communism, and, finally, the post-Soviet order of the 1990s and 2000s. It likewise traces how postwar European Jewry grappled with the anxieties of immigration and return, the wages of acculturation and assimilation, and the interplay between cultural destruction, revival, and nostalgia in the face of persistent antisemitism, explosive Holocaust memory politics, and significant foreign Jewish philanthropy. Drawing on a wide range of printed, visual, and oral sources, this highly interdisciplinary course investigates questions particular to the Jewish experience, but also broader concerns about European inclusion, interethnic relations, and diasporic identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. All readings are in English. **For time and location, email jtapper@stanford.edu**
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
Instructors:
Tapper, J. (PI)
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