ENROLL

Paul Petzschmann

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, America often served as a canvass for projecting European anxieties about economic, social and political modernization. Admiration of technological progress and political stability was combined with a pervasive anti-Americanism, which was, according to political scientist Andrei Markovits, the "lingua franca" of modern Europe. These often contradictory perceptions of the United States were crucial in the process of forming national histories and mythologies as well as a common European identity. Accordingly, this course will explore the many and often contradictory views expressed by Europe's emerging mass publics and intellectual and political elites about the United States during this period.

Held for new first year students

Antony Adler

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.

Held for new first year students