History

This course uses an array of primary and secondary source readings to explore the emergence of the system of intensive colonial exploitation that we know as the plantation system. The course investigates the economic, political, legal, cultural, intellectual, and technological innovations that undergirded the development of the plantation as a colonial institution. It will also explore the role of bound and enslaved people in resisting and reshaping the institution. The seminar engages extensively with the historiographic debate about the relationship between the plantation system and the emergence of capitalism. It focuses upon developments across the Americas between the 16th and the late-18th century, drawing from the Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch empires and the newly independent United States.

 

This course aims at a broader and deeper understanding of Europe, developing a panorama of the meaning of the term “Europe” using a hybrid approach at once historical/cultural and institutional/political. It provides the basic knowledge needed to be an informed citizen of/in Europe and read and interpret accurately European current events. The course builds fundamental knowledge of the basics of European geography, and its common history and politics. It considers Europe as not simply a geographical area nor a multilateral treaty but a civilizational mosaic, and a whole. The course allows students to become familiar with the mainstays of French academic literature on European integration. The approach this course takes is to highlight and examine the key moments, what Solzhenitzyn called the nodal points, of the European adventure as a way of understanding what drove the artistic and religious revolutions that accompanied Europe's tremendous expansion on the basis of overseas conquest. Subsequently, and based on the understanding of the European historical ensemble, the course reflects on the political, economic, social, and even cultural convergence constituting the European integration which has been taking place over the past seventy years. 

This course offers an introduction to the historical and cultural processes of the Caribbean from the Lithic Age to the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Topics include: introduction to Insular Caribbean Studies; the Antillean insular environment and it's population; periodization of the pre-Hispanic Insular Caribbean; daily life and Antillean material culture; Antillean mythology and worldview; first contact with Europeans.

In 1800, two empires dominated the region of the Middle East: the Ottoman and Qajar Empires. Today, there are seventeen nation-states in the Middle East. How and why did this happen? This course serves as an introduction to the history of the modern Middle East with an emphasis on developing an understanding of how the region we call the Middle East came to take its current shape. Students explore the encounter with European modernity and subsequent European imperialism, modernisation efforts, responses to colonialism, the rise of new ideologies such as nationalism, and the role of religion in politics and political discourse. The course focuses on the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Iran, Turkey, and the Middle East in the 20th and 21st centuries.

This course explores the relationship between theater and religion in Antiquity, from the Pharaonic era to the early Middle Ages. It examines the spaces and forms of possible interactions between dramatic performances and cultural practices, the identity of the actors involved, and the effectiveness of drama in the process of emotional and cognitive arousal, both individual and collective, within the religious experience.