Spring Term Schedule
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Spring 2025
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HIST 112-1
Joshua Dubler
MWF 10:25AM - 11:15AM
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How does a country with five percent of the world's population, a country that nominally values freedom above all else, come to have nearly a quarter of the world's incarcerated people? In this survey course we investigate the history of imprisonment in the United States--as theorized and as practiced--from the founding of the republic to the present day. Special attention is paid to the politics, economics, race politics, and religious logics of contemporary mass incarceration, and to the efforts afoot to end mass incarceration.
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HIST 115-1
Tingting Xu
TR 4:50PM - 6:05PM
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This course offers a comprehensive survey of Chinese art and culture from the Neolithic age to the present. Course sections are arranged chronologically. We will study works by major artists together with the unique materials, formats, genres, conventions, and ideas in artistic conception and production. Besides regular class meetings, the schedule also includes two debating games (about Shang bronzes and Song landscapes respectively), a hands-on section of calligraphy, a touch section of authentic ceramic sheds from the best-known kilns, and a storage visit at the Memorial Art Gallery. We will develop our sensitivities to unspoken visual subtleties as we outline an intellectual history of Chinese culture through artistic creation.
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HIST 118-1
Stefanie Bautista San Miguel
TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM
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The discipline of archaeology can make unique contributions to our understanding of urbanism and daily life given its ability to examine long-term processes of development and change. The goal of this course is to provide an introduction and overview of urbanism as exemplified by the indigenous cities of the New World (e.g. Mesoamerica and South America). While regional differences will be discussed, we will focus mainly on identifying the theoretical issues that intersect all of the regions we will be studying.
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HIST 122-02
Rachel Walkover
TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM
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This course covers topics in Medieval European history. For spring 2025: Vox Populi: Medieval Popular Revolts: Throughout time, people have revolted against governing bodies and rulers, and the Middle Ages is no exception. In this course, we will use a variety of themes (good governance, heresy, economic stratification, and the daily lives of non-nobles) to contextualize the reasons for and the goals of rebellions, including the Jacquerie in France, the Ciompi Revolt in Florence, and the Great Rising in England.
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HIST 133-01
Matthew Lenoe
MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM
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This class examines the history of the Soviet Union from foundation (1917) to collapse (1991), focusing on internal developments in the Russian part of the Union. We will begin with a discussion of the background to the collapse of the imperial Russian state in 1917, including changes in Russian society and World War I. Later, the class will look at questions such as: Did the New Economic Policy of the 1920s create a stable socioeconomic order? How did Stalin defeat his political rivals and create a personal dictatorship? What were the motivations for the Great Terror of 1937-1938? How did the Soviet Union defeat Nazi Germany in World War II? We will also devote some time to the Soviet role in the Cold War and the appeal of Leninism in colonized and post-colonial societies. The course will conclude with a discussion of the collapse of the USSR and the emergence of a soft authoritarian order in post-Soviet Russia. The syllabus will emphasize primary-source readings and class discussion.
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HIST 136-1
Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio
MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM
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The second of a sequence of two, the course approaches "The Divine Comedy" both as a poetic masterpiece and as an encyclopedia of medieval culture. Through a close textual analysis of the second half of "Purgatorio" and the entirety of "Paradiso," students learn how to approach Dante’s poetry as a vehicle for thought, an instrument of self-discovery, and a way to understand and affect the historical reality. They also gain a perspective on the Biblical, Christian, and Classical traditions as they intersect with the multiple levels of Dante’s concern, ranging from literature to history, from politics to government, from philosophy to theology. A visual component, including illustrations of the "Comedy" and multiple artworks pertinent to the narrative, complements the course. Class format includes lectures, discussion, and a weekly recitation session. Intensive class participation is encouraged. No prerequisites. Freshmen are welcome. Part of the Dante Humanities Cluster.
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HIST 147-1
Mehmet Karabela
MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM
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This course examines the role of religion in the politics of the Middle East. In the first part, the course introduces key concepts and terms necessary for understanding contemporary Middle Eastern politics and political discourse. The second part focuses on the central issues from the late 19th-century through to the Arab Spring, such as the emergence of constitutionalism, Arab nationalism, the rise of Islamism, the debate on Islam’s compatibility with liberal democracy, Islamic feminism, and the concept of post-Islamism. The third part of the course illustrates these issues with five corresponding case studies which provide insight into the trajectories of political Islam in Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Egypt. Throughout this course, we will pay particular attention to gender issues and women’s participation in civil society, government, and religion.
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HIST 157-01
Brianna Theobald
TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM
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When visitors arrive on Alcatraz Island in the Bay Area today, they are greeted by the words, "You are on Indian land." Written by a participant in Native activists' occupation of the island in 1969, the statement is a reminder that there are Indigenous histories of the land that is currently the United States—and these histories are very much ongoing. This course is an introductory survey of the history of Native America, which consists of hundreds of distinct Indigenous nations. Among other topics, the course will explore how Native peoples navigated forced migrations and attempted genocide in the nineteenth century; the various ways they responded to efforts to Americanize them; Native activism and leadership on and off reservations across the twentieth century; and more recent developments from Standing Rock to Reservation Dogs.
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HIST 158-01
Ruben Flores
MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM
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How did a nation surrounded by the French and British Empires at the end of the nineteenth century become the preeminent global superpower by the end of World War II in 1945? We will study the political and economic decisions after the US Civil War that culminated in the Spanish-American War of 1898, including America’s global invasion of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. We will consider the role that America assigned itself to in the march of world history. We will examine the place of commerce and consumer culture in the making of the Panama Canal and modern trade flows. And we will examine the rise of Communism in the context of American global power beginning with the Soviet Union and ending with the Vietnam War. Throughout, we will seek to understand how America’s military and economic strength has been understood internationally from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day.
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HIST 171-01
Melanie Chambliss
TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM
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This introductory survey examines the history of African Americans from 1860 to the present. We will examine African Americans’ pursuit of freedom and justice as defined during different periods. Topics of study include the Reconstruction era; formation of Jim Crow segregation; Black migrations; the Civil Rights and Black Power movements; and the contemporary “color line” in the United States. Students will explore the impact of Black activism and cultural expression on national and international politics. By the end of the semester, students will understand key concepts and events that shaped post-emancipation Black history.
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HIST 176-1
Aaron Hughes
TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM
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An introduction to the religious and cultural development of Judaism. Will emphasize Judaism as a living tradition, one which has been subject to both continuity and change among its practitioners throughout its history.
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HIST 179-01
Morris Pierce
MW 6:15PM - 7:30PM
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Rochester’s history began long before the first permanent settlement in 1812 and was marked by a long and violent conflict between native peoples, the French and the British. Wheat harvested in the Genesee Valley was ground into flour using the power of the Genesee River as it dropped 260 feet to Lake Ontario. Transporting flour and other goods to New York City and other markets was difficult until the Erie Canal was completed in 1825. The canal enabled an enormous migration of settlers moving west, and many chose to stay in Rochester. The village became a city in 1834 with a vibrant and expanding mix of cultures that joined together to make Rochester a vibrant commercial and manufacturing center. The Western Union Telegraph Company traces its roots to Rochester in 1851 and in 1853 eight local New York railroads merged to form the New York Central, whose tracks ran parallel to the Erie Canal. In 1881 a local bank clerk, George Eastman, quit his job to devote his full attention to the business of photography and founded the Eastman Kodak Company. The Haloid Photographic Company was founded in Rochester in 1906 and entered into an agreement with inventor Chester Carlson in 1946 that resulted in the introduction of the Xerox 914 plain paper copy machine in 1959 was adopted around the world. Nevertheless, Rochester’s most famous residents are likely Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, who were instrumental in the struggle to expand civil rights to all Americans. The local community, however, struggled to welcome the large numbers of African Americans who moved to Rochester after World War II. Housing discrimination, white flight to the suburbs, and riots marked the 1960s, and the city today has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the country. Nevertheless, the city has vibrant cultural and educational institutions that continue to attract talented newcomers. In short, the history of Rochester has a bit of everything and students in the course are encouraged to study the entire experience of the community, including topics that may be new and frankly uncomfortable.
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HIST 183-1
John Downey
TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM
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The purpose of this course is to explore the general development of Christianity throughout its twenty centuries of existence, paying special attention to the religious presuppositions behind Christianity and its complex relationship to its socio-cultural matrix. The course will focus on important moments in Christian history, including its inception as a Jewish religious movement set in motion by Jesus, its dissemination in the Greco-Roman world by Paul of Tarsus, its growth and triumph in the Roman Empire, the split between the Greek- and Latin-speaking churches, medieval Catholicism, the Reformation and rise of Protestantism, Christianity and the modern world, and contemporary movements and tendencies within the Christian churches.
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HIST 191-01
Elizabeth Sapere
MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM
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This specific course can change each semester. It will cover a topic of post-1800 US History. For spring 2025: From neoliberalism and the age of fracture to post Fordism in a war for the soul of America, scholars have devised numerous frames to characterize the U.S. at the end of the twentieth century. This course will take a deep dive into the 1980s and 1990s and ask the big, overarching question: what happened? How did the previous two decades of civil rights, feminist, and student uprisings give way to two decades of reaction and backlash? "Sex, Satan, & the Carceral State" will take a longue-durée approach, beginning in the waning years of the 1970s and concluding in the first two years of the twenty-first century. Each week students will read primary and secondary sources about a moment of crisis, culture war, or change. These will include topics such as the sex wars, the AIDS crisis, stranger danger, police and prisons, and Rodney King, among many others. Students will grapple with the centrality of race, gender and class to each week’s topics, as well as interrogate the ways in which culture, politics and economics intersected in both old and new ways.
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HIST 192-01
Claire Becker
MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM
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This specific course can change each semester. It will cover a topic of pre-1800 European History. For spring 2025: This course surveys the varied ways in which Europeans made sense of the human body from the early days of Christianity to the discovery of the Americas. While questions of health, disease, and death certainly preoccupied premodern thinkers, this course follows recent trends in feminist and queer historical scholarship by privileging questions of gender and sexuality. As we read works on the body by modern historians and premodern thinkers alike, we’ll encounter medieval sex workers, lesbian nuns, a self-proclaimed “hermaphrodite” accused of sorcery, a fifteenth-century mystic whose unconventional writings described her sensual longing for Jesus Christ and, of course, plenty of so-called “sodomites.” As we transition from the medieval to the early modern period, we’ll consider the destructive and mutually transformative encounter between two civilizations—European and American—with distinct views on bodies, gender, and desire. Throughout the course, we’ll explore how sex became linked with sin, how virginity came to signify virtue and, more broadly, how certain gendered behaviors and embodiments became associated with transgression and others with normalcy (or even, in some cases, holiness). Most crucially, we’ll ask how knowledge about the body (“carnal knowledge,” if you’ll excuse the pun) has been produced, by whom, and to what ends, in concrete moments throughout European history.
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HIST 195-02
Richard Fadok
TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM
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This course covers topics in global history. For spring 2025: Animal Cities: From Pizza Rat to Neil the Seal What can our fascination with Pizza Rat’s herculean appetite or Neil the Seal’s traffic-jamming antics tell us about the relationships today between the beast and the borough, the human and the nonhuman? Why do we celebrate some urban wildlife while ignoring, reviling, and even exterminating others? This introduction to the interdisciplinary field of animal studies addresses these and other questions through recent scholarship on multispecies cities. The first part of the course surveys urban human-animal ecology from domestication to enclosure with an emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. In the second part, we ponder contemporary studies of interspecies contact, collision, and cohabitation, from macaques in Delhi and mosquitos in Dar es Salaam to capybaras in Buenos Aires and parakeets in London. Students will gain an understanding of the historical forces that have shaped everyday encounters with nonhuman animals, particularly as they concern matters of violence, intimacy, and justice. Alongside class discussions, we will collectively produce a ”subjective atlas” that explores the city of Rochester from the perspective(s) of its animal residents.
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HIST 200-3
Laura Smoller
MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM
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History 200 is an introduction to historical practice - what professional historians actually do. It is a requirement for history majors, but we encourage all interested undergraduates to enroll. This section focuses upon the concept of deviance in medieval European society, studying the process of identifying persons as “deviants” because of their religious beliefs, sexual preferences, alleged witchcraft, or presumed status as werewolves. Along the way we will discuss the various ways in which historians have approached this topic and will engage with key primary sources. Readings will address the question of whether the persecution of “deviants” began only in the twelfth century as part of the process of centralizing power in church and state. We will consider the relationship between persecution and power, as we ponder why certain groups were singled out for persecution. And we will ask what Europeans really were afraid of when they labeled certain groups as “deviant."
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HIST 200-4
Jedediah Kuhn
TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM
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Eureka! This gateway course introduces students to historical practice—what professional historians actually do—through a focus on matters of race, gender, and indigeneity during the California gold rush. Stretching before and after the gold rush years of 1848-1855, this course presents California as a site of overlapping colonial histories (Spanish, Mexican, and U.S.) and an immense diversity of Indigenous cultures and languages. It is also a site of racial struggle, as Mexican landowners, Chinese laborers, Indigenous peoples, White settlers, and free Black men and women vied for land, resources, and power, a struggle in which gender and sexuality played a key role. As a historical methods course, this class will introduce students to the diverse array of evidence available to historians, from legal documents and newspapers to travelogues, novels, historical interviews, maps, and artwork. This class is required for history majors, but we encourage all interested undergraduates to enroll.
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HIST 210-01
Elias Mandala
TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM
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Africa’s engagement with China has to be read as a two-sided story: China has found in Africa a reliable supplier of natural resources while Africans look to China for aid and investments in agriculture, industry, infrastructure, and education. And, in a significant departure from the colonial model of economic interactions, Chinese companies do not only ship finished products to Africa; they also manufacture in Africa goods for internal use and for export. The impact of these multifaceted relations will not be decided in Beijing alone, as many assume in the West; the outcome will also depend on the decisions taken in African capitals.
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HIST 210W-01
Elias Mandala
TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM
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Africa’s engagement with China has to be read as a two-sided story: China has found in Africa a reliable supplier of natural resources while Africans look to China for aid and investments in agriculture, industry, infrastructure, and education. And, in a significant departure from the colonial model of economic interactions, Chinese companies do not only ship finished products to Africa; they also manufacture in Africa goods for internal use and for export. The impact of these multifaceted relations will not be decided in Beijing alone, as many assume in the West; the outcome will also depend on the decisions taken in African capitals.
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HIST 215-01
Jesse LeFebvre
MW 4:50PM - 6:05PM
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According to a story recorded in A Collection of Notable Tales Old and New, in the wake of a civil war that saw to the formation of the Kamakura shogunate, the Cloistered Sovereign Goshirakawa sent an emissary to the Shogun Minamoto Yoritomo. This emissary carried with him an illustrated narrative scroll from Goshirakawa’s own secret collection. The shogun, however, dared not even glance at the contents and ordered its immediate return. Japan’s celebrated tradition of graphic storytelling can in part trace its roots to a culture of illustrated narrative that began in the 8th century. This course introduces students to illustrated narrative scrolls and other forms of visual and performative culture from the late classical through the early modern period with reference to modern manifestations of Japan’s ongoing visual culture. Students will explore the relationship between text and image, how scholars approach illustrated narrative, and how historical developments shape the formation of illustrated narrative and are in turn shaped by these combinations of text and image. In considering how illustrated scrolls developed and matured as a Japanese art form, we will dare to look where Japan’s first shogun did not, and in so doing, come to understand his refusal to do so—and something of our own desire to view and be viewed. Taught in English.
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HIST 225-01
Stewart Weaver
MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM
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This course is an introduction to the history of Europe before, during, and after the First World War. Beyond studying the details of the conflict itself, we will be concerned mainly with the effect of the war on European culture, politics, society, and consciousness. Class sessions will include some lectures, films, and regular seminar discussions. Readings will include a wide variety of memoirs, letters, diaries, novels, and poems by those who experienced the war and its traumatic aftermath first hand.
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HIST 225W-01
Stewart Weaver
MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM
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This course is an introduction to the history of Europe before, during, and after the First World War. Beyond studying the details of the conflict itself, we will be concerned mainly with the effect of the war on European culture, politics, society, and consciousness. Class sessions will include some lectures, films, and regular seminar discussions. Readings will include a wide variety of memoirs, letters, diaries, novels, and poems by those who experienced the war and its traumatic aftermath first hand.
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HIST 226-01
Stewart Weaver
MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM
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This course is a general introduction to the intersecting histories of exploration, science, and adventure from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment to the present. After a preliminary look at the idea of "exploration," what it means, and what distinguishes it from mere travel and/or adventure, we will focus each week on a discreet episode of scientific exploration, beginning with the epochal Pacific voyages of Captain James Cook and concluding with the Apollo missions to the moon. Other notable cases will include the South American travels of Alexander von Humboldt, the transcontinental journey of Lewis and Clark, Robert Scott's fateful journey to the South Pole, and early scientific exploration and mountaineering in the Himalaya. Our emphasis throughout will be on the complex relation between exploration and science, and on the ways in which exploration has shaped for good and ill our modern, globally interconnected world.
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HIST 226W-01
Stewart Weaver
MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM
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This course is a general introduction to the intersecting histories of exploration, science, and adventure from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment to the present. After a preliminary look at the idea of "exploration," what it means, and what distinguishes it from mere travel and/or adventure, we will focus each week on a discreet episode of scientific exploration, beginning with the epochal Pacific voyages of Captain James Cook and concluding with the Apollo missions to the moon. Other notable cases will include the South American travels of Alexander von Humboldt, the transcontinental journey of Lewis and Clark, Robert Scott's fateful journey to the South Pole, and early scientific exploration and mountaineering in the Himalaya. Our emphasis throughout will be on the complex relation between exploration and science, and on the ways in which exploration has shaped for good and ill our modern, globally interconnected world.
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HIST 228-01
Elias Mandala
R 2:00PM - 4:40PM
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North Africa and the Middle East is in a mess: Instead of democracy, the Arab Spring delivered a military dictatorship to Egypt; Iraq and Syria are melting into warring tribal enclaves; Saudi Arabia is waging a savage war in Yemen; and the Palestinians remain an unprotected stateless people. There is a crisis, and this course introduces students to the predicament, arguing that since the first Industrial Revolution in England, the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East have refashioned their destinies in partnership with the West. Students will examine how the following encounters helped make the region as we know it: the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1838, transition from Ottoman to West European colonialism, discovery of huge and easily extractable oil reserves, creation of the state of Israel, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the US Invasion of Iraq in 2003. The class will also explore how the above patterns of engagement shaped the histories of the region's working classes, women, and the peasantry.
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HIST 228W-01
Elias Mandala
R 2:00PM - 4:40PM
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North Africa and the Middle East is in a mess: Instead of democracy, the Arab Spring delivered a military dictatorship to Egypt; Iraq and Syria are melting into warring tribal enclaves; Saudi Arabia is waging a savage war in Yemen; and the Palestinians remain an unprotected stateless people. There is a crisis, and this course introduces students to the predicament, arguing that since the first Industrial Revolution in England, the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East have refashioned their destinies in partnership with the West. Students will examine how the following encounters helped make the region as we know it: the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1838, transition from Ottoman to West European colonialism, discovery of huge and easily extractable oil reserves, creation of the state of Israel, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the US Invasion of Iraq in 2003. The class will also explore how the above patterns of engagement shaped the histories of the region's working classes, women, and the peasantry.
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HIST 230-1
Sarah Higley
TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM
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Wes hal! England prior to the Norman Conquest i(1066 c.e.) produced King Alfred, Beowulf and stunning poetry and prose, written at a time when Engla-lond fought for its cultural and political status in the British Isles. We’ll explore the sublime, mystical, medical, and earthy writings of England: Wonders of the East, comets, portents, medicinal charms, riddles, the Paternoster and the Devil, maps, visions, wolves, women, runes, cross-dressing saints. We’ll translate some texts in Old English and read others in translation, and as your lærestre (teaching servant) I’ll help you learn Old English language and vocabulary, and explore the diversity of a people who’ve been reduced to stereotype. Old English stood with Old Irish as being one of the earliest producers in the western Middle Ages of a people’s native language on manuscript. England survived invasions by the Danes and the Normans (1066) which never completely replaced its language with Danish or French, merely enriched it.
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HIST 235-1
Alexander Cushing
TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM
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Political and moral ideals from the ancient Mediterranean World played an important role in shaping the character of political and social institutions in the colonial and post-colonial United States. Slaveholders justified the practice of slavery in America based in part on their own interpretation of ancient Roman and Greek models and ideologies of slavery. Both as a reaction to this pro-slavery use of ancient allusions and also because of the 19th century cultural value of Classical education and the authority of ancient examples, many American abolitionist thinkers, politicians, and activists also incorporated ancient examples and ideals into their own anti-slavery arguments. This course will explore the influence of the ancient Mediterranean world on the expression and evolution of abolitionist activities and political thought, with a particular focus on the rich local anti-slavery history of Rochester and Western New York. We will examine primary sources from the ancient world and the 18th and 19th centuries and consider the role of ideas about the ancient world as it relates to modern slavery and the movement to abolish it in the United States.
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HIST 236-1
Jesse LeFebvre
MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM
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“Miracles are a retelling in small letters,” said C.S. Lewis, “of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” In recent years, Korean film and television has taken the world by storm in what is no small miracle of marketing, technology, and story-telling, but what does contemporary Korean film and television render visible that would otherwise be difficult to see? Onscreen interactions with the supernatural, divine, or horrific provide a unique medium for myth-making, identity formation, and world-building. In this course students will explore the ways in which religion in Korean film and television confront mortality and collective anxieties, and how the interaction between the religious and nonreligious serve as sites for the construction and interrogation of nation, race, gender, identity, modernity, cosmology, and moral discourse.
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HIST 238-01
Matthew Lenoe
MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM
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This course uses primary source materials (treaties, memoirs, government orders, newspaper articles, letters, films) and secondary (scholarly literature) to examine the history of Ukrainian-Russian relations from the early 16th century to the present, as well as the role of propaganda and beliefs about that history on both sides of the present conflict. We will study the Cossack hetmanate of the early to mid-17th century, and its memory as the source of Ukrainian national identity. Other topics will include the development of modern Ukrainian nationalism in the mid-19th century, shifting Russian imperial attitudes towards Ukraine, the interregnum of Ukrainian independence in 1918, the great famine of 1932-1933, and Ukrainian combatants in World War II. We will also examine Vladimir Putin's account of East Slavic history and his rationalization of the aggressive attacks on Ukraine beginning in 2014.
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HIST 238W-01
Matthew Lenoe
MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM
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This course uses primary source materials (treaties, memoirs, government orders, newspaper articles, letters, films) and secondary (scholarly literature) to examine the history of Ukrainian-Russian relations from the early 16th century to the present, as well as the role of propaganda and beliefs about that history on both sides of the present conflict. We will study the Cossack hetmanate of the early to mid-17th century, and its memory as the source of Ukrainian national identity. Other topics will include the development of modern Ukrainian nationalism in the mid-19th century, shifting Russian imperial attitudes towards Ukraine, the interregnum of Ukrainian independence in 1918, the great famine of 1932-1933, and Ukrainian combatants in World War II. We will also examine Vladimir Putin's account of East Slavic history and his rationalization of the aggressive attacks on Ukraine beginning in 2014.
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HIST 259-01
Rachel O'Donnell
MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM
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In this colloquium we will look at the history of international feminism and explore its many faces. We will examine the various factors that have contributed to womens historically lower status in society; will look at the emergence of womens rights and feminist movements as well as the distinctions among various feminist theories, and will discuss the relevance of feminism today.
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HIST 259W-01
Rachel O'Donnell
MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM
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In this colloquium we will look at the history of international feminism and explore its many faces. We will examine the various factors that have contributed to womens historically lower status in society; will look at the emergence of womens rights and feminist movements as well as the distinctions among various feminist theories, and will discuss the relevance of feminism today.
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HIST 266-01
Jedediah Kuhn
TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM
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The latter half of the 20th century was a period of dramatic societal change in the United States in which gender and sexuality played a key role. Surveying significant developments in this period including the Women’s movement and rise of feminism, the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights, the sexual revolution, the gender and sexual politics of the civil rights movement, the conservative backlash, and the AIDS/HIV epidemic, this course examines the struggle over rights, freedom, and competing worldviews that continues into our present moment. Moreover, we will consider how gender and sexuality are themselves socially constructed and historically contingent as well as deeply embedded in matters such as race and U.S. imperialism.
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HIST 266W-01
Jedediah Kuhn
TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM
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The latter half of the 20th century was a period of dramatic societal change in the United States in which gender and sexuality played a key role. Surveying significant developments in this period including the Women’s movement and rise of feminism, the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights, the sexual revolution, the gender and sexual politics of the civil rights movement, the conservative backlash, and the AIDS/HIV epidemic, this course examines the struggle over rights, freedom, and competing worldviews that continues into our present moment. Moreover, we will consider how gender and sexuality are themselves socially constructed and historically contingent as well as deeply embedded in matters such as race and U.S. imperialism.
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HIST 270-01
Anna Rosensweig
TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM
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This course will examine representations of Algeria as a geographic, political, and symbolic space within French and Francophone Studies. We will pay particular attention to how French imperialist discourses from the early modern to the present have positioned Algeria paradoxically as both radically distinct from France and an integral part of the French nation and national identity. We will also examine films and texts that depict the Algerian War of Independence and its ongoing reverberations in French political and cultural life. Conducted in English.
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HIST 273W-1
Jean Pedersen
TR 11:35AM - 12:50PM
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This course will examine the history and progress of women’s rights movements around the world from the origins of the international anti-slavery movement in the eighteenth century to the organization of Women’s Marches and the rise of the #metoo movement today. Assignments will include a range of historical and contemporary readings, attendance at the world premiere of a new piece by Emily Pinkerton with the contemporary chamber ensemble fivebyfive, and participation in a variety of additional local cultural events during Women’s History Month in March and at other times as well.
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HIST 283-1
John Downey
TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM
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This course will examine the history of the Catholic sexual abuse crisis, which has garnered global attention in recent years. Although there had been nationally-reported cases of clerical sexual abuse for decades prior, perhaps most significantly the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” series in 2002, a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury investigation report marked a watershed moment in the study of this subject, by framing abuse as endemic to modern Catholicism. In their own words, “it happened everywhere.” In subsequent years, questions of who or what is to blame, and what penitent reconciliation might look like have become topics of intense debate. This course will study the history of abuse—and institutional responses—throughout global Catholicism, with an emphasis on North America. But it will also attend to abuse revelations as grounding contemporary debates about Catholic theology, ecclesiastical reform, and the nature of Church/State relations.
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HIST 292-01
Lisa Cerami
TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM
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Varying topics relating to modern languages and cultures.
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HIST 294-01
Lisa Cerami
TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM
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Only some people have direct experience with war, but almost all people have very firm ideas about what war is like––Writing war (writing about war; describing literal wars or fictionalizing them) is as old as writing itself, and war writing a staple of reading. We will think about the "encounter" with war in reading. With a selection of texts drawn heavily from the World Wars of the twentieth century, we will investigate questions of how war is represented in different media. We will learn how to translate our reading into our own writing. This course is designed to introduce students to the practice of critical reading and textual analysis, practices that are the cornerstone of the humanistic / social science disciplines. All reading and discussion in English, primary German reading available for additional credit.
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HIST 297-1
–
T 3:25PM - 6:05PM
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This course will trace the representation of Jews in cinema with a special focus on the Holocaust, events that led up to it, and the post-Holocaust world in which Jews had to find new meaning to existential, philosophical, and religious questions. Throughout the course we will pay special attention to issues of gender, the voices and experiences of women, the LGBTQ community, ethnic and racial differences and divides. In our in-class conversations and analyses we will develop tools to deconstruct major historical events in Jewish history exposing the ways in which they transformed the religious, cultural, and social matrix of Jewish communities locally and globally.
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HIST 299H-2
Michael Hayata
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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Interested in designing an original research project? This seminar introduces students to source identification, prospectus preparation, and grant-writing techniques for historical research. To prepare for your project, we will discuss select readings on questions of memory, power, archives and our motivations as writers of History. The course is mandatory for students interested in completing the History Honors program next year. Students who are planning on developing an alternate research project are also welcome to enroll. As a 2.0 credit course, the course only meets the first eight weeks of the semester.
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HIST 303W-01
Jean Pedersen
M 9:00AM - 11:40AM
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What does it mean to be human? What political, economic, religious, social, or sexual rights might be part of different people's working definitions? This course will look at both a) the historical development of conflicting theories of human rights and b) more contemporary debates about their ideal extent, their exercise, and their enforcement. Special topics will include debates over the meaning of the American and French Revolutions, the fight to design an International Declaration of Human Rights in the aftermath of World War II, the history of organizations such as Amnesty International, and the controversy around UN events such as the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, and the 2000 and 2005 Millennium Summits in New York City.
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HIST 346W-01
Michael Hayata
W 2:00PM - 4:40PM
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This course probes the regional dynamics of the Cold War in East Asia by examining the histories of China, Japan, and South and North Korea during the second half of the twentieth century. It uses primary and secondary works – including literature, film, and government documents – to explore the domestic and international contexts that shaped the region’s geopolitical landscape. Students will first study patterns of state control across East Asia in the form of rapid industrialization, land reform, and mass culture. They will then create dialogue between popular experiences of these social transformations by analyzing the alternative politics of such movements as the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Japanese peace movement, and South Korean democracy movement in relation to the Cold War world system.
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HIST 347W-01
Melanie Chambliss
R 2:00PM - 4:40PM
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How do archival absences impact what we know about the past? How should these silences shape the histories we write? This course will explore the process of historical production through critical archival studies. We will discuss how “the archive” documents power dynamics in the past and present. We will read histories and theories of archives’ construction and examine different approaches to recovering African diasporic history. Researchers have turned to microhistory, memoir, fiction, theory, and other methods or genres to address archival absences, and we will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these choices. By the end of the semester, students will be familiar with key voices within critical archival scholarship and postmodernist theories of history, and students will learn different techniques for addressing absences in their own research.
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HIST 357W-01
Molly Ball
TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM
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What does it mean for a country to be developed? Developing? Underdeveloped? And who decides what it means to be developed? To explore these questions over the course of the late nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, this upper-level seminar centers its focus on the ideological home of dependency theory, Latin America. We will explore how internal tensions manifested in competing local, regional, and national visions of development. We will examine how foreign interests, international humanitarian, and NGO goals intersected with and challenged Latin American efforts. Through weekly readings and a final, independent research paper, students will be challenged to rethink their understanding of development.
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HIST 376-01
Alexander Parry
W 5:00PM - 7:30PM
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Over the past few years, the COVID-19 pandemic, the rising cost of medical treatment, the opioid crisis,
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HIST 376W-01
Alexander Parry
W 5:00PM - 7:30PM
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Over the past few years, the COVID-19 pandemic, the rising cost of medical treatment, the opioid crisis,
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HIST 383W-01
Laura Smoller
MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM
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What is the relationship between disease and the society in which it strikes? How do societies define disease, and how does culture affect the treatment of the sick? How have scholars written the history of disease? In this research seminar, students will explore such questions by examining interactions between disease and society in western cultures from antiquity through the present, at the same time pondering what this insight can tell us as we face the frightening prospect of new killers like Ebola and resistant strains of old diseases like tuberculosis. Throughout, the course will insist that the experience of disease is not simply a biological fact, but is conditioned by the culture in which we live.
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HIST 388W-1
William Miller
MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM
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This course focuses on literature and medicine in the 16th and 17th centuries. It introduces students to the major medical systems of the era and explores the ways that medical theories and practices both influenced and incorporated literary representations. We will consider character, inspiration, gender, race, and erotic love, among other topics. Authors may include William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Robert Burton, Thomas Browne, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Finch, Lady Montague, and members of the Royal Society.
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HIST 391-01
Michael Jarvis
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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No description
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HIST 393-03
Brianna Theobald
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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No description
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HIST 393H-2
Matthew Lenoe
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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Advanced or Senior Project/Seminar/Thesis
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HIST 393H-4
Melanie Chambliss
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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Advanced or Senior Project/Seminar/Thesis
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HIST 393H-5
Ruben Flores
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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Advanced or Senior Project/Seminar/Thesis
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HIST 393H-6
Thomas Devaney
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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Blank Description
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HIST 394-01
Michael Jarvis
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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Experience in an applied setting supervised on site. Approved and overseen by a University instructor.
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HIST 395-01
Michael Jarvis
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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No description
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HIST 399H-1
Ruben Flores
7:00PM - 7:00PM
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This Spring semester seminar (2.0 credits) is taught by the Honors director. Enrollment is reserved for History seniors whose Honors research has progressed adequately during Fall semester. Students in 399H should also register to continue their Honors research in HIST 393H (4.0 credits with their advisor).
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Spring 2025
| Number | Title | Instructor | Time |
|---|---|
| Monday | |
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HIST 303W-01
Jean Pedersen
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|
What does it mean to be human? What political, economic, religious, social, or sexual rights might be part of different people's working definitions? This course will look at both a) the historical development of conflicting theories of human rights and b) more contemporary debates about their ideal extent, their exercise, and their enforcement. Special topics will include debates over the meaning of the American and French Revolutions, the fight to design an International Declaration of Human Rights in the aftermath of World War II, the history of organizations such as Amnesty International, and the controversy around UN events such as the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, and the 2000 and 2005 Millennium Summits in New York City. |
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| Monday and Wednesday | |
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HIST 158-01
Ruben Flores
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How did a nation surrounded by the French and British Empires at the end of the nineteenth century become the preeminent global superpower by the end of World War II in 1945? We will study the political and economic decisions after the US Civil War that culminated in the Spanish-American War of 1898, including America’s global invasion of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. We will consider the role that America assigned itself to in the march of world history. We will examine the place of commerce and consumer culture in the making of the Panama Canal and modern trade flows. And we will examine the rise of Communism in the context of American global power beginning with the Soviet Union and ending with the Vietnam War. Throughout, we will seek to understand how America’s military and economic strength has been understood internationally from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. |
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HIST 225-01
Stewart Weaver
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This course is an introduction to the history of Europe before, during, and after the First World War. Beyond studying the details of the conflict itself, we will be concerned mainly with the effect of the war on European culture, politics, society, and consciousness. Class sessions will include some lectures, films, and regular seminar discussions. Readings will include a wide variety of memoirs, letters, diaries, novels, and poems by those who experienced the war and its traumatic aftermath first hand. |
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HIST 225W-01
Stewart Weaver
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This course is an introduction to the history of Europe before, during, and after the First World War. Beyond studying the details of the conflict itself, we will be concerned mainly with the effect of the war on European culture, politics, society, and consciousness. Class sessions will include some lectures, films, and regular seminar discussions. Readings will include a wide variety of memoirs, letters, diaries, novels, and poems by those who experienced the war and its traumatic aftermath first hand. |
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HIST 259-01
Rachel O'Donnell
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In this colloquium we will look at the history of international feminism and explore its many faces. We will examine the various factors that have contributed to womens historically lower status in society; will look at the emergence of womens rights and feminist movements as well as the distinctions among various feminist theories, and will discuss the relevance of feminism today. |
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HIST 259W-01
Rachel O'Donnell
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In this colloquium we will look at the history of international feminism and explore its many faces. We will examine the various factors that have contributed to womens historically lower status in society; will look at the emergence of womens rights and feminist movements as well as the distinctions among various feminist theories, and will discuss the relevance of feminism today. |
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HIST 200-3
Laura Smoller
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History 200 is an introduction to historical practice - what professional historians actually do. It is a requirement for history majors, but we encourage all interested undergraduates to enroll. This section focuses upon the concept of deviance in medieval European society, studying the process of identifying persons as “deviants” because of their religious beliefs, sexual preferences, alleged witchcraft, or presumed status as werewolves. Along the way we will discuss the various ways in which historians have approached this topic and will engage with key primary sources. Readings will address the question of whether the persecution of “deviants” began only in the twelfth century as part of the process of centralizing power in church and state. We will consider the relationship between persecution and power, as we ponder why certain groups were singled out for persecution. And we will ask what Europeans really were afraid of when they labeled certain groups as “deviant." |
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HIST 238-01
Matthew Lenoe
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This course uses primary source materials (treaties, memoirs, government orders, newspaper articles, letters, films) and secondary (scholarly literature) to examine the history of Ukrainian-Russian relations from the early 16th century to the present, as well as the role of propaganda and beliefs about that history on both sides of the present conflict. We will study the Cossack hetmanate of the early to mid-17th century, and its memory as the source of Ukrainian national identity. Other topics will include the development of modern Ukrainian nationalism in the mid-19th century, shifting Russian imperial attitudes towards Ukraine, the interregnum of Ukrainian independence in 1918, the great famine of 1932-1933, and Ukrainian combatants in World War II. We will also examine Vladimir Putin's account of East Slavic history and his rationalization of the aggressive attacks on Ukraine beginning in 2014. |
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HIST 238W-01
Matthew Lenoe
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This course uses primary source materials (treaties, memoirs, government orders, newspaper articles, letters, films) and secondary (scholarly literature) to examine the history of Ukrainian-Russian relations from the early 16th century to the present, as well as the role of propaganda and beliefs about that history on both sides of the present conflict. We will study the Cossack hetmanate of the early to mid-17th century, and its memory as the source of Ukrainian national identity. Other topics will include the development of modern Ukrainian nationalism in the mid-19th century, shifting Russian imperial attitudes towards Ukraine, the interregnum of Ukrainian independence in 1918, the great famine of 1932-1933, and Ukrainian combatants in World War II. We will also examine Vladimir Putin's account of East Slavic history and his rationalization of the aggressive attacks on Ukraine beginning in 2014. |
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HIST 388W-1
William Miller
|
|
|
This course focuses on literature and medicine in the 16th and 17th centuries. It introduces students to the major medical systems of the era and explores the ways that medical theories and practices both influenced and incorporated literary representations. We will consider character, inspiration, gender, race, and erotic love, among other topics. Authors may include William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Robert Burton, Thomas Browne, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Finch, Lady Montague, and members of the Royal Society. |
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HIST 147-1
Mehmet Karabela
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This course examines the role of religion in the politics of the Middle East. In the first part, the course introduces key concepts and terms necessary for understanding contemporary Middle Eastern politics and political discourse. The second part focuses on the central issues from the late 19th-century through to the Arab Spring, such as the emergence of constitutionalism, Arab nationalism, the rise of Islamism, the debate on Islam’s compatibility with liberal democracy, Islamic feminism, and the concept of post-Islamism. The third part of the course illustrates these issues with five corresponding case studies which provide insight into the trajectories of political Islam in Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Egypt. Throughout this course, we will pay particular attention to gender issues and women’s participation in civil society, government, and religion. |
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HIST 191-01
Elizabeth Sapere
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This specific course can change each semester. It will cover a topic of post-1800 US History. For spring 2025: From neoliberalism and the age of fracture to post Fordism in a war for the soul of America, scholars have devised numerous frames to characterize the U.S. at the end of the twentieth century. This course will take a deep dive into the 1980s and 1990s and ask the big, overarching question: what happened? How did the previous two decades of civil rights, feminist, and student uprisings give way to two decades of reaction and backlash? "Sex, Satan, & the Carceral State" will take a longue-durée approach, beginning in the waning years of the 1970s and concluding in the first two years of the twenty-first century. Each week students will read primary and secondary sources about a moment of crisis, culture war, or change. These will include topics such as the sex wars, the AIDS crisis, stranger danger, police and prisons, and Rodney King, among many others. Students will grapple with the centrality of race, gender and class to each week’s topics, as well as interrogate the ways in which culture, politics and economics intersected in both old and new ways. |
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HIST 226-01
Stewart Weaver
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This course is a general introduction to the intersecting histories of exploration, science, and adventure from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment to the present. After a preliminary look at the idea of "exploration," what it means, and what distinguishes it from mere travel and/or adventure, we will focus each week on a discreet episode of scientific exploration, beginning with the epochal Pacific voyages of Captain James Cook and concluding with the Apollo missions to the moon. Other notable cases will include the South American travels of Alexander von Humboldt, the transcontinental journey of Lewis and Clark, Robert Scott's fateful journey to the South Pole, and early scientific exploration and mountaineering in the Himalaya. Our emphasis throughout will be on the complex relation between exploration and science, and on the ways in which exploration has shaped for good and ill our modern, globally interconnected world. |
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HIST 226W-01
Stewart Weaver
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|
|
This course is a general introduction to the intersecting histories of exploration, science, and adventure from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment to the present. After a preliminary look at the idea of "exploration," what it means, and what distinguishes it from mere travel and/or adventure, we will focus each week on a discreet episode of scientific exploration, beginning with the epochal Pacific voyages of Captain James Cook and concluding with the Apollo missions to the moon. Other notable cases will include the South American travels of Alexander von Humboldt, the transcontinental journey of Lewis and Clark, Robert Scott's fateful journey to the South Pole, and early scientific exploration and mountaineering in the Himalaya. Our emphasis throughout will be on the complex relation between exploration and science, and on the ways in which exploration has shaped for good and ill our modern, globally interconnected world. |
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HIST 133-01
Matthew Lenoe
|
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|
This class examines the history of the Soviet Union from foundation (1917) to collapse (1991), focusing on internal developments in the Russian part of the Union. We will begin with a discussion of the background to the collapse of the imperial Russian state in 1917, including changes in Russian society and World War I. Later, the class will look at questions such as: Did the New Economic Policy of the 1920s create a stable socioeconomic order? How did Stalin defeat his political rivals and create a personal dictatorship? What were the motivations for the Great Terror of 1937-1938? How did the Soviet Union defeat Nazi Germany in World War II? We will also devote some time to the Soviet role in the Cold War and the appeal of Leninism in colonized and post-colonial societies. The course will conclude with a discussion of the collapse of the USSR and the emergence of a soft authoritarian order in post-Soviet Russia. The syllabus will emphasize primary-source readings and class discussion. |
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HIST 136-1
Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio
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|
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The second of a sequence of two, the course approaches "The Divine Comedy" both as a poetic masterpiece and as an encyclopedia of medieval culture. Through a close textual analysis of the second half of "Purgatorio" and the entirety of "Paradiso," students learn how to approach Dante’s poetry as a vehicle for thought, an instrument of self-discovery, and a way to understand and affect the historical reality. They also gain a perspective on the Biblical, Christian, and Classical traditions as they intersect with the multiple levels of Dante’s concern, ranging from literature to history, from politics to government, from philosophy to theology. A visual component, including illustrations of the "Comedy" and multiple artworks pertinent to the narrative, complements the course. Class format includes lectures, discussion, and a weekly recitation session. Intensive class participation is encouraged. No prerequisites. Freshmen are welcome. Part of the Dante Humanities Cluster. |
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HIST 192-01
Claire Becker
|
|
|
This specific course can change each semester. It will cover a topic of pre-1800 European History. For spring 2025: This course surveys the varied ways in which Europeans made sense of the human body from the early days of Christianity to the discovery of the Americas. While questions of health, disease, and death certainly preoccupied premodern thinkers, this course follows recent trends in feminist and queer historical scholarship by privileging questions of gender and sexuality. As we read works on the body by modern historians and premodern thinkers alike, we’ll encounter medieval sex workers, lesbian nuns, a self-proclaimed “hermaphrodite” accused of sorcery, a fifteenth-century mystic whose unconventional writings described her sensual longing for Jesus Christ and, of course, plenty of so-called “sodomites.” As we transition from the medieval to the early modern period, we’ll consider the destructive and mutually transformative encounter between two civilizations—European and American—with distinct views on bodies, gender, and desire. Throughout the course, we’ll explore how sex became linked with sin, how virginity came to signify virtue and, more broadly, how certain gendered behaviors and embodiments became associated with transgression and others with normalcy (or even, in some cases, holiness). Most crucially, we’ll ask how knowledge about the body (“carnal knowledge,” if you’ll excuse the pun) has been produced, by whom, and to what ends, in concrete moments throughout European history. |
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HIST 236-1
Jesse LeFebvre
|
|
|
“Miracles are a retelling in small letters,” said C.S. Lewis, “of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” In recent years, Korean film and television has taken the world by storm in what is no small miracle of marketing, technology, and story-telling, but what does contemporary Korean film and television render visible that would otherwise be difficult to see? Onscreen interactions with the supernatural, divine, or horrific provide a unique medium for myth-making, identity formation, and world-building. In this course students will explore the ways in which religion in Korean film and television confront mortality and collective anxieties, and how the interaction between the religious and nonreligious serve as sites for the construction and interrogation of nation, race, gender, identity, modernity, cosmology, and moral discourse. |
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HIST 383W-01
Laura Smoller
|
|
|
What is the relationship between disease and the society in which it strikes? How do societies define disease, and how does culture affect the treatment of the sick? How have scholars written the history of disease? In this research seminar, students will explore such questions by examining interactions between disease and society in western cultures from antiquity through the present, at the same time pondering what this insight can tell us as we face the frightening prospect of new killers like Ebola and resistant strains of old diseases like tuberculosis. Throughout, the course will insist that the experience of disease is not simply a biological fact, but is conditioned by the culture in which we live. |
|
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HIST 215-01
Jesse LeFebvre
|
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|
According to a story recorded in A Collection of Notable Tales Old and New, in the wake of a civil war that saw to the formation of the Kamakura shogunate, the Cloistered Sovereign Goshirakawa sent an emissary to the Shogun Minamoto Yoritomo. This emissary carried with him an illustrated narrative scroll from Goshirakawa’s own secret collection. The shogun, however, dared not even glance at the contents and ordered its immediate return. Japan’s celebrated tradition of graphic storytelling can in part trace its roots to a culture of illustrated narrative that began in the 8th century. This course introduces students to illustrated narrative scrolls and other forms of visual and performative culture from the late classical through the early modern period with reference to modern manifestations of Japan’s ongoing visual culture. Students will explore the relationship between text and image, how scholars approach illustrated narrative, and how historical developments shape the formation of illustrated narrative and are in turn shaped by these combinations of text and image. In considering how illustrated scrolls developed and matured as a Japanese art form, we will dare to look where Japan’s first shogun did not, and in so doing, come to understand his refusal to do so—and something of our own desire to view and be viewed. Taught in English. |
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HIST 179-01
Morris Pierce
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Rochester’s history began long before the first permanent settlement in 1812 and was marked by a long and violent conflict between native peoples, the French and the British. Wheat harvested in the Genesee Valley was ground into flour using the power of the Genesee River as it dropped 260 feet to Lake Ontario. Transporting flour and other goods to New York City and other markets was difficult until the Erie Canal was completed in 1825. The canal enabled an enormous migration of settlers moving west, and many chose to stay in Rochester. The village became a city in 1834 with a vibrant and expanding mix of cultures that joined together to make Rochester a vibrant commercial and manufacturing center. The Western Union Telegraph Company traces its roots to Rochester in 1851 and in 1853 eight local New York railroads merged to form the New York Central, whose tracks ran parallel to the Erie Canal. In 1881 a local bank clerk, George Eastman, quit his job to devote his full attention to the business of photography and founded the Eastman Kodak Company. The Haloid Photographic Company was founded in Rochester in 1906 and entered into an agreement with inventor Chester Carlson in 1946 that resulted in the introduction of the Xerox 914 plain paper copy machine in 1959 was adopted around the world. Nevertheless, Rochester’s most famous residents are likely Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, who were instrumental in the struggle to expand civil rights to all Americans. The local community, however, struggled to welcome the large numbers of African Americans who moved to Rochester after World War II. Housing discrimination, white flight to the suburbs, and riots marked the 1960s, and the city today has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the country. Nevertheless, the city has vibrant cultural and educational institutions that continue to attract talented newcomers. In short, the history of Rochester has a bit of everything and students in the course are encouraged to study the entire experience of the community, including topics that may be new and frankly uncomfortable. |
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| Monday, Wednesday, and Friday | |
|
HIST 112-1
Joshua Dubler
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How does a country with five percent of the world's population, a country that nominally values freedom above all else, come to have nearly a quarter of the world's incarcerated people? In this survey course we investigate the history of imprisonment in the United States--as theorized and as practiced--from the founding of the republic to the present day. Special attention is paid to the politics, economics, race politics, and religious logics of contemporary mass incarceration, and to the efforts afoot to end mass incarceration. |
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| Tuesday | |
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HIST 297-1
–
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This course will trace the representation of Jews in cinema with a special focus on the Holocaust, events that led up to it, and the post-Holocaust world in which Jews had to find new meaning to existential, philosophical, and religious questions. Throughout the course we will pay special attention to issues of gender, the voices and experiences of women, the LGBTQ community, ethnic and racial differences and divides. In our in-class conversations and analyses we will develop tools to deconstruct major historical events in Jewish history exposing the ways in which they transformed the religious, cultural, and social matrix of Jewish communities locally and globally. |
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| Tuesday and Thursday | |
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HIST 118-1
Stefanie Bautista San Miguel
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The discipline of archaeology can make unique contributions to our understanding of urbanism and daily life given its ability to examine long-term processes of development and change. The goal of this course is to provide an introduction and overview of urbanism as exemplified by the indigenous cities of the New World (e.g. Mesoamerica and South America). While regional differences will be discussed, we will focus mainly on identifying the theoretical issues that intersect all of the regions we will be studying. |
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HIST 195-02
Richard Fadok
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This course covers topics in global history. For spring 2025: Animal Cities: From Pizza Rat to Neil the Seal What can our fascination with Pizza Rat’s herculean appetite or Neil the Seal’s traffic-jamming antics tell us about the relationships today between the beast and the borough, the human and the nonhuman? Why do we celebrate some urban wildlife while ignoring, reviling, and even exterminating others? This introduction to the interdisciplinary field of animal studies addresses these and other questions through recent scholarship on multispecies cities. The first part of the course surveys urban human-animal ecology from domestication to enclosure with an emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. In the second part, we ponder contemporary studies of interspecies contact, collision, and cohabitation, from macaques in Delhi and mosquitos in Dar es Salaam to capybaras in Buenos Aires and parakeets in London. Students will gain an understanding of the historical forces that have shaped everyday encounters with nonhuman animals, particularly as they concern matters of violence, intimacy, and justice. Alongside class discussions, we will collectively produce a ”subjective atlas” that explores the city of Rochester from the perspective(s) of its animal residents. |
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HIST 294-01
Lisa Cerami
|
|
|
Only some people have direct experience with war, but almost all people have very firm ideas about what war is like––Writing war (writing about war; describing literal wars or fictionalizing them) is as old as writing itself, and war writing a staple of reading. We will think about the "encounter" with war in reading. With a selection of texts drawn heavily from the World Wars of the twentieth century, we will investigate questions of how war is represented in different media. We will learn how to translate our reading into our own writing. This course is designed to introduce students to the practice of critical reading and textual analysis, practices that are the cornerstone of the humanistic / social science disciplines. All reading and discussion in English, primary German reading available for additional credit. |
|
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HIST 357W-01
Molly Ball
|
|
|
What does it mean for a country to be developed? Developing? Underdeveloped? And who decides what it means to be developed? To explore these questions over the course of the late nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, this upper-level seminar centers its focus on the ideological home of dependency theory, Latin America. We will explore how internal tensions manifested in competing local, regional, and national visions of development. We will examine how foreign interests, international humanitarian, and NGO goals intersected with and challenged Latin American efforts. Through weekly readings and a final, independent research paper, students will be challenged to rethink their understanding of development. |
|
|
HIST 171-01
Melanie Chambliss
|
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|
This introductory survey examines the history of African Americans from 1860 to the present. We will examine African Americans’ pursuit of freedom and justice as defined during different periods. Topics of study include the Reconstruction era; formation of Jim Crow segregation; Black migrations; the Civil Rights and Black Power movements; and the contemporary “color line” in the United States. Students will explore the impact of Black activism and cultural expression on national and international politics. By the end of the semester, students will understand key concepts and events that shaped post-emancipation Black history. |
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HIST 176-1
Aaron Hughes
|
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An introduction to the religious and cultural development of Judaism. Will emphasize Judaism as a living tradition, one which has been subject to both continuity and change among its practitioners throughout its history. |
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HIST 230-1
Sarah Higley
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Wes hal! England prior to the Norman Conquest i(1066 c.e.) produced King Alfred, Beowulf and stunning poetry and prose, written at a time when Engla-lond fought for its cultural and political status in the British Isles. We’ll explore the sublime, mystical, medical, and earthy writings of England: Wonders of the East, comets, portents, medicinal charms, riddles, the Paternoster and the Devil, maps, visions, wolves, women, runes, cross-dressing saints. We’ll translate some texts in Old English and read others in translation, and as your lærestre (teaching servant) I’ll help you learn Old English language and vocabulary, and explore the diversity of a people who’ve been reduced to stereotype. Old English stood with Old Irish as being one of the earliest producers in the western Middle Ages of a people’s native language on manuscript. England survived invasions by the Danes and the Normans (1066) which never completely replaced its language with Danish or French, merely enriched it. |
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HIST 270-01
Anna Rosensweig
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This course will examine representations of Algeria as a geographic, political, and symbolic space within French and Francophone Studies. We will pay particular attention to how French imperialist discourses from the early modern to the present have positioned Algeria paradoxically as both radically distinct from France and an integral part of the French nation and national identity. We will also examine films and texts that depict the Algerian War of Independence and its ongoing reverberations in French political and cultural life. Conducted in English. |
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HIST 273W-1
Jean Pedersen
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This course will examine the history and progress of women’s rights movements around the world from the origins of the international anti-slavery movement in the eighteenth century to the organization of Women’s Marches and the rise of the #metoo movement today. Assignments will include a range of historical and contemporary readings, attendance at the world premiere of a new piece by Emily Pinkerton with the contemporary chamber ensemble fivebyfive, and participation in a variety of additional local cultural events during Women’s History Month in March and at other times as well. |
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HIST 157-01
Brianna Theobald
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When visitors arrive on Alcatraz Island in the Bay Area today, they are greeted by the words, "You are on Indian land." Written by a participant in Native activists' occupation of the island in 1969, the statement is a reminder that there are Indigenous histories of the land that is currently the United States—and these histories are very much ongoing. This course is an introductory survey of the history of Native America, which consists of hundreds of distinct Indigenous nations. Among other topics, the course will explore how Native peoples navigated forced migrations and attempted genocide in the nineteenth century; the various ways they responded to efforts to Americanize them; Native activism and leadership on and off reservations across the twentieth century; and more recent developments from Standing Rock to Reservation Dogs. |
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HIST 210-01
Elias Mandala
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Africa’s engagement with China has to be read as a two-sided story: China has found in Africa a reliable supplier of natural resources while Africans look to China for aid and investments in agriculture, industry, infrastructure, and education. And, in a significant departure from the colonial model of economic interactions, Chinese companies do not only ship finished products to Africa; they also manufacture in Africa goods for internal use and for export. The impact of these multifaceted relations will not be decided in Beijing alone, as many assume in the West; the outcome will also depend on the decisions taken in African capitals. |
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HIST 210W-01
Elias Mandala
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Africa’s engagement with China has to be read as a two-sided story: China has found in Africa a reliable supplier of natural resources while Africans look to China for aid and investments in agriculture, industry, infrastructure, and education. And, in a significant departure from the colonial model of economic interactions, Chinese companies do not only ship finished products to Africa; they also manufacture in Africa goods for internal use and for export. The impact of these multifaceted relations will not be decided in Beijing alone, as many assume in the West; the outcome will also depend on the decisions taken in African capitals. |
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HIST 235-1
Alexander Cushing
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Political and moral ideals from the ancient Mediterranean World played an important role in shaping the character of political and social institutions in the colonial and post-colonial United States. Slaveholders justified the practice of slavery in America based in part on their own interpretation of ancient Roman and Greek models and ideologies of slavery. Both as a reaction to this pro-slavery use of ancient allusions and also because of the 19th century cultural value of Classical education and the authority of ancient examples, many American abolitionist thinkers, politicians, and activists also incorporated ancient examples and ideals into their own anti-slavery arguments. This course will explore the influence of the ancient Mediterranean world on the expression and evolution of abolitionist activities and political thought, with a particular focus on the rich local anti-slavery history of Rochester and Western New York. We will examine primary sources from the ancient world and the 18th and 19th centuries and consider the role of ideas about the ancient world as it relates to modern slavery and the movement to abolish it in the United States. |
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HIST 266-01
Jedediah Kuhn
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The latter half of the 20th century was a period of dramatic societal change in the United States in which gender and sexuality played a key role. Surveying significant developments in this period including the Women’s movement and rise of feminism, the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights, the sexual revolution, the gender and sexual politics of the civil rights movement, the conservative backlash, and the AIDS/HIV epidemic, this course examines the struggle over rights, freedom, and competing worldviews that continues into our present moment. Moreover, we will consider how gender and sexuality are themselves socially constructed and historically contingent as well as deeply embedded in matters such as race and U.S. imperialism. |
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HIST 266W-01
Jedediah Kuhn
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The latter half of the 20th century was a period of dramatic societal change in the United States in which gender and sexuality played a key role. Surveying significant developments in this period including the Women’s movement and rise of feminism, the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights, the sexual revolution, the gender and sexual politics of the civil rights movement, the conservative backlash, and the AIDS/HIV epidemic, this course examines the struggle over rights, freedom, and competing worldviews that continues into our present moment. Moreover, we will consider how gender and sexuality are themselves socially constructed and historically contingent as well as deeply embedded in matters such as race and U.S. imperialism. |
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HIST 283-1
John Downey
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This course will examine the history of the Catholic sexual abuse crisis, which has garnered global attention in recent years. Although there had been nationally-reported cases of clerical sexual abuse for decades prior, perhaps most significantly the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” series in 2002, a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury investigation report marked a watershed moment in the study of this subject, by framing abuse as endemic to modern Catholicism. In their own words, “it happened everywhere.” In subsequent years, questions of who or what is to blame, and what penitent reconciliation might look like have become topics of intense debate. This course will study the history of abuse—and institutional responses—throughout global Catholicism, with an emphasis on North America. But it will also attend to abuse revelations as grounding contemporary debates about Catholic theology, ecclesiastical reform, and the nature of Church/State relations. |
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HIST 292-01
Lisa Cerami
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Varying topics relating to modern languages and cultures. |
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HIST 122-02
Rachel Walkover
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This course covers topics in Medieval European history. For spring 2025: Vox Populi: Medieval Popular Revolts: Throughout time, people have revolted against governing bodies and rulers, and the Middle Ages is no exception. In this course, we will use a variety of themes (good governance, heresy, economic stratification, and the daily lives of non-nobles) to contextualize the reasons for and the goals of rebellions, including the Jacquerie in France, the Ciompi Revolt in Florence, and the Great Rising in England. |
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HIST 183-1
John Downey
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The purpose of this course is to explore the general development of Christianity throughout its twenty centuries of existence, paying special attention to the religious presuppositions behind Christianity and its complex relationship to its socio-cultural matrix. The course will focus on important moments in Christian history, including its inception as a Jewish religious movement set in motion by Jesus, its dissemination in the Greco-Roman world by Paul of Tarsus, its growth and triumph in the Roman Empire, the split between the Greek- and Latin-speaking churches, medieval Catholicism, the Reformation and rise of Protestantism, Christianity and the modern world, and contemporary movements and tendencies within the Christian churches. |
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HIST 200-4
Jedediah Kuhn
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Eureka! This gateway course introduces students to historical practice—what professional historians actually do—through a focus on matters of race, gender, and indigeneity during the California gold rush. Stretching before and after the gold rush years of 1848-1855, this course presents California as a site of overlapping colonial histories (Spanish, Mexican, and U.S.) and an immense diversity of Indigenous cultures and languages. It is also a site of racial struggle, as Mexican landowners, Chinese laborers, Indigenous peoples, White settlers, and free Black men and women vied for land, resources, and power, a struggle in which gender and sexuality played a key role. As a historical methods course, this class will introduce students to the diverse array of evidence available to historians, from legal documents and newspapers to travelogues, novels, historical interviews, maps, and artwork. This class is required for history majors, but we encourage all interested undergraduates to enroll. |
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HIST 115-1
Tingting Xu
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This course offers a comprehensive survey of Chinese art and culture from the Neolithic age to the present. Course sections are arranged chronologically. We will study works by major artists together with the unique materials, formats, genres, conventions, and ideas in artistic conception and production. Besides regular class meetings, the schedule also includes two debating games (about Shang bronzes and Song landscapes respectively), a hands-on section of calligraphy, a touch section of authentic ceramic sheds from the best-known kilns, and a storage visit at the Memorial Art Gallery. We will develop our sensitivities to unspoken visual subtleties as we outline an intellectual history of Chinese culture through artistic creation. |
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HIST 346W-01
Michael Hayata
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This course probes the regional dynamics of the Cold War in East Asia by examining the histories of China, Japan, and South and North Korea during the second half of the twentieth century. It uses primary and secondary works – including literature, film, and government documents – to explore the domestic and international contexts that shaped the region’s geopolitical landscape. Students will first study patterns of state control across East Asia in the form of rapid industrialization, land reform, and mass culture. They will then create dialogue between popular experiences of these social transformations by analyzing the alternative politics of such movements as the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Japanese peace movement, and South Korean democracy movement in relation to the Cold War world system. |
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HIST 376-01
Alexander Parry
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Over the past few years, the COVID-19 pandemic, the rising cost of medical treatment, the opioid crisis, |
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HIST 376W-01
Alexander Parry
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Over the past few years, the COVID-19 pandemic, the rising cost of medical treatment, the opioid crisis, |
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HIST 228-01
Elias Mandala
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North Africa and the Middle East is in a mess: Instead of democracy, the Arab Spring delivered a military dictatorship to Egypt; Iraq and Syria are melting into warring tribal enclaves; Saudi Arabia is waging a savage war in Yemen; and the Palestinians remain an unprotected stateless people. There is a crisis, and this course introduces students to the predicament, arguing that since the first Industrial Revolution in England, the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East have refashioned their destinies in partnership with the West. Students will examine how the following encounters helped make the region as we know it: the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1838, transition from Ottoman to West European colonialism, discovery of huge and easily extractable oil reserves, creation of the state of Israel, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the US Invasion of Iraq in 2003. The class will also explore how the above patterns of engagement shaped the histories of the region's working classes, women, and the peasantry. |
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HIST 228W-01
Elias Mandala
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North Africa and the Middle East is in a mess: Instead of democracy, the Arab Spring delivered a military dictatorship to Egypt; Iraq and Syria are melting into warring tribal enclaves; Saudi Arabia is waging a savage war in Yemen; and the Palestinians remain an unprotected stateless people. There is a crisis, and this course introduces students to the predicament, arguing that since the first Industrial Revolution in England, the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East have refashioned their destinies in partnership with the West. Students will examine how the following encounters helped make the region as we know it: the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1838, transition from Ottoman to West European colonialism, discovery of huge and easily extractable oil reserves, creation of the state of Israel, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the US Invasion of Iraq in 2003. The class will also explore how the above patterns of engagement shaped the histories of the region's working classes, women, and the peasantry. |
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HIST 347W-01
Melanie Chambliss
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How do archival absences impact what we know about the past? How should these silences shape the histories we write? This course will explore the process of historical production through critical archival studies. We will discuss how “the archive” documents power dynamics in the past and present. We will read histories and theories of archives’ construction and examine different approaches to recovering African diasporic history. Researchers have turned to microhistory, memoir, fiction, theory, and other methods or genres to address archival absences, and we will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these choices. By the end of the semester, students will be familiar with key voices within critical archival scholarship and postmodernist theories of history, and students will learn different techniques for addressing absences in their own research. |
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