341 - 350 of 389 results for: HISTORY

(Same as HISTORY 85B.) This course explores the full expanse of Jewish life today and in the recent past. The inner workings of religious faith, the content of Jewish identify shorn of belief, the interplay between Jewish powerlessness and influence, the myth and reality of Jewish genius, the continued pertinence of antisemitism, the rhythms of Jewish economic life ¿ all these will be examined in weekly lectures, classroom discussion, and with the use of a widely diverse range of readings, films, and other material. Explored in depth will the ideas and practices of Zionism, the content of contemporary secularism and religious Orthodoxy, the impact Holocaust, the continued crisis facing Israel and the Palestinians. Who is to be considered Jewish, in any event, especially since so many of the best known (Spinoza, Freud, Marx) have had little if anything to do with Jewish life with their relationships to it indifferent, even hostile?

The history of Jewish communities in the lands of Islam and their relations with the surrounding Muslim populations from the time of Muhammad to the 20th century. Topics: the place of Jews in Muslim societies, Jewish communal life, variation in the experience of communities in different Muslim lands, the impact of the West in the Modern period, the rise of nationalisms, and the end of Jewish life in Muslim countries.

Zionism from its genesis in the 1880s up until the establishment of the state of Israel in May, 1948, exploring the historical, ideological and political dimensions of Zionism. Topics include: the emergence of Zionist ideology in connection to and as a response to challenges of modernity; emancipation; Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment); other national and ideological movements of the period; the ideological crystallization of the movement; and the immigration waves to Palestine.

This colloquium will approach North Korea from a longer historical perspective and also discuss the country's current crisis and its future. Themes will include the northern region in colonial Korea, Kim Il Sung and Manchurian guerrillas, the USSR and North Korean Revolution, the reconstruction after the Korean War, Juche ideology and the political system, the everyday life of North Korea people, the Cold War and North Korean diplomacy, culture and mass performance, the great famine and economy in transition, the military and nuclear development, and refugees and the succession of leadership.

Cinema was invented in the 1890s and simultaneously introduced to East Asia. This colloquium explores how this new medium changed the cultural and social landscape of East Asia and how the visual power of films also affected the culture politics of empires in the region. The themes include cinema and urban spaces, cultural imperialism, film images and gender discourse, colonial modernity, Americanism and Asianism, the visual and the textual, wartime propaganda, and Hollywood movies and cold war empires.

The evolution of cities in the early imperial, medieval, and early modern periods. Topics include physical structure, social order, cultural forms, economic roles, relations to rural hinterlands, and the contrast between imperial capitals and other cities. Comparative cases from European history. Readings include primary and secondary sources, and visual materials.

Traversing 2,500 years of history, this colloquium begins with conceptions of nature, agricultural time, and agriculture in ancient East Asia, proceeds to look closely at the environmental history of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and then concludes with environmental issues in East Asia from a contemporary perspective.

This course serves as an introduction to Korean culture, society, and history before the modern period. It begins with a discussion of early Korea and controversies over Korean origins; the bulk of the course will be devoted to the Chos'n period (1392-1910), that from the end of medieval Korea to the modern period. Topics to be covered include: Korean national and ethnic origins, the role of religious and intellectual traditions such as Buddhism and Confucianism, popular and indigenous religious practices, the traditional Korean family and social order, state and society during the Chos'n dynasty, vernacular prose literature, Korean's relations with its neighbors in East Asia, and changing conceptions of Korean identity.nThe course will be conducted through the reading and discussion of primary texts in English translation alongside scholarly research. As such, it will emphasize the interpretation of historical sources, which include personal letters, memoirs, and diaries, traditional histories, diplomatic and political documents, along with religious texts and works of art. Scholarly work will help contextualize these materials, while the class discussions will introduce students to existing scholarly debates about the Korean past. Students will be asked also to examine the premodern past with an eye to contemporary reception. The final project for the class is a film study, where a modern Korean film portraying premodern Korea will be analyzed as a case study of how the past works in public historical memory in contemporary Korea, both North and South. An open-ended research paper is also possible, pending instructor approval.

How Japan and Asia mutually shaped each other in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Focus is on Japanese imperialism in Asia and its postwar legacies. Topics include: pan-Asianism and orientalism; colonial modernization in Korea and Taiwan; collaboration and resistance; popular imperialism in Manchuria; total war and empire; comfort women and the politics of apology; the issue of resident Koreans; and economic and cultural integration of postwar Asia.