History 101/207 | Staff | 3 credits
Can one person “change the course of history,” or are we all merely characters in a grand historical script authored by forces beyond our control? What is more important to learn about the past: The ways that people made love, or the ways that they fought wars? What might future historians conclude about America from this modern day newspaper headline: “Wall Street buoyed by increased rate of joblessness” (The Berkshire Eagle, 6/3/00)? Voltaire’s irreverent definition of history as “the tricks we play on the dead” calls attention to the ways that we, not people in the past, make history, writing their stories to suit our current needs. Our task, then, is to produce a history that informs our understanding of the present while doing justice to the lives of our forebears. This course begins with a brief outline of human experiences from the Paleolithic era to the early 21st century, which is then questioned and elaborated through consideration of a series of issues important for the study of world history on a macro and micro level (e.g., gender relations and sexuality, industrialization, peaceful and hostile cross-cultural encounters, etc.). Students weigh evidence, enter into debates with scholars, and write several pieces of original historical analysis. In their study of specific problems, students also consider the “big questions” that historical investigation can illuminate: Does human nature change over time? How can human action effect change? How can we appreciate rather than fear the differing ways humans cope with the challenges of their day? Where do we turn for practical knowledge and ethical grounding in our own era when it seems that rapid obsolescence is the only sure thing?
No prerequisites. This course is generally offered once a year.
History 110 | Jackson | 3 credits
This course introduces history as an academic mode of inquiry by exploring a set of questions: What is time, and how do we explain change, and maybe continuity, in human (and perhaps nonhuman) existence over time? What can we really know about an ultimately irretrievable past, how do we know it, and why? What is the relationship between the past, as we scrutinize and reconstruct it from the perspective of the present, and life today, as well as, perhaps, life in the future? Is it possible to find meaning for ourselves, and perhaps discover our identities, in the past, and if so, how? Are their particular scales of space and time that are best suited for history, and if so, what are they? Is history a humanistic enterprise, meant to be narrated as stories, or a scientific way to test ideas from philosophy, the social sciences, and other disciplines according to temporal variables? By reading, discussing, and writing about works of history, historical thought, and historical methods, we learn how historians “make” history. We weigh interpretations of King Phillip’s War, the Salem Witch Trials, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the French Revolution, the ways cotton shaped global capitalism, and competing explanations for the rise of fascism, World War II, and the Holocaust; and the problem of revolutionary violence in a decolonizing, Cold War-era world. Students write a series of brief responses to different sources, and four essays on questions of historical thought, methods, and analysis.
History 246 CP | Baum | 3 credits
This course examines the history of the Ottoman Empire from its origins in the early 14th century to its eventual demise at the conclusion of the First World War. The Ottoman Empire stood at the intersection of global events for almost six centuries. It was heir both to the Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire, and emerged as the preeminent Early Modern power in the Mediterranean and Middle East before eventually limping through the long 19th century. The remnants of the Ottoman Empire make up today’s modern Middle East, and the history of the Empire, especially the terms of its collapse, help us to understand the region currently. This course considers, among other issues, these competing claims about the Ottoman example: on the one hand the Ottoman Empire as a lesson in the failure to modernize; on the other as a model for multiethnic and multireligious coexistence in a nonnationalist culture.
No prerequisites.
History 247 | Jackson | 3 credits
Required for students concentrating in Historical Studies, this course surveys the grand sweep of American history, from Europeans’ first contacts with Native Americans in the sixteenth century, to the more recent Great Recession. Weekly readings and discussion advance chronologically, reviewing the most significant developments inside the area that became the greater United States. The course also exceeds traditional narratives of U.S. history organized around the nation-state, however, by asking how international, transnational, and global forces and ideas have shaped American life. It structures a changing American past around three great tensions: those between empire and nation, exclusion and inclusion, and capitalism and democracy. Topics addressed include European colonialisms and their changing relations with Native America and each other; the origins and growth of slavery, and the American Revolution in an age of revolutions in the Atlantic World; the rise of democracy, industrial capitalism and its opponents, and abolitionism, labor, women’s, and other social reform movements; the global history of Reconstruction and racial segregation; the birth of American empire in the age of high imperialism; World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II; nuclear weapons, the security state, and the Cold War; the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the rise of new identity politics; the ascendancy of modern conservatism; and the origins and dynamics of neoliberalism in an age of climate crisis.
History 300/400 | Staff | 4 credits
Under these course numbers, juniors and seniors design tutorials to meet their particular interests and programmatic needs. A student should see the prospective tutor to define an area of mutual interest to pursue either individually or in a small group. Examples of tutorials include, but are not limited to, Early Modern Europe (1500–1713), European History (1713–1848), and European History (1848–1950).