This course traces the history of Europe and the wider Mediterranean world in the later medieval and early modern periods, using the framework of material culture. Students explore a range of material sources such as domestic objects, clothing, coins, weaponry, and architecture in conjunction with contemporary texts to reconstruct major historical developments of the eleventh to seventeenth centuries, as well as changing values, intercultural exchange, and habits of consumption within Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic civilizations of the Near East.

This course is a survey of European history from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the present day. It examines the emergence of distinctively modern phenomena and trends such as mass politics, industrialization and urbanization, imperialism, modern diplomacy and warfare, middle-class culture and gender roles, and intellectual and cultural controversies. Using a wide range of sources, students examine different responses to modernity in Europe. Topics include Napoleon, the age of revolutions, imperialism, modern nationalism, feminism, the World Wars, and fascism and communism.

This course examines a period of upheaval and transformation in European history. Its major themes are the rise of the modern state, the emergence of secular thought, and the development of a modern economy. In order to examine these themes, students evaluate different kinds of historical sources such as fiction, memoirs and images. Topics include the absolutist state, colonialism and slavery, the Enlightenment, diplomacy and warfare, and the French Revolution.

Far from being a stagnant "dark age," the early Middle Ages were a time of sweeping changes that reshaped the political map of Europe, the Mediterranean, and Middle East and encompassed the rise of vibrant new cultures. The course begins with the transformation of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries before moving on to explore the distinctive trajectories of Rome's three heirs: the Latin West, Byzantine Empire, and Islamic caliphates. As we trace these cultures' histories from c. 300 to c.

How did colonialism shape ideas of gender for both Africans and Europeans? How did concerns about gender shape colonial policies and Africans' responses to those policies? How did the gendered nature of work shift after colonization? How could the performance of gender both uphold and subvert colonial power? Students will approach these questions through a variety of analytical lenses, and work collaboratively to explore different kinds of historical evidence around questions of gender.

Nelson Mandela has become an international symbol of South Africa's twentieth-century tragedies and triumphs, and for good reason; his experience touches on many of the major themes in that country's recent history. This course uses Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, as a starting point for exploring the history and historiography of South Africa.

Scholars have recently embraced a turn towards "transnationalism"--an approach to the study of the movement of goods, people, and information beyond state boundaries--as a framework or set of theoretical and methodological approaches for understanding Latin America as a distinct world region.

Revolutions, according to H.L. Mencken, are the "sex of politics." They offer an opportunity to glimpse social and political life in their rawest and most revealing forms. The goal of most twentieth-century Latin American revolutions has been national development, defined economically, politically, and culturally. This course explores the revolutions of Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua in terms of their causes, the process of revolution, and the consequences of revolution for politics, society, and culture.

This course traces the emergence of modern Mexico since its 1910 revolution. It begins with attempts at economic modernization and political centralization in the late nineteenth century, considers the social upheaval of the Revolution and the consolidation of the post-revolutionary regime by 1940. A second section follows the rise and demise of the "Mexican Miracle" of growth and stability from 1940 to 1982 in the context of the Cold War.

This course introduces students to the major events and trends of the past two centuries of African history and explores how those trends and events shaped the experiences of people across the continent. Major topics include the ending of the Atlantic Slave Trade, colonial incursion, cultural change, economic transformations, the rise of nationalism and the challenges of decolonialization. Students consider how ethnic, gender, religious, and other identities shaped individual Africans' experiences and make comparisons both regionally and in terms of Africa's relationship to the world.