History

This course combines seminars and site visits to take students on a cultural, literary journey through the many layers of Berlin. The course takes a historical look at 1920s Berlin, the liberal republic and how the Fascist government came to be. It then goes on to post WW2, when it became a frontline of the Cold War. Students explore the fall of the Wall in 1989 and the birth of Berlin in a new era as a center of creativity. 

Students will study and analyze the dictatorships of the southern cone (Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay) from a comparative and regional perspective, using sources especially appropriate for the study of recent history and memories, such as cinema, literature and music. 

This course explores how some of the myriad constructions and representations of sex and gender that emerged during the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), were performed in private, in public, and in the spaces where the two spheres intersected. Specifically, the course highlights how individuals and artists reacted to and expanded upon societal expectations concerning gender roles, during a period when Berlin became a global center of cultural innovation, artistic exploration, and scientific discovery. The stage and burgeoning film industry offer important documentation and a departure point to explore how German society grappled with the political implications of the First World War. In addition, both offer opportunities to explore how consumerism influenced the ways in which individuals chose to fashion their identities and the spaces around them.

If historians generally agree that Europe experienced far-reaching intellectual and cultural change during the 18th century, they rarely agree about the nature of that change or how to interpret it. This course introduces students to some of the major interpretations of, debates about, and approaches to the history of the Enlightenment in 18th-century Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. It asks students to engage with original sources (in English), alongside the historiography of the Enlightenment, and to come up with their own responses to that still troubling question.

The development of the Middle East and North Africa region is examined from an historical perspective. The course begins by exploring the major social, political, and cultural issues, events, and ideas which have shaped the region, primarily from the end of World War 1 until the present day. Particular attention is paid to the legacy of colonialism and the process of state-building, various inter-state conflicts and their domestic and regional consequences, the persistence of authoritarianism as well democratization efforts more recently. The course concludes by examining the Middle East and North Africa in the 21st century, including its changing place in the global political arena. The course is organized according to key events, themes as well as case studies.

This course examines Quebec history from New France to contemporary times. It include themes like ethnic relations, citizenship, gender and material culture. 

This is a special studies course involving an internship with a corporate, public, governmental, or private organization, arranged with the Study Center Director or Liaison Officer. Specific internships vary each term and are described on a special study project form for each student. A substantial paper or series of reports is required. Units vary depending on the contact hours and method of assessment. The internship may be taken during one or more terms but the units cannot exceed a total of 12.0 for the year.

The Ottoman Empire was one of the four principal political, military, and cultural forces in the premodern world (together with the Qing, Mughal and Habsburg empires), and still a power to be reckoned with in the modern period until 1918. With its core in the Aegean and Balkans, the empire exercised hegemony over large parts of the Middle East, North and East Africa, and Central Europe for many centuries. Taking the perspective of world history, this course provides a basic knowledge of Ottoman history and culture, especially during the last three hundred years of its more than six centuries long existence. In a more general sense, the course introduces the developing historical fields of empire studies and court studies. The course reviews the current historiographical debates about the nature and impact of Ottoman rule, including the question of ‘modernization’. Special attention is paid to the entanglements of politics, religion and ethnic identity in the region. This includes a critical appraisal of hackneyed terms and binaries, such as the east-west dichotomy, the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, and the very concept of ‘the Middle East’ itself. In addition, the course introduces students to Ottoman institutions of imperial rule, such as the court and the palace, the army, the role of religion, and Ottoman architecture.

This course introduces the current and past issues at stake in the political, legal, and cultural relations between religions and states. A subject of recurrent debate and controversy in France, laïcité (or rather, secularism) is rarely treated critically, dispassionately and from an international perspective. Such is the focus of this seminar. Depending on the areas covered, the course discusses more generally about “laïcité” (in the case of France) or “secularism” (in the case of Anglo-Saxon countries). The course is interdisciplinary, drawing on historical, political, legal, and sociological approaches. It also focuses on comparative approaches in Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. 

This seminar discusses the concept of genocide and the meaning of violence. As a first step, students read theoretical texts about genocide, mass violence, different forms of war and the Holocaust. Second, students study several examples of genocides in the modern and premodern periods. They analyze the specific nature of each and compare them to find out what unites and separates them. Students read theoretical texts about the concept of genocide and study the history of mass violence, war, and the Holocaust. Applying a global perspective, the course compares different forms of genocide and gets to the bottom of the question what unites and separates them.