Stanford University Explore Courses

HISTORY 243C: People, Plants, and Medicine: Atlantic World Amerindian, African, and European Science (CSRE 243C, CSRE 443C, FEMGEN 443C, HISTORY 343C, HISTORY 443C)

Explores the global circulation of plants, peoples, disease, medicines, technologies, and knowledge. Considers primarily Africans, Amerindians, and Europeans in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World and focuses on their exchanges in the Caribbean, in particular within the French and British empires. We also take examples from other knowledge traditions, where relevant. Readings treat science and medicine in relation to voyaging, the natural history of plants, environmental exchange, racism, and slavery in colonial contexts. Colonial sciences and medicines were important militarily and strategically for positioning emerging nation states in global struggles for land and resources. Upper-level undergrads must apply for 243C; please fill in this short form: https://forms.gle/XpUXwfT6ULiwC8P19 Graduate students taking the course as a one-quarter seminar should enroll in 343C. Graduate students taking the course as a two-part graduate research seminar should enroll in the 443C (Part I) in Winter and the 443D (Part II) in Spring.

Terms: Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI

Instructors: Schiebinger, L. (PI)

HISTORY 243D: Emerging Diseases, Past and Present

This course will use our current experience with the COVID-19 pandemic as a lens to study the processes by which infectious diseases emerge. Because of recent developments in the "historicist sciences" (bioarchaeology and palaeogenetics), it is possible to piece together the origin stories of some of the world's most impactful diseases. How does a "microbe's-eye view" of disease emergence change our understanding of past (and present) pandemics? Is it possible that understanding emergence might help us better understand why certain diseases have continued to proliferate, refusing to yield to modern interventions?We will focus on several major diseases transmitted between the Old and New Worlds before and after 1500. At issue is not simply the original spillover event (the transfer of a pathogen from one host species to humans), but the question of how these diseases exploit human connectivity to proliferate. These early globalizing stories will be compared with the story of SARS-CoV-2 as its own "origin story" continues to unfold. Given current critiques of the failures of "global health," what do these origin stories have to tell us about how diseases become "endemic"? Is humankind both the cause of its major diseases, but also doomed to endure them in perpetuity?

Last offered: Winter 2022 | UG Reqs: WAY-SI

HISTORY 243E: Culture and Revolution in Africa (AFRICAAM 213, COMPLIT 213, FRENCH 213E)

This course investigates the relationship between culture, revolutionary decolonization, and post-colonial trajectories. It probes the multilayered development of 20th and 21st-century African literature amid decolonization and Cold War cultural diplomacy initiatives and the debates they generated about African literary aesthetics, African languages, the production of history, and the role of the intellectual. We will journey through national cultural movements, international congresses, and pan-African festivals to explore the following questions: What role did writers and artists play in shaping the discourse of revolutionary decolonization throughout the continent and in the diaspora? How have literary texts, films, and works of African cultural thought shaped and engaged with concepts such as "African unity" and "African cultural renaissance"? How have these notions influenced the imaginaries of post-independence nations, engendered new subjectivities, and impacted gender and generational dynamics? How did the ways of knowing and modes of writing promoted and developed in these contexts shape African futures?

Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-SI, WAY-A-II

Instructors: Seck, F. (PI)

HISTORY 244F: New Directions in Gendered Innovations in Science, Medicine, Technology, and Environment (FEMGEN 344F, HISTORY 344F)

Welcome! This is a new upper-level course in Gendered Innovations that explores how sex, gender, and intersectional analysis in research and design sparks discovery and innovation. This course focuses on sex and gender, and considers factors intersecting with sex and gender, including age, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, educational background, disabilities, geographic location, etc., where relevant. We will read new research touching on basic concepts, intersectional design, gendering social robots, new approaches to sustainability, what's new in biomedicine & public health, facial recognition, inclusive crash test dummies, and more. As Director of Gendered Innovations, I work with the European Commission, Wellcome Trust, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and major journals on policy to support integrating sex, gender, and intersectional analysis into the design of research. The operative question is: how can this type of analysis lead to discovery & innovation while enhan more »

Welcome! This is a new upper-level course in Gendered Innovations that explores how sex, gender, and intersectional analysis in research and design sparks discovery and innovation. This course focuses on sex and gender, and considers factors intersecting with sex and gender, including age, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, educational background, disabilities, geographic location, etc., where relevant. We will read new research touching on basic concepts, intersectional design, gendering social robots, new approaches to sustainability, what's new in biomedicine & public health, facial recognition, inclusive crash test dummies, and more. As Director of Gendered Innovations, I work with the European Commission, Wellcome Trust, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and major journals on policy to support integrating sex, gender, and intersectional analysis into the design of research. The operative question is: how can this type of analysis lead to discovery & innovation while enhancing social equity and environmental sustainability? Students will read and report on new research in weekly sessions and present a paper on a topic of their choice. We welcome open and respectful discussion. This course is open to upper-level undergraduate students and to graduate students by application https://forms.gle/2KmxUUnRSG2LNNSS6. Limited to 15.

Terms: Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI

Instructors: Schiebinger, L. (PI)

HISTORY 246G: Participatory Research in African History

Historical research in Africa is liable to issues of authenticity and relevance to local communities, as well as power disparities between researcher and subject. Can we turn this weakness into a strength by developing theory and practice of participatory action research in which communities and scholars work together to make meaningful interpretations of the past? We will explore this issue, study previous attempts, and design a participatory action research project to be carried out in Ghana.

Last offered: Winter 2022 | UG Reqs: WAY-ER, WAY-SI

HISTORY 247: Gender and Sexuality in African History (AFRICAAM 247, FEMGEN 247, FEMGEN 347, HISTORY 347)

This course examines the history of gender and sexuality in twentieth and twenty-first century Africa. It explores how concepts, identities, and practices of gender and sexuality have changed in shifting social, cultural, political, and economic contexts across the continent and in connection with global currents. This historical journey encompasses European colonialism, independence, postcolonial nation-building, and current times. Course materials include African novels, films, material culture and multinational scholarly research and primary sources. We will also engage multidisciplinary perspectives, methodologies, and theories as tools for critical thinking, writing and varied modes of producing knowledge. Gender and sexuality(ies) as examined in this course act as gateways to explore transformations in : selfhood, peoplehood, and life stage; health, medicine, reproduction, and the body; law and criminality; marriage, kinship, family, and community; politics, power and protest; feminism(s); popular culture; religion and belief; LGBTQI+ themes; and the history of emotions, including love, joy, desire, pain, and trauma.

Terms: Spr | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI

Instructors: Jean-Baptiste, R. (PI)

HISTORY 250B: Comparative History of Racial & Ethnic Groups in California (CSRE 114R, NATIVEAM 114)

Comparative focus on the demographic, political, social and economic histories of American Indians & Alaska Natives, African Americans, Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans during late 18th and early 20th century California. Topics: relationships with Spanish, Mexican, U.S. Federal, State and local governments; intragroup and intergroup relationships; and differences such as religion, class and gender.

Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI

Instructors: Anderson, J. (PI)

HISTORY 251C: The American Enlightenment (AMSTUD 251C)

The eighteenth century saw the rise of many exciting new political, religious, and scientific theories about human happiness, perfectibility, and progress that today we call "the Enlightenment." Most people associate the Enlightenment with Europe, but in this course we will explore the many ways in which the specific conditions of eighteenth-century North America --such as slavery, the presence of large numbers of indigenous peoples, a colonial political context, and even local animals, rocks, and plants--also shaped the major questions and conversations of the people who strove to become "enlightened." We'll also explore how American Enlightenment ideas have profoundly shaped the way Americans think today about everything from politics to science to race. The class is structured as lecture and discussion, with deep reading in primary sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Last offered: Summer 2021 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

HISTORY 251J: American Slavery and Its Afterlives (AFRICAAM 251J, AMSTUD 251J, HISTORY 351J)

How did the institution of American slavery come to an end? The story is more complex than most people know. This course examines the rival forces that fostered slavery's simultaneous contraction in the North and expansion in the South between 1776 and 1861. It also illuminates, in detail, the final tortuous path to abolition during the Civil War. Throughout, the course introduces a diverse collection of historical figures, including seemingly paradoxical ones, such as slaveholding southerners who professed opposition to slavery and non-slaveholding northerners who acted in ways that preserved it. During the course's final weeks, we will examine the racialized afterlives of American slavery as they manifested during the late-nineteenth century and beyond.

Last offered: Autumn 2021 | UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI

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