HIS 213 Foundations of Europe: Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

This course charts the cultural and social development of Europe from the Pax Romana to the Hundred Years War. Important themes include: Judaism and the emergence of Christianity, religious persecutions, the rise of Islam, Islamic and Byzantine empires, monasticism, the rise of the institutional Church and papal power,Church and State conflict, gender and feudal society, manorialism, urbanization and the advent of universities, interdynastic conflict and the origins of modern states. The course is a preparatory course designed for majors and Social Studies concentrators, emphasizing enhanced development of analytical and research skills. Open to HIS/POS majors and Social Studies concentrators, or with permission of the instructor. Fall (L03)

HIS 214 Modern Europe

This course is a survey of modern European history. Topics include: imperialism, religious fragmentation, capitalism and its social impacts, social formations and popular resistance, revolution and nation building, reform movements, world wars, the welfare state, the Cold War, and the EU. The course is a preparatory course designed for majors and Social Studies concentrators, emphasizing enhanced development of analytical and research skills. Open to HIS/POS majors and Social Studies concentrators, or with permission of the instructor. Spring (L03)

HIS 216 Early Modern Britain 1500-1815

An in-depth analysis of Britain from the 16th century Protestant Reformation to its attainment of global military,commercial,and industrial hegemony following victory over France in the Napoleonic wars. During this critical formative period in British history, England not only revised its own political system through a century of civil war, revolution, and regicide, but also subdued its neighbors in the British Isles and carved out an overseas empire that ultimately came to encompass one-third of the territorial globe and one-quarter of its peoples. We will interrogate the conquests, concepts, and contradictions that constituted Britain’s rise to international preeminence. The course is a preparatory course designed for majors and Social Studies concentrators, emphasizing enhanced development of analytical and research skills. Open to HIS/POS majors and Social Studies concentrators,or with permission of the instructor. Fall (L03)

HIS 217 Modern Britain, 1815-Present

In this course we will chart the rise and decline of Britain as a world power and assess the conflicting legacies and tensions it has left to the world. Topics include: industrialization, urbanization, labor movements, political and social reform, anti-slavery, Chartism, socialism and the birth of the Labour Party; the Irish question, the “Woman Question;” imperial expansion and race ideology, world wars, the welfare state, devolution, Cold War, and Britain and the European Union. The course is a preparatory course designed for majors and Social Studies concentrators, emphasizing enhanced development of analytical reading, writing, and research skills. Open to HIS/POS majors and Social Studies concentrators, or with permission of the instructor. Spring. (L03)

His 280 Revolutionary France, 1788-1880

This online course will explore revolution as a multivalent concept and site of competing social interests and visions. We will focus on how the abstract ideals of “Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite” enshrined in 1789 were imagined, contested, and adapted to changing social and geopolitical conditions, explore the various impacts and responses to revolution in wider Europe and France’s colonial empire, and chart its multiple re-enactments across the 19th century. Students will consider the tensions generated by different meanings of revolution and its attendant notions of freedom, equality, and justice as envisaged by different social groupings.

HIS 312 Renaissance and Reformation in Europe

Between 1350 and 1600 a convergence of intellectual, political and socioeconomic developments shattered the old dream of a unified Christian community in Europe under papal supremacy. This course begins with a detailed examination of the rise of Italian humanism in its socio-political context, then traces the spread of the “new thinking” to Northern Europe. The second half of the course takes a critical approach to the various religious reformations of 16th-century Europe focusing on their political and geopolitical dimensions. We begin with an examination of the links between the Renaissance, traditional anti-clericalism and Luther’s challenge to the Pope, then move into the regional tensions and dynastic politics that informed the religious policies of different European rulers in the age of 'religious wars.' The course concludes with a discussion of the radical reformations and the Catholic Reformation. Fulfills writing-intensive requirement. Prerequisite: HIS 213 or HIS/POS 300.

HIS 313 European Empires

This course is a comparative survey of European empires and their cultures of rule. Moving forward from the 15th century, students will trace and analyze the military and commercial rivalries of Spain, Portugal, Holland,Britain and France, and later on Germany and Italy, that revolved around domination of global markets, territory, and resources, and the profound disruptions such contests brought to indigenous economies and cultures.We will consider the complexities of colonial power hierarchies,the formation and contradictions of colonial identities, and the collaborations and resistances that shaped a multiplicity of imperial projects whose effects continue to reverberate across the world today and lay at the heart of international conflict and global inequities. HIS 313L Fulfills writing-intensive requirement. Prerequisite: HIS 214,HIS 216, HIS 221, HIS 226, HIS 260 or HIS/POS 300.

HIS 314 European Social and Intellectual History

This course critically analyzes a range of influential ideas and epistemologies from the Enlightenment to ‘postmodernity’ by using them as optics on the historical conditions and transitions that produced and gave them meaning.We will focus particularly on the mutually constitutive relationship between social subjectivity and the production and deployment of knowledge by mapping its complex processes of association, circulation, appropriation, and contestation. Topics include: classical liberalism and political economy, trade unionism, ideologies of race and colonialism, socialism, anarchism, feminism, fascism, and existentialism. Fulfills writing-intensive requirement. Prerequisite: HIS 214, HIS 217, or HIS/POS 300.

HIS 315 The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset

This course traces the evolution of the British Empire from its origins in eastern trade rivalries and North American settlement to post-WWII decline. The core themes we will follow include colonial cultures of rule and resistances, the influences of empire on British identity and social life, forms of imperial administration and policy, the commercial, military, and political functions of the joint stock company, the shifting rationale and ideologies of empire and its relation to domestic politics and economy, and the lasting imprints the British empire has left on the world. Fulfills writing intensive requirement. Prerequisite: HIS 218, HIS 219,or HIS/POS 300.

HIS 317 Women,Work and Family in Modern Europe

This course interrogates European history through the critical lens of gender and women’s lives. We will explore the role of gender in organizing and validating social power relations, negotiating authority, and the relation between ideology and social practice. Topics include: women’s work and the impacts of industrial capitalism, women's participation in political and social movements, domestic ideology and its contradictions; the birth of organized feminism, women’s militancy and war work, second wave feminism and sexual liberation theory. Fulfills writing-intensive requirement. Prerequisite: HIS 214, HIS 217, or HIS/POS 300.

HIS 318 War and Revolution in Europe, 1900-1945

The first half of the 20th century was dominated by the calamity of two world wars fueled by the commercial and imperial competition and militant nationalisms carried over from the later 19th century. This course examines the transformative impact that these wars had on European society. Although we will certainly pay some attention to traditional military concerns, the course focuses on the societal forces unleashed by both of these total wars (the rise of labor,women’s suffrage, the growth of socialism and fascism, the cultural experimentation of the interwar years). The course concludes with a detailed examination of the Holocaust. Fulfills
writing-intensive requirement. Prerequisite: HIS 214 or HIS/POS 300.