Spring 2020 Undergraduate Courses
Please note: Course offerings subject to change.
HIST 11200: World History 1500 to the Present
Instructor: Melson
This course is a survey of world history from the 16th century until the present. Our focus will be the evolution of global connections and interactions that led to unprecedented movements of people, ideas, technologies, and microbes during this time period. As novel forms of migration and rule crossed our world, they propelled new forms of domination and resistance. We will explore how these processes impacted the causes and consequences of the slave trade, imperial domination, decolonization, and nationalism. Specific case studies will illuminate these events by exploring how global processes effected local contexts and vice-versa. Particular emphasis will be placed on how historians analyze primary source material, interpret, and debate the past. Finally, this course will reorient students away from a western perspective to highlight global and alternative histories that are often ignored within broad historical surveys.
For College: Fulfills CUNY Common Core (World Cultures).
For History Majors: Counts as Non-US/Non-Europe
HIST 12100: Early Modern Europe 1500-1815
Instructor: Melson
The early modern period saw the Renaissance, the Reformations, the Age of Discoveries, the invention of print, the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Contemporary observers interpreted these events as harbingers of new times, and speculated how society should or will be organized in the future. This course reads the major transformations of early modern Europe through the lens of these utopian visions. As we will see, the expectations of contemporaries were often not realized. Yet their writings reveal how scholars, priests, newswriters and ordinary people experienced and hoped to shape the world they were living in.
For College: Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group D).
For History Majors: Counts as European
HIST 12200: 19th and 20th Century Europe (W)
Instructors: Hett; Spritzer
History of modern Europe between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, covering Western, Eastern Europe, and Russia. The focus of this course is upon political history but topics related to economy, culture and the arts are included as well. We start with the French Revolution of 1789 and complete the course with the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union in 1991. We will analyze how the concept of Europe changed over time; how colonies turned into nation states, and how these nations transformed during the modern era; why, how, and when some states adopted totalitarian models; and how colonialism and totalitarianism came to an end in Europe after WWII. Themes include: the French Revolution and Revolutionary Wars, romanticism, liberalism, socialism and Marxism, 1848, empire and nation states, European imperialism, WWI, interwar radicalism, Nazism, fascism, and Stalinism, WWII, the Holocaust, cold war, European Union, the collapse of communism, and the creation of a new Europe. Lectures will be supplemented by weekly readings from the textbook and primary sources. Students will learn to work with primary sources and incorporate them into historical analysis.
For College: Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group D). Writing intensive course (W)
For History Majors: Counts as European
HIST 15100: United States from the Colonial Era to the Civil War (W)
This course will cover U.S. History broadly from the early period of European settlement to the conclusion of the Civil War. The course will include at least one focused study of a particular topic or event from this period.
For College: Fulfills CUNY Common Core (US Experience). Writing Intensive Course (W)
For History Majors: Counts as US and Prior to 1800
HIST 15200: United States from the Civil War to the Present (W)
This course surveys some of the major developments in United States history from 1865 to the 1970s. Among the subjects covered are the struggles for justice of African Americans and women; the expanding scope and power of the federal government; and the increasing engagement of the United States with the world.
For College: Fulfills CUNY Common Core (US Experience). Writing intensive course (W)
For History Majors: Counts as US
HIST 21000: History of Judaism
Instructor: Ruben
This course is an overview of the historical evolution of Judaism. Ranging from its origins in the Ancient Near East to the challenges of Modernity, the course will focus on religious and intellectual history. (The parallel course, History of the Jews, focuses more on social and political issues.) Judaism evolved through a dialectical tension between a desire to differentiate from and to embrace the surrounding civilizations in which it found itself – all in the quest for holiness and meaning. We will examine this process as the overarching theme of the course.
For History Majors: Counts as Non-US/Non-Europe
HIST 25017: Global Histories of Sex
Instructor: Mitchell
This course examines major themes in the history of sexuality in a global/transnational context. The course examines the evolution of medical and scientific discourses of sexuality, the ways in which sexuality became the basis for social control in colonial/imperial regimes, and the ways in which sexuality emerged as a site of global political contestation—particularly with regard to abortion and contraception, sexual determination for women and sexual minorities, and restorative justice for victims and survivors of abuse.
For History Majors: Counts as Non-US/Non-Europe
HIST 25022: Gender in Modern Jewish History
Instructor: Welt
This course will explore how Jewish men and women, informed by intra-Jewish debates and interactions with the empires in which they lived, constructed the gendered norms of the larger Jewish world. This course will pay particular attention to the ways in which Jewish women carved out spaces in politics, economic activity, and religious life across the Jewish diaspora in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Students will also grapple with how Jewish masculinity has been conceived and performed during different moments of modern Jewish history. As the course probes Jewish encounters with the rise of global capitalism, the forging of imperial networks and nation-states, mass migrations, and Zionist state-building, students will learn how gender integrally shaped the modern Jewish experience.
For History Majors: Counts as Non-US/Non-Europe
HIST 25023: US-Latin American Relations
Instructor: John
For History Majors: Counts as Non-US/Non-Europe
HIST 25076: History of Modern South Asia
Instructor: Bhagavan
This course is designed to introduce students to the civilization(s) of the subcontinent from the coming of the Mughals in 1526 to the present. We will examine aspects of South Asia’s diverse political, social, and cultural histories. “South Asia” here refers to the contemporary countries of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. No prior knowledge of South Asian history or culture is expected or required.
For History Majors: Counts as Non-US/Non-Europe
HIST 25081: American Indian History
Instructor: Gelfand
This course examines Native American history in what is now the United States from pre-Columbian times through the end of the nineteenth century. Topics include cultural diversity in North America prior to European colonization; the dynamics of early Indian-European encounters; accommodation and resistance to Euro-American expansion in the eighteenth century; forced Indian Removal by the United States; and nineteenth-century struggles for the Great Plains and American West. Native American agency, cultural persistence and change, survival strategies, and perseverance of tribal identities are key themes of the course.
For History Majors: Counts as US
HIST 27200: History of Latin America in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Instructor: John
This course explores key topics in the History of Latin America from the struggles for Independence through the present day. These include the rise of Latin American liberalism to upheavals like the Mexican Revolution, the birth of nationalist and populist mass politics, the Cuban Revolution and the counterinsurgency wars in Central America to the neoliberal" and "pink tide" trends of recent decades, and today's turbulence in many parts of the region. Using texts as well as music and video, we will study social, political and cultural aspects of the history of this varied and vibrant region whose importance for the U.S. and New York City in particular keeps growing.
For History Majors: Counts as Non-US/Non-Europe
HIST 27700: East Asia to 1600
Instructor: Belsky
A survey history of the traditional cultures and sociopolitical structures of China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam to about 1600 AD. This course tracks East Asian history from the regionally diverse evolution of early Neolithic cultures into more complex hierarchical polities. It examines the evolution of distinctly Chinese schools of thought regarding proper social/political relations and structures, and both traces how Chinese ideology evolved over time and how Chinese classical thinking affected and was adopted by the regionally diverse and distinctive societies with their own rich autonomous traditions located in modern Korea, Japan and Vietnam.
For College: Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group A).
For History Majors: Counts as Non-US/Non-Europe
HIST 29000: History Practicum
A writing intensive seminar intended to help history majors develop their skills as historians. Each section of this course may focus on a different historical theme and so students will encounter different readings and topics. But in all sections of this course students will learn to locate, critically assess, and interpret primary sources, both textual and non-textual; analyze and critique a range of secondary sources for both methodological and historiographical purposes; and develop, draft, and revise a strong and effective research paper by learning how to construct a thesis, organize a paper, devise a bibliography, and cite sources following the Chicago Manual of Style.
Writing Intensive Course.
Prereq: ENGL 12000; 6 cr in history and permission of the department.
HIST 31400: Ancient and Medieval Christianity
Instructor: Melson
The development of Ancient and Medieval Christianity.
For History Majors: Counts as European
HIST 31800: History of the American Working Class
Instructor: Haverty-Stacke
In this course we will examine the history of labor and working-class life in America since the colonial period. Working with both primary and secondary sources we will explore some of the major themes of this history. We will examine the different ways that American laborers organized themselves and struggled for control over their work and their lives, not only on the shop floor, but also in community organizations, through ethnic associations, and by their particular partisan affiliations. We will consider the nature and evolution of labor and of the working-class cultures that existed in America from the colonial period to the late-twentieth century, and the extent to which those working-class cultures both drew from and influenced a broader American culture.
Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group D). Writing Intensive course (W)
For History Majors: Counts as US
HIST 32000: Jewish History in the Modern World
Instructor: Ruben
From the 18th century to the present: Enlightenment, Jewish emancipation and nationalism, a Jewish state; anti-Semitism and the Holocaust; recent trends.
For College: Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group D).
For History Majors: Counts as European
HIST 32100: History of the Holocaust
Instructor: Casper
This course examines the fate of European Jewry between 1933 and 1945. Following an introduction to Jewish history and the historical background of anti-Semitic ideology, we will cover: the rise and fall of the democratic Weimar Republic in the 1920s; the Nazi seizure of power; anti-Jewish policy and legislation in Nazi Germany; ghettoization in Nazi Europe; and, the conception and implementation of the Final Solution during the Second World War. Additional topics will include discussions of the Jewish Councils, Jewish resistance, life in the ghettos and camps, the Jewish Question and public opinion in Nazi-occupied Europe, and the reactions of the Allies, the Church, and world Jewry to the Holocaust.
For History Majors: Counts as European
HIST 33400: France During the Revolution and Napoleonic Era
Instructor: Spritzer
A study of 18th-century antecedents of the French Revolution, the Revolutionary decade, and the Napoleonic Era.
For History Majors: Counts as European
HIST 3412I: Mapping Jewish New York
Instructor: Welt
This course will explore the history of Jewish New York up close and in person. Each week will entail walking tours of historic neighborhoods in the city that reveal the story of American Jews in the nation's largest city. While we navigate the historic Jewish spaces in New York, students will also learn about the political, cultural, and economic history of American Jewry.
For History Majors: Counts as US
CANCELLED
HIST 3412J: US Public History
Instructor: Bellows
What do objects, monuments, and museums tell us about the past? How do historians preserve and interpret American artifacts, ephemera, monuments, and more for the general public? Students will consider the different abilities of historians to present elements of American history through battlefields, museums, living history sites, memorials, and more, and wrestle with questions of interpretation, representation, and historical accuracy.
For History Majors: Counts as US
HIST 36700: Civil War and Reconstruction
Instructor: Dresser
Slavery, sectional conflict, political crisis of Union. New interpretations of postwar race relations.
For College: Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group D).
For History Majors: Counts as US
HIST 37500: Late Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union
Instructor: Casper
History of late imperial Russia and the Soviet Union from the nineteenth century to 1991. The course is organized around the concept of Russian special path: by analyzing Russian imperial and Soviet history, we will seek an answer to the question of why and when (if ever) Russia took a path, different from the rest of Europe. The focus of this class is upon the Empire: we will approach Russian history in its complexity and discuss the ethnic, religious and cultural heterogeneity of the Russian and Soviet Empires. This course combines aspects of political, cultural, intellectual and economic history: we will analyze how politics became reflected – or negated – in literature and the arts, and how it affected everyday life of citizens of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
For College: Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group D).
For History Majors: Counts as European
HIST 38233: History of WWII, 1937-1949
Instructor: Hett
HIST 38465: The Dreyfus Affair
Instructor: Schorr
More than 1,000 books about the Dreyfus Affair have been published in English. The Dreyfus trial was called Trial of the Century. Much as the Scopes trial in the US, the Dreyfus trial in France captured the attention of millions of people, dividing them into two camps—Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards. A detailed study of the trial opens a window on French history as the belle époque drew to a close and years of war and depression loomed. It is also an opportunity to study Jewish history as a century of expanding civil rights for French Jews was followed by a century of anti-Semitism and mass murder. Finally, study of this trial raises broader questions of military justice and military secrets, the role of a free press, and the role of public intellectuals.
For History Majors: Counts as European