Stanford University Explore Courses

HISTORY 78S: The Haitian Revolution: Slavery, Freedom, and the Atlantic World (AFRICAAM 178S, FRENCH 178)

How did the French colony of Saint-Domingue become Haiti, the world's first Black-led republic? What did Haiti symbolize for the African diaspora and the Americas at large? What sources and methods do scholars use to understand this history? To answer these questions, this course covers the Haitian story from colonization to independence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Our course will center Africans and people of African descent, both enslaved and free, as they negotiated and resisted systems of racial and economic oppression in the French Caribbean. Our inquiry will critically engage with conceptions and articulations of human and civil rights as they relate to legal realities and revolutionary change over time, as well as the interplay between rights and racial thinking. Tracing what historian Julius Scott called the "common wind" of the Haitian Revolution, we will also investigate how the new nation's emergence built on the American and French Revolutions while also influencing national independence movements elsewhere in the Atlantic World. Priority given to history majors and minors; no prerequisites and all readings are in English.

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

HISTORY 79C: The Ethical Challenges of the Climate Catastrophe (HISTORY 179C)

( History 79C is 3 units; History 179C is 5 units.) This course explores the ethical challenges of the climate catastrophe from historical, social, economic, political, cultural and scientific perspectives. These include the discovery of global warming over two centuries; the rise of secular and religious denialism toward the scientific consensus on it; the dispute between "developed" and "developing" countries over the timing and amount of national contributions per the 2015 Paris Accord; climate justice as it intersects with race, ethnicity, class, gender, and nationality; and the "role morality" of various actors (scientists, politicians, fossil fuel companies, the media and ordinary individuals) in assessing ethical responsibility for the catastrophe and how to mitigate, adapt, or even geoengineer, it.

Last offered: Spring 2021 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-ER, WAY-SI

HISTORY 81B: Making the Modern Middle East

(Same as HISTORY 181B. 81B is 3 units; 181B is 5 units) This course aims to introduce students to major themes in the modern history of the region linking the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds. No prerequisites or prior knowledge of the Middle East is required. We will begin with the Eurasian context that produced the Safavid and Ottoman empires and quickly move to the rapid transformations of the nineteenth century and imperial dissolution of the early twentieth. Twentieth-century themes will include mass migrations and colonial occupation; nationalism, mass politics and revolution; socialist and Islamist movements; and the growing role of American policy in the region. The course will conclude with a close examination of the profound transformations of the past decade, from the multiform uprisings of the 2010s to the equally multiform attempts to repress them.

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

Instructors: Barakat, N. (PI) ; Owens, M. (TA) ; Uran Kyzy, A. (TA)

HISTORY 82S: Enemies Within: Hostile Minorities in Israel and Iraq in the 20th Century

This course explores the nation state in the Middle East through the perspectives of minority groups in Israel and Iraq. The class examines the origins of these two states since WWI, and considers the integral role that minority groups have played in their formation. Using an array of primary sources and methods of analysis, we will examine significant political, economic, social, and discursive trends in these states, while keeping in mind the broader regional and global contexts.

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

HISTORY 83A: Enlightenment and Genocide: Modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire

( HISTORY 83A is 3 units; HISTORY 183A is 5 units.) In the early eighteenth century, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, introduced Ottoman smallpox inoculation to western medicine. But over the next two centuries, Ottoman scientific, cultural, and geopolitical strength disintegrated, while western Europeans colonized much of the globe and industrialized at home. How and why did this happen? This course explores this period of wrenching social change and transformation, and asks how the Enlightenment, with its calls for universal human rights and democracy, existed alongside crimes against humanity such as the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust. We inquire into ethical dilemmas from diverse perspectives to better understand the contested heritage of our modern world. Bringing western and non-western philosophy into conversation with history, we study the changing structures of Ottoman and European societies in the context of industrialization, repeated cycles from monarchy to democracy to dictatorship, and the growth of radical strains of Islam as a social protest and revolt against European dominance.

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

HISTORY 83S: Refugees, Routes, and Risks: How People and Things Moved in the Early Modern Period

How did people move, before the inventions of the train and steamship? How did they cross borders before the passport, or get news before the internet, the telephone, the telegraph? We often imagine people, things, and ideas in the early modern period as being static, unchanging, and immobile. This course offers a new "mobile" perspective on history of the Early Modern world before 1800, particularly focusing on the Ottoman Empire, Eastern and Western Europe.

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

HISTORY 85B: Jews in the Contemporary World: Culture, Pop Culture, and Representation (JEWISHST 85B, REES 85B)

( HISTORY 85B is 3 units; HISTORY 185B is 5 units.) From Barbra Streisand to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from The Dybbuk to Broad City, and from Moscow to LA, this course applies a multicultural perspective on different experiences of Jewishness in the 20th and 21st centuries. The discussion is centered on the ways in which these experiences are represented in various types of media: in literature or on TikTok, in poetry or on Instagram, in film and on television. The themes of the course include (but are not limited to) the interplay of national, religious, ethnic, linguistic, and political identities, intersectionality, the definitions and boundaries of Jewish cultures, Queer and variously gendered experiences of Jewishness, as well as antisemitism and stereotyped representations of Jewishness. The course introduces students to the analysis of a diverse array of media as cultural texts and historical sources. Students are encouraged to apply their new skills to media of their choice.

Last offered: Spring 2023 | UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI

HISTORY 86Q: Blood and Money: The Origins of Antisemitism (JEWISHST 86Q)

For over two millennia, Jews and Judaism have been the object of sustained anxieties, fears, and fantasies, which have in turn underpinned repeated outbreaks of violence and persecution. This course will explore the development and impact of antisemitism from Late Antiquity to the Enlightenment, including the emergence of the Blood libel, the association between Jews and moneylending, and the place of Judaism in Christian and Islamic theology. No prior background in history or Jewish studies is necessary. Prerequisite: PWR 1.

Terms: Win | Units: 4-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI, Writing 2

Instructors: Dorin, R. (PI)

HISTORY 87: The Islamic Republics: Politics and Society in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan

(Same as HISTORY 187. History majors and other taking 5 units, register for 187.) Explores the contested politics of these societies in modern times. Topics include controversies surrounding the meaning of revolution, state building, war, geopolitics, Islamic law, clerical authority, gender, an Islamic economy, culture, and ethnic, national and religious identities from the 1940s to the present. Assignments will focus on primary sources (especially legal documents, poetry, novels, and memoirs) and films.

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

HISTORY 89S: Chinese Diaspora and the Making of the Pacific World, 1750-1911

What do the city of Singapore, ICE, the abolition of the slave trade, and the latex condom have in common? All are entangled with the merchant princes, people-smugglers, indentured laborers, and rubber planters that made up the Chinese diaspora in the ¿long¿ 19th century. This course will introduce the primary sources and interpretive techniques that historians use to understand the Chinese diasporic past by focusing on four main themes: autonomy and assimilation, indenture and forced labor, race and immigration, and intellectual and material exchanges.