History

History—both the actual physical materials that help historians establish a timeline of events of the past and the imaginings contemporaries have of those events—is a crucial part of feminist and gay rights activism. This course analyzes feminist organizing in the U.K. and gay rights organizing in the U.S. from two perspectives. First, it delves into specific historical moments that have created significant cultural and political reverberations, such the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York and the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp from 1981. Second, it examines how those events and others become parts of the storytelling used by the feminist and gay rights movements as tools to advance their demands in specific national contexts. From this dual articulation, the seminar examines the relationship between the past and the present as well as the stakes that this reciprocity has for advancing or hindering social progress. Students engage in independent and original research as they learn to engage in historical archival research and think about these issues from the perspective of apprentice scholars.

The course is an introduction to early Irish society and culture. The period covered was one of great change for Irish society: the arrival of Christianity with a new language, the rise of new, forceful power groupings, and the opportunities and challenges posed by the intrusion of the Vikings. Underlying these transformations there was continuity and we examine the evidence for the survival of earlier belief, specifically in burial records and the role of women in the administration of associated rituals. We look at the institution of kingship, with rituals & taboos grounded in Paganism.  We consider the position of slaves in Irish society, their role in the running  the household, in labor, and intensive agricultural economy. Students engage with myth and saga literature of the time to deepen the their understanding of early Irish culture and society.

This course offers a survey of Southeast Asian history from the second half of the early modern period to the early twentieth century. The course is centered on a key problem that characterizes the region — the tension between the region's distinctiveness on one hand and its well-known openness to “external” influences on the other. Using updated historical scholarship on the region, the course situates Southeast Asia in the context of developments in world history. The following key themes in Southeast Asian history are presented: (1) indigenous social, cultural and religious systems and their interaction with “extra-regional” influences (2) intra-regional, Asian trade systems and mercantilism (3) “state” and imperial formations (4) European colonization and its effects on local societies (5) local responses to colonialism during the early twentieth century.

This course discusses social and political conflicts in contemporary history. It examines the repertoires of collective mobilization and revolutionary processes.