HIST BC 1062x Introduction to Later Middle Ages: 1050-1450

Social environment, political, and religious institutions, and the main intellectual currents of the Latin West studied through primary sources and modern historical writings.

HIST BC 1101x Introduction to European History: Renaissance to French Revolution

Political, economic, social, religious, and intellectual history of early modern Europe, including the Renaissance, Reformation and Counter-Reformation, absolutism, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment.
3 points

HIST BC 1302y Introduction to European History: French Revolution to the Present

Emergence of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary mass political movements; European industrialization, nationalism, and imperialism; 20th-century world wars, the Great Depression, and Fascism.

HIST BC 1401x Survey of American Civilization to the Civil War

The major theological and social concerns of 17th-century English colonists; the political and ideological process of defining an American; the social and economic forces that shaped a distinctive national identity; the nature of the regional conflicts that culminated in civil war.
3 points

HIST BC 1402y Survey of American Civilization Since the Civil War

Examines the major intellectual and social accommodations made by Americans to industrialization and urbanization; patterns of political thought from Reconstruction to the New Deal; selected topics on post-World War II developments.

HIST BC 1760y Introduction to African History: 1700-Present

Survey of African history from the 18th century to the contemporary period. We will explore six major themes in African History: Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World, Colonialism in Africa, the 1940s, Nationalism and Independence Movements, Post-Colonialism in Africa, and Issues in the Making of Contemporary Africa.

HIST BC 1801x Colonialism and Nationalism in South Asia

Introduction to South Asian history (17-20 c.) that explores the colonial economy and state formation; constitution of religious and cultural identities; ideologies of nationalism and communalism, caste and gender politics; visual culture; and the South Asian diaspora.

HIST BC 3062x Medieval Intellectual Life, 1050-1400

Development over three centuries of a language of the heart, of the intellect, and of the polity. Primary readings in devotional and courtly literature, university speculation, and political thought, discussed in their historical and cultural contexts.

HIST BC 3180y Merchants, Pirates, and Slaves in the Making of Atlantic Capitalism

Examines how the Atlantic Ocean and its boundaries were tied together through the flow of people, goods, and ideas. Studies the cultures of the communities formed by merchants, pirates, and slaves; investigates how their interactions and frictions combined to shape the unique combination of liberty and oppression that characterizes early modern capitalism.

HIST BC 3230x Central Europe: Nations, Culture, and Ideas

The making and re-making of Central Europe as place and myth from the Enlightenment to post-Communism. Focuses on the cultural, intellectual, and political struggles of the peoples of this region to define themselves. Themes include modernization and backwardness, rationalism and censorship, nationalism and pluralism, landscape and the spatial imagination.
General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points

HIST BC 3305y Bodies and Machines

Situates key scientific and technological innovations of the modern era in their cultural context by focusing on the interactions between bodies and machines. Through our attention to bodily experience and material culture, we will explore the ways in which science and technology have shaped and been shaped by the culture of modernity.

HIST BC 3321x Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Culture of Empire

Examines the shaping of European cultural identity through encounters with non-European cultures from 1500 to the post-colonial era. Novels, paintings, and films will be among the sources used to examine such topics as exoticism in the Enlightenment, slavery and European capitalism, Orientalism in art, ethnographic writings on the primitive, and tourism.

HIST BC 3323y European Women in the Age of Revolution

Exploration of the origins of the "modern" European woman: changing political and legal definitions of women; new concepts of women's work and authority during industrialization; women's involvement in religion and reform; and emergence of socialist and feminist critiques of 19th-century womanhood.

HIST BC 3380y A Social and Cultural History of Food in Europe

The European context of new technologies and patterns of consumption, including significance of social stratification; ideologies of taste, health and medicine, changing modes of production, the science of nutrition; regulation of food safety; social welfare and surpluses; industrial food and new dietary awareness; globalization of food products.

HIST BC 3413y The United States, 1940-1975

Emphasis on foreign policies as they pertain to the Second World War, the atomic bomb, containment, the Cold War, Korea, and Vietnam. Also considers major social and intellectual trends, including the Civil Rights movement, the counterculture, feminism, Watergate, and the recession of the 1970s.

HIST BC 3414x The United States in the World

Examination of the meaning of empire in its relationship to the historical development of what we now call the United States of America. Starting with the thirteen colonies and moving west through time and space, we will examine the relationship of ideas, geography, borders, immigration, culture, economies and the military to the expansion of U.S. power in the world. Using insights from our current "global" moment, we will investigate questions dealing with the control and use of resources, the structure of society, the meaning of political borders, inequality and power.
General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC).
3 points

HIST BC 3423y The Constitution in Historical Perspective

Development of constitutional doctrine, 1787 to the present. The Constitution as an experiment in Republicanism; states' rights and the Civil War amendments; freedom of contract and its opponents; the emergence of civil liberties; New Deal intervention and the crisis of the Court; and the challenge of civil rights.

HIST BC 3424x Approached by Sea: Early American Maritime Culture

Thematically and chronologically ordered narrative of the impact of the Atlantic Ocean and its tidal tributaries upon the beginnings and subsequent development of the American colonies and of the Early American Republic. Special stress will be placed upon the physical givens and cultural implications of the coastal environment in which early Americans went about their lives.

HIST BC 3457x A Social History of Columbia University

Traces the University's history from 1754 to the present; will focus on institutional interaction with NYC, governance and finance, faculty composition and the undergraduate extra-curriculum; attention also to Columbia professional schools and Barnard College.

HIST BC 3466y American Intellectual History Since 1865

Examination of the major ideas engaging American intellectuals from Appomattox to the present, with special attention to their institutional settings. Topics include Darwinism, the rise of the professoriate, intellectual progressivism, inter-war revisionism, Cold War liberalism, and neoconservatism.

HIST BC 3494y Era of Independence in the Americas

Comparative examination of colonial independence struggles in the New World, c. 1760-1830. The transition from the monarchical ancient regime to a more or less "republican" order. State formation and the invention of nationality. Special attention to the cases of the United States, Haiti, and Mexico.

HIST BC 3525y 20th Century Urbanization in Comparative Perspective

Examination of metropolitan growth and development in large cities around the world, placing particular emphasis on cities that have grown rapidly in the 20th century. Examples from South America, Australia, and Asia will be considered as well as cities from the United States and Canada.

HIST BC 3567y American Women in the 20th Century

A consideration of women's changing place in modern America; the "family claim"; women in the workplace; educational expansion; the battle for suffrage; social reformers; the sexual revolution; women in the professions; the crisis of depression and war; the feminine mystique; and the new feminism.

HIST BC 3570y Alma Mater: A Social History of American Universities and Colleges

The role of colleges and universities in American life; their changing social and intellectual impact; issues of access, equity, legitimacy and solvency.

HIST W 3661y Latin American Civilization II

Explores major themes in Latin American history from the independence period to the present. It will trace economic, political, intellectual, and cultural trends. Particular attention will be given to the enduring issue of social and racial inequality and the ways that the interactions of dominant and subordinate groups have helped shape the course of Latin American history.

HIST BC 3664x Reproducing Inequalities: Families in Latin American History

Explores changing structures and meanings of family in Latin America from colonial period to present. Particular focus on enduring tensions between "prescription" and "reality" in family forms as well as the articulation of family with hierarchies of class, caste, and color in diverse Latin American societies.
General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points

HIST BC 3681y Women and Gender in Latin America

Examines the gendered roles of women and men in Latin American society from the colonial period to the present. Explores a number of themes, including the intersection of social class, race, ethnicity, and gender; the nature of patriarchy; masculinity; gender and the state; and the gendered nature of political mobilization.

HIST BC 3682y Modern Latin American History

Explores major themes in Latin American history from independence to the present, with a special focus on the evolution of socio-racial inequality, political systems, and U.S.-Latin America relations. We will discuss not only "what happened" in Latin America's past, but how historians know what they know, the sources and methods they use to write history, and the theoretical frameworks they employ to interpret the past.

HIST BC 3980y World Migration

Overview of human migration from pre-history to the present. Sessions on classical Rome; Jewish diaspora; Viking, Mongol, and Arab conquests; peopling of New World, European colonization, and African slavery; 19th-century European mass migration; Chinese and Indian diasporas; resurgence of global migration in last three decades, and current debates.

HIST BC 1803x Gender and Empire

Examines how women experienced empire and asks how their actions and activities produced critical shifts in the workings of colonial societies worldwide. Topics include sexuality, the colonial family, reproduction, race, and political activism.

HIST BC 1815y Decolonization: Studies in Political Thought and Political History

This course will take the historical fact of decolonization in Asia and Africa as a framework for understanding the thought of anticolonial nationalism and the political struggles that preceded it, and the trajectories of postcolonial developmentalism and the contemporary new world order.

HIST BC 3805y Law and Society in South Asia

Examines law as a critical site from which to explore changing conceptions of self and community from the pre-colonial to the post-colonial periods.

HIST BC 3840x Topics in South Asian History

Examines caste and gender as an important lens for understanding the transformations of intimate life and political culture in colonial and post-colonial India. Topics include: conjugality; popular culture violence, sex and the state; and the politics of untouchability.

HIST BC 3861x Chinese Cultural History 1500-1800

Introduction to visual and material cultures of China, including architecture, food, fashion, printing, painting, and the theatre. Using these as building blocks, new terms of analyzing Chinese history are explored, posing such key questions as the meaning of being Chinese and the meaning of being modern.

HIST BC 4062x Medieval Economic Life and Thought ca. 1000-1500

Traces the development of economic enterprises and techniques in their cultural context: agricultural markets, industry, commercial partnerships, credit, large-scale banking, insurance, and merchant culture. Examines usury and just price theory, the scholastic analysis of price and value, and the recognition of the market as a self-regulating system, centuries before Adam Smith.

HIST BC 4064y Medieval Science and Society

The evolution of scientific thinking from the 12th to the 16th centuries, considering subjects such as cosmology, natural history, quantification, experimentation, the physics of motion, and Renaissance perspective. At every point we link proto-scientific developments to social and technological developments in the society beyond the schools.

HIST BC 4119y Capitalism and Enlightenment

Traces the lively debates amongst the major European Enlightenment figures about the formation of capitalism. Was the new market society ushering in an era of wealth and civilization or was it promoting corruption and exploitation? Particular emphasis on debates about commerce, luxury, greed, poverty, empire, slavery, and liberty.

HIST BC 4323y The City in Europe

A social history of the city in Europe from early modern times; the economic, political, and intellectual forces influencing the growth of Paris, London, Vienna, and other urban centers.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preference to upper-class students. Preregistration required. General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

HIST BC 4324y Vienna and the Birth of the Modern

Examines Vienna from the 1860s through the 1930s as the site of intellectual, political, and aesthetic responses to the challenges of modern urban life. Through readings in politics, literature, science, and philosophy, as well as through art and music, we explore three contested elements of personal identity: nationality, sexuality, and rationality.

HIST BC 4327y Consumer Culture in Modern Europe

The development of the modern culture of consumption, with particular attention to the formation of the woman consumer. Topics include commerce and the urban landscape, changing attitudes toward shopping and spending, feminine fashion and conspicuous consumption, and the birth of advertising. Examination of novels, fashion magazines, and advertising images.

HIST BC 4332y The Politics of Leisure in Modern Europe

Transformations in the culture of leisure from the onset of industrialization to the present day. Relations between elite and popular culture and the changing relationship between the work world and the world of leisure will be among the topics considered in such settings as the department store, the pub, the cinema, and the tourist resort.

HIST BC 4360x London: From 'Great Wen' to World City

Social and cultural history of London from the Great Fire of 1666 to the 1960s. An examination of the changing experience of urban identity through the commercial life, public spaces, and diverse inhabitants of London. Topics include 17th-century rebuilding, immigrants and emigrants, suburbs, literary culture, war, and redevelopment.

HIST BC 4368y History of the Senses

Examination of European understandings of human senses through the production and reception of art, literature, music, food, and sensual enjoyments in Britain and France. Readings include changing theories concerning the five senses; efforts to master the passions; the rise of sensibility and feeling for others; concerts and the patronage of art; the professionalization of the senses.

HIST BC 4375y Boundaries and Belonging: Gender and Citizenship in Modern History

Examines the ways gender has constituted citizenship in modern western history. Topics include suffrage; national belonging; marriage and military service for women and LGBT citizens; social citizenship and the welfare state; "postpolitical citizenship" through economics and consumption; statelessness and migration; cosmopolitan citizenship; and parity, quotas and representation.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 20 students. Sophomore standing. Preregistration required. General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

HIST BC 4391x-BC4392y Senior Research Seminar

Individual guided research and writing in history and the presentation of results in seminar and in the form of the senior essay.
Prerequisites: Open to Barnard College History Senior Majors.
8 points. 4 points each term.
4 points

HIST BC 4402y Selected Topics in American Women's History

Critical examination of recent trends in modern U.S. women's history, with particular attention to the intersection of gender, sexuality, class, and race. Topics will include: state regulation of marriage and sexuality, roots of modern feminism, altered meanings of motherhood and work, and changing views of the body.

HIST BC 4411y Race in the Making of the US

Considers what role "race" plays in U.S. culture, politics, economics and foreign policy. Beginning with the origins of racial slavery, examines how, when and whether the subsequent development of racial systems - and challenges to them - shaped historical developments. Through a survey of theories about "race relations" and contemporary discussions about affirmative action, immigration, empire and rights, ponders the possibilities for a "colorblind" society in the United States.

HIST BC 4468y American Women in the 1920s

Exploration of women's lives from World War I to the Great Crash. Topics include women's politics, domestic roles, the female work force, collegiate life, the new morality, flaming youth, women in the Harlem Renaissance, women's literature, and the paradox of modern feminism.

HIST BC 4542x Education in American History

Consideration of the place educational institutions, educational ideas, and educators have played in American life. Emphasis will be on the connection between education and social mobility.

HIST BC 4543y Higher Learning in America

Examination of the history of American colleges and universities from the colonies to the present; special emphasis on the evolving relationship between academic institutions and the political and social orders.

HIST BC 4546y The Fourteenth Amendment and Its Uses

The role of the 14th Amendment in shaping the modern American Constitution; theories of judicial review; the rise and fall of economic due process; the creation of civil liberties; the civil rights revolution; and the end of states' rights.

HIST BC 4592y Maritime History Since the Civil War

Critical consideration of the maritime aspects of American life and culture since the Civil War: rise of American sea power; peaking of American maritime commerce and labor; historic seaports and coastal areas as recreational resources; marine science and environmentalist concerns in shaping recent American maritime policies. Seminar will make extensive use of the web for resources and communication.

HIST BC 4651y Jewish Tales from Four Cities: The Immigrant Experience in New York, Buenos Aires, Paris and London

Examines Jewish immigrant experience in New York, Buenos Aires, London, and Paris, c.1880-1930. Focus on the Old World origins of the arrivals, the formation of neighborhoods, ethnic institutions, family, work, cultural expressions, and relations with the rest of society. Based on readings and primary research (newspapers, letters, songs, photographs, etc.).

HIST BC 4669y Inequalities:Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Latin America

Latin America has long been characterized by extreme and enduring inequalities - of class, income, race, and ethnicity. Examines patterns of inequality from different disciplinary perspectives, both historically and in the present. Examines not only causes and solutions but how scholars have approached inequality as an intellectual problem.

HIST BC 4672x Perspectives on Power in 20th Century Latin America

Examination of recent Latin American historiography concerns with power in the context of 20th-Century Latin America. Focus on such diverse topics as the Mexican Revolution and migrant culture in Costa Rica, labor mobilization in Chile and the dirty war in Argentina. Themes include the relationship between popular culture and the state; the power of words and the power of symbols; structure and agency; the role of the law; the relationship between leaders and followers; and the intersections of gender, race, and power.

HIST BC 4763x Children and Childhood in African History

Focuses on the history of childhood in African societies and how children as historical agents have impacted the social history of the communities. Themes covered in the course will include labor, sexuality, violence, and the history of the family in Africa.

HIST BC 4771y Critical Perspectives on the Mobilization of Race and Ethnicity on the Continent and in the Study of Africa

Critically examines the relationship between social difference and narratives and practices of power in historical and contemporary African publics. Race and Ethnicity are the key axes of social difference that will be examined. Other axes of difference such as gender, sexuality, class, caste, generation and nationality will also be examined through points of intersection with race and ethnicity.

HIST BC 4791x Lagos: From Pepper Farm to Megacity

Examines the many Lagoses that have existed over time, in space, and in the imagination from its origins to the 21st century. This is a reading, writing, viewing, and listening intensive course. We read scholarly, policy-oriented, and popular sources on Lagos as well as screening films and audio recordings that feature Lagos in order to learn about the social, cultural, and intellectual history of this West African mega-city.

HIST BC 4805y Caste, Power, and Inequality

Draws on the experiences of life and thought of caste subalterns to explore the challenges to caste exploitation and inequality.

HIST BC 4830y Bombay/Mumbai and Its Urban Imaginaries

Explores the intersections between imagining and materiality in Bombay/Mumbai from its colonial beginnings to the present. Housing, slums, neighborhoods, streets, public culture, contestation, and riots are examined through film, architecture, fiction, history and theory. It is an introduction to the city; and to the imaginative enterprise in history.

HIST BC 4861x Body Histories: The Case of Footbinding

The deceptively small subject of footbinding provides a window into the larger family dynamics and sexual politics in Chinese history and society. Explores the multiple representations of footbinding in European travelogues, ethnographic interviews, Chinese erotic novels and prints, and the polemics of modern and feminist critiques.

HIST BC 4870x and y Gender & Migration: A Global Perspective

Explores migration as a gendered process and what factors account for migratory differences by gender across place and time; including labor markets, education demographic and family structure, gender ideologies, religion, government regulations and legal status, and intrinsic aspects of the migratory flow itself.

HIST BC 4879x Feminist Traditions in China

Explores the intellectual, social and cultural grounds for the establishment and transmission of feminist traditions in China before the 19th century. Topics include pre-modern Chinese views of the body, self, gender, and sex, among others. Our goal is to rethink such cherished concepts as voice, agency, freedom, and choice that have shaped the modern feminist movement.

HIST BC 4886x Fashion

Investigates the cultural, material and technological conditions that facilitated the development of "fashion systems" in early modern Europe, Japan and contemporary Asian diasporic communities. In the global framework, "fashion" serves as a window into the politics of self-presentation, community formation, structure of desires, and struggles over representation.

HIST BC 4901x and y Reacting to the Past II

Collision of ideas in two of the following three contexts: "Rousseau, Burke and Revolution in France, 1791;" "The Struggle for Palestine: The British, Zionists, and Palestinians in the 1930s," or "India on the Eve of Independence, 1945".

HIST BC 4903x Reacting to the Past III: Science and Society
Prerequisites: Not offered 2008-09.
Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required. General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA). Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

HIST BC 4904x Introduction to Historical Theory and Method

A writing-intensive introduction to modern historical theories and methods. Emphasis on the critical reading of a wide range of primary and secondary historical sources. Recommended for, but not limited to, new history majors.

HIST BC 4905x Capitalism, Colonialism, and Culture: A Global History

From Indian Ocean worlds of the seventeenth century, to Atlantic world slavery, to the establishment of colonies in Asia and Africa during the nineteenth century, colonization was critical to the development of metropolitan ideas regarding politics and personhood. This seminar will examine these histories, along with emerging constructions of race and gender, as precursors to debates about human rights and humanitarianism in the twentieth century.

HIST BC 4907y Edible Conflicts: A History of Food

Conflicts emerging from the production and consumption of food from prehistoric to modern times. Settled agriculture and the significance of geography and social stratification in determining food consumption; ideologies of social status and "taste" in Europe; impact of knowledge about health and hygiene on European dietary habits; drink in diets and social life; dining out in European culture; role of transport and technology in consumer culture; food and the welfare state; mass production and globalization of food.

HIST BC 4909x or y History of Environmental Thinking

A consideration of how experiences of the natural world and the meaning of "nature" have changed over the past three centuries. Follows the development of the environmental sciences and the origins of environmentalism. The geographical focus will be Europe, with attention to the global context of imperialism.