History

This course introduces students to the field of global history - one of the fastest growing and most dynamic areas of historiography today. Just as we live in an ever more "globalized" world, so have historians become increasingly interested in the ways that past societies interacted with each other on a global basis. There are a number of key themes in global history: the limitations of the nation-state, going beyond Eurocentric perspectives, the spread of capitalism, empire as an enduring form of political organization, and the relationship between the universal and the particular. Nevertheless, Global history is a wide and evolving field that contains differing and contrasting approaches. To what extent is globalization a product of western domination in the post-industrial age? Can we narrate global history through a single person (for example an artist), village, or object, or must we construct grand narratives that encompass the entire world? Is it acceptable for global historians to synthesize the more localized primary research of other historians, or should they consult their own primary sources?

This course examines some of the fundamental processes of the historical evolution of Chile in the 19th century, such as the transition from Colony to Republic, the republican organization, the integration into the world market, the exercise of sovereignty, and the formation of the nation. It also identifies and explains the social and cultural characteristics of society, relating the political and economic processes with the living conditions of the population.

This course explores the sound track to life in modern Britain. From the concert culture and street ballads of the late eighteenth century to the brass bands and music halls of the Victorians, and from the dawn of the ‘Jazz Age’ to rock ‘n’ roll, punk and beyond, this course focuses on the ways in which music has shaped, and been shaped by, British society. Transformative processes – the Industrial Revolution, democratization, imperial expansion and decline, campaigns for gender, racial and sexual equality, to name a few – have all made their mark on British music, just as British music has played its part in bringing these changes into being. The course revolves around a series of repeating thematic motifs whose development we will track from the nineteenth century into the twentieth. In these years, music became a way of defining class hierarchies, enforcing women’s social marginalization, and projecting British imperial power. And yet it was also a weapon of resistance that offered a sense of solidarity, of identity, of dignity, to those marginalized in British life; the musical lives and struggles of the working classes, of women, and of Black and Asian British communities are central to this history. This is also a course designed by a historian, for historians. While music is our central focus, an ability to read music is not required. Our emphasis will be on the social and cultural meanings of music-making and listening, meanings that are accessible through a wide range of sources, from diaries, memoirs, letters, magazines, newspapers, and official archives to visual images and material culture. That said, we will do plenty of listening to music as we seek to understand how the form that music took – the nature of the sounds being created – reflected and challenged social values and norms. While this course finishes with the sounds of Britpop in the 1990s, poised on the verge of our current internet age which has opened a new chapter in musical life, the implications of our study of music and social change in modern Britain carry important legacies that continue to define the music and society of today.

Alfred Hitchcock is one of the most acclaimed and influential of all filmmakers, and this course employs the methods of the “new film history” to explore the director's work and the debates surrounding it. The course investigates the production and reception of key films, considers aspects of visual style and technique, and examines the representation of nation, class, gender, sexuality, and politics within specific historical contexts. Hitchcock's critical reputation and his influence on contemporary filmmakers are also considered. Students model a holistic approach to film analysis with reference to both textual and contextual factors through the deconstruction, decoding, and interpretation of filmic imagery, sound, dialogue, and story.

This course considers the formation of modern Mexico in the 19th and 20th centuries with attention to the analogies, differences, and interrelations with the rest of Latin America. The course focuses on the construction of the nation state and the rise of capitalism; it continues this analysis while exploring the role of social movements to shape these developments. Particular topics include indigenous peoples and modernization, cultural currents and nationality, modernity and industrial utopia, development and stabilization, democracy, student movements, new social issues, the feminist movement, neoliberalism, socio-economic projects and structural adjustment.

The class draws on literacy, painting, cinema, and other artistic sources to examine the political and social past of France from the French Revolution to the present. By the end of the course, students have gained a familiarity with France that allows them to appreciate the richness and depth of its history.

During the Arab springs, Algeria gave the impression of remaining impervious to regional dynamics. Algerians however claimed they recognized in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolts, democratization, rise of Islamism, and later threat of the return of dictatorship, their own experiences. An outlier to current events in the Maghreb, and perhaps a precursor, Algeria is an excellent case study for students to acquire a deeper historical understanding of the region. Based on texts, images, and film sources, and with constant comparison to other Maghribi countries, this course begins with the enthusiasm of independence in 1962, Third Worldism, and socialist utopia, and then moves on to the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the rise of Djihadi Islam, and the first of its kind civil war between the army and the armed Islamists in the 1990, and its aftermath.