171 - 180 of 355 results for: HISTORY

1500 to 1700. Theorists include Hobbes, Locke, Harrington, the Levellers, and lesser known writers and schools. Foundational ideas and problems underlying modern British and American political thought and life.

In today's world, credit scores are nearly as important as citizenship. Creditworthiness is measured in numbers, but is also bound up with moral qualities. To lack credit is to be on the margins of society, and vice versa. How did we get here? How did lenders mitigate risks before credit scores were available? Where do the risk management tools of modern finance come from? How did merchants trade over long distances when information technology was extremely poor? This one-unit course will address these pressing questions from a historical perspective, starting from the modern U.S. and reaching back in time to the Middle Ages. Classroom discussions and readings include articles written by historians and social scientists, as well as primary sources in English translation.

In 1633, the Italian mathematician Galileo was tried and condemned for advocating that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the cosmos. The Catholic Church did not formally admit that Galileo was right until 1992. Examines the many factors that led to the trial of Galileo and looks at multiple perspectives on this signal event in the history of science and religion. Considers the nature and definition of intellectual heresy in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and examines the writings of Galileo's infamous predecessor Giordano Bruno (burned at the stake in 1600). Looks closely at documents surrounding the trial and related literature on Renaissance and Reformation Italy in order to understand the perspectives of various participants in this famous event. Focal point of seminar involves the examination of the many different histories that can be produced from Galileo's trial. What, in the end, were the crimes of Galileo?

"The Don Draper of Existentialism" for Adam Gopnik, "the ideal husband of contemporary letters" for Susan Sontag, and "the admirable conjunction of a man, of an action, and of a work" for Sartre, Camus embodies the very French figure of the "intellectuel engagé," or public intellectual. From his birth in 1913 into a poor family in Algeria to the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, from Paris to the Mediterranean world, Camus engaged in the great ethical battles of his time, from the fight against nazism and communism, from questioning colonial rules to the Algerian War of Independence. Through readings and films, we will explore his multiple, long-lasting legacies. Readings from Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Kamel Daoud, Mouloud Feraoun, Alice Kaplan, A.B. Yehoshua, Yasmina Khadra. This course is a WIM course. Students will work on their production of written French, in addition to speaking French and reading comprehension. Taught in French. Prerequisite: FRENLANG 124 or consent of instructor.

In this course we will examine ideas radical to their context in modern European thought, paying close attention to what it has meant to explain features of society, government, and politics in terms of power. What is power? What is human nature, and do all humans possess natural rights? How is human identity interwoven with the practice of power? What makes an idea radical? We will examine these and other questions through close readings of seven thinkers whose ideas shaped the modern period: John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, C.L.R. James, and Michel Foucault.

This seminar explores the history of urban planning in twentieth-century Europe. We will discuss visions of ideal cities and attempts at their implementation in the context of democratic and authoritarian systems as well as capitalism and socialism. Through case studies from eastern and western Europe--from Berlin in Germany to Nowa Huta in Poland--we will examine how broader historical trends played out in, and were shaped by, specific local circumstances. The seminar is intended for advanced undergraduate students.

(Students who have taken HISTORY 134 should not enroll in this course.) This course will focus on the birth of modern politics in the French Revolution. The goal will be to understand the structural contradictions of the French monarchy in the pre-revolutionary period, the reasons for the monarchy's failure to resolve those contradictions, and the political dynamic unleashed as they were solved by the revolutionary action of 1789. Sovereignty, democracy, rights, representation, and terror will be principal themes. Lectures will be combined with close reading and discussions of political and philosophical writings of the period.

Since the nineteenth century, Germans, like their counterparts around the world, have considered the meaning and the role of humanity in outer space. As space travel developed from a dream to a reality, and as Germany changed borders and political systems among empires, dictatorships, socialist states, and capitalist states, German interest in spaceflight remained, although the meaning found in the stars changed dramatically. This course considers Germans' dreams of and predictions for outer space travel alongside German technological developments in spaceflight. It includes the different German states throughout the century, including Weimar Germany, National Socialism, East Germany, and West Germany. The course looks at science fiction films and novels, newspaper reports, scientific developments, and German space engineering projects, which together demonstrate how and why space travel often found high levels of support in Germany. Students will engage in historical and cultural analysis through course readings, discussions, and assignments.nNOTE: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take this course for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade.

Classical Italy attracted thousands of travelers throughout the 1700s. Referring to their journey as the "Grand Tour," travelers pursued intellectual passions, promoted careers, and satisfied wanderlust, all while collecting antiquities to fill museums and estates back home. What can computational approaches tell us about who traveled, where and why? We will read travel accounts; experiment with parsing; and visualize historical data. Final projects to form credited contributions to the Grand Tour Project, a cutting-edge digital platform. No prior programming experience necessary.