printer friendly pageHISTORY 10B: Renaissance to Revolution: Early Modern Europe
(Same as
HISTORY 110B.
HISTORY 10B is 3 units;
HISTORY 110B is 5 units) Few historical settings offer a more illuminating perspective on our world today than old-regime Europe. Few cast a darker shadow. Science and the enlightened ambition to master nature and society, the emergence of statehood and its grasp for human mobility, bloodshed and coexistence in the face of religious fragmentation, as well as capitalism and the birth of modern finance: this course surveys some of the most consequential developments in European societies between the late fifteenth and the early nineteenth century.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-SI
HISTORY 10C: Modern Europe's Lives
(Same as
HISTORY 110C. 10C is 3 units; 110C is 5 units.) From the late 18th century to the present. How Europeans responded to rapid social changes caused by political upheaval, industrialization, and modernization. How the experience and legacy of imperialism and colonialism both influenced European society and put in motion a process of globalization that continues to shape international politics today.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
Instructors:
Daughton, J. (PI)
;
Zhang, A. (TA)
HISTORY 10N: Thinking About War
This course examines classic approaches to war as an intellectual problem, looking at how a matter of such great physical violence and passions can be subjected to understanding and used in philosophy, political theory, and art. Questions to be examined include the definition of war, its causes, its moral value, the nature of its participants, its use in the self-definition of individuals and societies, its relation to political authority, warfare and gender, and the problem of civil war.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
Instructors:
Lewis, M. (PI)
HISTORY 10S: The Enlightenment and Slavery
An age defined by lofty goals of progress, improvement, and perfection also saw the colossal expansion of race-based slavery in the Atlantic world. This course explores how people living in the 1700s reconciled the ideals of the Enlightenment with the realities of slavery. Characters include Caribbean enslavers lining their deadly plantations with coconut trees, Black slaves tracking the developments of the Haitian Revolution from American newspaper offices, and European political thinkers questioning imperial rule. With an Atlantic-focused but global perspective, we will use ideas about betterment to examine a notoriously brutal history.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Shah, S. (PI)
HISTORY 11N: The Roman Empire: Its Grandeur and Fall (CLASSICS 26N)
Preference to freshmen. Explore themes on the Roman Empire and its decline from the 1st through the 5th centuries C.E.. What was the political and military glue that held this diverse, multi-ethnic empire together? What were the bases of wealth and how was it distributed? What were the possibilities and limits of economic growth? How integrated was it in culture and religion? What were the causes and consequences of the conversion to Christianity? Why did the Empire fall in the West? How suitable is the analogy of the U.S. in the 21st century?
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| UG Reqs: GER:IHUM-3, WAY-SI
HISTORY 12N: Income and wealth inequality from the Stone Age to the present (CLASSICS 12N)
Rising inequality is a defining feature of our time. How long has economic inequality existed, and when, how and why has the gap between haves and have-nots widened or narrowed over the course of history? This seminar takes a very long-term view of these questions. It is designed to help you appreciate dynamics and complexities that are often obscured by partisan controversies and short-term perspectives, and to provide solid historical background for a better understanding of a growing societal concern.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
Instructors:
Scheidel, W. (PI)
HISTORY 13P: Media and Communication from the Middle Ages to the Printing Press (ENGLISH 13P, ENGLISH 113P, HISTORY 113P, MUSIC 13P, MUSIC 113P)
Did you know that the emperor Charlemagne was illiterate, yet his scribes revolutionized writing in the West? This course follows decisive moments in the history of media and communication, asking how new recording technologies reshaped a society in which most people did not read or write--what has been described as the shift "from memory to written record." To understand this transformation, we examine forms of oral literature and music, from the Viking sagas, the call to crusade, and medieval curses (Benedictine maledictions), to early popular authors such as Dante and the 15th-century feminist scribe, Christine de Pizan. We trace the impact of musical notation, manuscript and book production, and Gutenberg's print revolution. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, how did the medium shape the message? Along the way, we will consider how the medieval arts of memory and divine reading (lectio divina) can inform communication in the digital world. This is a hands-on course: students will handle medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Special Collections, and will participate in an "ink-making workshop," following medieval recipes for ink and for cutting quills, then using them to write on parchment. The course is open to all interested students.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Phillips, J. (PI)
HISTORY 13S: Misfits of the Middle Ages: Persecution and Tolerance in Medieval Europe
Medieval Europe is infamous for its persecutions. In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages were a uniquely unhappy time for Jews, heretics, lepers, witches, and countless other outsiders. But what is the truth about Europe¿s ¿Dark Ages?¿ What was it actually like to be a Jew in medieval Italy, a leper in England, a heretic in France? Who carried out the persecutions, what motivated them to violence, and did they actually succeed? How do the experiences of medieval Europe¿s outsiders still inform our own notions of tolerance, human rights, and inclusion today?
Last offered: Winter 2021
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 14B: The Crusades: A Global History (JEWISHST 14B)
(
HISTORY 14B is 3 units;
HISTORY 114B is 5 units.) Questioning traditional western narratives of the crusades, this course studies Latin and Turkic invaders as rival barbarian formations, and explores the societies of western Afro-Eurasia and the Mediterranean in the centuries before western European global expansion. We approach the crusades as a "Christianized Viking raid," and investigate an array of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish sources. In so doing, we emphasize the diversity of perspectives within the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities: in the Muslim case, the tangle of Turkic, Arab, and Berber ethnicities; in the Jewish case, Hebrew, Arabic, and Turkic speakers ranging from the Iberian peninsula to India; in the Christian case, the fragmented Greek, Latin, and Arabic traditions. We explore how these barbarian invasions transformed the societies of western Afro-Eurasia, how ancient Greek knowledge in Islamic translation came to medieval Europe, and how a fragmenting Byzantine Empire gave way to the rise of the Ottoman Empire. However foreign, the interactions and encounters between these societies continue to reverberate today.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 14S: Conversion in Ancient and Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (JEWISHST 14S)
In the third century, a group of Roman soldiers submerged themselves in baptismal waters in the Syrian desert and became Christians, a radical act. A thousand years later, the Jews of Spain were forced to do the same; in 1391, their mass forced baptisms sparked widespread panic. Traces of these historical events, and countless others like them, survive in texts, manuscripts and archeological remains, and prompt the following questions: how did people of the past judge the "authenticity" of a religious conversion? What was the relationship between religion, culture, ethnicity, and race? Was religion an internal conviction, or a cultural practice? This course will explore conversions, both willing and forced, in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Our exploration will focus on conversions among the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
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