History

This course explores the turbulent development of the United States from its inception in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence through to its ascendance as an industrial and imperial world power in 1896. Students explore the history of this young nation from the writing of the Constitution, through contests over democracy, slavery and the Civil War, to an era of mass immigration and industrial capitalism. Throughout the module our studies will be guided by four themes which were central to the building of an American nation and which continue to divide opinion today: expansion, race, capitalism, and democracy. Students gain an understanding of different approaches to studying American history and demonstrate an ability to marshal historical knowledge to make a convincing case in favor of their own critical interpretation of the past.

This course provides general knowledge of Italian contemporary history and the main interpretations of it. The course prepares students to transmit the knowledge acquired, adopting the appropriate vocabulary and being versed in the historiographical debate. It covers the methodologies used by the research on social classes including basic mass culture and consumption phenomena. It provides awareness of how sources and choice of methodology bear on the ultimate result. The course covers: Italy from the First to the Second Republic; the main political, economic, and social junctures that represented the framework within which the democratic political system was reconstituted in Italy in the aftermath of the Second World War; the institutional as well as the economic and social framework, always keeping the international context as a reference perspective; the various moments that have marked the history of the Italian peninsula since the Second World War, from reconstruction to the economic boom, from the years of revolts and movements to the crisis of the First Republic and of that party system that had contributed to rewriting the democratic political framework. Finally, attention is focused on the different generations of men and women who were protagonists of that history.

This course examines the roots of the primitive Arab state, its conquests, expansion, and evolution, as well as its cultural influence both on the spaces dominated by Arabs and other political institutions of their environment, highlighting in particular the dialogue with Europe throughout the Middle Ages. It is divided into three units: the birth of the Islamic world-- unity, expansion, and culture; geopolitical transformation of the Islamic world; political (re)presentation of Islam.

The course examines how Ireland’s landscape has changed in the period 1850-present, and examines the sources and methods we can use to understand the history of landscape. Throughout this course students try to make sense of the overlapping influences of conflict, economic change, and social life on the making of the landscape and explore the impact that place and land has had on the creation of modern Ireland.

Who has felt authorized to narrate their life history and what has compelled them to tell explanatory stories that make sense of their lives? How accurate is it to call autobiography the history of the self? Do we encounter other histories or selves in autobiography? What is the history of autobiography and how do we read it? Historians reading autobiography for documentary evidence of the past and endeavoring to write about it objectively will find that their task is complicated by the autobiographer’s subjective and often highly creative engagement with memory, experience, identity, embodiment, and agency. This course is intended for students who wish to explore the interdisciplinary links between autobiography, history, literature, and personal narrative, and to acquire strategic theories and cultural understanding for reading these texts.

This course examines the history of Palestine and the people who lived in it, from the spread of Christianity, through the Islamic period, and until the beginning of Western domination in the 19th century. The story of the land is told from the bottom up, focusing on peasants and the urban non-elites, and to encompass the diversity of the ethnic and religious groups who made Palestine their home.

This course approaches history in an unconventional way, namely, through the study of everyday objects. By analyzing thirty objects ranging in time from the ice age to the current times, this course presents history as a kaleidoscope of cultures, languages, and ways of thinking that shows the world as constantly shifting, profoundly interconnected, and unfailingly fascinating. An anonymous and ordinary-looking stone pillar, for example, will tell us the story of a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people; a series of luxury Spanish coins will introduce us to the troubled history of colonization; and an early Victorian tea set will speak to us about the idea of empire.  

The goal of this course is to explain the key stages in global history through the study of everyday objects.  

This course offers a study of the political and historical transition from ‘indigenismo’ to ‘indianismo’ in Latin America since the 1960s and the emergence of contemporary indigenous movements. 

This course introduces students to the uneven scope, scale, and pace of change in contemporary Britain. Students interrogate the ways in which different narratives of continuity and change emerged in and about the 20th century in Britain, and the purposes they have served. By exploring different areas of life – from politics, voting, and protesting, to working, shopping, belief, and love – students engage with alternative ways of understanding this period in British history. In this course students tackle big historiographical debates in the field and develop a more complex understanding of the political turmoil, economic uncertainty, and social upheaval of the 20th century.

This course provides a detailed examination of the various conflicts that have beset Iraq since 1980, covering the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War; the 1990-91 Gulf War; the 2003 war; the post-2003 civil war, and the conflict with the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). The aim is to examine these conflicts holistically, considering not only their military and political dimensions – absolutely central as these are to an understanding of Iraq's modern history and politics – but also to look at the economic sources and impacts of the conflict, the social and religious dynamics, and the regional setting and implications of them. The course broadly follows a chronological line in looking at these conflicts, since to a large extent these conflicts stem from previous ones, but the discussion and analysis is also interspersed with theoretical discussions about conflict and with the examination of films, documentaries, and other audiovisual narratives about modern Iraq.