Course Descriptions and Sample Syllabi
History 313: The Revolutionary Century: France, 1789-1900
H313 Syllabus 2020
The revolution of 1789 in France announced the beginning of a new age, in which established social and political traditions were swept away in the name of cultural novelty and political experimentation. Armed with a powerful new model of citizenship and national identity, France’s revolutionaries sought to export their allegedly universal model of modern civilization to the rest of the world. Meanwhile, at home in metropolitan France, repeated attempts across the nineteenth century to create a new revolutionary political order failed, although a stable and relatively conservative form of republican government was established after 1870. Using a variety of sources—auto-biography, historical documents, novels, and recent studies—this class will explore the social and political history of France’s revolutionary century, paying special attention to its resonance beyond France’s European borders, and to the unexpected transformations produced within France and elsewhere.
History 314: Empire, War, and Modernity: France and the World in the 20th Century
H314 Syllabus 2019W
In the fall of 2005, people all over the world were shocked to see images broadcast on television of young men and boys in France—many of them born to parents of immigrant origin—burning cars and schools and battling with police on the outskirts of French cities. Coming on the heels of a decade-long debate about the place of Islam in French society, many have wondered whether the traditional French republican model of citizenship was adequate to deal with the problems faced by contemporary French society.
This class will attempt to place the current French predicament in a broader historical context, by examining the nation’s traumatic history in the 20th century, a period which encompasses the two world wars, the German occupation, and the difficult and often violent struggles that accompanied the loss of the French empire in the 1950s and early 1960s. Readings include autobiographies, novels and works of history written by people who lived in metropolitan France, as well as authors from former French colonies in Senegal and Algeria.
History 318: Europe in the Age of Total War, 1870-1945
2019F H318 Syllabus
In 1945, Europe was in ruins. Two global conflicts between 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 had leveled entire cities with the destructive powers of industrialized warfare. These conflicts produced genocidal regimes that pursued mass murder at a previously unimaginable scale. What made such violence possible, and how did ordinary men and women experience it? History 318 will seek answers to these questions by beginning with an account of Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. We will explore the social dislocation that accompanied Europe’s transformation from a predominantly rural and agrarian society into a modern industrial economy and consumer society. Readings will also seek to establish a global context for understanding this history by connecting events in Europe to the history of European colonialism in the nineteenth century. We will learn about the ideologies and cultural forces that emerged in the context of these developments: liberalism, socialism, and nationalism. In lectures and discussion, we will trace the events that took Europe from the devastation of World War I, through the postwar revolutions that reshaped political and economic life in Russia, and the final weeks of the class will explore the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe, and the prolonged nightmare of the Holocaust and the Second World War.
History 615: Introduction to the Comparative Study of History
HIST 615 Syllabus Fall 2015
This course is designed to introduce first-year graduate students to a few key historical concepts that have helped shaped the discipline as it is practiced today. It is not intended to prepare students for study in any particular geographical area, but rather to provide a forum for the collective examination of various theories and methods that have been at the center of historical debate for much of the last half century.
