Catalogue 2024-2025
History Department
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Chair: Sumita Choudhury (2023-24), Ismail O. D. Rashid (2024-25);
Professors: Nancy Bisaha, Robert K. Brigham, Sumita Choudhuryb, Rebecca Edwardsab, Lydia Murdoch, Ismail O. D. Rashid, Joshua Schreier;
Associate Professors: Michaela Pohl;
Assistant Professors: Yu-chi Chang, Daniel Mendiola, Allison Puglisiab, Ashanti Shihb, Noel Smythab;
Visiting Instructor: Amanda Brennan;
Postdoctoral Fellow: Isobel Plowright;
Adjunct Associate Professor: Ronald Patkus.
b On leave 2024/25, second semester
ab On leave 2024/25
Advisers: The department.
Major
Correlate Sequence in History
History: I. Introductory
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HIST 104 - Asian American History
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 104 ) This course provides an introduction to the history of East, South, and Southeast Asian migrations and settlement to the United States from the late 18th century to the present. Major themes include labor, migration, community formation, U.S. imperialism, religion, legal exclusion, racial segregation, gender and sexuality, cultural representations, and political resistance. Students engage with Asian American voices and key concepts in ethnic studies, as we explore the incredible diversity of experiences that make up Asian American history. Throughout, the course challenges students to contend with the category “Asian American” and argues that Asian American stories are crucial to understand U.S. history and American race relations more broadly. Ashanti Shih.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 115 - Russian Revolutions: Metropolis and Borderlands Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course offers an introduction to radical movements in the late Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union. We look not only at the groups who took power in Petrograd and Moscow in 1917 but beyond, to discover a broad array of causes and revolutionary processes in the non-Russian borderlands and across the empire. The course examines local dynamics, changing ideas about women, the roles ethnic identities play in resistance movements, and the shape of class conflict in non-Russian societies. We also consider how clichés, propaganda, and strategic silences are used to define and control this history. Topics include the assassination of the Tsar in 1881, Russian and non-Russian revolutionary parties, the Central Asian uprising of 1916, Russia’s cities in 1917, and some of the events and outcomes of the post-revolutionary war. Michaela Pohl.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 116 - The Dark Ages
1 unit(s)
Was early medieval Europe really Dark? In reality, this was a period of tremendous vitality and ferment, witnessing the transformation of late classical society, the growth of Germanic kingdoms, the high point of Byzantium, the rise of the papacy and monasticism, and the birth of Islam. This course examines a rich variety of sources that illuminate the first centuries of Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, and early medieval culture showing moments of both conflict and synthesis that redefined Europe and the Mediterranean. Nancy Bisaha.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 117 - High Middle Ages Semester Offered: fall
1 unit(s)
This course examines medieval Europe at both its cultural and political height. Topics of study include: the first universities; government from feudal lordships to national monarchies; courtly and popular culture; manorial life and town life; the rise of papal monarchy; new religious orders and spirituality among the laity. Relations with religious outsiders are explored in topics on European Jewry, heretics, and the Crusades. Nancy Bisaha.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 125 - Infamy on Trial: Famous Trials in Early Modern Europe Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course examines several of the most famous trials of Europe’s early modern period (1500-1700). Each trial allows us to explore how communities and individuals responded to the changing nature of European society during this period of upheaval. Through cases involving all sorts of people—men and women, peasants and kings, we have access to conflicting understandings of authority, family, religion, and gender. The trial of Galileo challenged contemporary understandings of what it meant to be a Christian while the execution of King Charles I raised questions about kingship. By studying criminal cases, we engage with a rich selection of primary sources, such as trial records, contemporary accounts, and private papers. Through these readings, the class investigates how early modern people interpreted crime and justice during moments of crisis. Sumita Choudhury.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 129 - The First World War Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This First-Year Writing Seminar teaches the skills of college research and writing by focusing on the cultural and social history of the Great War. Students explore the diplomatic events leading to war and the July Crisis of 1914; the deployment of weapons of mass destruction, many adopted from colonial contexts; the experiences of trench warefare; colonial soldiers and the war’s influence on global and mass anti-imperial movements; the relationship between home fronts and battle fronts; the war’s effects on gender roles; propaganda; the 1918 pandemic and new medical approaches to shell shock, amputations, and public health. Lydia Murdoch.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 150 - Revolution, Evolution, and the Global Nineteenth Century Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as GNCS 150 ) The world as we know it largely came into being during the nineteenth century. Marked by social, political, cultural, and technological transformations, the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of modernity out of the instabilities of change. Railways crisscrossed continents; European empires expanded; agricultural laborers flocked into mushrooming urban centers; and the enslaved, the colonized, and the disenfranchised around the world fought for liberty and citizenship. In this course, we consider these and other nineteenth-century transformations in a global context by focusing on the interconnections between North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Our investigations are organized around five core areas: revolutions, emancipations, evolution and progress, popular culture, and the domestic sphere. Students analyze a variety of sources, including novels, plays, short stories, photographs, early films, paintings, periodicals and pamphlets, government documents, letters, music, and scientific works. The course is team taught with occasional guest lectures. Daniel Mendiola and Mark Taylor.
Three 50-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 151 - British History: James I (1603) to the Great War Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course explores the central developments in Britain from the age of Shakespeare to the age of total war. We study the political and scientific revolutions of the seventeenth century, the eighteenth-century rise of commercial society and the “British” nation, and the effects of industrialization on Britain’s landscape, society, and politics. The course concludes by exploring how the First World War transformed British society. Lydia Murdoch.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 158 - The Making of Modern East Asia Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 158 ) This course introduces the history of modern East Asia (China, Japan, and Korea) by examining regional interactions and global connections. We discuss how East Asia serves as a geographic, cultural, and analytical framework for historical inquiry. The course begins in the eighteenth century, a period marked by major political, social, and cultural transformations and challenges in East Asia. The course traces the region’s engagement with the world, the rise of nation-states, reforms and revolutions, imperialism and colonialism, warfare, trade network, gender and sexuality, and social movements, among other topics. By contextualizing these themes, we explore how the past has shaped, and continues to shape, modern East Asia. Yu-chi Chang.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 160 - American Moments: Rediscovering U.S. History Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This is not your parents’—or your high school teacher’s—American history course. No textbook: Instead we read memoirs, novels, newspaper articles, letters, speeches, photographs, and films composed by a colorful, diverse cast of characters—famous and forgotten, slaves and masters, workers and bosses. No survey: Instead we pause to look at several illuminating “moments” from the colonial era through the Civil War to civil rights and the Cold War. Traveling from the Great Awakening to the “awakening” that was the 1960s, from an anticolonial rebellion that Americans won (1776) to another that they lost (Vietnam), the course challenges assumptions about America’s past—and perhaps also a few about America’s present and future. Amanda Brennan.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 161 - Violent Economies: Rewriting the American West
1 unit(s)
This course considers themes in the history of the United States and its trans-Mississippi frontiers. Among these are resource exploitation and cycles of boom and bust; violence and accompanying ideologies of race, class, gender, religious faith, and property rights; dispossession of native peoples and their survival, resistance, and resilience; and the emergence of an ethos of environmental conservation. To examine these issues, we investigate histories of the West from the California Gold Rush through twentieth-century dam-building and firefighting. Along the way, we compare these to other kinds of storytelling, including eyewitness accounts, fiction, and mythmaking.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Three 50-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 164 - Environmental History of Latin America Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENST 164 and LALS 164 ) This course explores the history of Latin America by centering the environment. Beginning with examples in the ancient Americas and continuing through the colonial and national periods, this course explores how human ideas about the environment, along with tangible regimes for exploiting “natural” resources, have shaped the history of Latin America. Class materials draw from a range of academic, literary, and primary sources, and class discussions cover topics such as: the flora and fauna of the ancient Americas; organisms and landscapes of the “Spanish Conquest”; ranching, farming, and export agriculture; mining, drilling, and extractivist industries; hurricanes, volcanoes, and “natural” disasters; urbanization, pollution, and climate change; and debates over environmental protections and human rights. Accordingly, this course addresses the questions: what discourses, representations, and ideas have shaped the meaning of the environment in Latin America? How has the environment shaped broader meanings of Latin America itself? And what is at stake today for the people of Latin America today as governments, corporations, and NGOs take different approaches to environmental issues? Daniel Mendiola.
Two 75 minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 168 - Black Histories in the United States
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 168 ) This course introduces students to major themes and debates in African American history, starting with their African origins and leading into the twenty-first century. It explores African American experiences through a variety of primary source materials, including letters, speeches, newspaper articles, posters and autobiographies. Through lecture and class discussion, students interrogate how race, class, gender, sexuality and ability have shaped African American experiences over time. The primary objective is to help students develop a solid understanding of the political, social, economic and personal lives of African Americans from their arrival in the colonies through today. Specific topics covered include African antecedents, colonial and antebellum slavery, the abolitionist movement, African American free people, the Civil War, Emancipation, Jim Crow segregation, the modern freedom struggle, popular culture, and the contemporary experience. Allison Puglisi.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 170 - Introduction to Native American History
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 170 ) This course introduces students to the diverse experiences and histories of Indigenous peoples in North America since before European contact to the present moment. And course materials invite students to engage with many Indigenous voices and their perspectives on the past. The course focuses on the historical development of a U.S. Federal Indian policy and its ongoing impact on Native peoples. Students analyze the persistence, change, and adaption of Native cultures to historical and contemporary social conditions of the U.S. settler colonialism as well as individual and community efforts to maintain sovereignty in the 21st century. Since Indigenous peoples have their own culturally specific ideas and practices concerning gender and sexuality, students also examine the ways in which Indigenous ideas and practices around gender and sexuality have become sites of resistance to settler colonialism and an assertion of Indigenous identity, both in past and present. Students also investigate issues related to race, identity, and community by analyzing historical relations between African Americans and Native Americans across North America. Noel Smyth.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 174 - The Emergence of the Modern Middle East Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
An exploration of the Middle East over the past three centuries. Beginning with economic and social transformations in the eighteenth century, we follow the transformation of various Ottoman provinces such as Egypt, Syria/Lebanon, and Algeria into modern states, paying careful attention to how European colonialism shaped their development. We then look at independence movements and the post-colonial societies that have emerged since the middle of the twentieth century, concluding with study of colonialism’s lingering power—and the movements that confront it. Joshua Schreier.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75 minute classes
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HIST 175 - Mandela: Race, Resistance and Renaissance in South Africa Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 175 ) This course critically explores the history and politics of South Africa in the twentieth century through the prism of the life, politics, and experiences of one of its most iconic figures, Nelson Mandela. After almost three decades of incarceration for resisting Apartheid, Mandela became the first democratically elected president of a free South Africa in 1994. It was an inspirational moment in the global movement and the internal struggle to dismantle Apartheid and to transform South Africa into a democratic, non-racial, and just society. Using Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, as our point of departure, the course discusses some of the complex ideas, people, and developments that shaped South Africa and Mandela’s life in the twentieth century, including: indigenous culture, religion, and institutions; colonialism, race, and ethnicity; nationalism, mass resistance, and freedom; and human rights, social justice, and post-conflict reconstruction. Ismail Rashid.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
History: II. Intermediate
The prerequisite for courses at the 200-level is ordinarily 1 unit in history. -
HIST 203 - How We Got Here
1 unit(s)
(Same as CLCS 203 ) This course is a dynamic introduction to the ways in which texts, traditions, concepts, and institutions throughout history have brought us to the moment in which we currently exist, and how they prepare us to meet the challenges of the future. No matter how “modern” an issue may seem—be it race, money, gender, violence—the roots or echoes of a deeper past are always there in ways that bear examining. By starting with the distant past and bringing our questions forward in time, we can find a space to explore and discuss tough issues that often polarize people today. Sources may include selections from the Bible, medieval epic, and the arts. This course has several Vassar faculty guest speakers who work on these issues in the modern period, and it also features practitioners in various fields beyond academia who discuss how their undergraduate studies in the humanities and social sciences shaped their lives. Students all have the chance to attend a dinner with one of the speakers outside of class. Nancy Bisaha, Marc Epstein.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 214 - The Roots of the Palestine-Israel Conflict Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as JWST 214 ) An examination of the deep historical sources of the Palestine-Israel conflict. The course begins some two centuries ago when changes in the world economy and emerging nationalist ideologies altered the political and economic landscapes of the region. It then traces the development of both Jewish and Arab nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before exploring how the Arab and Jewish populations fought—and cooperated—on a variety of economic, political, and ideological fronts. It concludes by considering how this contest led to the development of two separate, hostile national identities. Joshua Schreier.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 216 - History of the Ancient Greeks
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 216 ) This course examines the history and culture of the ancient Greeks from the emergence of the city-state in the eighth century BCE to the conquests of Alexander the Great in 335 BCE. In addition to an outline of the political and social history of the Greeks, the course examines several historical, cultural, and methodological topics in depth, including the emergence of writing, Greek colonialism and imperialism, ancient democracy, polytheism, the social structures of Athenian society, and the relationship between Greeks and other Mediterranean cultures. Students both read primary sources (for example, Sappho, Tyrtaios, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristophanes, and Plato) and examine sites and artifacts recovered through archaeology; the development of students’ critical abilities to evaluate and use these sources for the study of history is a primary goal of the class. Barbara Olsen.
Not offered in 2024/25.
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HIST 217 - History of the Ancient Romans
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 217 ) This course examines the history of the ancient Romans from the foundation of their city around the eighth century BCE to the collapse of their Mediterranean Empire in the fifth century CE. The course offers a broad historical outline of Roman history, but focuses on significant topics and moments in Roman history, including the Republican aristocracy, the civil and slave wars of the Late Republic, the foundation of the Empire by Caesar Augustus, urbanism, the place of public entertainments (gladiatorial combats, Roman hunts, chariot races, and theater) in society, the rise of Christianity, the processes of Romanization, and barbarization, and the political decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Students read primary sources such as Plautus, Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius, and secondary accounts dealing with important issues such as slavery, religious persecution and multiculturalism. Students also examine important archaeological sites and artifacts. The development of students’ critical abilities to evaluate and use these sources for the study of history is a primary goal of the class.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
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HIST 221 - Medieval Science and Technology Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as MRST 221 and STS 221 ) Science and technology: the very words seem synonymous with “modernity.” Yet, crucial developments in scientific knowledge and application occurred during the Middle Ages, forming the foundation for the Scientific Revolution. This interdisciplinary course offers an introduction to science and technology in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean world, exploring the influence of classical, East Asian, and Arab learning, and the rise of empiricism and experimentation. Through readings, discussions, and hands-on activities, we examine developments in monasteries, universities, castles, and farms. Topics may include beer making, beekeeping, alchemy, siege warfare, watermills, astrology, plagues, and medicine. Nancy Bisaha, Christopher Smart. Nancy Bisaha
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 222 - The Politics of Borders
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 222 and LALS 222 ) This course interrogates the normative construction of nation-state borders and the meaning of nation-state borders. We do so from the United States/Mexico border, and utilize a comparative approach, relating Latinx Studies to critical Indigenous feminist perspectives. While focused mainly on the United States landmass the course also critically foregrounds Native/Indigenous land and sovereignty to reconceptualize the United States as a settler colonial, imperial state. Utilizing the knowledges of Latinx and Indigenous thinkers, students trace the construction of modern borders and productively reframe assumptions around immigration/migration, citizenship, nationalism and indigenismo/Indigeneity.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 224 - Intersectionality in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
1 unit(s)
(Same as MRST 224 and WFQS 224 ) This course offers a study of the intersections of gender, religion, class, ethnicity, race, and (dis)ability in various medieval and early modern contexts. Authors, genres, critical and theoretical approaches, historical coverage, and themes may vary from year to year.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 225 - Renaissance Italy Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 225 ) This course examines the history of Italy between 1300 and 1565. Italian intellectual, political, and religious history is emphasized, but some attention is also given to cross-cultural, gender, and social history. Looking beyond Italy, we also consider developments in Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire and their impact on Italy and Europe. Topics to be covered include the Black Death, the rise of humanism, the Renaissance papacy, and the Catholic Reformation. Finally, throughout the course, we question the meaning of the term “Renaissance”: is it a distinct period, a cultural movement, or an insufficient label altogether? Nancy Bisaha.
Two 75-minute periods.
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HIST 226 - Northern Europe in the Renaissance, c. 1300-1550
1 unit(s)
As a famous scholar has argued, the north witnessed a long “autumn of the Middle Ages,” holding tightly to medieval ideals of chivalry, pageantry, and piety – precisely at the same time Italy seemed to be forging ahead into modernity. Yet by the end of the period, Northern states overshadowed Italy politically, economically and, increasingly, culturally. This course examines Northern Europe during this remarkable period of transformation. The Hundred Years War, the Black Death, the Tudors, French and German state building and court life, and urban society in Flanders, are addressed along with the poetry of Chaucer, the humanism of More and Erasmus, and the doctrine of Luther. In turn, we examine the complex meanings of the terms “Renaissance” and “Reformation” and the relationship between them. Nancy Bisaha.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
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HIST 227 - Chinatowns
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 227 and URBS 227 ) The course explores the layered histories of Chinatowns in the United States, as they have defined, reflected, and adapted to the changing experiences of Chinese Americans over the last century and a half. First constructed in the era of gold and railroads, Chinatowns have continually served as lively centers for trade, kinship, and transnational community. They have anchored political movements against anti-Chinese sentiment, as well as brought solace, from Chinese Exclusion to COVID-19. These ‘ethnic enclaves’ have been policed, destroyed, and developed according to the fears and fantasies of other Americans, who have imagined Chinatowns as thriving sites for vice, plague, and also tourism. Yet, many Chinese Americans-including women, mixed-race families, Christian converts, queer ‘bachelors,’ herbalists, and architects-led complicated lives that have continually challenged the cultural and physical boundaries of Chinatowns. With new waves of immigration and suburbanization, what even is a ‘Chinatown’ in the twenty-first century? We explore these layers through historical texts, maps, oral histories, film, fiction, and a visit to NYC Chinatown. Ashanti Shih.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 229 - Paris and London: Society and Culture in the Early Modern City, 1500-1800 Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 229 ) Between 1500-1800 European society experienced upheavals caused by cataclysmic events such as the Reformation and major shifts in economic and political organization. And it was Europeans living in urban areas – Europeans of different social status, faith, and ethnicities – who experienced these changes most intensely. This course investigates how two of the most dynamic cities in early modern Europe, London and Paris, changed from essentially medieval cities to urban metropolises. We look at the changing material, religious, and political conditions of London and Paris over two centuries and explore how the peoples of these two cities articulated and made sense of such changes. The central focus of the class is examining how the identities of Parisians and Londoners as urban dwellers underwent transformations during this period. Mita Choudhury.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 230 - The French Revolution: Local Origins and Global Impact
1 unit(s)
(Same as GNCS 230 ) The French Revolution remains one of the definitive moments in modern history. Over the course of the Revolution, recognizable themes emerged that became the hallmarks of modern society, themes such as human rights, universal suffrage, nationalism, and feminism. This course examines how many of these ideals originated in not just the Enlightenment, but also within the institutions of Old Regime France, an absolute monarchy and emerging colonial force. It looks at how the promises of revolutionary ideals affected peoples unequally both in France and its colonies, especially Saint-Domingue. How, between 1789 and 1799, did France move from being a constitutional monarchy to a republic to an oligarchy and finally, to an imperial dictatorship? We pay special attention to the connections between the French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution in considering the Revolution’s global legacy. Sumita Choudhury.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 231 - Algeria/France:Race, Religion & Citizenship Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 231 ) Since the early modern era, slavery, colonialism, commerce, piracy, and migration have woven the Mediterranean together in both peace and in horrifying violence. This broad, multipolar web of conflict and communication has served as the context in which multiple French and Algerian identities have careened into modernity. Constant references to local and cross-Mediterranean “others” have shaped the very meanings of such key terms as “emancipation,” “republic,” “Islam,” “progress,” and “civilization.” Even today, debates on issues ranging from women’s clothing to secularism to immigration to anti-Semitism echo with this long and contested history. Joshua Schreier.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 235 - Ending Deadly Conflict
1 unit(s)
(Same as INTL 235 ) This course uses historical case studies to identify practical ways to end conflict and build sustainable peace. It is concerned with the vulnerability of the weak, failed and collapsed states, with post conflict periods that have reignited into violence, and problems of mediating conflicts that are unusually resistant to resolution. Of particular interest will be the role that third party intermediaries and global governance institutions have played in bringing about a negotiated end to violence. Major topics may include: the Paris Peace Accords, South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commissions, the Good Friday Agreement, Israel-Palestine negotiations, the Dayton Peace Accords ending the Balkans wars, and negotiations to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Robert Brigham.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 236 - The Black Freedom Struggle
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 236 and WFQS 236 ) This course considers the thought and organizing of Black activists in the Civil Rights Era. Importantly, Black activists did not all speak with one voice: they often disagreed on the path forward for Black Americans. For that reason, this course explores the diversity of Black political visions from roughly 1930 to 1980: liberalism, feminism, communism, nationalism, and combinations thereof. We devote special attention to the role of religion and spirituality in shaping Black social movements. Toward the end of the course, we consider how Black activists’ objectives shifted after Jim Crow’s end. Class readings consist of both historical and creative texts. Allison Puglisi.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 237 - Gender and Sexuality in Black America
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 237 and WFQS 237 ) African American history is also the history of gender and sexuality. As structural racism imposed sexual rules on Black Americans, they responded with their own creative expressions of gender and sexuality. The course begins by exploring how experiences of slavery differed across gender, Black women articulated abolitionism, and legislation against interracial desire shaped American politics. We then consider an array of twentieth-century Black feminist, trans, and queer movements: the National Welfare Rights Organization Combahee River Collective, STAR, and more. Allison Puglisi.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 239 - Warfare in Modern China Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 239 ) This course delves into the origins, implications, and ramifications of warfare in China from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. The course explores historical events such as the conflicts between the Qing and British Empires, the Taiping Rebellion/Civil War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the involvement of the United States in China during World War II, and the Chinese Civil War between the Nationalist and Communist Parties. In studying these events, we address key questions: How have China’s internal conflicts and wars with other empires and countries driven various political and societal transformations? What was life like during wartime, and how can we understand war as an everyday experience? What roles do memories and narratives of warfare play in contemporary China? We investigate everyday experiences of people, including mass mobilization, displacement, violence, and trauma. Additionally, we look at how warfare shaped gender concepts, nationalism, popular culture, identity, and memory. Students use course materials and archival resources to develop a final project of their choice in either a written or multimedia format. Yu-chi Chang.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 241 - Asian American Women and Gender History
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 241 and ASIA 241 ) This course focuses on Asian American women as key historical actors and the use of gender analysis to re-examine major themes in Asian American history: immigration, labor, communtiy formation, cultural representations, feminist political organizing, sexuality, and marriage and family life. We also touch on the “queering” of Asian American history, as well as ideas of masculinity and the intersections of sexuality and racialization for Asian American men. Course materials emphasie Asian American women’s voices and include memoirs, poetry, film, oral histories, and artwork in addition to traditional academic texts. Students explore different types of archives and methodologies to evelop a final reserch project of their choice. Ashanti Shih.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 242 - The Russian Empire to 1812
1 unit(s)
This course introduces major events and issues in the history of the Russians and their neighbors to the South and East. The main themes each week include the formation of Russia’s autocracy and nobility, Eurasian family/clan politics and cultural practices, and the connection between expansion and repression. Topics include the great steppe empires, Russia as part of the Golden Horde (1240-1480), the era of Ivan the Terrible and his conquest of the Tatars of the Volga, the Time of Troubles, the conquest of Siberia, the imposition of serfdom, westernization and globalization of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great, relations with the Ottoman Empire under Russia’s female tsarinas, the conquest of the Caucasus, and the history of the Cossacks. Michaela Pohl.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 243 - Russia and the Soviet Union, 1861-2000 Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course explores how Russians and their neighbors (Ukrainians, Poles, Kazakhs, and others) collectively encountered the age of revolutions and socialism. The beginning and the end of the Soviet Union in 1917 and in 1991 pitted national dreams against socialist ideology and Western-style shock therapy, and both were followed by decades of economic troubles and political chaos. Topics include the emancipation from serfdom, the Bolshevik revolution, Stalinism, the Communist Party and the purges, the victory over the Nazis in World War II, reforms under Khrushchev and Gorbachev, the fall of communism, oligarchic politics, and the rebirth of Russia and the war in Chechnya under Yeltsin and Putin. Michaela Pohl.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 245 - Medicine, Health and Diseases in East Asia
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 245 and STS 245 ) From the globalization of acupuncture to the proliferation of biobanks to the fight against the deadly SARS virus, the history of East Asian medicine and society has been marked by promises and perils. Through examining the ways in which East Asians conceptualized medicine and the body in their fight against diseases from a myriad of sources, this course critically examines the persistence, transformation, and globalization of both “traditional medicine” and biomedicine in East Asia. Topics covered include the knowledge of nature as embedded in the changing categorization of pharmaceuticals, the contestation over vaccination and the definition of diseases, the construction of gender and sexuality in medicine, the importance of religion in healing, the legacies of colonialism in biopolitics and biotechnology, the development of healthcare systems, and the imaginations of Asian medicine in the West.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
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HIST 246 - World War II in East Asia
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 246 ) The Second World War was transformative for Japan and China. At the height of its conquest, the Japanese Empire ruled over more than 130 million people, even as it struggled to deal with controversies and scarcity. China became one of the Big Four Allied Powers as state building and resistance persisted in unoccupied areas. This class examines how the Second World War shaped the everyday lives of East Asians and foreigners through speeches, memoirs, fiction, oral histories, documents, and films. In addition, this course explores the contexts, contingencies, and legacies of wartime events and issues. This includes the Nanjing massacre, the Chinese, Koreans, and Taiwanese resistance to and collaboration with the Japanese, Japan’s wartime mobilization, the internment of Japanese-Americans in the United States, the role of wartime science and technology, the gendered and racial underpinnings of wartime labor, the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, and the U.S. government’s decision to release atomic bombs in Japan.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
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HIST 247 - Albert Einstein
1 unit(s)
(Same as STS 247 ) This course explores the complex life and work of the iconic scientist of the 20th century. Using recent biographical studies and a wide range of original sources (in translation), Einstein’s revolutionary contributions to relativity and quantum mechanics, his role in Germany in the opposition to the rise of Nazi ideology and anti-Semitism, and his work as a political and social activist in the United States are examined. Students are encouraged to make use of Vassar’s Bergreen Collection of original Einstein manuscripts. José Perillán.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
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HIST 249 - Global Science and Empire 1800-Present
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 249 and STS 249 ) Why has science been considered a “tool of empire’? How has scientific knowledge shaped and been shaped by colonial experiences? How did Indigenous and local peoples variously participate in and resist encounters with colonial science? This course explores these questions as we survey the relationship between science and empire from the early nineteenth century to the present. Rather than take a comprehensive approach, students engage with a series of case studies from around the globe that touch on various scientific disciplines and practices–such as anthropological exhibitions across the British empire, American colonial medicine in the Philippines, scientific forestry in Japanese-occupied Korea and Taiwan, and mapping in postcolonial India–to learn how science has been used both for imperial control and as a means of envisioning postcolonial futures. Other major themes include scientific exploration; collecting and classifying; race, gender, and sexuality; Indigenous knowledge; postcolonial science; and, finally, the contemporary conversation around “decolonizing’ the sciences and scientific institutions. Throughout the course, students engage with visual, material, and textual sources, including visits to campus collections. Ashanti Shih.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 251 - A History of American Foreign Relations Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course examines the foreign relations of the United States from the 19th century to the present day emphasizing the motivations, objectives, and tactics of U.S. policy makers. The course will focus on America’s role in the Spanish-American War; its embroilment in two world wars; its Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union; its wars in Korea and Vietnam; its response to human rights abuses and mass atrocities; and its leadership in the global war on terror. Robert Brigham.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 254 - Victorian Britain
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 254 and GNCS 254 ) This course examines some of the key transformations that Victorians experienced, including industrialization, the rise of a class-based society, political reform, and the women’s movement. We explore why people then, and historians since, have characterized the Victorian age as a time of progress and optimism as well as an era of anxiety and doubt. Lydia Murdoch.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 255 - The British Empire
1 unit(s)
This course is an introduction to British imperialism from the mid-eighteenth century to the twenty-first century, with particular attention to imperial encounters involving Britain, the Atlantic world, South Asia, and Africa. The main theme of the course is the way in which historical constructions of gender, race, and class not only aided in the establishment of imperial control, but also influenced subsequent imperial and national identities. We examine British motives for imperialism, the transition from trade empires to more formal political control, the late nineteenth-century “Scramble for Africa,” decolonization, and the long campaign for civil rights in Britain. Students engage current historical debates, practice the skills of historical analysis, and produce a final research paper on a topic of choice. Lydia Murdoch.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 257 - Comics and History
1 unit(s)
In this intensive study we research and draw cartoons about history in the broadest sense. Topics can include public history, self-discovery, memory, trauma work, nostalgia, and comedic, ironic, or fantasy reworkings of past events. Course participants research settings and images, illustrations, fashion, and propaganda from the culture and era in question and develop a plot and dialogue. The work involves reading a cartooning manual, drawing on paper or digitally, and considering how comics aesthetics, layout, and composition contribute to constructing a historical narrative. Students submit drafts, critique them in class, and re-submit inked versions of the previous week’s page. The final project is a 10-page mini comic. Michaela Pohl.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: INT -
HIST 260 - Sex & Reproduction in 19th Century United States: Before Margaret Sanger
1 unit(s)
(Same as WFQS 260 ) Focusing on the United States from roughly 1800 to 1900, this course explores sex and reproduction and their relationship to broader transformations in society, politics, and women’s rights. Among the issues considered are birth patterns on the frontier and in the slave South; industrialization, urbanization, and falling fertility; the rise of sex radicalism; and the emergence of “heterosexual” and “homosexual” as categories of identity. The course examines public scandals, such as the infamous Beecher-Tilton adultery trial, and the controversy over education and women’s health that was prompted by the opening of Vassar College. The course ends by tracing the complex impact of the Comstock law (1873) and the emergence of a modern movement for birth control. Rebecca Edwards.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 263 - Conquest and Borderlands in Colonial Latin America Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 263 ) This course explores the history of colonial Latin America by centering conquests and borderlands. Beginning with examples in the ancient Americas and continuing through the end of the 18th century, this course explores the ideas, practices, and experiences that shaped the long-term processes of conquering territory, as well as the parallel processes of creating “borderlands” in the places that conquering powers failed to reach. Class materials draw from a range of academic, literary, and primary sources, and class discussions cover topics such as: the Aztec Empire and its war with the Spanish; the Canary Islands and early precedents of Spanish conquests; the Philippines and Latin America’s Asian borderlands; the indigenous Comanche Empire and North American borderlands; the afro-indigenous Mosquito Confederation and Caribbean borderlands; and the indigenous Mapuche Nation and South American borderlands. Accordingly, this class addresses the questions: what is a conquest? What are borderlands? How have conquests shaped the history of Latin America? How do borderlands call into question traditional narratives of conquest? And what is at stake in questioning conquest narratives today? Daniel Mendiola.
Two 2-hour periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 265 - Cold War America
1 unit(s)
Following the Second World War, many Americans expected the United States to create a better world abroad and a more equitable society at home. We examine those expectations along with the major social, political, cultural, and economic changes in the United States from1945 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, including the dawn of the cold war, McCarthyism, suburbanization, high mass consumption, civil rights and the Black Power movement, the Vietnam War, and the Reagan years. Robert Brigham.
Two 2-hour periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 272 - Modern African History
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 272 ) Africa has experienced profound transformations over the past two centuries. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Africans lost and regained their independence from different European colonial powers. This course explores the changing African experiences before, during, and after European colonization of their continent. Drawing on primary sources, film, memoirs, and popular novels, we look at the creative responses of African groups and individuals to the contradictory processes and legacies of colonialism. Particular attention is paid to understanding how these responses shape the trajectories of African as well as global developments. Amongst the major themes covered by the course are: colonial ideologies, African resistance, colonial economies, gender and cultural change, African participation in the two world wars, urbanization, decolonization and African nationalism. We also reflect on some of the contemporary developmental dilemmas as well as opportunities confronting post-colonial Africa. Ismail Rashid.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
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HIST 274 - Early America, 1500-1750
1 unit(s)
This course examines the development of European colonialism and chattel slavery in North America from the 16th century to the mid 18th century. Focusing on the history of Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans, and the ways in which their lives changed over more than two centuries of contact and colonization, there is an emphasis in this course to understand early American history from multiple perspectives of race, indigeneity, and gender. The course pays close attention to the interactions between Africans, Native peoples, and Europeans in different colonial contexts across time. In addition to highlighting the varied nature of African-European-Native interactions, the course examines the role ideologies of race and gender played in the construction of European colonies and in the interactions between a diversity of people from Africa, Europe and North America. Noel Smyth.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 275 - Revolutionary America, 1750-1830
1 unit(s)
The course explores the era of the American Revolution and the creation of the United States. Readings and other course materials invite students to investigate the eara from many vantage points and analyze the varied and contested meanings of the Revolutionary era to women and men from Africa, the Americas, and Europe. (Many people are familiar with the famous phrase in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” but what did that mean?) How did the Revolutionary era impact the lives of women? Why did so many Native Americans and African Americans fight against the American colonists? What role did the institution of slavery play in the creation of the United States? By exploring these questions, students develop a more nuanced understanding of the competing interests in colonial American during the Revolutionary era and examine how the creation of the United States led to some gaining freedoms, while many others lost them or remained unfree. The course concludes by situating the outcome of the American Revolution in a global historical context and considering the legacy of this era in which an American empire was born. Noel Smyth.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 276 - Democracy in America? Parties, Politics and Grassroots Change, 1828-1912
1 unit(s)
Focusing on the nineteenth-century United States, this course traces political struggles over continental conquest, slavery, industrialization, and nation-building. Key topics include expansion and conflict in the trans-Mississippi West; the rise of the Republican Party and sectional conflict; Emancipation and post-Civil War struggles over the scope and role of government; and struggles that accompanied the emergence of modern corporate capitalism. The course explores relationships among formal politics (parties and elections), public policy, and grassroots movements for change, such as abolitionism, labor, and agrarian protest. Rebecca Edwards.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 278 - Women’s History of Latin America
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 278 and WFQS 278 ) This course explores the history of Latin America by centering women. Beginning with examples in the ancient Americas and continuing through the colonial and national periods, this course explores how the ideas, representations, experiences, and actions of women have shaped Latin American history. Class materials draw from a range of academic, literary, and primary sources, and class discussions cover topics such as: women in Aztec and other ancient societies; “La Malinche” and women of the Conquest; witchcraft and women in colonial religion; Sor Juana, Gabriela Mistral, and women of Latin American literature; women and 20th-c. activism; and indigenous women in Latin America today. Accordingly, this course addresses the questions: what cultural, economic, and political conditions have shaped how women in Latin America experienced the world? How have women had agency in shaping the meaning of Latin America? And what is at stake for Latin American women today in debates over issues such as economic development, migration, and human rights? Daniel Mendiola.
Two 75 minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 279 - The Viet Nam War
1 unit(s)
An examination of the origins, course, and impact of America’s involvement in Viet Nam, emphasizing the evolution of American diplomacy, the formulation of military strategy, the domestic impact of the war, and the perspective of Vietnamese revolutionaries. Robert Brigham.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
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HIST 286 - History of the American Family Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course examines the history of the American family from the Early Republic to the turn of the twenty-first century. The family has had a unique grip on the American political imagination, informing almost every aspect of everyday life, from the architecture of the home to the extension of citizenship. Drawing from legal, cultural, and economic history, we explore how ideas about marriage, gender, sexuality, and love transformed over time. We analyze the family both as a site of care and as a unit of governance, covering topics such as romantic friendships, settler colonialism and the imposition of the nuclear family, race and marriage law, and the feminist movement(s). Readings include diaries, legal cases, cookbooks, and short works of fiction. Isobel Plowright.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 290 - Community-Engaged Learning Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Individual or group field projects, especially in local, state, or federal history. May be taken either semester or in summer. The Department.
Prerequisite(s): An appropriate course in the department.
Corequisite(s): An appropriate course in the department.
Permission required.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: INT -
HIST 298 - Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission required.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: OTH
History: III. Advanced
Prerequisite for advanced courses is ordinarily 2 units of 200-level work in history, or by permission of the instructor. Specific prerequisites assume the general prerequisite. -
HIST 300 - Thesis Preparation: Sources, Methods, and Interpretations Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
As a yearlong independent research project, a senior history thesis can be an exhilarating but also challenging experience. Many questions must be considered: How do I clearly define my research question? How do I locate my work within the existing scholarship in my field? Where are the most relevant sources? How do I organize and interpret the information that I have uncovered? This seminar provides the opportunity for students to grapple with these questions and to prepare for writing their senior history thesis. Through a common set of readings and workshops, students develop clear research ideas and questions, locate necessary sources, become acquainted with different historical methods, and discuss strategies for different stages of the process. The seminar also provides a community in which students share their experiences, approaches, and ideas about researching and writing their theses. The Department.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
Yearlong course HIST 300-301 .
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 301 - Senior Thesis Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This 1-unit course, which builds on the work done in HIST 300 , culminates in the completion and submission of a thesis that is approximately 10,000 words long. The Department.
Yearlong course HIST 300 -301.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: INT -
HIST 302 - Senior Thesis
1 unit(s)
This 1-unit course, which builds on the work done in HIST 300 , culminates in the completion and submission of a thesis that is approximately 10,000 words long. The Department.
Same as HIST 301 , for students who are completing the thesis out of cycle. Please note that 302 cannot be taken simultaneously with HIST 300 .
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: INT -
HIST 303 - Senior Thesis
1 unit(s)
This 1-unit course, which builds on the work done in HIST 300 , culminates in the completion and submission of a thesis that is approximately 10,000 words long. Same as HIST 301 for students who are completing the thesis in one semester. Please note that 303 is taken simultaneously with HIST 300 . Rebecca Edwards.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: INT -
HIST 310 - Mao’s China in the World: War, Science and Legitimacy
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 310 ) This class examines the history of China’s recent past from 1949 to the present, with an emphasis on the relationship between China and the world. We explore the strategies of Mao Zedong and his comrades in winning and consolidating power, the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party in gaining global legitimacy for the People’s Republic of China vis-à-vis the Republic of China in Taiwan, the critical role of science, medicine, and technology in the Chinese economy and society, and the ways in which gender, class, and race underpinned the revolutionary experiences of the Chinese. This class also pays particular attention to Mao’s legacies on China and the world. Upon completion of the course, students gain the tools to critically examine the growth of contemporary China in the context of its dynamic past.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25
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HIST 312 - Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese Diaspora
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 312 ) This seminar explores how members of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese diaspora maneuvered challenges of empire, colonialism, war, and revolution to thrive economically in the 19th and 20th centuries. This class also contextualizes the recent protests around the world against China’s interventions into Taiwan and Hong Kong’s autonomy within the longer histories of Taiwan and Hong Kong’s interaction with the Dutch, Japanese, and British empires, Chinese nationalism, and America’s Cold War interests. It also examines how the Chinese diaspora have negotiated issues of identities, healthcare, and migration in their quest for autonomy.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 314 - History of Asian American Social Movements
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 314 and ASIA 314 ) This seminar uses primary and secondary sources to explore the history of social movements by and for Asian Americans. After brief discussion of early forms of resistance and organizing, the course focuses primarily on social movements during and after the “Asian American movement” arose in the long 1960’s. Topics include struggles for ethnic studies. Yellow Power and recognition for “Brown Asians,” antiwar, Redress (reparations for Japanese American WWII incarceration), fair working conditions, Asian American feminisms, gay marriage, environmental justice, and anti-Asian violence and #StopAsianHate. Throughout the course, we ground Asian American activists and their ideas in their transnational dimensions,including Third World Liberation and anticolonial ideaologies, and we explore their solidarities with other liberation movements such as Civil Rights, Black Power, and Indigenous sovereignty. For the final project, students work together to create our own archive and interpreation of Asian American student activism at Vassar College. Ashanti Shih.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 315 - Crusading and the Holy Land (1095-1204) Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
The First Crusade, called in 1095 by Pope Urban II, heralded profound changes in medieval society. The Crusades affected faith and war for Muslims, Christians, and Jews, and redefined relations in the Mediterranean. Warfare and colonization, however, also fostered productive contacts and cultural exchanges between Europe and Asia with increased trade and travel. Back in Europe it led to new theories of government, papal power, and holy war; a growth in epic poetry and romance; new styles of castle and church building; and increased urbanization. This course focuses on the first century of crusading and the establishment of Latin rule in the Holy Land. It critically engages primary sources written by Franks, Arabs, Jews, and Byzantines, as well as cutting-edge scholarship on the Crusade Era. Nancy Bisaha.
Recommended: HIST 116 or HIST 117 .
One 2-hour period.
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HIST 316 - Constantinople/Istanbul: 1453
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 316 ) This seminar examines a turning point in history-the end of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of the Ottoman Empire. The focus is the siege of Constantinople as seen in primary accounts and modem studies. The course also looks closely at culture and society in late Byzantium and the early Ottoman Empire. Specific topics include the post-1453 Greek refugee community, the transformation of Constantinople into Istanbul, and the role of Western European powers and the papacy as allies and antagonists of both empires. Nancy Bisaha.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 319 - Military, War and Society
1 unit(s)
The US military does not send itself to war. Choices about war and peace are made by civilians, and those decisions have shaped, and been shaped by, American society and culture. In this seminar, we consider the ways social and cultural processes have framed US military engagements in the 20th and 21st centuries and the ways wars and militarization have shaped modern American society and culture. Robert Brigham.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 322 - Dangerous Liaisons, Dangerous Selves
1 unit(s)
The intensive focuses on Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a novel that was notorious when it came out in 1782 and still appeals today in film such as Dangerous Liaisons and Cruel Intentions. We use the technique of “slow reading” to allow for careful analysis and thought while also bringing out the pleasure of reading. The connections between reading and the self was an object of great speculation and anxiety in the eighteenth century, when writers and the public were obsessed with interiority and subjecthood.The course explores how Les Liaisons Dangereuses explored multiple, sometimes conflicting selves, such as love and trauma, agency and authenticity, transgression and tradition. In addition to reading the novel (in translation), we examine primary and theoretical sources to contextualize the self. Students are expected to develop a creative final project on the articulation of selfhood. Sumita Choudhury.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: INT -
HIST 326 - Machiavelli: Power and Politics
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 326 ) This course examines the life and writings of one of the most fascinating and misunderstood thinkers of the early modern era. By situating Machiavelli (1469-1527) against the backdrop of his times, we gain insight into the Florentine Republic, Medici rule, the papacy, and devastating invasions of Italy by French, Spanish, and German armies. We also explore cultural movements like the study of antiquity by humanists and the rise of vernacular writing and bold new forms of popular expression and political discourse. Several of Machiavelli’s works are read, including his letters and plays, The Prince, The Discourses, The Art of War, and The Florentine Histories, as well as some of the major modern interpretations of Machiavelli in historiography and political thought. Nancy Bisaha.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 336 - Black Ecologies
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 336 , AMST 336 , ENST 336 , and WFQS 336 ) This seminar operates on the notion that structural racism and environmental degradation are historically related–and that Black Americans have confronted the two together. Over the course of the semester, we interrogate how different Black activists have done so, from the Antebellum period to the present day. We consider how enslaved people drew from nature in their resistance to slavery, as well as the role of pollution, environmental disasters, and gentrification in twentieth-century organizing. Toward the end of the course, we explore the concepts of environmental justice and ecofeminism. Allison Puglisi.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 337 - The Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany
1 unit(s)
This course explores the Third Reich by locating it within the peculiar nature of German political culture resulting from late unification and rapid industrialization. Readings explore how and why the Nazis emerged as a mass party during the troubled Weimar years. The years between 1933 and 1945 are treated by focusing on Nazi domestic, foreign, and racial policies. Maria Höhn.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
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HIST 340 - Dave the Potter
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 340 and AMST 340 ) Born enslaved around 1800 in South Carolina, David Drake was a poet and potter who–despite extreme restrictions on enslaved Africans’ literacy–learned to read and write. Tasked with making large ceramic jugs for his enslavers, Dave inscribed each with a short poem and signed his name. In some of these inscriptions, he comments on the pots’ shape and size; in others, he rebukes slavery and white supremacy. In recent years, Dave’s work has garnered growing attention: it has been featured in academic research, museum exhibits, and even a picture book for children. In this intensive, students explore the scholarly debates surrounding Dave the Potter and apply the skill of close reading to his pieces. Each student performs a ceramic art project that draws on the themes of the course: slavery, abolition, and diaspora. In the process, we discuss the ethical stakes of recovering artistic expression and resistance among the enslaved. Allison Puglisi.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: INT -
HIST 351 - Problems in U.S. Foreign Policy
1 unit(s)
Using historical case studies, this seminar examines some of the major foreign affairs dilemmas U.S. policy makers have faced since 1945. Major topics include: containment; modernization; nation building; limited war; détente; human rights and humanitarian intervention; and democracy promotion. Robert Brigham.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 354 - History and the Politics of Grief
1 unit(s)
(Same as GNCS 354 ) How is the recognition of grief linked with modern ideals of rights and citizenship? In this intensive, students examine the mourning rituals—funerals, cemeteries, dress, postmortem photographs, relics, and jewelry—that proliferated and took on new meanings in nineteenth-century Britain, marking new ways of embodying and visualizing grief. Along with literary and personal expressions of loss, we explore how public commemorations of the dead gained political value in movements and moments such as factory regulation, abolition of slavery, urban reform, child welfare, and the First World War. We begin the semester with discussion of common readings and analysis of material objects from Vassar’s Loeb Art Center. Students then undertake supervised work on independent research projects (which may explore connections between the long nineteenth-century and present-day mourning practices), peer reviews, and presentations. Lydia Murdoch.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: INT -
HIST 355 - Childhood and Children in Nineteenth-Century Britain Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as GNCS 355 and WFQS 355 ) This course examines both the social constructions of childhood and the lived experiences of children in imperial and domestic Britain during the long nineteenth century. We analyze new ideals of childhood arising at the beginning of this period and explore how these ideals—of childhood innocence and dependence, for example—applied to the experiences of actual children in vastly different ways. Thus, a main theme of the course is how age categories intersect with racial, class, gender, and national identities. Topics include the relationships between children and adults, child labor, sexuality, gender, education, welfare, and the ways in which ideals of childhood upheld imperialism. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of childhood; we examine a variety of primary sources ranging from parliamentary reports and memoirs to photographs and children’s literature. Lydia Murdoch.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 357 - The First World War
1 unit(s)
For many, the First World War marks the beginning of the modern age. After examining the debate about the conflict’s causes, this seminar takes the social and cultural history of the war as its subject. Topics include the methods of mechanized trench warfare, the soldiers’ experience, the effects of the total war on the home front, and the memory of the Great War in film and literature. The primary focus is on European combatants, but we also explore the role of colonial troops and the impact of the war on European empires. Lydia Murdoch.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 363 - Bordering the Americas
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 363 ) This course examines the creation and proliferation of national bordering regimes throughout the Americas. Beginning in the late colonial period and continuing to the present, the course evaluates how the meanings and practices of borders have changed over time, as well as how the borders have impacted the lives and livelihoods of real people. Class materials draw from a range of academic, literary, and primary sources, and class discussions will cover topics such as: the role of borders and migration in creating nation states; the role of Asian exclusion in changing the meaning of borders throughout the Americas; the evolution of migration enforcement tactics the targeting of asylum seekers; migrant caravans and the history of forced migration in Central America; grass roots efforts at protecting migrants; and alternative approaches to borders based on free migration and universal rights. Accordingly, this course addresses the questions: why has constraining migration come to be one of the most salient meanings of borders today? How has this affected people? How have people in different places and times contested borders? And what is at stake in how we construct borders today? Daniel Mendiola.
Two 2-hour periods.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 366 - Transatlantic Encounters: Indigenous Histories of the Gulf South and the Greater Caribbean
1 unit(s)
The course is focused on Indigenous history in the Gulf South and the Greater Caribbean from 1492 to the early nineteenth century. Students analyze the ways in which the history of Indigenous peoples on Caribbean islands intersected and overlapped with the history of Native peoples in nearby coastal areas across the Americas. By investigating multiple sites of contact with Europeans, from Florida to Louisiana to New Spain (Mexico) to the Guianas, the course analyzes the ways in which European colonization and slave raiding disrupted Indigenous societies across the region and how many Indigenous peoples resisted and survived the ordeal. Reading scholarly and primary sources to better understand the multitudinous responses of Indigenous individuals and polities to centuries of European colonization, the course analyzes how Native peoples adapted to European colonization by forming new networks and polities, sometimes across vast distances. The course also investigates the creation of Afro-Indigenous communities across the region. Readings for the course include scholarship on methodological and ethical issues pertaining to research and writing about Native American history and the importance of including Native voices in Indigenous histories is highlighted. Noel Smyth.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 374 - The African Diaspora
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 374 ) This seminar investigates the social origins, philosophical and cultural ideas, and the political forms of Pan-Africanism from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It explores how disaffection and resistance against slavery, racism and colonial domination in the Americas, Caribbean, Europe, and Africa led to the development of a global movement for the emancipation of peoples of African descent from 1900 onwards. The seminar examines the different ideological, cultural, and organizational manifestations of Pan-Africanism as well as the scholarly debates on development of the movement. Readings include the ideas and works of Edward Blyden, Alexander Crummell, W. E. B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, Amy Garvey, C.L.R. James, and Kwame Nkmmah. Ismail Rashid.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instrcutor.
One 2 hour meeting
Not offered in 2024/25.
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HIST 375 - Nineteeth-Century America at War
1 unit(s)
This course explores three military initiatives in the nineteenth-century United States and interconnections among them: violent dispossession of Native peoples between the 1830s and the 1890s; the U.S.-Mexico War; and Confederate secession and the Civil War. We consider questions such as: What factors drove each conflict? Who opposed these military operations and why? What results did the victors anticipate, and what outcomes actually unfolded? Who did the U.S. government seek to “Reconstruct” in peacetime? What were the long-term political, social, and cultural legacies, and how was each conflict remembered and mythologized? We also consider the grim toll of grief and suffering wrought by violence, as well as participants’ and observers’ responses. Readings include eyewitness accounts, works of fiction, films, and historical scholarship. Rebecca Edwards.
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 379 - War and Adoption
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 379 and ASIA 379 ) This intensive seeks to explore the links between war and adoption in Asia and the US. The consequences of US wars in Asia and the Pacific have been multifaceted and reverberating for adoptees through the formation of new families, institutions, and subjectivities-topics of which we are just beginning to study and theorize. Yet adoptees are more than their conditions of adoption. Through this intensive, we analyze the historical and legal origins of transnational adoption, the relationships between veteran fathers and first mothers, state, religious and civic institutions that facilitated adoptions, as well as the individual lives of adoptees. In particular, we aim to highlight the diversity of adoptee narratives through historical monographs, memoirs, films, photography, graphic novels, comics, oral histories, and performances. It will take a multidisciplinary historical approach to understanding the militarized aspects of adoption in the US by honing in on the interstitial figures that emerge out of war: the orphan, waifs and mascots, the adoptee, American GI fathers, social workers, Asian first/birthmothers. Robert Brigham.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: INT -
HIST 380 - Ukraine/Russia: War and Peace
1 unit(s)
This course explores the history of relations between Ukrainians and Russians, with a special focus on historical and contemporary issues that are heavily affected by misinformation. We consider periods of conflict as well as peaceful eras and the prospects for human rights and building a safe future. Michaela Pohl.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 381 - History of Abolitionism Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course follows the trajectory of the movement ot abolish slavery in the United States from the American Revolution to the end of the American Civil War. We follow the career of Samuel Ringgold Ward, who escaped slavery in Maryland and become a prominent abolitionist, newspaper editor, and labor leader. His story is directly enmeshed in the Hudson Valley, where he was a founding member of the Poughkeepsie Anti-Slavery Society at the First Congressional Church. Some of the topics we cover include the transnational networks that formed the abolitionist movement, the Underground Railroad, the spiritual, moral, and economic critiques of slavery, and the relationship between black and white abolitionists. We read documents that were deeply implicated in the struggle against slavery, including abolitionist pamphlets, testimonies by the enslaved, newspaper reports, and poetry. Isobel Plowright.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 382 - Marie-Antoinette Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as WFQS 382 ) More than 200 years after her death, Marie-Antoinette continues to be an object of fascination because of her supposed excesses and her death at the guillotine. For her contemporaries, Marie-Antoinette often symbolized all that was wrong in French body politic. Through the life of Marie-Antoinette, we investigate the changing political and cultural landscape of eighteenth-century France including the French Revolution. Topics include women and power, political scandal and public opinion, fashion and self-representation, motherhood and domesticity, and revolution and gender iconography. Throughout the course, we explore the changing nature of the biographical narrative. The course also considers the legacy of Marie Antoinette as martyr and fetish object in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and her continuing relevance today. Sumita Choudhury.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 383 - Stereotypes and Cultural Ideals in America Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course explores the origins and implications of specific stereotypes, aspirational images, and cultural ideals in America, from the time of slavery through the twenty-first century. We analyze how stereotypes and aspirational images develop understandings of race, gender, class and sexuality and compare images to see how they create boundaries between social categories as well as influence personal and cultural identities. We focus on popular culture using newspapers, magazines, literature, art, movies, television, and material objects to investigate the formation of these images and to track the persistence of the images. For example, we track the development of the “Mammy” stereotype from its beginnings in slavery through to the recent controversy over “Aunt Jamima.” We interrogate the purpose and function of aspirational images and stereotypes as we look at their usage in Reconstruction, Jim Crow, women’s rights movements, the Roaring Twenties, post WWII prosperity, and the conservative ascendance among other time periods. Amanda Brennan.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 385 - Colonialism, Nationalism, and Social Identities in the Modern Middle East Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course explores how social sciences, colonialism, and nationalism have shaped identities in the modern Middle East. The course begins with a brief survey of older, foundational scholarship on “The Orient” in order to map out how scholars understood the non-European world, including regions later labeled “The Middle East.” We then discuss how these European mythologies, as well as imperial interventions, international institutions, and post-colonial nationalisms nurtured new differences, leading to violence along sectarian, racial, ethnic, or national lines. We focus particularly on the question of how Middle Eastern and North African societies have come to be seen as divided between religious “minorities” and “majorities.” Joshua Schreier.
Recommended: HIST 174 or HIST 214 or HIST 255 .
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 386 - Central Asia and the Caucasus: Nation Building and Human Rights Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as INTL 386 ) The Muslim regions between Russia and China are becoming more populated, prosperous, and connected. The Caspian Sea region is booming with new oil and gas wealth. A wave of democracy movements swept newly independent states but oligarchs and long-term autocratic presidents dominate politics and business. An Islamic revival after the fall of communism has brought a crisis of political Islam, including problems like terrorism, re-veiling campaigns, and bride-kidnappings. Chechnya and the North Caucasus became magnets for violence, while Tatarstan has seen a quiet renaissance of liberal Russian Islam. This cross-listed seminar explores nation building, human rights, and spiritual life in Central Asia and the Caucasus from a historical perspective. Topics include the legacies of Mongol and Tatar power verticals, the impact of communism on Central Asia, the war in Chechnya and its effect on human rights in the region, the history of Kazakhstan’s new capital, Astana, and daily life and politics since independence in 1991. Michaela Pohl.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 391 - Independent Study - Thesis Preparation and Methodology Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
1 unit(s)
As a yearlong independent research project, a senior history thesis can be an exhilarating but also challenging experience. Many questions must be considered: How do I clearly define my research question? How do I locate my work within the existing scholarship in my field? Where are the most relevant sources? How do I organize and interpret the information that I have uncovered? This seminar provides the opportunity for students to grapple with these questions and to prepare for writing their senior history thesis. Students develop clear research ideas and questions, locate necessary sources, become acquainted with different historical methods, and discuss strategies for different stages of the process.
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: CLS -
HIST 392 - Independent Study - Senior Thesis Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
1 unit(s)
This 1-unit course, which builds on the work done in HIST 391 , culminates in the completion and submission of a thesis that is approximately 10,000 words long.
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: OTH -
HIST 399 - Senior Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission required.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: OTH
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