Courses
Check out some of our undergraduate course offerings, next semester and beyond!
Spring 2021 Courses
The following courses are offered this semester only.
- HIST 2001.14: Migration and Documentation in the Middle East
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W 3:10-5:00
Large scale migrations, forced and voluntary, have been a defining feature of our world since the sixteenth century. The vast literature in public culture on global migration often overlooks the impact of documents in shaping the experience of migrants. From the travel passes to identification papers, from visas to passports, the document has been a central feature of the migrants’ lives. This course focuses on the development of systems of identification of migrants in the Middle East from the late nineteenth century to the present. We will explore the relationship of documents of identification to citizenship and nationality; the meaning of statelessness and its relationship to documentation; the impact of war on stable categories like borders, citizenship and identity documents; and the legal and existential limbo of internally displaced people, asylum seekers and refugees in the age of global anxiety about security and identity.
- HIST 2001.81: Women in Modern European History
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Cross-listed with WGSS 3170.84
MW 9:35-10:50
Ever wonder how the women's suffrage movement developed across Europe? Or what role gender played during the Holocaust? More recently, how did the #MeToo movement unfold in the European context?
This class explores these questions as well as the ideas, politics, work, and everyday lives of women in Europe from the late Enlightenment to the present day. The class will leave you thinking critically about the way European history has been constructed throughout the modern period.
- HIST 2001.82: Arab-Jews? History of Jewish Sephardi Communities & the Making of Mizrahi Identity in Israel
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Cross-listed with JSTD 2002.84
MW 3:45-5:00
All too often, Jewish history is seen through an Ashkenazi lens, focusing on Jews originating from Western European and Eastern European regions. The fascinating stories of various Sephardi Jewish communities (descendants of those expelled from Spain) who spoke Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino), and the various Jewish communities in Arab and Middle Eastern countries were left out of this grand narrative. The two aims of the new course are to provide students with a broad overview of the history of the major Sephardi communities in modern times, and, secondly, to explore the history of Mizrahi Jews who immigrated to Israel and represent a significant part of Israeli society. We will be leaping from Salonica to Baghdad, Algiers to Tehran, Istanbul to Tunisia, examine how the term "Mizrahi" came to life and charged with cultural and political meaning and how various non-Ashkenazi authors and intellectuals began describing themselves as "Levantines" or "Arab-Jews."
- HIST 6601.80: The Geopolitics of Afghanistan, South and Central Asia
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Cross-listed with IAFF 6318.82
W 5:10-7:00
Did you know the current conflict in Afghanistan is the longest and most expensive war in American history? Are you interested in understanding America’s never-ending war? Do you want to know something beyond the headlines about a place that has taken a generation of American political capital? Then take this course! Undergraduates welcome.
Race and Inequality Courses
A selection of upcoming history courses that focus on race and inequality.
- HIST 2001.13: Capitalism and Inequality, 1700-Present
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TR 3:45-5:00
Economic inequality has become one of the central political concerns of our time, but it has only recently attracted scholarly attention. Is inequality a natural and inevitable characteristic of human society, or can it be historicized? What are its determinants and how has it changed over time? Has the global spread of industrial capitalism increased or decreased inequality between individuals, between groups, and between countries? Have changes in inequality historically been the product of market forces, or political forces, or both? This course explores the history of global inequality and examines how it relates to the peculiar set of economic institutions that we call "capitalism."
- HIST 3301W.10: Slavery, Race, and American Visual Culture
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P. Troutman
TR 11:10-12:25
How did 18th- and 19th-century American artists, sculptors, cartoonists, and viewers use visual culture to assert, challenge, reproduce, and rethink ideas about race? How were those ideas informed and shaped by trans-Atlantic and trans-Caribbean events, including the American and Haitian Revolutions and French and British Emancipation? How did they intersect with gender, sexuality, religion, class, and political identities? Students in this WID course will engage with pathbreaking recent scholarship on visual culture and race theory and will perform original analysis on period visual materials in digital archives and, if possible, in virtual field trips to museums and collections. Please note that we will encounter and analyze historical materials that include disturbing imagery and language; we will address ethical approaches to handling such materials in contemporary scholarship, museum curation, and artistic expression.
For further information, please email Prof. Troutman at [email protected].
- HIST 3301W.81: U.S. Black Radicalisms
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Cross-listed with AMST 3950W.80
M 11:10-1:00
Seeking to revitalize and re-envision prior generations’ praxes for freedom and progressive social transformation, we will study the radical side of the 20th-century black freedom movement, including feminism, nationalism, varieties of Marxism, and combinations of these. This course will emphasize the northern and Midwestern arenas of the black freedom movement where historians have better documented the ways in which black radicalism remained at the forefront of activists’ social criticism and strategies. Likewise, we will remain mindful of international politics and follow black American activists as they travel the world, participating in and drawing upon freedom movements in West Africa, Asia, and Europe.
- HIST 3361.80: African American History since 1865
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Cross-listed with AMST 3361.80
MW 2:20-3:35
This course investigates the major events and themes of African American history since the slaves achieved emancipation and began the long struggle toward full freedom in the United States. We will thus study late 19th century and 20th century U.S. history from the perspectives of African American men and women, focusing on their efforts to make freedom real and learning the dynamic history of U.S. white supremacy. Along the way, we will study issues of gender politics, cultural expression and representation, labor organizing, racial identity, and the various, evolving ideologies of the movement for black freedom. We will cover the major eras of the U.S. black freedom movement, including emancipation and Reconstruction, Uplift, the Great Migration, Garveyism, the New Negro Era, Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Feminism.
- HIST 6001.10: Pearl Divers in Eastern Arabia
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M 4:10-6:00
The course focuses on slavery in the nineteenth and twentieth century Western Indian Ocean, an area that includes western India, southern Pakistan and Iran, the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa. We will address the distinctive features of slavery in the Western Indian Ocean; the role that ethnicity, race and religion played in enslavement and manumission; the impact of the international ban on slave trade on labor practices in places like Mauritius, Zanzibar and the pearl fisheries of Bahrain and Kuwait, and the influence of inter-imperial rivalry between European powers and their indigenous interlocutors on the one hand and the Ottomans on the other, on the ability of freed slaves to fashion a new identity. We conclude the course with a look at how descendants of East African slaves in the Persian Gulf have shaped notions of citizenship and race.
- HONR 2053.11: Narratives of Slavery and Freedom
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C. Arena
F 1:00-3:30
This seminar will examine histories of slavery found in plays, novellas, and autobiographical texts written in Europe, the Caribbean, and North America. Some of these texts, originally created as fictional works, nevertheless reveal important historical truths about the development of racism towards the indigenous peoples of America and Africa. We will also focus on the genre of “slave narratives” written by formerly enslaved Black abolitionists, and discuss the political power and use of these texts. The first half of the class will thus address the institutionalization of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery, and the second half of the class on the long process of abolition of the slave trade and emancipation. We will see both the creation and dismantling of slavery and racial ideology as long and ongoing processes. Please note there are two sections of this course: an Honors section where plays, novellas, and autobiographies will be read in their entirety (HONR 2053:11) and an introductory section with abridged versions of texts and shorter essay requirements (UNIV 1006).
#OnlyAtGW Courses
The following courses are offered every year. Application required.