History

This course explores various aspects of classical and early medieval Japan by listening to different voices recorded in historical and literary sources. The sessions alternate in focus: first, the sessions discuss the history of a particular time or topic and then explore related literary works. The course expands one's perspective and reshapes their understanding of Japanese history as a complex and nonlinear process.

This course analyzes the elements that comprise the spatial organization of past societies. It examines the complex interrelationship between the natural and cultural aspects of the territory within its historical context. This course focuses on the material remains or archaeological record of different societies and, from their geographical coordinates, the spatial behaviors of those historical societies. It explores the socioeconomic impact of the cultural landscape, especially in its role as a tourist attraction.

This course introduces students to the history of the area surrounding the present-day political boundary between the United States and Mexico. How did this peripheral region, far from the centers of state power, become a place of great interest for those who sought to sustain and resist that power? As the course grapples with that question, students learn to think historically across and about national borders. They begin with the first contacts between Spanish explorers and native peoples and continue through NAFTA, the war on drugs, and the contemporary migration crisis. Students look for common trends in regional history that nation-based surveys and nationalistic media coverage tend to overlook. Simultaneously, they chart the emergence of the border as a political boundary, a social space, and a cultural entity.

This course examines how attitudes toward death and the management of the dead transformed during the 19th and 20th centuries. It explores the effects of scientific and medical developments, secularization, imperial expansion, nationalism, and urbanization on how societies understood death and treated the dead. Through comparative case studies from Asia, Europe, and Latin America, the course considers whether death has become increasingly invisible in the modern age and whether the dead continue to hold sacred or social power. Emphasis is placed on analyzing historical sources to uncover past emotions, attitudes, and cultural norms surrounding death.

This course introduces past and present-day economic phenomena. Its scope consists in an examination and analysis of the successive stages of development of market capitalism and its variants. After a discussion of the terms used to describe an economic “system,” the enquiry proceeds by examining “primitive” or incomplete prototypes of capitalist enterprise as well as the mercantilist “system” in the preindustrial era. The emergence of industrial capitalism, the first wave of globalization, the emergence of financial capitalism and the attendant slumps as well as the regulations introduced by political authorities provide matter for discussion in the following chapters. All along this journey the connection between the diffusion of market mechanisms and political dynamics is underscored.

This anthropology/history course taught in Spanish focuses on civilizations in America from the 18th to the 20th century. It focuses on the economic, technological, and political developments that led to the conquest of America by European civilizations, specifically from the point of view of the Spanish Empire.  

This course explores, thematically and conceptually, a crucial stage in the development of Europe. The period c.1000–1300 in Europe saw some of the farthest-reaching changes in the continent’s history; changes that shape the world we live in today. The frontiers of western Europe expanded in almost every direction through conquest and settlement; the powers of both secular and ecclesiastical authorities increased through the growth of governments and state bureaucracies; there was rapid growth in the economy and in the power of those who controlled production; the emergence and development of new and diverse forms and expressions of religious life and devotion; and the establishment of an international European culture in the worlds of learning and the arts. At the same time, this period saw the birth of the Inquisition, the persecution of heretics and other religious minorities such as the Jews, and of perceived sexual deviants; increasingly effective state oppression of political dissent; and growing corruption in institutions. The approach of the course is firmly comparative, and the geographical scope is wide: from the British Isles to the Crusader States. 

This course introduces the long pasts of the southern African region before the twentieth century. Instead of assuming that this history was inevitably leading to the emergence of a nation-state, this course examines the complex historical processes of making and unmaking of identities and territories. The topics include historiographical debates, the nature of precolonial societies and states, colonial conquest and violence, slavery and resistance, colonial governance, frontier narratives, missionary power, the mineral revolution and the South African War at the end of the nineteenth century. Rather than privileging the action of settlers, this course focuses on the ways in which African people remade and reformulated their polities and societies in the context of conflict and conquest. In drawing on historical materials from different interior regions of southern Africa, it also challenges the Cape-centric bias of the conventional historiography. DP requirements: 100% of required coursework and course evaluation. Assessment: Coursework counts for 50% of the final mark, and one examination at the end of the semester counts for 50%. Course entry requirements: At least two courses in historical, social science or cultural studies offered by the Faculty of Humanities, or by permission of the Head of Department.

This course begins with an overview of France's relations with the Arab world, Islam and the Ottoman Empire, from the Crusades (11th-13th centuries) onwards. This is followed by a look at the colonial period (Maghreb in the 19th century), the Mandat period in the Levant (after the First World War); the reconstruction of the country after 1945 with the call for foreign labor; decolonization; and continued immigration. All these historical milestones are worth recalling to understand the contemporary period. The latter is characterized by the presence of different communities of Muslim origin, as well as by the complementarity/rivalry between the various currents of Islam in France. The obscure and polemical question of "islamo-gauchisme" is also addressed. In addition to theological and jurisprudential aspects, the presence and influence of Islam is addressed from a political standpoint: what external and foreign elements help determine Islam in France?