History

In this course, students examine key artworks in the Madrid museums, galleries, and public art interventions to question what these pieces can convey about the contemporary history and cultures of Spain. The course includes visits to the world-leading collections at the Museo del Prado and Museo Reina Sofía contemporary art museum, among other sites, to learn firsthand about the historical context of Picasso’s Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, study Dalí’s references to psychoanalysis and sexuality in relation to other surrealists, and approximate Miró’s multiple interpretations in abstractionism over the twentieth century. Students learn to interpret the cultural codes of classical Golden Age and Modern iconography (El Greco, Velázquez, Goya), as well as more contemporary interpretations of these tropes for the ways in which they have been resignified over time with new meanings that resonate with publics from contemporary history (Mallo, Equipo Crónica, Chillida, Oteiza, Saura, etc.). In addition to studying the visual material and artists in question, the course includes historically grounded ways of seeing, looking, and the gaze at issue in each artwork and its circumstance, as well as their transformations over time. 

This course introduces students to the forces that made, upheld, and unmade empires in modern global history (c. 1780-present). The course approaches empires in a global historical perspective, looking at them as frameworks of power and resistance, and identifying connections and comparisons. Transformations in world order is a central concern. The course begins with imperial expansion, resistance and independence movements during the global period of revolution and global war in the 1780s. It traces the growth and consolidation of formal and informal empire through conquest and trade in the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Pacific, examining how changing conceptions of identity, race, nation, and belonging intersected with modes of political and economic power. The course also examines the impact of European imperial expansion on the empires of Asia and their transition from empire to nation-state in the international society of the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Human Rights are often assumed to have a precise 20th-century origin in the 1948 Universal Declaration or in the succeeding decades of increasing activism. However, the history of human rights discourse and its practical impact emerged as only the latest stage of a sequence of intellectual debates and real-life struggles in specific historical settings over political, religious, economic rights, broadly defined. Different cultural milieus have produced a variety of contexts for working out tensions between claims by individuals or minorities for autonomy on the one hand and the rival demands of collective obligation and identity on the other. This course seeks to explore an (inevitably selective) range of these historical contexts in order to demonstrate the continuity of perennial themes of conflict between the claims of individual actors and corporate institutions, whether states, churches, empires or other institutions, while also showing how and when key changes take place in the recognition of rights of political action, conscience, property ownership, gender identity, and workers’ rights etc. 

This course explores the intellectual, religious, and political transformations that reshaped England during the Reformation and laid the foundations of the modern Church of England. It examines how theological debates, assertions of royal authority, popular belief, and international pressures converged to sever England’s ties with Rome and redefine the relationship between church, state, and society. In addition, the course situates these developments within the broader evolution of knowledge, tracing how the upheavals of the Reformation intersected with the emerging currents of the Scientific Revolution. It analyzes how shifting methods of inquiry, changing attitudes toward authority and evidence, and new conceptions of truth transformed both religious and scientific thought. By integrating the study of religious reform with the history of knowledge and scientific advancement, the course highlights how early modern England became a critical site for rethinking the nature of belief, authority, and the production of knowledge in the modern world.

This general survey course is intended to introduce primarily international students to contemporary South Korean history, covering the period roughly from 1945 to the 1990s. Participation in this class does not require knowledge of modern or contemporary Korean history, nor fluency in the Korean language. After a brief overview of Korea‘s colonial past in order to contextualise post-1945 developments, the cours focuses on major political, social, economic, and ideological transformations from liberation to the end of the Cold War era.  

Key topics include the liberation and U.S. occupation period, the Korean War, authoritarian military regimes, and democratic movements. While the course is conducted entirely in English, including all required reading materials, it aims to introduce students to central concepts, historical figures, and key issues in South Korean history, thereby providing a foundation for more advanced study. 

This course introduces a comprehensive reflection on the Palestinian Question, taking into account the unique characteristics of each of its constituent issues, so that students gain clarity on how Palestine has been territorially and demographically constituted over the last two centuries, its place on the world political map before the establishment of Israel in 1948, and the subsequent progressive territorial and demographic transformations.

This course explores the history of the United States from the early 1900s to the present, providing a more international point of view as well as analyzing current events. It traces the actions of prominent US historical figures and analyzes US policies that have impacted the rest of the world.

The word ‘empire’ makes one think of the great European naval empires: Portuguese, Dutch, and English. And yet, the third largest empire in history—surpassed only by the Mongol and British Empires—is Russia. Moreover, Russia has sustained its peak territorial extent much longer than any other empire, having been the largest polity on earth for the last 400 years. How should we understand the Russian empire? And how does it help us get a better grasp on recent political events? Much commentary has tried to describe Russian with the classic categories of Western political thought: autocracy, despotism, dictatorship, nationalism, fascism. Others have followed Winston Churchill in declaring Russia to be incomprehensible: ‘a mystery wrapped in an enigma’. This course teaches to think about Russia in a different way, and to recognize it as a complex socio-cultural entity that needs to be understood on its own terms. It shows that the most famous events in Russian history—whether the Revolution of 1917, or the full-scale invasion of Ukraine—can only be properly evaluated within the long-term context of Russian imperial history and identity-formation and teaches students to think of a Russia that faces not only ‘the West’, but also a vast frontier stretching from the Caucasus mountains to the Korean peninsula. The course also places Russian history in comparative perspective, using tools and methods well-known to scholars of International Relations. The course examines whether Russian autocracy is a unique cultural phenomenon, or whether it bears similarities to other political regimes throughout history. Most importantly, it considers the constant interaction between culture and politics. How did shifting conceptions of gender shape the Russian imperial project? How was the Empire’s extraordinary diversity in terms of religious belief, mother tongue, ethnicity or lifestyle studied, interpreted, codified in law, and leveraged for political gains or reinforcing power hierarchies? How has political authority been conceptualized by Russians and their subjects, not just in high politics and formal treatises, but also in art, literature, and other forms of cultural expression? At the end of this course, understand the long-term origins of the Russian Empire, and be able to debate how these origins shape Russian culture and society today.

The modern history of Iran has been tumultuous, full of revolts, revolutions and reversals. Key political developments in the nineteenth century included the impact of European political philosophies and Western educational systems, the Tobacco Revolt (1891), the Constitutional Revolution (1906-1911) and its aftermath, the rise of feminist movements and its effects in the revolutionary uprising in 2022. Pivotal events in the twentieth century included the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty and the modernization project, the nationalization of oil production, the CIA-staged coup that removed the democratically-chosen Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq (1882-1967), the White Revolution and urbanization, the repression of intellectuals and the 1979 Revolution, the hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), and the consolidation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. These events have been followed in recent decades by reforms and most recently, the revolutionary uprising with the powerful slogan “Women, Life, and Freedom” (zan, zendegi, azadi). The year 1979 marked the start of several weighty political developments in the Middle East, which have considerably changed the region and international relations. The rivalry between Iran and Saudi-Arabia, the Shiite-Sunnite divide, the role of Iran in Afghanistan, the ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and Hizballah in Lebanon are among topics which are going to be treated in this course. The course surveys this period from the perspectives of Iranians, seeing how they view their own history and use religious tenets, poetry, art and material culture to contribute to the modernization of their country. The course address how they positioned Iran in the regional and international political settings? While secondary sources are used to examine Iran’s modern history, key primary sources are introduced in translation, to show how Iranians look at their own history in relation to their neighbors and Western powers.