History (HISTORY)

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2022, Fall 2020
History 1 introduces students to core dynamics of global history. Traversing the experience of human societies from earliest origins to the complex, chaotic, and cacophonous twenty-first century, the course highlights recurrent themes including the origins and development of political order; the evolution of interstate (or international) relations; and the historical advance of globalization. From this vast panorama, students will acquire a broad, even foundational, perspective on the human past and new insight into transcendent problems in the human experience.
Global History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024
This course focuses on the history of global interaction, with a particular emphasis on the relationships between states and societies. Though it begins with a brief exploration of antiquity, it emphasizes world developments since the 15th century. The purpose of the course is to gain a better understanding of the rise and decline of states, empires, and international trading systems. Taking a panoramic view of the last 500 years, it explores the ways in which disparate places came closer together, even while it seeks to explain how those places maintained their own trajectories in the face of outside intervention.
Survey of World History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Reading and composition courses based upon primary historical documents and secondary historical scholarship. These courses provide an introduction to core issues in the interpretation of historical texts and introduce students to the distinctive ways of reading primary and secondary sources. Courses focus on specific historical topics but address general issues of how historians read and write. Satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement.
Reading and Composition in History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2017, Fall 2014
This lower-division lecture course introduces students to the study of history in multiple periods and regions. It will typically be co-taught by faculty members with different geographical and chronological expertise and will center around a particular theme, such as cities, food cultures, or war and society. No prior course-work in the history of any particular part of the world will be expected.
Comparative World History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2015
A general introduction to the study of history, this course focuses on Byzantium and the Islamic world, two medieval successors to the Roman empire in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. This course has three aims: to provide an outline of events that transpired in this area from the 4th-15th centuries; to explain how a modern historian can approach medieval sources in order to reconstruct various aspects of the past; and to discuss the commonalities of pre-industrial societies, and how lessons learnt in this class can be applied to the study of other time periods and geographic locations.
Islamic and Eastern Roman History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course examines the history of the ancient Mediterranean world, from the rise of states and complex societies c. 3000 BCE to the reign of the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine, in the fourth century CE. The first part of the course introduces students to the main regions and historical periods of the wider Mediterranean basin. The second part of the course proceeds thematically and considers a wide range of topics, including demography, mobility, economy, political organization, rulership, warfare, social hierarchy, sex and gender, slavery, revolution and resistance, religion and beliefs, and cultural production. The course concludes with a set of comparative perspectives, ancient and modern.
The Ancient Mediterranean World: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course surveys medieval European history from Constantine's conversion to Christianity in 310 to 1400, emphasizing the creativity of the new peoples populating Europe in adapting the heritage of the Roman world and the role of economic change in transforming European societies after the millennium. Topics include the development of kingship and states, courtly literary and material cultures, economic change, the environment, and religious movements. Discussion sections will explore medieval sources—heroic epics, biographies of kings and saints, letters and chronicles, documents, social satires, and material artifacts—while lectures narrate the changes transforming Europe over the Middle Ages in conversation with our contemporary world.
Medieval Europe: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course is an introduction to European history from around 1500 to the present. The central questions that it addresses are how and why Europe—a small, relatively poor, and politically fragmented place—became the motor of globalization and a world civilization in its own right. Put differently, how did "western" become an adjective that, for better and often for worse, stands in place of "modern".
European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
The history of China from its beginnings to the destruction of the Song Dynasty by the Mongols in the 13th century. Topics to be covered include the emergence of Chinese civilization, the Chinese language, early rhetoric and philosophy, the creation of the first empire, law, Buddhism and religious Taoism, the socioeconomic revolution of the 10th to 12th centuries, identities (male and female, Chinese and "barbarian"), lyric poetry, and painting and calligraphy.
History of China: Origins to the Mongol Conquest: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This is an introduction to Chinese history from the 13th through the 20th centuries -- from the Mongols and Khubilai Khan's conquest of southern China to the amazing turnaround following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the opening of the era of reform that has led to China's emergence as a major economic and strategic power today. The course assumes no prior knowledge of Chinese history.
Introduction to Chinese History: From the Mongols to Post-Mao China: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2023
This course is an introduction to the history of the United States from the beginning of the European colonization of North America to the end of the Civil War. It is also an introduction to the ways historians look at the past and think about evidence. There are two main themes: one is to understand the origin of the "groups" we call European-Americans, Native-Americans, and African-Americans; the second, is to understand how democratic political institutions emerged in the United States in this period in the context of an economy that depended on slave labor and violent land acquisition.
Introduction to the History of the United States: The United States from Settlement to Civil War: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Summer 2024 8 Week Session, Spring 2024
What does it mean to be American? Whatever your answer is to this question, chances are it is deeply connected to the themes and events we will discuss in this class. Here we will track America's rise to global power, the fate of freedom in a post-Emancipation political setting, and the changing boundaries of nation, citizenship, and community. We will use landmark events to sharpen our themes, but we will also take care to analyze the equally important (and shifting) patterns of where and how Americans lived, worked, and played.
Introduction to the History of the United States: The United States from Civil War to Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This course covers the history of Latin America from the time of Columbus to around 1870. It thus reckons with almost four centuries of encounter, colonization, accommodation, and struggle that frame the ways that Latin America was becoming Latin American. Lectures and a mix of secondary and primary source readings and images produced during the colonial period serve as points of entry for discussion in section meetings.
Latin American History: Becoming Latin America, 1492 to 1824: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This introductory course surveys the history of modern Latin America from independence to the present, with a strong emphasis on the twentieth century. Our focus will be on broad transfomations in politics, place, identity, and work.
Latin American History: Modern Latin America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
The history of Africa is extraordinarily complex and rich in both tragedy and achievement. In this course, important issues in African history will be introduced including the following: how and why complex societies formed in Africa; the technological responses of different Africans to environmental changes; how various cultures, religions, and state ideologies helped to organize African social and political life; the effects of the trade in enslaved Africans on African social and political structures; the impact of European colonial rule on the continent; the political economy of post-colonial Africa; and some of the ways in which modern Africans have experienced the enormous transformations.
African History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2019
South Asia is often imagined as exceptional and timeless. Home of many religions, over thousands of years it has seen dozens of dynasties ruling diverse peoples speaking scores of languages and worshiping both many gods and the One. This course offers a rapid jaunt through South Asia’s historical contradictions: from the sublime peaks of its myriad philosophies to its brutal postcolonial realities; from its depleted jungles to its teeming cities; from its ageless epics and arts to its obsession with Bollywood and cricket today. Our inquiries are driven by a single question of universal relevance. How do we reconcile this varied land’s millennia of civilization with its fractured present?
Introduction to the Civilizations and Cultures of South Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2020
This course takes a panoramic view of the long sweep of Indian history up to the mid eighteenth century. Beginning with the earliest signs of settled civilization, we will examine the growth of empires and urban societies in the subcontinent, and will supplement our understanding of political history with close attention to literary and aesthetic artifacts that reveal the richness and diversity of these cultures. Areas of focus will include links to the Hellenic world and the development of science, religion, and philosophy in the Indo-Greek world, the Delhi Sultanate in North India and the dynasties of the South, the development of new religious traditions and hybrid political formations, and the arrival of Vasco da Gama and Babur.
The Wonder That Was India: Politics, Culture, and Philosophy in Premodern South Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course will cover the history of the "Middle East" as a historical, geographic, political, and cultural category. It will be framed by the historical construction of the category in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, then reach back to the advent of Islam in the seventh century CE and forward to the present. Themes will include the Middle East in the Mediterranean world, religion and politics, interconfessional relationships and conflicts, and the changing relationships to Europe, Asia, and Africa over the centuries.
The Middle East: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course is a broad introductory survey of the history of Southeast Asia, covering prehistory, the classical era, the early modern era, the colonial era and the postcolonial era. The central focus will be on political developments but it will also explore change over time with regard to economy, society and culture. To capture Southeast Asia’s profound diversity, it will address both regional phenomena (i.e. a regional economy, engagements with China and the Chinese, European colonialism, World War II, Japanese occupation, decolonization and the Cold War) and local political narratives. For the modern era, it covers the political narratives of the region’s five biggest countries: Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, Siam, and Vietnam.
Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to the Cold War: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Spring 2022
A brisk introduction to the nearly two millennia of recorded Japanese history. As a survey, the course gives attention to broad themes and problems in Japan's political, social, and cultural/intellectual history. Topics include the dialectic of national and local identities in shaping Japanese politics, Japan's interaction with the Asian continent and the Western world, and the relation of past to present in modern times.
Introduction to the History of Japan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course introduces students to the history of religion from the earliest written records to the modern world, including the monotheistic traditions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, the Asian traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism, and much else besides. Along the way, we will consider such topics as: the relationship between myth and religion; the ways religions define their boundaries, both to create community and to exclude outsiders; religion as a tool of imperial power, as well as a weapon of emancipation; secularization; the rise of fundamentalism; and the modern relationship of religion and science.


Introduction to the History of Religion: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2021, Fall 2020
The Freshman Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to fifteen freshmen.
Freshman Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Science as we know is the product of a historical process. In this course, we will explore the emergence of its concepts, practices, goals, and cognitive authority by surveying its roots in their social and cultural setting. We will trace the development of conceptions of the natural world from antiquity through the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment and up to the modern age. All the sciences fall within our purview, from their early forms up to today.
Science and Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2022
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower-division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.
Freshman and Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2022
The goal of this course is to foster a critical engagement with humanitarian interventions in Africa. Through this course, we will develop a better understanding of the complexity of humanitarianism and its often-unintended consequences in different parts of Africa. Our approach is not prescriptive in the sense that it provides a course of action or a politics to follow. Instead, we use historical methodology as an analytical tool in evaluating the connections between humanitarianism and Africa over more than two hundred years.
Africa and the Humanitarians: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2021, Fall 2019
This seminar uses the haute couture fashions exhibited in the Met’s 2018 blockbuster exhibit Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination to examine the production of meaning through material culture and the uses of the Middle Ages to engage contemporary issues. After being introduced to the history of fashion and critical questions in clothing and textile studies, students will define and conduct their own research projects using the exhibit catalog as a primary source.
Fashion, the Middle Ages, & the Catholic Imagination: The Heavenly Bodies Exhibit: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2009
Neoliberalism has become a catch-word in social sciences. It is used by scholars from various disciplines and has different meanings. However, usually it is used to indicate some profound change that took place since the 1970s. Some even use it to describe the three decades that have followed the postwar period. In this seminar we will approach neoliberalism from a historical perspective, including the history of neoliberal ideas, neoliberal transformations in a number of selected countries, the 2008-9 economic crisis, the neoliberalization of higher education, and the contentious relationship between neoliberalism and democracy. We will end with an outlook on the future of neoliberalism.
The History of Neoliberalism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2009, Fall 2006
In 2011, Bill Gates and David Christian launched a project for teaching “Big History” at high schools. In their definition, “Big History seeks to understand the integrated history of the Cosmos, Earth, Life, and Humanity, using the best available empirical evidence and scholarly methods.” The vocabulary, concepts, and environmental fears driving the project are distinctly twenty-first century. However, humanity has sought the exact same goals for longer than two millennia already. The course will sample how ancient Greek philosophy and science were used in order to propose practically and morally relevant “Big History” at different times and places: Graeco-Roman antiquity, the Christian and Muslim Middle Ages, and the modern period.
Big History as Astronomy, Astrology, and Philosophy: From Antiquity to the Big Bang: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2009, Fall 2005, Fall 2004
A paradox lies at the heart of our visions of present-day South Asia: on the one hand, the region has witnessed explosive economic growth, leading some to speak of the next hundred years as an ‘Asian Century’. On the other hand, the countries of the region remain beset by enormous challenges, from the shadow of terrorism, the threat of nuclear war, the increasingly rapid slide into authoritarianism, the growth of religious violence and fundamentalism, resource scarcity and the looming environmental catastrophe – to name only a few. This course will explore this paradox through works of reportage, fiction and contemporary history from across the Indian subcontinent today.
Third World Problems: Contemporary South Asia in Historic Perspective: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2010, Spring 2005
This course covers the history of Scandinavian political society from the Viking invasions to the formation of kingdoms. After examining the attacks on England and the European Continent, discussion turns to Viking mythology, the colonization of the North Atlantic (including Vinland), and Icelandic feuding. A fair amount of attention will be devoted to archaeological excavations. The course also works with Norse mythologies, and the ways the history of early Scandinavian kings was grafted into those mythologies. We will end with the beginnings of the Scandinavian kingdoms in the 13th century. Readings are both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources include histories, chronicles, Eddic poetry, sagas, and law codes.

Civilizing the Vikings: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2008, Spring 2005
The Eastern Mediterranean, like the larger Mediterranean world of which it is a part, has been a fascinating laboratory of unity and diversity—geographic, economic, social, political, and cultural—since Roman antiquity. In this course we look at the unity and diversity of culture in the region as related to population movements over the last two centuries. After considering historical and anthropological conceptions of culture, we consider the political developments, economic conditions, and violent conflicts that precipitated migration, both within the region and abroad.
Culture and Migration in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1800-2000: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2010, Spring 2006
Child labor in Africa is a complex phenomenon that defies simple analysis or solution. It is claimed that about one third of all children under 14 years of age, are "economically active" This seminar seeks to examine diverse categories of child labor spawned by specific socio-cultural, religious, economic, and political contexts riddled with extreme poverty, and a hostile global environment. Sample topics to be explored include: definitions of childhood and child labor; traditional constructions of children's work; colonialism, globalization and redefinition of children's work; gender and child labor; child abductions, child soldiers; sex slavery; and talibes.
Child Labor in Africa: A Historical Perspective: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Fall 2016, Fall 2013
“Feminist history” is a term that encompasses a wide and rich range of histories of ideas, issues, movements, and contemporary controversies. In this seminar we will examine the history of feminist movements, anthropological descriptions of South Asian women’s lives and cultures, political tracts on contemporary issues with older genealogies, and historical/anthropological monographs dealing with specific scandals associated with women’s bodies, such as dowry murders, or honor killings. The seminar will progress thematically rather than geographically, and will address issues specific to the lives of women in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, from the early modern period through partition, and the post-nationalist milieu.
Gender and the Politics of Feminism in South Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2007, Spring 2002
This course is concerned broadly with the with the long history of the relationship between Hinduism and Islam in the Indian subcontinent over the last millennium. Using a variety of readings from the ancient past and the contemporary present, we will relationship between the categories of ‘religion’ and ‘politics’; the practices of violence which lie at their intersection; and their evolving forms in South Asia today. Topics explored include the establishment and historical development of Islamic rule in India; the effects of colonialism; the partition of 1947 and the post-colonial present. No prior study of Indian history is required.
Hindu/Muslim: Religion, Politics, and Violence in a Millennium of Indian History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2018, Spring 2007
This seminar explores the history of Shanghai as a place of interaction between China and the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Shanghai’s opening to foreign trade and residence after 1842 sparked its rapid growth into China’s largest metropolis, and one of the great cities of the world, less than a century later. We will focus on how the accelerating flow of people, goods, and ideas through Shanghai from across the world and throughout China dramatically transformed the material and mental landscape of the metropolis, which in turn shaped the lives and identities of the many different groups of residents who crowded into its expanding borders.
Shanghai: Between China and the World: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2004, Spring 2003
This class will examine different aspects of warfare from the Germanic invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries through the Hundred Years War of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. We will also discuss the Viking invasions (especially in England), the Third Crusade, weaponry, army recruitment and size, castle construction, and siege weaponry and tactics. Special attention will be given both to the details of logistics and warfare’s broader social and political contexts, as well as the role of warfare in the development of states.
Warfare in the Middle Ages: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2019, Spring 2007
Ancient and medieval historians paid little attention to women. When they did, it was either to praise them lavishly or disparage them irredeemably. Their impoverished view of women’s lives stands in stark contrast to the material available from other sources, both textual and artistic. In this class we shall consider the gamut of women’s experiences, such as social, religious and gender roles, economic and legal rights, faith, passions, and religious responsibilities. We will read about Greek priestesses and Christian martyrs, wives and queens, poets and benefactors. This class will be organized chronologically and will cover select topics from ancient Greece, Rome, and early Byzantium.
Well-Behaved Women Making History: Accessing Women's Lives from the Ancient Sources: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Sophomore seminars are small interactive courses offered by faculty members in departments all across the campus. Sophomore seminars offer opportunity for close, regular intellectual contact between faculty members and students in the crucial second year. The topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 sophomores.
Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2018, Spring 2017
In this connector course, we will explore how historical data becomes historical evidence and how recent technological advances affect long-established practices, such as close attention to historical context and contingency. Will the advent of fast computing and big data make history “count” more or lead to unprecedented insights into the study of change over time? During our weekly discussions, we will apply what we learn in lectures and labs to the analysis of selected historical sources and get an understanding of constructing historical datasets. We will also consider scholarly debates over quantitative evidence and historical argument.
How Does History Count?: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Fall 2019, Spring 2019
Lectures and small group discussion focusing on topics of interest that vary from semester to semester. Grading based on discussion and written work.
Directed Group Study for Lower Division Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Berkeley Connect is a mentoring program, offered through various academic departments, that helps students build intellectual community. Over the course of a semester, enrolled students participate in regular small-group discussions facilitated by a graduate student mentor (following a faculty-directed curriculum), meet with their graduate student mentor for one-on-one academic advising, attend lectures and panel discussions featuring department faculty and alumni, and go on field trips to campus resources. Students are not required to be declared majors in order to participate.
Berkeley Connect: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.
Special Topics in the History of the United States: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.
Special Topics in Ancient History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.

Special Topics in European History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.
Special Topics in Medieval History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.

Special Topics in the History of the United States: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.
Special Topics in Latin American History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.

Special Topics in Asian History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2014, Spring 2014
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.
Special Topics in African History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Designed primarily to permit the instructors to deal with a topic with which they are especially concerned, usually more restricted than the subject matter of a regular lecture course. A combination of informal lectures and discussions, term papers, and examinations. Instructors and subject to vary. Consult department website during pre-enrollment week each semester for topic.
Special Topics in Legal History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.
Special Topics in the History of the Middle East: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2021 Second 6 Week Session
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.
Special Topics in History: Short Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024, Summer 2024 10 Week Session, Summer 2023
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.
Special Topics in History: Study Abroad: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2023
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.
Special Topics in the History of Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2020, Fall 2019
This course is a parallel course to History 100S: Special Topics in the History of Science, intended for students interested in teaching elementary or secondary school science and math. Students in the "T" course will attend the regular History 100S lectures and a special section; this section will focus on techniques, skills, and perspectives necessary to apply the history of science in the juvenile and adolescent science classroom, including pedagogy, devising lesson plans for their classrooms, finding reliable historical information, and writing.
Special Topics in the History of Science (CalTeach): Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.
Special Topics in Comparative History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Designed primarily to permit the instructors to deal with a topic with which they are especially concerned, usually more restricted than the subject matter of a regular lecture course. A combination of informal lectures and discussions, term papers, and examinations. Instructors and subject to vary. Consult department website during pre-enrollment week each semester for topic. Satisfies the premodern requirement for the History major.
Special Topics in Comparative History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 1982, Spring 1975, 1975
Individual research projects carried out in seminar sections in various historical fields resulting in a lengthy paper, with readings and discussions on general problems of historical inquiry. In addition to regular class meetings, individual consultations with the instructor, research, and preparation totaling ten to twelve hours per week are required.
Seminar in Historical Research and Writing for History Majors: Semester one of two-semester option: Read More [+]

Terms offered: 1983, Spring 1975
Individual research projects carried out in seminar sections in various historical fields resulting in a lengthy paper, with readings and discussions on general problems of historical inquiry. In addition to regular class meetings, individual consultations with the instructor, research, and preparation totaling ten to twelve hours per week are required.
Seminar in Historical Research and Writing for History Majors: Semester two of two-semester option: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
Individual research projects carried out in seminar sections in various historical fields resulting in a lengthy paper, with readings and discussions on general problems of historical inquiry. In addition to regular class meetings, individual consultations with the instructor, research, and preparation totaling ten to twelve hours per week are required.
Seminar in Historical Research and Writing for History Majors: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2021
This seminar is an introduction to some dimension of the history of a nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon selected by the respective instructor. Students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors prioritize critical reading, engaged participation, and focused writing assignments.
Proseminar: Problems in Interpretation in the Several Fields of History: Ancient: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This seminar is an introduction to some dimension of the history of a nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon selected by the respective instructor. Students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors prioritize critical reading, engaged participation, and focused writing assignments.
Proseminar: Problems in Interpretation in the Several Fields of History: Europe: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2015, Fall 2013
Discussion-oriented seminars designed to give students an intimate but rigorous introduction to a historical topic. Requirements vary, but generally prioritize critical reading, engaged participation, and focused writing assignments. For precise schedule of offerings, consult departmental website for topic information which is viewable at http://history.berkeley.edu/courses
Proseminar: Problems in Interpretation in the Several Fields of History: England: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This seminar is an introduction to some dimension of the history of a nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon selected by the respective instructor. Students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors prioritize critical reading, engaged participation, and focused writing assignments.
Proseminar: Problems in Interpretation in the Several Fields of History: United States: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022
This seminar is an introduction to some dimension of the history of a nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon selected by the respective instructor. Students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors prioritize critical reading, engaged participation, and focused writing assignments.
Proseminar: Problems in Interpretation in the Several Fields of History: Latin America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2023
This seminar is an introduction to some dimension of the history of a nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon selected by the respective instructor. Students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors prioritize critical reading, engaged participation, and focused writing assignments.
Proseminar: Problems in Interpretation in the Several Fields of History: Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2022
This seminar is an introduction to some dimension of the history of a nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon selected by the respective instructor. Students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors prioritize critical reading, engaged participation, and focused writing assignments.
Proseminar: Problems in Interpretation in the Several Fields of History: Africa: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
This seminar is an introduction to some dimension of the history of a nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon selected by the respective instructor. Students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors prioritize critical reading, engaged participation, and focused writing assignments.

Proseminar: Problems in Interpretation in the Several Fields of History: Middle East: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2022, Fall 2020
This seminar is an introduction to some dimension of the history of a nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon selected by the respective instructor. Students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors prioritize critical reading, engaged participation, and focused writing assignments.
Proseminar: Problems in Interpretation in the Several Fields of History: History of Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This seminar is an introduction to some dimension of the history of a nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon selected by the respective instructor. Students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors prioritize critical reading, engaged participation, and focused writing assignments.
Proseminar: Problems in Interpretation in the Several Fields of History: Comparative History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
The principal aim of this course is to prepare students to write a capstone/thesis in history (in either the History 102 or 101A/101B seminars). To that end, its goals are (i) to introduce students to the methods and craft of history; (ii) to model approaches to the discipline of history and provide exposure to methods in lecture; and (iii) to provide ample opportunity in discussion sections to practice and hone these methods. The course is offered in fall and spring semesters, and is designed to precede the required 103 and 101/102 seminars.
The Craft of History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2018, Fall 2016
An overview of the history of the Greek world from the Bronze Age to 404 BC. Major themes will include: the ecology of the Mediterranean; development of the polis; colonization; tyranny and democracy; religion; warfare; agriculture and commerce; interstate relations; the Persian Wars; Sparta and the Peloponnesian League; Athens and the Athenian Empire. Most readings will be in (translated) primary sources, including Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and documentary evidence such as laws, treaties, and decrees.
Ancient Greece: Archaic and Classical Greek History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2019, Spring 2018
An overview of the history of the Greek World from the end of the Peloponnesian War to the Battle of Actium, the final stage in the Roman conquest of the Hellenistic World. Major topics will include: Greek-Persian relations in the fourth century; the rise of Macedon under Philip II; the conquests of Alexander the Great; the Hellenistic kingdoms; cultural interactions between Greeks and non-Greeks; Hellenistic economics; and the Roman conquest of the Greek world. Most readings will be in translated primary sources.
Ancient Greece: The Greek World: 403-31 BCE: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2020, Summer 2018 First 6 Week Session
A history of Rome from the foundation of the city to the dictatorship of Caesar. The course examines the evolution of Republican government, the growth of Roman imperialism, and the internal disruptions of the age of the Gracchi, Sulla, and Caesar.
Ancient Rome: The Roman Republic: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Summer 2021 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2020
A history of Rome from Augustus to Constantine. The course surveys the struggles between the Roman emperors and the senatorial class, the relationship between civil and military government, the emergence of Christianity, and Roman literature as a reflection of social and intellectual life.
Ancient Rome: The Roman Empire: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 1996, Fall 1991
This course examines the emergence and development of democracy in the ancient Greek world, from its tentative beginnings in the sixth century BCE to its most radical form in the fourth century. We will consider ancient evidence for the day-to-day workings of Athenian democracy and the emergence of democratic ideologies. We will explore the problems of leadership, citizenship, the size and structure of the Athenian population, decision-making, judicial procedure, punishment, and the tension between democracy and inequality. We will also read in their historical context some fierce ancient criticisms of democratic rule. We will explore the forces that undermined democracy in ancient Greece, and those that merely threatened to do so.
Democracy in Classical Athens: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2017
The social, cultural, and religious history of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean from late antiquity through the early middle ages. The survival of the Roman Empire in Byzantium, the Sassanian Empire in Iran, and the rise of Islam are the topics covered.
Byzantium: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2011, Spring 2006, Spring 2004
A survey of Islamic civilization in the Middle East during the medieval period. Topics include the emergence of Islam in Arabia and the role of the prophet Muhammad; the rapid rise of an Islamic empire and its effects on the societies it governed; the creation of an Islamic civilization and the religious, political, and intellectual debates it engendered; contact with Europe and Asia through trade, the Crusades, and nomadic conquest; the contributions of non-Muslims, women, slaves.
The Rise of Islamic Civilization, 600-1200: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2012, Fall 2010
The establishment of Turkish power in the Middle East: Seljuks, Mongols, Ottomans, and Safavis.
The Middle East, 1000-1750: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2022, Spring 2021
The breaking of pre-modern empires and the formation of national states in the Arab world, Turkey, and Iran; Islam and nationalism.
The Middle East From the 18th Century to the Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024
This course teaches the modern history of Palestine and the Palestinian people from a multireligious Ottoman Palestine to the contemporary moment. It centers the experience of being Palestinian at home and in exile after the Nakba of 1948. In particular, it examines the origins of one of the longest running and most significant settler colonial realities in modern history. The course explores the history and ethics of Palestinian resistance to their dispossession, the literary and visual expressions of Palestinian identity, and the representations of the Palestinian struggle in the West. Using a broad range of primary sources, literary texts, and films, students will be encouraged to reflect upon Palestinian history on its own terms.
Palestine and the Palestinians: A Modern History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Fall 2010, Fall 2003
The rise of the region's most important classical and early modern states; long-term economic, social, and religious trends.
Topics in the History of Southeast Asia: Southeast Asia to the 18th Century: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2017, Spring 2015
Major themes in modern Southeast Asian history with an emphasis on cross-country comparisons involving the region's largest and most populous countries: Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Topics in the History of Southeast Asia: Modern Southeast Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2014, Spring 2014
This course provides an introduction to the main issues in Vietnamese history from the mythic and archaeological origins of the modern nation-state to the end of the Second Indochina War in 1975. Special emphasis will be placed on "modern" developments from the late 18th century. In addition to history texts, readings will be taken from novels, short stories, poetry, and memoirs.
Topics in the History of Southeast Asia: Political and Cultural History of Vietnam: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2022
This course explores the history of the wars that engulfed Vietnam during the post-WWII era. While focusing on the Second Indochina War (1954-1975), it also examines the history of the First Indochina War (1946-1954) and the Third Indochina War (1978-1980). It will address military, political, and social dynamics of the conflict as well as representatives of the war in film, fiction, and memoirs.
Vietnam at War: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 1997, Fall 1995
This course explores African history before 1800: How and why did complex societies form in Africa? Why did states form in some place and times and not others? What technological responses did different Africans make to environmental changes? How did various cultures, religions, and state ideologies help to organize African social and political formations? What effect did the medieval and early-modern trade in African slaves have on African social and political formations? We will attempt to answer these questions from both theoretical and historiographical perspectives by engaging with academic debates on some of these issues, and by looking at the viewpoints of African historical actors themselves using primary sources.
Precolonial Africa: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course will examine three centuries of South African history that account for the origin and development of the recently dismantled apartheid regime. Our aim is to understand the major historical forces that progressively shaped what became a turbulent socio-cultural, economic, political, and racial frontier.
Africa: Modern South Africa, 1652-Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2020, Spring 2017
This course examines the nature and effects of European colonization of Africa, and African responses to the colonial encounter. Broad themes include colonial conquest and practices of administration, African responses to the imposition of colonial rule, colonial economies, labor migration, introduction and impact of Christianity and Western education; women and the colonial state, urbanization, social change, the apartheid system, liberation struggles, decolonization, and the colonial legacy.
Colonialism and Nationalism in Africa: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2011, Spring 2010
This course will survey major social, economic, and political developments on the Korean peninsula from the middle of the 19th century.
Modern Korean History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2014
This course offers a historical introduction to the varied cultures of the Indian subcontinent from earliest times until the dawn of the modern world. We will discuss the development of political entities in the subcontinent until the establishment of colonial authority in the late eighteenth century through an exploration of their stories, plays, poetry, works of philosophy, painting and sculpture, produced in the intersection of Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity.
Politics, Culture, and Philosophy in South Asia before Modernity: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2021, Spring 2020
Here we will deal with the history of South Asia between the coming of the Europeans and the present. It will be organized around a series of contested formulations about the recent South Asian past. One of these problems is: how was India comprehended and manipulated by the Europeans? The second problem is: How was India conquered, by the sword or by the word? The third is: How did Indians resist the British? Finally, how was the voice of women, lower classes, and others expressed and heard? We will read books about language, gender, the "subaltern" classes, and women in an attempt to understand these questions.
India: Modern South Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021
The aim of this course on the culture and history of Muslim communities and institutions in South Asia is to introduce students to the broad historical currents of the expansion of Islam in the Indian subcontinent, the nature of Muslim political authority, the interaction between religious communities, Islamic aesthetics and contributions to material culture, the varied engagements and reactions of Muslims to colonial rule, and the contemporary concerns of South Asia's Muslims. While this is a lecture course, ample time will be set aside for discussion and the active engagement of participants will be expected. Lectures will be supplemented with visual material, music, and movies where possible.
Islam in South Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Spring 2010, Spring 2008
This lecture course is designed (1) to introduce a framework for grasping pre-historical and early historical developments of the human societies in China, from the birth of the classical era to the end of the classical era (323 BC.-A.D. 316); (2) to identify the political, social, economical, and ideological driving forces behind these developments; (3) to give an overview of the main archaeological and historical sources available for that period; (4) to assess the benefits, costs, as well as the characteristics of early Chinese forms of social and political organization as well as belief systems. Reference will also be made to the imaginaries about Early China that played their roles in later periods of Chinese history.

China: Early China: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2013, Spring 2012, Spring 2010
This course explores Chinese history and culture in the period from the 7th to the 13th centuries, when China achieved unprecedented military, political, and cultural power in East Asia. It concentrates on the fundamental transformation of state and society that took place between the 8th and 12th centuries, and on the nature of the new "early modern" order that had come into existence by the end of the Southern Song. Topics of special concern are economic and political power, technology, religion and philosophy, and poetry and painting.
China: Two Golden Ages: China During the Tang and Song Dynasties: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Spring 2009, Spring 2006
Between the 16th and the 19th century China was home to the world’s largest empire and economy. Beijing sat at the center of an East Asian order of trade, tribute, and learning. China reached the height of its continental power around 1800. Meanwhile Western European ships began sailing into East Asian waters. These ships facilitated long-distance exchanges of goods and ideas by the sea.
This course examines the question: What mattered more in the shaping of modern China thereafter: the Inner Asian origins of the Chinese governing system or the dynamics of a globalizing maritime economy and society? To anchor the discussion, the course will focus on aspects of law and society.
China: Modern China: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
Chinese history from the decline of the Qing empire to the reforms under the Chinese Communist Party in the late 20th century.
China: Twentieth-Century China: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2020, Fall 2017
The history of China's relationship to the world from earliest times to the 20th c. Provides historical contextualization for China’s recent resurgence on the world stage. Topics will include early territorial expansion, the Silk Road, the Great Wall, the Chinese diaspora, Mongol and Manchu empire building, the impact of Europeans in the 19th c, the emergence of Chinese nationalism, and China's evolving role in the global economy.
Imperial China and the World: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Fall 2017, Spring 2017
It is impossible to understand Chinese history and culture without knowing what ordinary people thought, felt, and believed. In this course, our primary concerns will be 1) the built environment -- village form, houses, temples; 2) village festivals and domestic rituals; 3) the rituals and scriptures of local cults; 4) operas, storytelling, and other forms of village entertainment; and 5) popular visual arts. These subjects will be studied through both written and visual documentation.
Topics in Chinese History: Chinese Popular Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2005
This course brings a thematic approach to the critical analysis of the visual in Chinese history. In focusing on key elements of material culture and emphasizing how they have been viewed at specific moments in Chinese history, the course teaches students of history how to achieve a more balanced picture of the past drawn from both visual and literary records. Inevitably, the course tries to determine for a particular temporal and geographical setting what's ordinary or conventional and what's not; also to rethink the metaphors that currently dominate thinking about history in China. No prior acquaintance with Chinese history is required for the course.
Topics in Chinese History: Reading the Visual in Chinese History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2018, Spring 2013
This course brings a thematic approach to the critical analysis of the "Chinese body," as constructed before the 20th century, from four main perspectives, those of (1) gender, (2) sexual activity, (3) health, and (4) medicine. A variety of sources, material and literary, attest to changing perceptions over time, through the continuing use of standard vocabulary for Yin/Yang and the Five Phases frequently masked innovations.
Topics in Chinese History: The Chinese Body: Gender and Sex, Health, and Medicine: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
Emphasis on political, cultural, and intellectual history of the Early Imperial State, Japan's first military governments, early modern, and Meiji Japan.
Japan: Japan, Archaeological Period to 1800: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2015, Fall 2014
Emphasis on the social and intellectual history of Japan's pre-war reconstruction.
Japan: Japan 1800-1900: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course addresses a twofold question: what did the 20th century mean for Japan? And what did Japan mean for the 20th century? In search of answers, we will trace Japan's emergence as a “world-shaper” in its two phases, military and economic, focusing on the institutional, social, and cultural transformations that were attendant to each phase and continue to define Japan’s presence in the contemporary world.
The Twentieth Century in Japan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Summer 2010 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2009 First 6 Week Session
This course considers the history of Japan since the end of World War II, beginning with an exploration of the war itself and its complex legacy to the postwar era. Using the best recent scholarship and a selection of translated novels, essays, and poetry along with film and art, we look at the six postwar decades and the transformations of Japanese life that those years have brought. We try, finally, to answer the question: has "postwar" itself come to an end?
Topics in Japanese History: Postwar Japan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2018 Second 6 Week Session
History of the American environment and the ways in which different cultural groups have perceived, used, managed, and conserved it from colonial times to the present. Cultures include American Indians and European and African Americans. Natural resources development includes gathering-hunting-fishing; farming, mining, ranching, forestry, and urbanization. Changes in attitudes and behaviors toward nature and past and present conservation and environmental movements are also examined. Readings are from primary source documents supplemented by recent essays.

American Environmental and Cultural History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2015
This course explores the history of the four continents on the Atlantic rim—Europe, Africa, North and South America—and their increasing interconnectedness in the wake of Columbus’s voyage in 1492. It takes the Atlantic Ocean and its peripheries as a common zone of interaction, where peoples, cultures, ideas, goods, foodstuffs, and pathogens came into contact from diverse regions. The course begins with a portrait of Amerindian, African, and European civilizations c. 1400 and ends with an overview of the protracted struggles for decolonization and emancipation from slavery in the 19th-century Americas. Throughout these five centuries of profound transformation, we will study conflict and encounter between the region’s many diverse peoples.
The Atlantic World: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2014, Spring 2013

The Colonial Period and American Revolution: The American Revolution: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
This course examines half a century of life in the United States (roughly from the War of 1812 until the secession of the Southern states), focusing on race relations, westward expansion, class formation, immigration, religion, sexuality, popular culture, and everyday life. Assigned readings will consist largely of first-person narratives in which women and men of a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds construct distinctive visions of life in the new nation.
Antebellum America: The Advent of Mass Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2022, Fall 2017
This lecture course will take a broad view of the political, social, economic, and cultural history of the United States in the mid-19th century in order to explore both the causes of the Civil War and its effects on American development. Major topics will include slavery and race relations (north and south), class relations and industrialization, the organization of party politics, and changing ideas about and uses of government power.
Civil War and Reconstruction: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Fall 2017
During the first half-century before World War II, the United States became an industrialized, urban society with national markets and communication media. This class will explore in depth some of the most important changes and how they were connected. We will also examine what did not change, and how state and local priorities persisted in many arenas. Among the topics addressed: population movements and efforts to control immigration; the growth of corporations and trade unions; the campaign for women's suffrage; Prohibition; an end to child labor; the institution of the Jim Crow system; and the reshaping of higher education.
The Recent United States: The United States from the Late 19th Century to the Eve of World War II: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
Immediately prior to World War II, the US military ranked 17th in the world, most African-Americans lived in the rural south and were barred from voting, culture and basic science in the United States enjoyed no world-wide recognition, most married women did not work for wages, and the census did not classify most Americans as middle-class or higher. By 1973, all this had changed. This course will explore these and other transformations, all part of the making of modern America. We will take care to analyze the events, significance and cost of US ascendancy to world power in an international and domestic context.
The Recent United States: The United States from World War II: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Spring 2022
The course will survey African American history from the African background to the outbreak of the Civil War. The origins and development of Afro-American society, culture and politics will be explored from the perspective of African-Americans themselves: slave and free, North and South. Throughout, the enduring dilemma of race relations functions as a central theme.
African American History and Race Relations: 1450-1860: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This course will examine the history of African Americans and race relations from 1860 through 2016. Social, cultural, economic, and political developments will be emphasized. Topics to be covered include: Civil War; Black Reconstruction; black life and labor in the New South; Jim Crow; migration; urbanization; war and social change; the modern African American Freedom Struggle; and, post-Civil Rights-Black Power developments.
African American History and Race Relations: 1860-2016: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 1974
Latinx peoples are the largest U.S. minority group. How and why did so many different peoples come to be seen as like one another and as not “American”? Although often perceived as “aliens” or foreigners, Latinx peoples have lived in North America since before the nation existed. In the words of historian Vicki Ruiz, “Our America is American history.” As we move across Nuestra América from precolonial times to the present, we will examine diverse cultural practices, social movements, processes of community formation, intellectual trajectories, and responses to U.S. empire and white supremacy. We will also consider how race, class, gender, sexuality, and indigeneity have shaped belonging and inclusion within Latinx communities.

Latinx Histories: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2022, Fall 2013
This course introduces students to the history of Mexican and Mexican American peoples in the United States. It begins in the precolonial Americas with an emphasis on North America and the region that later became the U.S. Southwest, and it ends in our present moment. It contextualizes historical moments, processes, and ideologies that continue to shape the lives of Mexican Americans: conquest, capitalism, heteropatriarchy, mestizaje, and white supremacy. Rooted in social history, the course emphasizes the struggles of everyday people to improve the circumstances of their lives. It asks students to examine U.S. history from the perspective of communities often erased in national narratives.
Mexican American Histories: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2022, Summer 2019 First 6 Week Session
The history of California from pre-European contact to the present, with emphasis on the diversity of cultures and the interplay of social, economic, and political developments.
California: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course will survey the history of California and the American West from the mid-19th century to the dawn of the 21st century. It will situate this state and regional history within the relevant currents of global history, which have profoundly shaped and been shaped by California and the American West - from the Gold Rush and the global guano trade it sparked in the mid-19th century, to the rise of Hollywood in the early 20th century, to the development and deployment of atomic weapons in the mid-20th century, to the emergence of Silicon Valley technological innovation and New Gilded Age income polarization in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
California, the West, and the World: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2021
This course will explore the history of American foreign policy since 1776, focusing on diplomatic and military interactions and the evolution of American strategic thought. Students will also traverse the broader history of international relations and will engage some of the basic vocabulary of IR theory. Topics will range from the territorial expansion of the United States to the making of Cold War strategy and beyond. Students will be asked to consider how historical knowledge and reasoning might inform the making of foreign policy.
American Foreign Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2024
This course examines the transformation of American society since the Civil War. The lectures and readings give special attention to the emergence of city culture and its possibilities for a pluralistic society; the experience and effect of immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the revolution in communications and industry; changes in family dynamics, the emergence of modern childhood, schooling, and youth culture; changes in gender relations and sexuality; the problematics of race and the changing nature of class relationships in a consumer society; the triumph of psychological and therapeutic concepts of the self.
Social History of the United States: Creating Modern American Society: From the End of the Civil War: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020
The U.S. military has served as an engine of socio-economic mobility, and changes in its personnel policies often foreshadowed the reordering of American society. However, the U.S. military has also been a space in which the federal government actively discriminated against many Americans—people of color, women, immigrants, religious minorities, and queer people. This course is neither a history of American wars nor a traditional military history focused on battles and strategy; rather it explores the social dynamics of the U.S. military from the American Revolution to the present and investigates how the military has reflected, resisted, influenced, and heralded social, cultural, political, and religious transformations in American life.
In the Shadow of War: A Social History of the U.S. Military: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019
This course surveys religion in the land that became the United States from colonial contact with indigenous people to the present with an emphasis on how religion has shaped, and been shaped by, the American experience. It addresses enduring tensions between the presence of religious diversity, the ideals of religious pluralism, and the desire for religious power. What are the relationships between various American religious traditions and American society, politics, and culture? How have religious groups articulated their values to address questions of law, politics, culture, and economics? How does religion intersect with race, class, gender, and sexuality to form American identities and transform religious communities?
American Religious History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2014, Spring 2014, Fall 2012
In this course we will be discussing key developments in U.S. thought since the middle of the nineteenth century, roughly beginning with the reception of Darwin. The broader story told in the class weaves together in the history of science and engineering, the arts and popular culture, philosophy, and education. Our goal is to trace how ideas, whether they are dominant, challenging, or look back, have affected the ways in which Americans live together. We will look at how intellectual life has empowered and expanded the capacity of Americans to understand their world and achieve goals more effectively. We will also consider how intellectual theories have contributed to inequality and injustice.
Intellectual History of the United States since 1865: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2021
This course explores the history of American labor, business, and economy from the colonial period to the present day.
The History of American Capitalism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2019
As longstanding symbols in U.S. history and culture, “Wall Street” and “Main Street” refer to streets that intersect at right angles and places that represent the antithesis of each other: Wall Street is home to nefarious big banks run by greedy financiers, while Main Street is home to “mom-and-pop” shops patronized by people of modest means who live in the surrounding wholesome small towns. This course will examine critical junctures in the intersection of Wall Street and Main Street in the 20th century U.S., how and why the two streets have been understood to point in opposite directions, the extent to which that understanding makes sense, and how and why the relationship between Wall Street and Main Street has evolved over time.
Wall Street / Main Street: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
The data we use both reflects our values and shapes them, structuring the questions we ask and answer about the world. This course will examine the history of American data collection and analysis, from the census to opinion polling to sports. Along the way we will explore the ways that categories, units of analysis, and collection practices shape what we know about race, gender, labor, and economic change. We will also analyze quantitative documents to learn about the past—both through close reading and through aggregation and statistical analysis. Students can expect to grapple with practical and ethical questions related to data and also to prepare an original research project that analyzes historical data.
Calculating Americans: Big Histories of Small Data: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2016, Spring 2014
For most of human history, urban living has been the experience of a distinct minority. Only in the past two hundred years have the physicial spaces, social relations, and lifestyles associated with large cities entered the mainstream. This course examines the long century of urban growth between 1825 and 1933, when big cities came into being in the United States. Focusing on large metropolitian centers (especially on New York, Chicago, and San Francisco), we will study the way urban spaces provided sites and sources of new modes of personal interaction, popular entertainment, social conflict, and political expression.
The Age of the City: The Age of the City, 1825-1933: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2004
A cultural and social history of urban life in America since the beginning of the 20th century.
The Age of the City: The 20th Century to the Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
The early colonial period in the Americas is one of history’s most traumatic, astonishing, and consequential eras. This lecture class compares and contrasts histories of encounter, resistance, conquest, and colonization in three regions of indigenous America: Hispaniola, the Valley of Mexico, and the St. Lawrence River Valley. Each section will begin with regional geography and indigenous and European contexts on the eve of contact. As the class progresses, lectures and discussions of primary sources will interrogate the dynamics that gave rise to the complex and profoundly unequal American societies of the early colonial period, with their stratified, diverse populations.
Encounter & Conquest in Indigenous America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2009, Spring 2008, Fall 2006
This course explores the social, political, cultural, and economic history of women and men's lives, as well as changing sexual attitudes toward gender, the family and sexuality. Against the tapestry of twentieth American history, we will analyze how two dramatic changes--women's entry into the paid labor force and their control over their repoductive lives--gave rise to our contemporary cultural wars over the family, sexuality and reproduction.
Gender Matters in 20th Century America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020
This course is a survey of the history of women in America from the pre-colonial period to the turn of the twentieth century. It examines the significant cultural, economic, and political developments that shaped the lives of American women, but places gender at the center of historical analysis. The course also stresses the variety of women’s experiences, acknowledging the importance of race, ethnicity, and class in shaping female lives.
The History of Women in the United States before 1900: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2020, Fall 2017
This course introduces students to the history of gender and sexuality in twentieth-century United States. We will learn about the distinctive history of women and men from 1900 to the present, the transformation of gender relations and sex roles, and how gender and sexuality have shaped the lives of different groups of women and men in twentieth century America. While paying attention to broader historical trends, we will specifically focus on the intersection of gender, race, sexuality, and class and its consequences for the experiences of women and men.
Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century US History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2020
Taking as its focus diverse groups of women who have shaped the course of North American history, this class will explore the relationship between gender, power and violence from the colonial period to the modern era. We will discuss how women have challenged conventional notions of “womanhood” through their words and their deeds, how their respective communities understood their behavior, and we will contemplate the ways in which these women simultaneously constructed narratives of power that do not conform to contemporary conceptualizations of their lives.
Defiant Women: Gender, Power and Violence in American History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Taking as its focus diverse groups of women who have shaped the course of North American history, this class explores the relationship between gender, power and violence from the colonial period to the modern era. We will discuss how women have challenged conventional notions of “womanhood” through their words and deeds, how their respective communities understood their behavior, and we will contemplate the ways in which these women simultaneously constructed narratives of power that do not conform to contemporary conceptualizations of their lives. Moreover, students will contemplate prevailing narratives of powerlessness which render these women, and their acts, invisible to us and the role gender ideologies played in their construction.
Defiant Women: Gender, Power and Violence in American History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2024, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session
This course examines the coming together of people from five continents to the United States and provides an historical overview of the shifting patterns of immigration. The course begins in the colonial era when servants and slaves typified the migrant to America. It then follows the migration of the pre-industrial immigrants, through migration streams during the industrial and "post-industrial" eras of the nation.
Immigrants and Immigration as U.S. History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Fall 2017, Fall 2016
History of science in the U.S. from the colonial period to the present, with a focus on the contentious debates over the place of science within cultural, religious, and social-intellectual life. Development of institutions for the pursuit of scientific knowledge, with special attention to the relationships between science and technology and between science and the state.
History of Science in the U.S.: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Fall 2017, Fall 2016
This course is a parallel course to 138, intended for students interested in teaching elementary or secondary school science and math. Students in the "T" course will attend the regular 138 lectures and a special section; this section will focus on techniques, skills, and perspectives necessary to apply the history of science in the juvenile and adolescent science classroom, including pedagogy, devising lesson plans for their classrooms, finding reliable historical information, and writing.
History of Science in the US CalTeach: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2006 10 Week Session, Summer 2005 10 Week Session
This course explores the history of labor and working people in the United States from the 1830s to the 1980s, examining workers' experiences and expectations within the context of major events and trends in American history (wars, depressions, migrations, reform movements, state action, and political economy) and against the backdrop of changing habits of everyday life (mass consumption, commercial leisure, religious practices, and popular culture). Special emphasis will be placed on the varying experiences and perspectives of African Americans, European Americans, and Asian Americans during this period.
Topics in United States History: American Labor History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025
This course introduces students to the entwined, overlapping, multiracial histories of involuntary servitude and slavery in British North America/the United States. We will cover topics such as Native American systems of bondage, European enslavement of Indigenous men, women, and children, the often-forcible transport to and compulsory servitude of European migrants, the captivity and enslavement of African-descended people, and the coerced servitude of Asian migrants in the 19th century. The class concludes by considering the development of the post-Civil War penal state and the rise of mass incarceration. Students will leave the class with a more expansive understanding of American systems of captivity from settlement to the present.
The Multiracial History of Slavery & Servitude in America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Spring 2014, Spring 2013
The history of the United States is the history of migration. The course covers the evolution of the American population from about 20,000 BC with the goal of understanding the interdependent roles of history and demography. As an American cultures class, special attention is given to the experiences of 18th- and 19th-century African and European immigrants and 20th- and 21st-century Asian and Latin American immigrants. Two substantial laboratory assignments; facility with a spreadsheet program is assumed.
The American Immigrant Experience: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Summer 2018 Second 6 Week Session
Beginning with the onset of World War II, America experienced not a sigular,unitary Civil Rights Movement -- as is typically portrayed in standard textbood accounts and the collective memory -- but rather a variety of contemporaneous civil rights and their related social movements. This course explores the history, presenting a top-down (political and legal history), bottom-up (social and cultural history), and comparative (by race and ethnicity as well as region) view of America's struggles for racial equality from roughly World War II until the present.
Civil Rights and Social Movements in U.S. History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016
World War II lifted the U.S. from the Great Depression and launched a long economic boom that helped underwrite and propel efforts on behalf of greater racial equality and economic equity. As that boom began to fade in the late 1960s, America’s march toward greater racial equality foundered, while its march toward greater economic equity began to reverse course. The Civil Rights Era gave way to the New Gilded Age. This course will explore the political, legal, and economic history of America’s struggles for racial equality and economic equity – and the relationship between them.
From Civil Rights Era to the New Gilded Age: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2021
This course surveys Mexican history from the end of the colonial period to the present, with an eye to how the study of Mexican history can help us understand the Mexico of today. Topics include the historical origins of peasant rebellions and their influence on national politics; the tension between democratic pressures and elitist and exclusionary pressures on the political system; neo-liberal economic policies; the powerful influence of the Catholic church; immigration to the U.S.; and the explosive 20th-century growth of Mexico City.
Mexico: Modern Mexico: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Spring 2017, Fall 2015
Affirmation of the central state. Social conflicts in the 20th century: industrialization and agrarian conflict.
Social History of Latin America: Social History of Modern Latin America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2020, Fall 2018
This course surveys Cuban history, culture, and politics from the 15th century to the present. We will examine both the outsized role the island has played in world history and the dramatic ways world history has refracted through the island’s turbulent past. How has Cuban history and culture been shaped by its unique position in global geopolitics, at the crossroads of Europe, the Americas, and Africa? How have inhabitants of Cuba struggled against ongoing relationships of colonialism and dependency with foreign powers? How have inhabitants of Cuba defined what it means to be Cuban both because of and in spite of these global forces? We will draw on a wide array of texts from long before the famous Revolution of 1959 to well after.
Cuba in World History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2017, Spring 2015
From 16th Century conquest and settlement to the emergence of an industrial economy during the post-1964 period of military rule. Emphasis on dependence of colony on empire, on plantation agriculture, slavery, export economy, and the transition from agrarian to industrial society.
Brazil: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024
In this course, students examine the history of the US and Latin America from independence to the present. Lectures, readings, and written assignments will invite students to consider the history of the Americas through international, transnational, and comparative frameworks. This means we will cover the political history of US-Latin American relations, scrutinizing major turning points in U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America, as well as transnational histories of the region, through histories of immigration, the African diaspora, feminism, human rights, and drug trafficking. Course readings will range from black internationalist newspapers to oral histories with migrants, and secondary source readings of a similar scope.
The US and Latin America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2004 10 Week Session, Summer 2003 10 Week Session, Summer 2002 10 Week Session
This class uses films as the basis of historical inquiry and analysis. Students will consider the content, form, and execution of a set of outstanding films from Latin America, primarily Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, and Argentina. Discussions and readings will focus on histories of the film industry and cultural policy as well as the political and social issues raised in the movies, such as the portrayal of race and gender, depictions of poverty and inequality, and how films have contributed to the creation of national mythology and icons. All films have English subtitles.
Latin America in Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2018, Fall 2014
This class surveys the experiences and impact of women in Latin America from the pre-conquest period to the present, as well as the ways that gender ideologies (like patriarchy, honor-shame, machismo) have influenced Latin American history.
Latin American Women: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2019, Fall 2017
This course is a survey of the history of northern Italy during the central Middle Ages (ca. 1000-1350). It traces the emergence, flowering, and decline of the "communes," the independent city republics that made Italian political life distinctive during the Middle Ages. The course explores the culture of these dynamic urban communities, especially emphasizing the rich visual and material culture, as well as the particular relationship between religion and society in Italy before the Renaissance.
Medieval Italy: Italy in the Age of Dante (1000-1350): Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course explores the history of medieval England from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the end of the Wars of The Roses in 1485. The conquest radically changed English politics and society. The new rulers drew the kingdom into the politics and conflicts of continental Europe. At the same time England expanded at the expense of its neighbors in the British Isles, and faced recurring internal conflicts among its aristocracy and royal families. Alongside the history of kings and battles, we will study the economic, social, cultural and intellectual life of the realm, the development of its distinctive political and legal systems, and the social and religious upheavals which rocked England in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Medieval England: from the Conquest to 1485: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2019
The history of Britain, albeit with primary emphasis on England, from the advent of the Tudors through the reformations of the 16th century, revolutions of the 17th century, and growth of commercial society in the 18th century. Principal concentration on political, religious, and social developments. No prerequisites other than some sense of general European history.
Early Modern Britain, 1485-1750: Reformation to Revolution, Island to Empire: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Fall 2009, Fall 2007
This is a course about the history of Britain that asks why this small island nation was so central to how Europeans and others understood world history more generally. It looks at Britain as the paradigmatic venue of industrialization, class conflict or its absence, consumer culture, parliamentary democracy, religious tolerance, imperial expansion, and modernity generally. It begins with the aftermath of Europe's first revolution and ends with the first world's fair, 1851's Great Exhibition.
Britain 1485-Present: Britain, 1660-1851: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Fall 2018
Was Britain the maker of the modern world? This small, cold, and wet island was the first to develop representative politics, to industrialize, to urbanize, and to infamously build a global empire. And yet it was unable to rid itself of ancient institutions like the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the established church. The class explores this paradox by tracing the rise, fall and reinvention of a ‘liberal’ political economy that laid out how markets, governments, empires, and even people, should work. It shows how people of color, as subjects of slavery and imperialism, as well as residents of Britain, were integral to this story. It concludes Britain did not make the modern world, the world helped make Britain modern.
Maker of the Modern World? Britain since 1750: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Fall 2011, Fall 2009
Irish history from the completion of the English conquest (1691) to the present. Topics: the formation of the British colony; the French Revolution and the beginnings of the nationalist tradition; Catholic emancipation and the origins of Home Rule; the Great Famine and the struggle of rural Ireland to the Land League; the transformation of the Catholic unionism, and the Great War; the Irish Revolution; the two Irelands, 1921-1967; Northern Ireland, troubles and terror; Ireland and Europe.
Topics in the History of the British Isles: Ireland Since the Union: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2011, Fall 2008, Fall 2004
Formulation of a West European civilization; stress on tribal settlements, the Carolingian Empire, and Christian foundations.
Medieval Europe: From the Late Empire to the Investiture Conflict: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2018, Fall 2014
Crusades; empire, papacy and the Western monarchies; social change, the rise of towns and heresy; culture and learning. Medieval civilization at its height.
Medieval Europe: From the Investiture Conflict to the Fifteenth Century: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2019, Fall 2015
An inquiry into the nature of the "State", the preconditions of its emergence in the later middle ages, and its place in fundamental issues of political morality.
The Justice of the State in the Middle Ages: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2019, Fall 2015, Fall 2013, Spring 2012
European history from the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century. Political, social, and economic developments during this transitional period will be examined, together with the rise of Renaissance culture, and the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century.
The Renaissance and the Reformation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2011, Fall 2005, Spring 2005
The eighteenth century in Europe witnessed a series of "revolutions"--intellectual, political, and to a lesser extent, social and economic--that together constitute the birth rites of modern European society and culture. Historians collectively agree that the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the European expansion of Napoleonic France were events of world-historical significance, yet the causes and precise meaning of these events are the subjects of substantial disagreement. We will study the transformations of the eighteenth century that announced our modern world, and we will also try to make sense of the different ways that historians disagree about the meaning of what happened.
Modern Europe: Old Regime and Revolutionary Europe, 1715-1815: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2013, Spring 2001, Fall 1994

Modern Europe: Europe in the 19th Century: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2023 8 Week Session, Summer 2022 8 Week Session, Summer 2021 8 Week Session
A survey of the main trends and forces in the history of Europe from 1914 to the present. The course stresses the interaction of political, economic, and socio-cultural changes and explores the relationship between domestic and international politics. Topics discussed include the two world wars, the rise and fall of fascism and communism, imperialism, European integration, the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
Modern Europe: Old and New Europe, 1914-Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session
Fascism is a crucial subject to understanding the modern world. It was a break with all forms of political organization known to that point, and travelled speedily across national boundaries, to find representation in every European state west of the Soviet Union. Yet it prospered very differently by place -- strong in Romania, weak in Poland -- and came to power only in Germany and Italy, and from there transformed our world, with destructive energies that were unprecedented, revealing the ultimate consequences of an ideology based in racial supremacy.
The course surveys all aspects of this movement, from intellectual origins in 19th century bourgeois Europe and World War I, through the extreme experience of World War II.

History of Fascism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course looks at the history of economic and social thought from the 18th to the 21st century. It does so by presenting major thinkers and schools of thought and discussing the relevance of their theories for current economic, social, and ecological challenges. Among the thinkers that are covered are classical economists such as Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo, along with Marx, utilitarian and marginalist economists, as well as a number of undogmatic and radical thinkers. The course will, furthermore, discuss the work of Keynes and the theories of his neoliberal critics. Finally, the course also looks at more recent developments such as feminist and environmental economics and economics of race and discrimination.
The Power of Ideas: The History of Economic and Social Thought: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024
This is a survey of the economic and social origins and development of the modern economy, beginning in early modern Europe and extending until the construction of the global capitalist system in the late nineteenth century. It attends to scholarly disputes over the origins of the distinctive economic features of capitalism: private property, the international monetary system, free wage labor and slavery, commodification and cultures of consumption, credit and banking, crises and inequality, as well as industrialization and economic growth. This course is a companion to the ideas studied in History 159B and is intended to lead in to the material covered in History 160. No prior quantitative methods training is required, or assumed.
Origins of Capitalism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Development and crises of the advanced economies, with particular emphasis on trade relations with third world countries. Economic impact of war, business cycles, and social movements. This course is equivalent to Economics 115; students will not receive credit for both courses.
The International Economy of the 20th Century: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2017, Fall 2016
This upper division course looks at the rise and fall of the European great powers from the Peace of Westphalia, traditionally perceived as the beginning of the modern states system, to the coming of the First World War, an era of state and empire building. Economic and technological trends are naturally part of the story as well as cultural, social, and political forces. At the same time, the course highlights the decisive influence of the shakers and movers--kings, emperors, and generals.
Europe and the World: Wars, Empires, Nations 1648-1914: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2020, Fall 2018
This course analyzes the turbulent transitions from the classical European balance of power system to the global multipolar system of today. The course explores the political, economic, ideological, and technological roots of international affairs. Among topics discussed are the two world wars, inter-war collective security,the Cold War, European integration, imperialism and de-colonization, the collapse of Communism, the Middle East conflict, the rise of China and Japan, and the post-1990 international order.
War and Peace: International Relations since 1914: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2019
The Second World War was destructive on a scale all its own: it was the first ideological war, not simply about territory, but about conflicting ideas on how governments should organize lives of their citizens. This lecture course invites students to think through this War in three stages, considering first its causes, then the course of conflict in all its theaters, and finally its consequences. The approach involves political, cultural and military history, and readings include major works of historical synthesis along with selected documents, literary treatments, oral histories, and films.
World War II: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2021
Between 1500 and 1800, European thought built the foundations of modern culture, politics, economy, government, law, and religion. This course will introduce students to the period, from the Renaissance rediscovery of antiquity to the Scientific Revolution, from the theological innovation of the Reformation to the new forms of political theory that accompanied both French and American Revolutions.
The Birth of Modern Thought: European Intellectual History, 1500-1800: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2013, Spring 2011
Reading primary texts, we will examine the major figures and themes in the intellectual development of Europe from Rousseau to Wagner. Included in the topics of the course will be German Idealism, Romanticism, Utopian Socialism, Marxism, Realism, Feminism and Nationalism. We will read works by Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Marx, Flaubert, Wollstonecraft, Kierkegard, and others. We will also listen to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. The intellectual and artistic currents of the period will be set against the background of European history as a whole.
Modern European Intellectual History: European Intellectual History from Enlightenment to 1870: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2014, Spring 2012
The focus of the coruse will be on the social and political thought, primarily in Germany and France, with the peripheral attention paid to England and Italy. Related philosophical and cultural trends will also be discussed. The readings will consist largely of selected texts which are representative of the major currents of the period.
Modern European Intellectual History: European Intellectual History 1870 to the Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2014, Spring 2013
This course examines not a period but a process: the reform and disruption of the civilization called "Christendom" during the 16th and 17th centuries and its transformation into the familiar Europe of the nation states.
Topics in Modern European History: The Reformations of Christendom: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2007, Fall 2003
New philosophies, new economies, new visions of politics, new imperialisms, new forms of natural science, new relations between the sexes, new forms of racial difference, new understandings of the human: the European Enlightenment marks a threshold to a modern era that many still call their own. This course emphasizes the history of ideas, balanced by the political, economic, and social history of the period roughly 1680-1800. Readings will include works of literature, history, economics, political theory, natural science, and philosophy written by well-known authors of the period (including John Locke, Adam Smith, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant) as well as by many writers who should be known better.
The Enlightenment: Culture, Society, and Politics in Europe, 1680-1800: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023
Cultural history in Europe across the long nineteenth century, from the French Revolution through World War I. Topics: cultural production including music, theater, visual images, literature, and religious devotion (among others), as experienced in the street and indoor venues across social strata and ethnicities from east to west. This course will critically investigate emerging boundaries between “high” and “low culture;” between creativity and economic productivity; leisure and labor; and the interplay between politics, economics, the production of culture, and social solidarities.
Culture in the Age of Commerce: Europe, 1789-1920: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2021, Fall 2018
This course examines the lives of ordinary people in Europe from roughly 1300-1800. Its goal, in the words of the great social historian E.P. Thompson, is to rescue them from "the enormous condescension of posterity," exploring how the common people made their own history and used their ingenuity to shape not only their own lives but also, at key moments, the development of European modernity.
The Social and Cultural History of Early Modern Europe: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2022, Fall 2020
This is an upper-division survey of French History from the Renaissance through the French Revolution (1500-1800). The course explores the economic, political and cultural factors that allowed France to emerge as the most powerful nation and global actor in Europe from the end of the middle ages to the reign of Louis XIV. We examine the extent of the kingdom's military, political and cultural influence and the realities of everyday life in 16th and 17th century France. We then turn to the key developments of the eighteenth century—capitalism, colonialism, global conflict and Enlightenment—that led to the collapse of French monarchy in 1789 and the unfolding of the first democratic revolution in the West.
Modern France: Renaissance to Revolution: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Fall 2018, Spring 2015
This course explores modern France and its place in the world. We begin with the French Revolution, one of the truly earth-shaking events in history, and then we follow French history through a series of monarchical, authoritarian, and democratic regimes. In the process, we will also trace the emergence, expansion and decline of a great colonial empire. Issues of focus include French cultural and intellectual life; empire as a way of life not only for colonists but also for those living in mainland France; religion; immigration; battles over “who is French”; and dramatic changes in French economy and society during the past two centuries.
Modern France: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2011, Fall 2007, Fall 2002
From the period of the Protestant Reformation to the era of enlightened despotism and the French Revolution, German history was characterized by severe conflicts and problems unresolved. Early Modern German history contains many lessons concerning the relationship of war and peace, of violence and toleration, of reform and renewal and the rejection of any change, of Baroque splendor and widespread misery, of some progress and much disappointment, in short: of a most complicated legacy for future generations.
Modern Germany: Early Modern Germany: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2010, Spring 2010
This course provides the essential foundation for understanding the catastrophic history of Germany in the 20th Century, as well as some of its successes. A central theme is the struggle to define and impose a single national identity on socially, culturally, and religiously diverse peoples in an age of Great Power conflict. Although the region now known as Germany will be the focus of our investigation, considerable attention will also be paid to the Hapsburg Empire, for until 1866 Austria was officially a part of "Germany" and remained, for nearly a century thereafter, culturally and in popular consciousness a part of a "Greater Germany."
Modern Germany: The Rise and Fall of the Second Reich: Germany 1770-1918: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2021
This course will survey the political, economic, social, and cultural development of Germany since 1914. Special attention will be paid to the impact of World War I; problems of democratization under the impact of defeat, inflation, and depression; National Socialist racism and imperialism; the evolution of the German Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic; unification and its problems; and modern Germany's role in Europe.
Modern Germany: Germany 1914 to the Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2021
This course provides an introduction to Germany’s experience of the twentieth century, analyzed through the social and cultural history of its modern metropolis. Pivotal site for the collapse of four different Germanies between 1918 and 1989, Berlin has been the capital of imperialism, war and revolution, democracy, social reform and cultural experimentation, Nazism, genocide and urban warfare, Cold War division, student radicalism in the West and Soviet-style Socialism in the East, and finally re-united Germany, haunted by the presence of the past.
Berlin and the Twentieth Century: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Fall 2020
This course will focus on the rise and development of early modern Europe's most powerful empires. Rising from the unlikely setting of a weak and fragmented Iberian peninsula in the 15th century, the Spanish and Portuguese Empires went on to become the world's first truly global powers. As such, they had a tremendous impact on the political, economic, cultural, and religious life of not only Iberia, but on significant parts of Europe and the New World.
Spain and Portugal: The Spanish and Portuguese Empires in the Golden Age: 1450-1700: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2016, Fall 2014
This course will focus on the history of Italy during a period when it was the leading center of European artistic and cultural production and the driving force in the revival of classical learning and literary ideals. This was the Italy of Raphael and Michelangelo, Ariosto and Alberti, Brunelleschi and Botticelli. At the same time, Italy was also a political battleground through most of this period, both in the realm of ideas and theory but also in a literal sense. It was in Italy that "the art of war," as Machiavelli called it, took center stage as the peninsula became one of the major theaters of war between the great powers of the age, France and Spain. The course will combine a study of the artistic, intellectual, religious, and political history of Italy in this period both as it developed internally and as it was related to the rest of Europe and the Mediterranean world. Requirements will include a midterm, a final, and an optional final paper.
Modern Italy: Renaissance and Baroque Italy 1350-1800: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2018, Spring 2015
The Lowlands from the earliest times to the present monarchy; emphasis on the Golden Age of the 17th and 18th Centuries.
The Netherlands: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Fall 2007, Spring 2007
This course examines the forces that molded Russian culture, society, and politics from earliest times to the 18th century. Lectures and readings touch upon multiple disciplines, including politics, society, economics, art, architecture, religion, and literature.
Russia: Russia to 1700: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2020
The Romanovs ruled Russia from 1613 until 1917, when revolutions swept them from power. In three centuries, they transformed it from a landlocked country, inhabited largely by ethnic Russians, into a sprawling, western-oriented, multi-ethnic empire, governing well over 100 million people across some 8.6 million square miles. This course will focus on the techniques of rule that the Romanovs used to maintain and expand state power. It will inquire into the extent and limits of the reach of the administrative and military apparatus into subjects’ public and private lives. Nominally, Russia was an autocracy. How powerful were Russia’s Romanov autocrats in practice? What can the Russian experience teach us about the nature of the modern state?
Autocracy and Society in Romanov Russia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2021
An introductory survey of Soviet history from the revolutions of 1917 to the present. Marxism-Leninism, War Communism, and Real Socialism; the Great Transformation and the Great Terror; family and nationality; state and society; Russia versus Soviet; Gorbachev versus the past.
Russia: History of the Soviet Union: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Spring 2020
Nationalism, socialism, and gender defined collective and personal identity in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. As writers struggled to position themselves globally, they wondered whether Russia and the Soviet Union belonged to Europe or Asia. They also questioned elite culture amid economic and social oppression. For some, science and art held intrinsic value; others felt they must address social, gender, and ethnic disparity. As socialism arose, so did debate as to which groups deserved greatest protection: agrarian laborers, industrial workers, ethnic minorities, or women. Perhaps, the family itself had to be abolished to achieve true equality. Readings will feature essays, articles, short stories, and novels.
Nationalism, Socialism, and Gender in Russia, 1800-1950: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2001, Spring 1999, Spring 1992

History of Eastern Europe: The Habsburg Empire, 1740-1918: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2020, Fall 2018
This course will examine the history of 20th-century Eastern Europe, understood as the band of countries and peoples stretching from the Baltics to the Balkans. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, however, will receive special attention. Topics of study will include foundation of the national states, Eastern European fascism, Nazi occupation, contructing Stalinist socialism, the fate of reform communism, reconstitution of "civil society," and the emergence of a new Eastern Europe. Given the paucity of historical writings on the region, the course will make extensive use of cinematic and literary portrayals of Eastern Europe.
History of Eastern Europe: History of Eastern Europe: From 1900 to the Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2010, Fall 1979
The course will focus on the development of identities within the constantly shifting borders of Polish-Lithuanian and Polish states. Among the topics: competing definitions--ethnic, confessional, linguistic, political--of Polishness; continuities and discontinuities in Polish history and historiography; Poland beween East and West; the development of Polish self-perceptions; Jewish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian identities in the Polish context; the Polish chapter in the events leading to the end of Communist hegemony in Eastern Europe.
Topics in the History of Eastern Europe: A History of Poland-Lithuania: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Fall 1999, Spring 1999
This course uses the devices of historical and literary interpretation to expose and analyze some of the lines of political and cultural development that have led to the Poland we now know.Beginning with the awakening of modern Polish nationalism, it traces the emergence of this Poland through the rise of mass society; the horrifying and exhilarating spectacles of World War I and national and social revolutions; first experiments with modern Polish statehood (especially policies toward ethnic minorities and socially marginalized groups); then the transformations wrought by a half century of totalitarian rule; ethnic cleansing, elite transfer, forces social stratification, and despite all of this, the defiant return of civil society.
Topics in the History of Eastern Europe: Poles and Others: the Making of Modern Poland: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2017 First 6 Week Session
Once again, Europeans are questioning the limits of coexistence. Recently we have watched a refugee crisis unfold and in the process have reopened discussions regarding who “belongs” in Europe. This course approaches these vexing question from a unique historical perspective, that of coexistence and otherness in both the “old” and “new” Europe. Specifically our laboratory includes Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. We will utilize five case studies (the Jews of Europe; the Roma of Northern Bohemia; the Vietnamese in Prague, the Turkish in Germany and recent refugees across the EU) to better understand how ideas of “Europe” and “Europeaness” changed over the past century.
The History of Belonging and Coexistence in Modern Europe: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2021, Fall 2018
This course will examine the impact of modern intellectual, political, cultural, and social forces on the Jewish people since the eighteenth century. It is our aim to come to an understanding of how the Jews interpreted these forces and how and in what ways they adapted and utilized them to suit the Jewish experience. In other words, we will trace the way Jews became modern. Some of the topics to be covered include Emancipation, the Jewish Enlightenment, new Jewish religious movements, Jewish politics and culture, immigration, antisemitism, the Holocaust, and the state of Israel.
Jews in the Modern World: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2020
This class treats France and the Francophone world as a laboratory for the study of Jewish civilization over the past millennium. France has the world’s second largest Jewish population outside of Israel. It has a rich and complex history that traces all the key developments of the Jewish experience since ancient times: expulsions and migrations; codification of Jewish law; religious reform; the rise of anti-Semitism and the tragedy of the Holocaust; struggles between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews; complex relations between Muslims and Jews; the emergence modern Jewish politics; and the impact of the Israeli-Arab conflict. As we explore these themes and other themes, students become introduced to most fields of Jewish studies.
Jews and Judaism: From Paris to Jerusalem and Beyond: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2016, Spring 2015, Fall 2013, Fall 2012, Fall 2011
This is the fourth course in a four-course sequence in the history of Jewish culture and civilization. It explores the major themes in Jewish history from 1750 to the present, with special attention paid to the transformation of Jewish communal and individual identity in the modern world. Topics to be treated include the breakdown of traditional society, enlightenment and emancipation, assimilation, Hasidism, racial anti-Semitism, colonialism, Zionism, and contemporary Jewish life in Europe, North America, and Israel. The multicultural nature of Jewish history will be highlighted throughout the course through the treatment of non-European Jewish narratives alongside the more familiar Ashkenazi perspective.
Jewish Civilization: Modern Period: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2020
The course takes us far beyond contemporary tensions between Muslims and Jews, and deep into a more complicated history that spans the Mediterranean and beyond. We move through topics that include the earliest encounters between Muslims and Jews during the years of the rise of Islam; the historical impact and legacy of the dhimmi (the system of rights and restrictions that defined Jews’ status for centuries under Islamic rule); the culturally fruitful shared experience of Jews and Muslims in Medieval Spain and the Ottoman Empire; the effects of French, British, and Italian colonialism in the modern Middle East; and the important conflicts over Zionism and Arab nationalism during the past century.
Muslim-Jewish Encounters: From the Beginnings of Islam to Today: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023
The class explores the history of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel in all its complexity and contradictions. What is Zionism? What are its roots? Is it a liberation movement? A religious cause? A colonial ideology? A set of state policies? And what is the relationship between Zionism and the modern State of Israel? How do Zionism and Israel look different when considered from the standpoint of Jewish, Palestinian, European, or Middle Eastern history? Exploring Zionism and Israel from its roots in the nineteenth century to the present, this class offers in-depth knowledge and discussion on all of these topics and more.
History of Modern Israel: From the Emergence of Zionism to Our Time: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This course provides a survey of Armenian history from the earliest mentions of Armenia more than 2500 years ago to the end of the last Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia and the rise of the Ottomans in the 1400s. It will focus on the connections of Armenians and Armenian kingdoms with neighboring empires (including Persian, Roman, Abbasid, Byzantine, Seljuk, and Mongol), ethnic and religious groups and cultures. The aim of the course is to explore various social, political, and economic transformations that both linked Armenians with their neighbors and differentiated them as an ethno-religious group.
Armenia and Armenians from Ancient to Medieval Eras: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
This survey course will cover the period from the incorporation of most of the Armenian plateau into the Ottoman Empire to the present day.
Armenia: From Pre-modern Empires to the Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Fall 2020
This course will survey the historical events and intellectual developments leading up to and surrounding the destruction of European Jewry during World War II. By reading a mixture of primary and secondary sources we will examine the Shoah (the Hebrew word for the Holocaust) against the backdrop of modern Jewish and modern German history. The course is divided into three main parts: (1) the historical background up to 1933; (2) the persecution of the Jews and the beginnings of mass murder, 1933-1941; and (3) the industrialized murder of the Jews, 1942-1945.
History of the Holocaust: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2018
This course will survey the development of the sciences of living nature from the mid-18th to the late-20th century. Topics include scientific and popular natural history, exploration and discovery, Darwin and evolution, cell theory, the organizational transformation of science, physiology and experimentalism, classical and molecular genetics, and the biomedical-industrial complex. Emphasis is on the formation of fundamental concepts and methods, long-term trends toward specialization, institutionalization, professionalization, and industrialization, and the place of the life sciences in modern societies. Many lectures are illustrated by slides.
The Life Sciences since 1750: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2018
This course is a parallel course to 180, intended for students interested in teaching elementary or secondary school science and math. Students in the "T" course will attend the regular 180 lectures and a special section; this section will focus on techniques, skills, and perspectives necessary to apply the history of science in the juvenile and adolescent science classroom, including pedagogy, devising lesson plans for their classrooms, finding reliable historical information, and writing.
History of the Life Sciences Since 1750 (Cal Teach): Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2008, Fall 2005, Spring 2005
This course examines the establishment of the ideas and institutions of modern physics over the last century and a half.We begin with the 19th century organization of the discipline and the debates over the classical world picture (mechanics, electromagnetism and optics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics).We follow the dramatic changes that undid the classical picture, from the discovery of radioactivity through Einstein's theories of relativity on to the creation of quantum mechanics and the accompanying philosophical disputes.Alongside these conceptual upheavals we will look at the evolving structure of the discipline, its links with industry and government, and the massive transformations of WWII, culminating in the atomic bomb.
Topics in the History of the Physical Sciences: Modern Physics: From the Atom to Big Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Spring 2020
Where do science and technology come from? How did they become the most authoritative kinds of knowledge in our society? How do technology, culture, and society interact? What drives technological change? The course examines these questions using case studies from different historical periods. We shall discuss the emergence of science as a dimension of our modernity, and its relations to other traditions such as magic, religion, and art. The aim of the course is for students to learn about how science and technology shape the way we live and, especially, how technological change is invariably shaped by historical and social circumstances.
Science, Technology, and Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Spring 2020
This course is a parallel course to 182A, intended for students interested in teaching elementary or secondary school science and math. Students in the "T" course will attend the regular 182A lectures and a special section; this section will focus on techniques, skills, and perspectives necessary to apply the history of science in the juvenile and adolescent science classroom, including pedagogy, devising lesson plans for their classrooms, finding reliable historical information, and writing.
Science, Technology, and Society (Cal Teach): Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This course provides an overview of the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) as a way to study how our knowledge and technology shape and are shaped by social, political, historical, economic, and other factors. We will learn key concepts of the field (e.g., how technologies are understood and used differently in different communities) and apply them to a wide range of topics, including geography, history, environmental and information science, and others. Questions this course will address include: how are scientific facts constructed? How are values embedded in technical systems?

Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course is a parallel course to C182C, intended for students interested in teaching elementary or secondary school science and math. Students in the "T" course will attend the regular C182C lectures and a special section; this section will focus on techniques, skills, and perspectives necessary to apply the history of science in the juvenile and adolescent science classroom, including pedagogy, devising lesson plans for their classrooms, finding reliable historical information, and writing.
Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society (Cal Teach): Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Spring 1998

Topics in the History of Medicine: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2022
The history of medicine shows how societies have faced health crises in the past and how they have changed their approach to illness and disease over time. This class is a survey of the history of medicine in the U.S., focusing on changing concepts of disease, medical practices, institutions, patient experiences, and public health measures. In particular, the course examines how shifting ideas about gender, class, and race shaped experiences of illness and suffering, as well as medical knowledge and education. While the course focuses on the history of American medicine, it acknowledges that changes in the practice, theory, and education of medicine often do not occur in isolation but are part of global developments.
Disease, Health and Medicine in American History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024
This course introduces the history of science, medicine and technology in modern East Asia—mainly China, Japan, Korea, and their inland and maritime peripheries—between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries. The first half of the course examines the reconfiguration in understandings of the body and the natural world, as well as the politics of medicine and technology, during the transition from the early modern to the modern period. The second half puts this East Asian reconfiguration into global perspective over the last century. A central goal will be to explore different methodological approaches including traditional history of science, social history, post-colonial studies, gender, translation studies, and material culture.
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Modern East Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 8 Week Session, Spring 2022, Fall 2020, Spring 2020
This course teaches you to use the tools of applied historical thinking and Science, Technology, and Society (STS) to recognize, analyze, and shape the human contexts and ethics of data. It addresses key topics such as doing ethical data science amid shifting definitions of human subjects, consent, and privacy; the changing relationship between data, democracy, and law; the role of data analytics in how corporations and governments provide public goods such as health and security to citizens; sensors, machine learning and artificial intelligence and changing landscapes of labor, industry, and city life. It prepares you to engage as a knowledgeable and responsible citizen and professional in the varied arenas of our datafied world.
Human Contexts and Ethics of Data - DATA/History/STS: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
The course deals with the beginnings of Christianity and its development into a legal religion in the Roman Empire. It traces the changes Christianity underwent as the Roman Empire changed into one of several powers in the Mediterranean alongside the Umayyad Caliphate and other post-Roman kingdoms. Focusing on the evolution of Christianity in the West, the course ends with the coronation of Charlemagne as emperor in Rome in 800 CE. Throughout, the beginnings of Christianity will be investigated in the context of the societal givens that shaped it and to which the inhabitants of the Roman Empire and its successor states who became Christian responded. The course is based on primary sources and will include problems of historical method.
Christianity: The Beginnings: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2021, Fall 2018
This course follows 185A as the 2nd of two semesters on the History of Christianity. It treats the history of (principally Western) Christianity between the High Middle Ages and the present in Europe and in the rest of the world. The course's main theme is Christianity and the encounter of cultures. Its core readings range from Thomas a Kempis, Martin Luther, and St. Teresa of Avila to Simone Weil and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The lectures will treat social, cultural, and intellectual topics, such as ecclesiastical authority institutions, forms of piety, revivalism, evangelization, theological speculation, Biblical scholarship, and philosophical arguments for and against religion.
History of Christianity: History of Christianity from 1250: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2017, Fall 2013
This course explores great and complex global historical changes that have taken place since the end of the second World War. By situating the major postwar upheavals - from decolonization to the Cold War; from population growth to environmental degradation; from globalization to the endurance of economic inequalities - in comparative and international contexts, this course encourages students to see the origins of our own times and dilemmas in their proper historical context and provides an introduction to recent international and gloal history.
International and Global History since 1945: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course examines the historical development of human rights to the present day, focusing especially (but not exclusively) on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More than a history of origins, however, this course will contemplate the relationships between human rights and other crucial themes in the history of the modern era, including revolution, slavery, capitalism, colonialism, racism, and genocide. As a history of international and global themes and an examination of specific practices and organizations, this course will ask students to make comparisons across space and time and to reflect upon the evolution of human rights in international thought and action—from imperial beginnings to the crises of our time.
The History and Practice of Human Rights: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2013
This course explores the intersections of art and science in medieval, modern, and contemporary history. It focuses on the ways in which artistic and scientific practices have shaped and legitimated each other through the ages. The course takes the form of an overview that spans from the awakening of European culture through the reception of new knowledge from the Near East to the most recent encounters between art and technoscience in the 21st century.
Art and Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2014
In this course we explore the intersections of art and science in medieval, modern, and contemporary history. Our aim is twofold. First, to explore the close interaction between these two fields, and the way in which they have shaped each other through the ages. Second, to focus our attention on specific instances of art/science interaction, using them as prisms through which one can reach a fuller understanding of major historical transformations.
Art and Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2018, Spring 2016
This course will explore magic as an experimental science within the learned traditions of civilizations that we consider as fundamental for a modern Western identity: from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome to the medieval and early modern Middle East, Byzantium, and Europe. The primary sources used for this exploration will be texts on demons, magic, divination, and the sophisticated philosophical background to such beliefs. In addition, archeological remains pertinent to these practices such as talismans, amulets, and other magical objects will be discussed.
Magic, Religion, and Science: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
The course focuses on several crucial shipwreck narratives in Homer’s Odyssey, the Ancient Egyptian Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, Sophocles’ Philoctetes, a shipwreck survived by Apostle Paul, in imperial Roman romance novels, and in Shakespeare’s Tempest to examine long-distance trade and the impact of maritime catastrophes on narratives that encapsulate encounters with the divine, conversions, shifts in religious and personal identity, and concepts of paradise. We will look at ship-building innovations and trade routes to provide context and use cultural anthropology and literary theory to identify how the narrators use shipwrecks to fashion the relation between nature, the divine, and humans as individuals and members of a society.
Shipwrecked: Conversion, Redemption, and Salvation in Shipwreck Narratives: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022
What is love? An instinct, a thing of nature? Or an idea, a product of culture? European philosophers since Plato have sought answers to these questions, advancing in the process various theories about the relationship between nature, culture, and the human condition. This class considers these theories as a starting point of an historical exploration of love as represented in a variety of cultural artifacts from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages. Among them are the poetry of Sappho and Ovid; Greek and Roman sculpture; ancient, Byzantine, and medieval romances; marriage chests and wedding hymns; the letters of Abelard and Eloise; the New Testament and Augustine’s The City of God.
Eros: A History of Love from Ancient Greece to the Renaissance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Whether you call it soccer, football or futebol the beautiful game with the round ball is played and watched around the world. This class will explore how and why that came to happen. Along the way it will trace key developments in the game such as the formation of clubs, international tournaments, the development of stadiums, fan culture, media coverage, formations and styles of play, gambling and corruption, the working conditions and wages of players. We will locate these changes in broader historical processes – political, economic, social and cultural - that have transformed the game and made it a global commodity. The class will teach you both about the game and about thinking historically and how the world changes over time.
Soccer: A Global History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Fall 2013, Fall 2005, Fall 2002
This course will study the end of life--dying and death--from the perspective of medicine and history. It seeks to confront the humanist with the quotidian dilemmas of modern clinical practice and medicine's deep engagement with death more generally. It invites pre-med, pre-law, and public policy students to understand these matters in light of the historical and, more broadly, literary and artistic perspectives of the humanities.
Death, Dying, and Modern Medicine: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives: Read More [+]