This first offering in a two-course sequence introduces students to the history of the Middle East. Surveying the region's history prior to the eighteenth century, it considers the emergence of the world's earliest civilizations; the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the spread of Arab, Turkish, and Persian Empires. Emphasis is placed on the Middles East's place in global trade networks and imperial conflicts.
Selected topics in the history of western Europe during the Middle Ages. Emphasis on reading, papers, discussion.
This seminar uses the Sewanee area as a case study to introduce students to the conceptual processes of history. Students employ historical methods within a variety of interdisciplinary contexts, drawing on insights from archeology, biology, and geology, as well as various approaches to history, to comprehend both what has happened here and how it is variously understood. Classroom sessions are complemented by regular field work and archival research.
This course explores New York City by studying the migrants and immigrants who have settled there since its founding. It explores how migrants and immigrants change New York, how the city changes them, and the significance of ethnic diversity in the city’s politics and culture. We will read scholarly writings, examine films and music as primary sources, take field trips to immigrant neighborhoods, and visit museums devoted to migration and immigration. At every opportunity, we will venture outside our classroom to learn about the city through direct observation.
A seminar dealing with important political, social, and intellectual movements in American history.
A consideration of some of the ways historians have dealt with historiographical issues. The books to be examined are all significant in the way they treat evidence, construct an interpretation of the past, and reflect ideas and values of the historians' own time. The emphasis in the course is on current historical methods and interpretations.
A seminar on the history of Latin American women from the seventeenth century to the present, examining the tension in Latin American countries concerning the role of women, their relationship to the family, and their desire for equality. The course explores controversies over the legal status of women, education, employment, and participation in political life. Students will examine several theoretical approaches to gender studies together with specific case studies.
Cities have long offered possibilities for resisting gender and sexual norms, constructing new gender and sexual identities, forming sexual subcultures, and fighting for gender and sexual freedom. But cities have also been sites of repression and violent conflict around gender and sexuality. This seminar asks how urban life has shaped—and been shaped by—gender and sexuality, examining topics such as the anxieties about nineteenth-century “streetwalkers,” “race riots” fueled by rumors of interracial sex, and the gay liberation movement. Course materials draw primarily from histories of American cities but will also consider works of urban history focused on other geographic regions.
An examination of the significant social, political, and intellectual movements in the history of Europe.
History majors engage in primary and secondary research on a topic of interest, culminating in a significant analytical paper. The semester concludes with an oral presentation of each student's research.
History majors engage in primary and secondary research on a topic of interest, culminating in a significant analytical paper. The semester concludes with an oral presentation of each student's research.
History majors engage in primary and secondary research on a topic of interest, culminating in a significant analytical paper. The semester concludes with an oral presentation of each student's research.
This course examines the great age of European expansion in the 19th and 20th centuries in Asia and explores the underpinnings of an imperial state. From the age of exploration, to the age of trade, to the age of European decolonization, the relations between the European and the local peoples underwent a significant change in terms of cultural contact, economic exploitation, and political domination. The course analyzes the results of these relations for the Europeans and for the Asians they ruled. It also considers why and how imperial dominations lost their force and new national identities emerged in Asia.
Humanities
As an interdisciplinary study, this course investigates how the medieval world made sense of itself. It explores material from across the Middle Ages, including literature, art, architecture, and theology, and considers how different literacies (or modes of interpretation and understanding), developed during this time period. Focusing on several different areas of the medieval experience will help participants to gain insights into larger questions that stretch out from the medieval period to today.
This course explores how utopian, dystopian, and post-apocalyptic discourse imaginatively engages--and has engaged--cultural and historical challenges. Using approaches related to history, philosophy, literature, political theory, and the visual arts--especially film--this class seeks to ground utopian and dystopian speculation in the historical and cultural circumstances engendering it. Possible texts include works by Rousseau, More, Plato, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Leibniz, Voltaire, Huxley, Orwell, Zamyatin, McCarthy, Burgess, Atwood, Ishiguro, Lovecraft, Fritz Lang, and Ridley Scott.
This course explores how utopian, dystopian, and post-apocalyptic discourse imaginatively engages--and has engaged--cultural and historical challenges. Using approaches related to history, philosophy, literature, political theory, and the visual arts--especially film--this class seeks to ground utopian and dystopian speculation in the historical and cultural circumstances engendering it. Possible texts include works by Rousseau, More, Plato, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Leibniz, Voltaire, Huxley, Orwell, Zamyatin, McCarthy, Burgess, Atwood, Ishiguro, Lovecraft, Fritz Lang, and Ridley Scott.
This course explores how utopian, dystopian, and post-apocalyptic discourse imaginatively engages--and has engaged--cultural and historical challenges. Using approaches related to history, philosophy, literature, political theory, and the visual arts--especially film--this class seeks to ground utopian and dystopian speculation in the historical and cultural circumstances engendering it. Possible texts include works by Rousseau, More, Plato, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Leibniz, Voltaire, Huxley, Orwell, Zamyatin, McCarthy, Burgess, Atwood, Ishiguro, Lovecraft, Fritz Lang, and Ridley Scott.
This course focuses on special topics in the humanities not already covered in existing courses in the program. This course may be repeated twice for credit when the topic differs.
International & Global Studies
Using disaster as a starting point for understanding the visual culture of modern and contemporary Japan, this course provides students with a survey of Japanese art history from 1850 to the present day. Considers the intersections of popular culture and fine art, examines painting, sculpture, architecture, memorials, photography, prints, video, and installation art. Explores the impact and legacy of natural disasters, war, the nuclear bomb, imperialism, environmental issues, and terrorism in the visual arts, analyzing various artistic responses to calamity.
This course examines major artistic currents in China from 1980 to the present day. Explores connections between artistic production, political movements, and political structures. Considers the position of Chinese artists in a global society, issues of diaspora, and the role of art institutions and markets in the production and reception of Chinese contemporary art.