2023-24 Academic Catalog

This course provides an introduction to the global history of exploration. We will examine the scientific and artistic aspects of expeditions, and consider how scientific knowledge--navigation, medicinal treatments, or the collection of scientific specimens--helped make exploration, and subsequently Western colonialism, possible. We will also explore how the visual and literary representations of exotic places shaped distant audiences’ understandings of empire and of the so-called races of the world. Art and science helped form the politics of Western nationalism and expansion; this course will explore some of the ways in which their legacy remains with us today.

Food, health, medicine, public policy and the built environment... all were transformed as Britain industrialized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This course explores how cultural, social and economic changes shaped the culture of food consumption during this transitional period. We also explore changing ideas in medical history and public health from the early modern to modern period. We will consider how our historical understanding can inform our views of the present through an academic civic engagement project that will connect students to Northfield communities.

The struggle for independence from colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent involved a wide array of nationalist movements, prominently including the struggle led by M. K. Gandhi, who forged a movement centered on non-violence and civil disobedience which brought down the mighty British empire. We will study this alongside numerous other powerful nationalist currents, particularly those based on Islamic ideas and symbols. A significant part of the course will involve a historical role-playing game, Reacting to the Past: Defining a Nation, wherein students will take on roles of actual historical figures and recreate a twentieth century debate about religious identity and nation-building in the colonial context.

“Colossus of the North” or “Good Neighbor”? While many of its citizens believe the United States wields a benign influence across the globe, the intent and consequences of the U.S. government’s actions across Latin America and Latin American history offers a decidedly more mixed picture. This course explores the history of Inter-American relations with an emphasis on the twentieth century and the Cold War era. National case studies will be explored, when possible through the lens of declassified U.S. national security documents. Latin American critiques of U.S. involvement in the region will also be considered.