A colloquium to introduce the beginning graduate student to the major themes in the study of history, a variety of techniques and analytical tools recently developed by historians, and the nature of history as a profession.

This seminar introduces students to key topics and approaches in twentieth-century European history. It encompasses classic subjects like political violence, the two world wars, the renovation of empire, and decolonization, as well as new scholarship on international order, rights, neoliberalism, religion, and the family.

This course explores major themes of Caribbean history: slavery, capitalism, and emancipation; colonialism, empire, and revolution; and nationalism and race. Throughout, the course attempts to bridge the vertical lines that often separate the study of the different linguistic and imperial Caribbeans. It also considers different frameworks in which the Caribbean is studied, from traditional area studies, hemispheric studies, transnational US history, African Diaspora, and Atlantic World.

Topics include the relationship between society and warfare in pre-modern and modern Africa, the impact of violence on society (for example, population displacement, disease, and genocide) and post-conflict recovery (i.e. demobilization, return and resettlement of internally displaced persons and refugees, the transition from emergency aid to development aid) and reconciliation (for example, truth- and/or reconciliation commissions and war crimes/humanitarian courts) as well as the memorialisation of the violence and peace-building.

Since 1991, the Association for Asian Studies has offered a biennial award for a first work dealing with the geographical region of Southeast Asia. Named after the late Harry J. Benda, the pioneering Czech historian of the Japanese occupation of Java, the prize has long assigned value (and expectation) to emerging scholarship on the region. But while we shall see how it can be used as a sampling of how a field might be taking shape at a given time, it is also worth juxtaposing with other works within the list, what has since emerged, and how one might connect Southeast Asia to other spaces and concerns.

This seminar surveys the history of sexuality, situating recent works in the field alongside canonical texts and longstanding debates in the field. Please see instructor for a draft of the syllabus.

This research seminar is intended for students working in any period of Chinese history. During the semester, students develop a research agenda for an original project while pursuing one of two trajectories: 1) Produce a short research paper that can become the basis for a published scholarly article or 2) Draft a preliminary prospectus for dissertation research. In close consultation with the instructor, students work on different aspects of the research and writing process, including historiographical interventions, source selection, problems of interpretation, narrative, and argumentation.

This course introduces and engages with historiographical questions central to our understanding of the Byzantine Empire from its inauguration in the fourth century to its fall in the fifteenth century. Sample sources - available in original and translation - are examined and analyzed using a variety of current methodological approaches. We consider aspects of political, economic, social, and cultural and intellectual history. The main areas of focus in a specific year will depend on the interests of the group. The aim is to provide students with concrete tools that will inform and strengthen their own research and teaching.

The course provides an intensive introduction to the study of France and the French empire in the era of the Enlightenment and the French and Haitian revolutions.

The course examines financial innovation and its consequences from the early modern period to present: it examines the evolution of trading practices, bills of exchange, government bonds, equities, banking activity, derivatives markets, securitization. How do these evolve in particular state or national settings, how are the practices regulated, how do they relate to broader processes of economic development and to state formation? What happens as financial instruments are traded across state boundaries, and how does an international financial order evolve? What are the effects of international capital mobility?

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the history of the Syriac language and Syriac-speaking Christians. We focus on important individual authors, key historical moments, and significant themes and aspects of the history of Syriac-speaking Christians in the Middle East. Since Syriac-speaking churches have traditionally been classified by Western authors as "heretics" we also examine the nature of orthodoxy and heresy. Students are introduced to and trained in the use of the most important instrumenta studiorum of Syriac studies.

This seminar explores the history of Britain and its empire after 1700 from the broader and necessary perspectives of global history. Topics include the complexities and tensions of British and Irish unions, industrial, urban and cultural revolutions, citizenship and constitutions, warfare, empire, ideologies and race, and the shifting nature of imperial linkages and decline.

'This is perhaps why a general history of `conservative' doctrine cannot be written; too many minds have been trying to `conserve' too many things for too many reasons.' Thus J.G.A. Pocock. This course takes up the challenge posed by J.G.A. Pocock and examines the history of conservatism in modern European history. Simultaneously, we examine 'crisis' as a historical category of analysis.

This course offers readings in multidisciplinary literature on peasant/agrarian studies. It combines anthropological, sociological, and historical approaches and analyzes how peasant communities interact with the world of rising capitalism, nation states, standardization, colonialism, and postcolonial global order. The main themes discussed in the classes include: peasants as "the others" for educated elites, peasant economy and the way of life in comparative prospective, and forms and languages of domination, passive, and active resistance.

This course provides an introduction to the historiography of colonial North American and the American revolutionary era. Topics of interest include empire, slavery, the Atlantic world, Native American history, settler colonialism, gender, revolution, political culture, and state formation.

A broad survey of major works and recent trends in the history of medicine, focusing on the cultural politics of disease and epidemics from tuberculosis to AIDS, the relationship of history of medicine to the history of the body and body parts, the politics of public health in comparative national perspective. Surveying key controversies at the intersection of biology and medicine, the intellectual and political logic of specialization in fields such as genetics, health and political activism, and the relationship of class, race, and gender to shifting notions of disease and identity.

This course takes alchemy as a starting point for exploring the history of medieval and early modern science and medicine. Alchemy's goals ranged from transmuting metals to prolonging life. They also invoke broader themes: religious belief, artisanal practice, secrecy, medical doctrine, experimental philosophy, visual culture. This Spring, the University Library is hosting an exhibition on alchemical imagery that seeks to combine these themes. We use this opportunity to investigate the historical approaches that inform modern presentations of art and science: from displaying artefacts, to reconstructing experiments in a modern laboratory.