Schedule of Classes

Two principles central to modern American culture are "separation of church and state" and individual freedom of religious choice. For most of Western history, however, these principles would have been largely incomprehensible. This course examines the close relationship between religion and "the state" in ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and medieval Europe, analyzing the ways in which they reinforced each other as well as instances in which they came into conflict. More broadly, the course examines ways in which religion reinforced or challenged social norms relating to gender, hierarchy, and the identification of "insiders" and marginalized groups.

The course delves into the intellectual, social and cultural aspects of the Native American/European encounter in what came to be called Latin America in the first century after the arrival of Columbus. It examines such facets as the underlying religious and political legitimation of the Iberian conquests, indigenous responses, and the issue of "othering" and mutual perceptions. It also scrutinizes material and institutional factors such as Spanish imperial and Indian policy, forms of surplus extraction established by the Spanish, and political arrangements embracing native peoples and Europeans.

This course focuses on Race, Class, and Identity in American history since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 to the present, emphasizing specific political, social, and economic developments. It examines such topics as expansion, Populist and Progressive movements, the Great Depression, the World Wars, reform and dissent in the 1960s and the Vietnam conflict.

This course examines how ideas about sex, gender, and work have intertwined and changed across U.S. history. It considers both how women have negotiated sex and sexuality in their work—including wanted and unwanted sexual advances in the workplace—and how activism around issues of sex, sexual assault, and rape has itself been work. This course will pay special attention to women’s experiences of sexual harassment both in and outside the workplace. Students will consider how the history of unwanted sexual attention informs present-day debates and activism around these issues, up to and including the #MeToo movement.

This course examines some of the most significant conflicts and turning points in the history of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth in Europe and its Caribbean slave colonies from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. We approach women’s reproductive bodies as contested sites of political struggle over issues as diverse as slavery, colonialism, population growth and birth control, religious reform, midwifery, the medicalization of childbirth, and nation-building. Centering women’s voices and experiences of the birth process where the sources allow us, we study the cultures and communities that women of diverse racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds constructed around biological reproduction.

This course is an introduction to the study of the Black Atlantic. Built on a chronological and thematic basis, the course will focus on the history and culture of populations of African descent, particularly in Europe and the Americas. This course is divided into three parts. The first part will conceptualize the notion of Black diaspora and the Black Atlantic. The second part will explore the history of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, in particular, how this forced migration impacted societies in the Americas and Europe. The third section of this course will explore the postemancipation period and the modern construction of race in western societies. Students will review both primary and secondary readings throughout the semester.

A general survey of the political, constitutional, economic, and social history of the United States.

A survey of European history from 1400 to 1750. Topics include rural and urban communities, the Renaissance, humanism, education and literacy, women and gender, the Protestant and Counter Reformations, confessional violence, absolutism, witch-hunts, poverty and deviance, colonialism, science and empire, nationalism, religious pluralism and Enlightenment.

This class surveys the political, social, and cultural foundations of East Asian civilization from earliest times to around 1600. From the rise of states and empires to the Ways of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, we will explore the flowering of Chinese cultural norms across Asia as well as consider the unique expressions of these norms throughout China, Korea, and Japan.

A survey of the history of Japan from earliest times to the present. Topics include early Chinese influence, Buddhism, the rise of feudalism, unification in the 15th Century, the era of isolation, the intrusion of the west, the Meiji Restoration, the rise of Japan as a military power and World War II, and postwar recovery.

A study of nation building and strongman government in the nineteenth century, the Mexican Revolution 1910-20, Argentina under Peron, and twentieth-century Brazil. Special emphasis on the roles of women and blacks.

A survey of the history of African-Americans from their arrival in the English colonies to the end of the Civil War. African-Americans' struggle with slavery and oppression provide the central theme, but the course will address the various political, economic, social, and cultural conditions which contributed to the development of a unique African-American community. Particular attention will be given to the development of such institutions within this community as family, religion, and education.

An introduction to the field of environmental history, which asks how the natural world has shaped the course of human civilization, and how humans, in turn, have shaped the natural world, over time.

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.

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 seminar compares the warfare that accompanied colonial encounters in North America and southern Africa, from the first European contact through the early twentieth century. It focuses on wars fought in response to resistance by native peoples and on the use of native allies in warfare between imperial foes as windows into the processes of acculturation, resistance, dispossession, and representation that characterized the colonial encounter as a whole. Texts range from traditional military history to religious, cultural, environmental, and comparative approaches to the topic.

Schedule of Classes

Greek

History