Curriculum : First Year

This course introduces students to the issues and conceptual possibilities of approaching history from an international or global perspective. It will survey historiographies and methodologies, including civilizational approaches, comparative histories, and world systems theory. It will address specific problems such as how to rethink area divisions rooted in the Cold War and colonial eras, andhow to think about periodization on a global scale. It will also emphasize examples of research that provide viable models for graduate research, such as studies on migration, technology, trade, diplomacy, international organizations, and war.

The goal is to encourage students to consider research that can illuminate large scale historical processes, engage in comparative and cross-cultural histories, or explore geographically dispersed phenomena such as environmental processes, international politics, transnational networks,borderlands and oceanic regions.

In this course students will learn how to identify animportant historical problem, conduct research in primary sources, and presentwork to their peers. It will begin with a discussion of some of the perennial challenges of historical research and then address the more particular problems for those who work outside convention national or regional fields. But students will spend most of the semester reading and critiquing one another’s work asthey develop a research prospectus for their MA theses. They will also be expected to seek advice from Columbia and LSE faculty with expertise on the subject, and designate two who can serve as thesis advisors. Approaches to International and Global History, G8930, is a prerequisite for the course.

Each week will feature a workshop on the practical aspects of researching, writing, and publishing history. Many include short assignments– see below for details. Aside from regular attendance and active participation, you must also complete the following written assignments. All of these dates are firm.

Examines how the Atlantic ocean and its boundaries were tied together through the flow of people, goods, and ideas. Studies the cultures of the communities formed by merchants, pirates, and slaves; investigates how their interactions and frictions combined to shape the unique combination of liberty and oppression that characterizes early modern capitalism. 3 pts.

The shaping of European cultural identity through encounters with non-European cultures from 1500 to the postcolonial era. Novels, paintings, and films are among the sources used to examine such topics as exoticism in the Enlightenment, slavery and European capitalism, Orientalism in art, ethnographic writings on the primitive, and tourism. 3 pts.

In this course students will explore contemporary international and global history, focusing on how states have cooperated and competed in the Cold War, decolonization, and regional crises. But lectures will also analyze how non-governmental organizations, cross-border migration, new means of communication, and global markets are transforming the international system as a whole. 3 pts.

An examination of metropolitan growth and development in large cities from around the world, including South America, Australia, Asia, and North America, with particular emphasis on cities that have grown rapidly in the 20th century. 3 pts.

The history of Middle Eastern and North African Islam and of Western Christendom as parts of a common Islamo-Christian Civilization. Selected topics from the last 2000 years illuminate both Islamic and European history by treating them in tandem. Course culminates in discussion of the historical roots of current international problems. 3 pts.

This course examines how women experience empire and asks how their actions and activities produced critical shifts in the workings of colonial societies worldwide. Topics include sexuality, the colonial family, reproduction, race, and political activism. 3 pts.

The interconnected histories of the Pacific War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War and their lasting political, cultural, and socio-economic impact on East Asia, the U.S., and the world. 3 pts.

Dedicated to four main topics on human rights: 1) long-term origins; 2)short-term origins; 3) evolution through the present; 4) moral defenses and ideological criticisms. 3 pts.

An exploration of the large-scale processes and global interconnections of the past 500 years that have produced the economic, cultural and political structures of the modern world. 3 pts.

Overview of human migration from pre-history to the present. Sessions on classical Rome; Jewish diaspora; Viking, Mongol, and Arab conquests; peopling of New World, European colonization, and African slavery; 19th-century European mass migration; Chinese and Indian diasporas; resurgence of global migration in last three decades, and current debates. 3 pts.

Explores the relations between domestic animals and human societies from prehistoric times to the present. Topics include animal symbolism, origins of domestication, economics of animal-drawn transport, food taboos, animals in religion, acclimatization of animals in new territories and impact on society and environment, and the evolution of attitudes toward animals in the 20th century. 3 pts.

The aim is to provide an empirical grasp of U.S. foreign relations and to problematize the historiographical views of the various periods and questions that have come up to make that particular history. Much emphasis will thus be put on critique, and on determining limits of these contentious principles. 3 pts.

This seminar explores concepts, perspectives and sources essential to understanding the U.S.'s use of soft power over the last century. Students will work with terms such as "hegemony," "Americanization," and "creolization" with an eye to developing their own topics which might range from Woolworths to Walmart and from fast food to faith-based inititiatives. Knowledge of a foreign language is required. 4 pts.

Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, millions of Jews in Eastern Europe uprooted themselves from their places of birth and settled in new homes around the world. In this course, we shall analyze primary source material, literary accounts as well as secondary sources as we try to make sense of the different factors shaping East European Jewish immigrants' experiences in the Americas. 4 pts.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, millions of Jews uprooted themselves from their places of birth and moved to cities scattered throughout the world. In this course, we shall analyze primary source material, literary accounts as well as secondary sources as we examine the Jewish encounter with the city, and see how Jewish culture was shaped by and helped to shape urban culture. We shall compare Jewish life in six cities spanning from Eastern Europe to the United States and consider how Jews' concerns molded the urban economy, urban politics, and cosmopolitan culture. We shall also consider the ways in which urbanization changed everyday Jewish life. 4 pts.

Examines Jewish immigrant experience in New York, Buenos Aires, London, and Paris, c.1880-1930. Focus on the Old World origins of the arrivals, the formation of neighborhoods, ethnic institutions, family, work, cultural expressions, and relations with the rest of society. Based on readings and primary research (newspapers, letters, songs, photographs, etc.). 4 pts.

Comparative and critical reading of major themes and methods in the historiography on crime and punishment in Europe and Latin America. Topics include banditry, policing and justice, urban crime, violence and gender roles, and the development of criminology. 4 pts.

In recent years politicians and pundits in the U.S. and elsewhere have decried the decline of the family. What exactly has changed? What has stayed the same? And what contribution can historians make to this debate? Drawing on cross-cultural examples, primarily from Latin America, the U.S. and Europe, this seminar explores varieties of domestic forms from the early modern period to the present. 4 pts.

This course will examine some of the problems inherent in Western historical writing on non-European cultures, as well as broad questions of what itmeans to write history across cultures. The course will touch on therelationship between knowledge and power, given that much of the knowledge we will be considering was produced at a time of the expansion of Western power over the rest of the world. By comparing some of the "others" which European historians constructed in the different non-western societies they depicted, and the ways other societies dealt with alterity and self, we may be able to derive a better sense of how the Western sense of self was constructed. 4 pts.

Questions driving this seminar will include: Is Islam foreign to Africa, or is it local? What were the historical relationships between Muslims and non-believers, broadly, and between Muslim scholars and mystics and state power, more narrowly? How have the means and the ends of Muslim political engagement in sub-Saharan Africa changed over the last millenium, and particularly under colonial rule in the 19th and 20th centuries? We will read several texts written by African Muslims of the 16th through the 20th centuries, in addition to the work of historians, anthropologists, and others who have addressed the history of Africa's Muslims. 4 pts.

An exploration of colonialism's "worlding" of the world, and the philosophical question of "the human." Approaches comparative colonial experiences and global discourses of human rights historically and anthropologically. Consideration of relationships among somatic states, technologies of control, and shifts in political economy. 4 pts.

How have Asians understood and translated international law? How has the encounter with Asia shaped international law? How have Asian nations been excluded from international law and subject to extraterritoriality and colonialism through ideas like "civilization" and "self rule"? How and why have they achieved inclusion? Does international law offer a viable universal norm? 4 pts.

Analysis of the wars in Indochina from 1945 to 1975, with a focus on the American period (1965-1973). As a major event in twentieth-century world history, the Vietnam War will be seen in the context of decolonization, the rise of Third-World nationalism, the global Cold War, and the expansion of American power after World War II. 4 pts.

Investigates the cultural, material and technological conditions that facilitated the development of "fashion systems" in early modern Europe, Japan and contemporary Asian diasporic communities. In the global framework, "fashion" serves as a window into the politics of self-presentation, community formation, structure of desires, and struggles over representation. 4 pts.

The literature of the coming of and the policies involved in World War II. Emphasis not only upon the American involvement but also on the other major belligerents. 4 pts.

From Indian Ocean worlds of the seventeenth century, to Atlantic world slavery, to the establishment of colonies in Asia and Africa during the nineteenth century, colonization was critical to the development of metropolitan ideas regarding politics and personhood. This seminar will examine these histories, along with emerging constructions of race and gender, as precursors to debates about human rights and humanitarianism in the twentieth century. 4 pts.

Conflicts emerging from the production and consumption of food from prehistoric to modern times. Settled agriculture and the significance of geography and social stratification in determining food consumption; ideologies of social status and "taste" in Europe; impact of knowledge about health and hygiene on European dietary habits; drink in diets and social life; dining out in European culture; role of transport and technology in consumer culture; food and the welfare state; mass production and globalization of food. 4 pts.

This course will consider how experiences of the natural world and the meaning of "nature" have changed over the past three centuries. We will follow the development of the environmental sciences and the origins of environmentalism. The geographical focus will be Europe, with attention to the global context of imperialism. 4 pts.

Exploration of the role of technology in history and approaches toward studying that role. Ancient, medieval, and modern technology, both Western and non-Western. 4 pts.

Why have some forms of migration, trade and organized violence become illegal, and how is this connected to the formation of modern states and borders? These questions will be addressed from a global perspective over the last five centuries. 4 pts.

A thematic graduate colloquium that examines the phenomenon of captivity in Western history, from the Biblical Near East to the present day and across Europe and the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Americas. Students will read primary sources (“captivity narratives” and others) alongside secondary scholarship, and produce either an essay based on original research or another suitable final project. 4 pts.

This course examines how great powers sought to justify, expand and stabilize their colonial empires in the period after the First World War. We will examine both the rhetorical frameworks through which imperial powers understood and explained their colonial efforts, and the practices and consequences of colonial rule on the ground. Particular attention will be paid to the impact of international movements and institutions on colonial governance, to colonial legal systems and economic structures, to conflicts between metropole and colony, and to the ways in which colonial governments and administrators reacted to, and learned from, each other across national lines. 4 pts.

This seminar will examine conflicting interpretation and analysis of the international history of Latin America during the Cold War from 1948 to 1990. It will focus mainly on Latin America’s relations with the United States, examine the formulation and impact of U.S. Cold War policies throughout the region, analyze episodes of direct and indirect intervention that overturned governments, and consider the evolution of hemispheric alliances and organizations that embodied and projected U. S. power. The seminar will also examine efforts by Latin American governments, political parties, and interest groups to balance against U. S. influence or exploit close relations with the United States for their own purposes. 4 pts.

Intensive reading and discussion course designed to critically analyze some of the major themes and newest scholarship in women's and gender history. Readings emphasize the history of Europe and the United States though they include selections from the non-western world; and they selectively span the period from 1600 to the present. 4 pts.

Comparative and critical reading of major themes and methods in the historiography on crime and punishment in Europe and Latin America. Banditry, policing and justice, urban crime, violence and gender roles, and the development of criminology.  4 pts.

4 pts.

This course aims to provoke a conversation across fields. How do Africanists write colonial history? How do Europeanists? Is it possible to write an ‘African’ history of European empire, or a ‘European’ history of colonialism? We will read the work of innovative scholars from both subfields of history, as well as from other disciplines, with the goal of appreciating the similarities and differences in their questions, their methods, and their conclusions. This course aims to provoke a conversation across fields. How do Africanists write colonial history? How do Europeanists? Is it possible to write an ‘African’ history of European empire, or a ‘European’ history of colonialism? We will read the work of innovative scholars from both subfields of history, as well as from other disciplines, with the goal of appreciating the similarities and differences in their questions, their methods, and their conclusions. 4 pts.

This colloquium explores the recent historiography of colonial institutions of control and governance, and inquires comparatively into the development of disciplinary practices in both metropole and colony. Focusing on how “colonial modernity” relied on forms of racialized control and discipline, this seminar moves beyond the critique of colonial ideology to ask what material practices helped to shape colonial governance. In particular we will explore how the body of the colonized became a critical locus through which ideologies of racial and cultural difference were deployed. 4 pts.

Taught jointly by historians of the ancient and contemporary world, this colloquium aims to stimulate students wanting to work with an historical perspective to examine cross-culturally the roots, the modalities, the effects and the rhetoric of imperialism across the ages. Classes will consider a variety of theoretical approaches and a series of case studies. 4 pts.

4 pts.

The aim of this graduate level colloquium is to provide a broad introduction to disease, public health, and medicine in colonial and post-colonial countries, with an emphasis on comparative history. 4 pts.

A transnational exploration of the history of the twentieth century, addressing commonalities, connections, and comparisons among different parts of the world toward the end of telling the twentieth century as a whole. 4 pts.

4 pts.

All histories, from the most local and antiquarian to the most sweeping and synthetic, have at least an implicit understanding of their place in the world as a whole. We will look at how macro-categories that divide and structure the world have been imagined and made into reality over time. How did the world come to be a mosaic of nation states, further grouped into macro-categories like civilization, culture areas, East-West, North-South, developed-undeveloped, and the First, Second and Third Worlds? How have such categories continued to shape our understanding of historical processes? 4 pts.

The commercial and territorial expansion of Europe and the Ottoman Empire and the formation of long-distance trading networks in East and Southeast Asia in the early modern period led to an unprecedented movement of knowledge. This graduate research seminar examines the physical and epistemic travels of various forms of knowledge, including objects, texts, and techniques, in the early modern world. 4 pts.

4 pts

This seminar explores how scholarship in the history of gender and sexuality articulates with studies of empire, colonialism, and anti-colonial nationalism. Focusing in particular on the regions of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia the seminar is centrally interested in the convergences between gendered identities, the reconfiguration of sex and the family, and religious and cultural formations as they took shape during the nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries. Furthermore, the seminar will investigate how those experiences have structured the politics and histories of feminisms in these regions. 4 pts.

4 pts.