Related Courses

HIST 221J/RSEE 231

Russian politics, culture, and society ca. 1850 to 1905. Tsars’ personalities and ruling styles, political culture under autocracy. Reform from above and revolutionary terror. Serfdom and its abolition, problem of “traditional” Russian culture. Growth of industrial and financial capitalism, middle-class culture, and daily life. Foreign policy and imperial conquest, including the Caucasus and the Crimean War (1853-56). Readings combine key scholarly articles, book chapters, and representative primary sources. All readings and discussions in English.

Fall 2024

W 3:30pm-5:20pm

GREK 467

Close reading of selected satirical works and dialogues by Lucian of Samosata. Focus on grammar, syntax, and translation. Some attention to the teachings of competing philosophical schools, the culture of the Second Sophistic movement, and the nature of satire, rhetoric, and conversational dialogue. A bridge course between intermediate and advanced courses.

Fall 2024

MW 11:35am-12:50pm

RUSS 316/EALL 288/EAST 316/LITR 303/RSEE 316

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the complex cultural and political paradigms of late socialism from a transnational perspective by focusing on the literature, cinema, and popular culture of the Soviet Union and China in 1980s. How were intellectual and everyday life in the Soviet Union and China distinct from and similar to that of the West of the same era? How do we parse “the cultural logic of late socialism?” What can today’s America learn from it? Examining two major socialist cultures together in a global context, this course queries the ethnographic, ideological, and socio-economic constituents of late socialism. Students analyze cultural materials in the context of Soviet and Chinese history. Along the way, we explore themes of identity, nationalism, globalization, capitalism, and the Cold War. Students with knowledge of Russian and Chinese are encouraged to read in original languages. All readings are available in English.

Fall 2024

Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

EMST 660/HIST 560/RLST 691

Readings in primary texts from the period 1500–1700 that focus on definitions of the relationship between the natural and supernatural realms, both Catholic and Protestant. Among the topics covered: mystical ecstasy, visions, apparitions, miracles, and demonic possession. All assigned readings in English translation.

Fall 2024

W 3:30pm-5:20pm

SOCY 542

The course seeks to give students the conceptual tools for a constructive engagement with sociological theory and theorizing. We trace the genealogies of dominant theoretical approaches and explore the ways in which theorists contend with these approaches when confronting the central questions of both modernity and the discipline.

Fall 2024

W 1:30pm - 3:20pm

HIST 265/RSEE 266

Overview of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. Topics include political culture and ideology of the Bolshevik/Communist Party; social and economic changes; foreign policy and the role of WWII; major artistic and cultural movements. Paper assignments involve close readings of memoir and oral history accounts.

Fall 2024

MW 1pm-2:15pm

GLBL 283/PLSC 145

A seminar on the interplay between technology and war; an examination of the impact of new technologies on strategy, doctrine, and battlefield outcomes as well as the role of conflict in promoting innovation. Focus on the importance of innovation, the difference between evolutions and revolutions in military affairs, and evaluating the future impact of emerging technologies including autonomous weapons and artificial intelligence.

ANTH 756/ARCG 756

This seminar focuses on archaeological approaches to exchange and trade. As background, we review some of the principal theories of exchange from anthropology and sociology, such as those of Mauss, Malinowski, and Polanyi. The role of trade and exchange in different kinds of societies is examined by contextualizing these transactions within specific cultural configurations and considering the nature of production and consumption as they relate to movement of goods. We consider methods and models that have been used to analyze regions of interaction at different spatial scales and the theoretical arguments about the social impact of inter-regional and intra-regional interactions involving the transfer of goods, including approaches such as world systems, unequal development, and globalization. In addition, we examine the ways that have been utilized in archaeology to identify different kinds of exchange systems, often through analogies to well-documented ethnographic and historic cases. Finally, we consider the range of techniques that have been employed in order to track the movement of goods across space. These sourcing techniques are evaluated in terms of their advantages and disadvantages from an archaeological perspective, and in terms of how the best technical analyses may vary according to the nature of natural or cultural materials under consideration (ceramics, volcanic stone, metals, etc.). The theme for this year’s seminar is obsidian; students select some aspect of obsidian research for their final paper and presentation.

Fall 2024

W 1:30pm-3:20pm

ITAL 315/HIST 280/RLST 160

Introductory survey of the interaction between Catholicism and Western culture from the first century to the present, with a focus on pivotal moments and crucial developments that defined both traditions. Key beliefs, rites, and customs of the Roman Catholic Church, and the ways in which they have found expression; interaction between Catholics and the institution of the Church; Catholicism in its cultural and sociopolitical matrices. Close reading of primary sources.

Fall 2024

TTh 2:30pm-3:20pm

FREN 331

French Revolutionary Saint-Just famously declared: “happiness is a new idea in Europe.” It is certainly a major concern in the eighteenth century. Whether envisioned as an individual or a collective pursuit the quest for happiness increasingly moves away from the realm of theology to become secularized and democratized. This course proposes to study how the writers of the period introduced the idea of happiness in their works, both literary and philosophical. Readings in Abbé Prévost, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Giacomo Casanova, Denis Diderot, Mme de Charrière, Voltaire, and others.

Fall 2024

TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

HSHM 226

The material, political, cultural, and social transformations that underpinned the rise of modern science between the 14th and 18th century, considered in global context. Topics include artisanal practices and the empirical exploration of nature; global networks of knowledge and trade, and colonial science; figurative arts and the emersion of a visual language of anatomy, astronomy, and natural history.

Fall 2024

MW 1pm-2:15pm

GREK 403/GREK 703

An introduction to three essential aspects of Ancient Greek: (i) the structure of the word; (ii) the structure of sentences and clauses in the language; (iii) the structure of longer stretches of connected discourse. The first component (weeks 1-7) is a brief introduction into Into-European comparative-historical linguistics and will focus on the phonology and morphology of Greek verbs and nouns; the third component (weeks 8-13) is a systematic analysis of Greek prose, with detailed attention to the properties through which texts “cohere” (such as particles, deictics, and tenses); the second component is taught as part of each class meeting on the basis of translation-into-Greek (“composition”) exercises.

Fall 2024

TTh 11:35am-12:50pm