2017-18 Catalog | Caltech Academic Catalog

Hum/H 1

American History

9 units (3-0-6) | offered by announcement

Among the major events, trends, and problems of our country's history are the American Revolution, the framing and development of the Constitution, wars, slavery and emancipation, ethnic and gender relations, immigration, urbanization, westward conquest, economic fluctuations, changes in the sizes and functions of governments, foreign relations, class conflicts, domestic violence, and social and political movements. Although no one course can treat all of these themes, each freshman American history course will deal with two or more of them. How have American historians approached them? What arguments and evidence have scholars offered for their interpretations and how can we choose between them? In a word, what can we know about our heritage? Not offered 2017-18.

Hum/H 2

Baseball and American Culture, 1840 to the Present

9 units (3-0-6) | offered by announcement

This course explores the history of baseball in America. It covers, among other topics, the first amateur clubs in the urban North, the professionalization and nationalization of the sport during the Civil War era, the rise of fandom, baseball's relationship to anxieties about manhood and democracy, tensions between labor and management, the Negro Leagues, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, Nisei baseball during World War Two, Jackie Robinson and desegregation, and the Latinization of baseball. The history of baseball is, in many respect, the history of the United States writ large as well as the history of the myths that Americans tell about themselves. Not offered 2017-18.

Hum/H 5

The History of the Chinese Empire

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

This class will explore several facets of how the concept of empire and its historical formation in China was defined, portrayed, and developed over time. It offers students a chance to reflect on the interaction of event, record, and remembrance as these components combine in the creation and contestation of history. This course will particularly emphasize how the making, writing, and remembering of history responds to the advent of different regimes of legitimacy in order to give students a new perspective on the relationship between action, authorship, and interpretation in history.

Instructor: Dykstra

Hum/H 8 a

Civilization, Science, and Archaeology: Before Greece: The Origins of Civilization in Mesopotamia

9 units (3-0-6) | offered by announcement

This course will introduce students to the early development of civilization in Mesopotamia and Egypt from 4000 B.C.E. through 1000 B.C.E. Origins of agriculture and writing, the evolution of the city, and the structures of the Mesopotamian economy and social order will be discussed. Comparison with contemporary developments in Egypt during the Old and Middle Kingdoms may include a reading of Gilgamesh from 3000 B.C.E. and of the Egyptian Tale of Sinuhe. The course concludes with a discussion of life during the late Bronze Age. Focus will be on life as it was lived and experienced by many groups in pre-classical antiquity rather than on kings and dynasties. Not offered 2017-18.

Hum/H 8 b

Civilization, Science, and Archaeology: The Development of Science from Babylon through the Renaissance

9 units (3-0-6) | second and third terms

Connections in antiquity between astrology and astronomy, early theories of light, Islamic science, new concepts of knowledge during the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, the early laboratory, the development of linear perspective, the origins of the Copernican and Keplerian systems of astronomy, and the science of Galileo.

Instructor: J. Buchwald

Hum/H 8 c

Civilization, Science, and Archaeology: The Nature of Religious Belief in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Israel

9 units (3-0-6) | offered by announcement

The civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia gave rise to complex forms of religious practices connected to the social order, moral behavior, and the afterlife. The course examines the origins of concepts of moral death and of sin as a violation of cosmic order in antiquity, the nature of polytheism, and the manner in which monotheism arose out of it. In addition to historical analyses the course includes readings by anthropologists who have studied cult structures as well as contemporary theories by evolutionary psychologists. Not offered 2017-18.

Hum/H 9 a

European Civilization: The Classical and Medieval Worlds

9 units (3-0-6) | offered by announcement

Will survey the evolution of Mediterranean and European civilization from antiquity through the end of the Middle Ages. It will emphasize the reading and discussion of primary sources, especially but not exclusively literary works, against the backdrop of the broad historical narrative of the periods. The readings will present students with the essential characteristics of various ancient and medieval societies and give students access to those societies' cultural assumptions and perceptions of change. Not offered 2017-18.

Hum/H 9 b

European Civilization: Early Modern Europe

9 units (3-0-6) | first and second terms

Will survey the evolution of European civilization from the 14th century to the early 19th century. The topics covered will depend on the individual instructor, but they will include some of the major changes that transformed Western civilization in the early modern period, such as the Renaissance, the Reformation, the rise of sovereign states and the concomitant military revolution, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, and the French and industrial revolutions. Readings will include major works from the period, as well as studies by modern historians.

Instructors: Wey-Gomez, Hoffman

Hum/H 9 c

European Civilization: Modern Europe

9 units (3-0-6) | first and third terms

Will introduce students to major aspects of the politics and culture of modernity that have profoundly transformed Western society and consciousness from the French Revolution to the contemporary era. A variety of historical, literary, and artistic works will be used to illuminate major social, intellectual, and cultural movements. The focus will be on significant and wide-ranging historical change (e.g., the industrial revolution, imperialism, socialism, fascism); on cultural innovation (e.g., modernism, impressionism, cubism); and on the work of significant thinkers.

Instructors: Dennison, Kormos-Buchwald

Hum/H 10

Medieval Europe: The Problem of Violence

9 units (3-0-6) | first and second terms

This course will explore how people understood violence in Europe between ca. 500 and ca. 1400 AD. It will focus on the various norms that governed the use of violence in a period when the right of free people to carry and use weapons was considered self-evident. Working through primary sources, students will explore the relationship between violence and vengeance, the law, central authority and public order, religion, emotions, public ritual, and economics. As they go along students will consider whether violence can coexist with or even promote stable, ordered societies, or whether it by definition creates disorder.

Instructor: Brown

Hum/H 15

Early Modern Environmental History

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

This course explores how people have understood and interacted with the natural world from c.1450-c1850. Focusing on Europe and the Americas, this course will cover a broad range of topics including climate change, relationships between humans and animals, pollution, deforestation, resource management, and the transition to fossil fuels. We will use both primary and secondary sources to ask how human societies adapted to a changing climate, whether pre-industrial people were "green," and how human/environmental relationships shaped European colonial expansion.

Instructor: Pluymers

Hum/H 16

Introduction to North American Environmental History

9 units (3-0-6) | third term

This course will introduce students to topics in North American environmental history, explaining how landscapes have changed over time and how the peoples of the continent have interacted with the natural world. Beginning with Native American peoples' uses for fire, the course will cover a wide range of topics including the introduction of non-native species, pollution, the creation of environmental regulations like the Endangered Species Act, and the origins and development of the environmental movement. Students will be expected to read and analyze both primary and secondary sources in class discussions and in writing.

Instructor: Pluymers

Hum/H/HPS 18

Introduction to the History of Science

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

Major topics include the following: What are the origins of modern Western science, when did it emerge as distinct from philosophy and other cultural and intellectual productions, and what are its distinguishing features? When and how did observation, experiment, quantification, and precision enter the practice of science? What were some of the major turning points in the history of science? What is the changing role of science and technology? Using primary and secondary sources, students will take up significant topics in the history of science, from ancient Greek science to the 20th-century revolution in physics, biology, and technology. Hum/H/HPS 10 may be taken for credit toward the additional 36-unit HSS requirement by HPS majors and minors who have already fulfilled their freshman humanities requirement and counts as a history course in satisfying the freshman humanities breadth requirement.

Instructor: Feingold

H 60

Reading in History

Units to be determined for the individual by the division | any term

Reading in history and related subjects, done either in connection with the regular courses or independently, but under the direction of members of the department. A brief written report will usually be required. Graded pass/fail. Not available for credit toward humanities-social science requirement.

E/H/Art 89

New Media Arts in the 20th and 21st Centuries

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

Prerequisites: none.

This course will examine artists' work with new technology, fabrication methods and media from the late 19th Century to the present. Major artists, exhibitions, and writings of the period will be surveyed. While considering this historical and critical context, students will create their own original new media artworks using technologies and/or fabrication methods they choose. Possible approaches to projects may involve robotics, electronics, computer programming, computer graphics, mechanics and other technologies. Students will be responsible for designing and fabricating their own projects. Topics may include systems in art, the influence of industrialism, digital art, robotics, telematics, media in performance, interactive installation art, and technology in public space. Artists studied may include Eadweard Muybridge, Marcel Duchamp, Vladmir Tatlin, John Cage, Jean Tinguely, Stelarc, Survival Research Laboratories, Lynne Hershman Leeson, Edwardo Kac, Natalie Jeremenjenko, Heath Bunting, Janet Cardiff and others.

Instructor: Mushkin

H 98

Reading in History

9 units (1-0-8)

Prerequisites: instructor's permission.

An individual program of directed reading in history, in areas not covered by regular courses.

Instructor: Staff

H 99 abc

Research Tutorial

9 units (1-0-8)

Prerequisites: instructor's permission.

Students will work with the instructor in the preparation of a research paper, which will form the basis of an oral examination.

Instructor: Staff

H 108 a

The Early Middle Ages

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

This course is designed to introduce students to the formative period of Western medieval history, roughly from the fourth through the tenth centuries. It will emphasize the development of a new civilization from the fusion of Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions, with a focus on the Frankish world. The course focuses on the reading, analysis, and discussion of primary sources.

Instructor: Brown

H 108 b

The High Middle Ages

9 units (3-0-6) | third term

This course is designed to introduce students to European history between 1000 and 1400. It will provide a topical as well as chronological examination of the economic, social, political, and religious evolution of western Europe during this period, with a focus on France, Italy, England, and Germany. The course emphasizes the reading, analysis, and discussion of primary sources.

Instructor: Brown

H 109

Medieval Knighthood

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

This course tells the story of the knight from his beginnings in the early Middle Ages, through his zenith in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, to his decline and transformation in the late medieval and early modern periods. The course treats the knight not simply as a military phenomenon but also as a social, political, religious, and cultural figure who personified many of the elements that set the Middle Ages apart. Not offered 2017-18.

H 111

The Medieval Church

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

This course takes students through the history of the medieval Christian Church in Europe, from its roots in Roman Palestine, through the zenith of its power in the high Middle Ages, to its decline on the eve of the Reformation. The course focuses on the church less as a religion (although it will by necessity deal with some basic theology) than as an institution that came to have an enormous political, social, cultural, and economic impact on medieval life, and for a brief time made Rome once more the mistress of Europe. Not offered 2017-18.

H 112

The Vikings

9 units (3-0-6) | third term

This course will take on the Scandinavian seafaring warriors of the 8th-11th centuries as a historical problem. What were the Vikings, where did they come from, and how they did they differ from the Scandinavian and north German pirates and raiders who preceded them? Were they really the horned-helmeted, bloodthirsty barbarians depicted by modern popular media and by many medieval chronicles? What effect did they have in their roughly two centuries of raiding and colonization on the civilizations of medieval and ultimately modern Europe? Not offered 2017-18.

H 115 abc

British History

9 units (3-0-6) | first, second, third terms

The political and cultural development of Great Britain from the early modern period to the twentieth century. H 115 a covers the Reformation and the making of a Protestant state (1500-1700). H 115 b examines the Enlightenment and British responses to revolutions in France and America (1700-1830). H 115 c is devoted to the Victorian and Edwardian eras (1830-1918). H 115 a is not a prerequisite for H 115 b; neither it nor H 115 b is a prerequisite for H 115 c. Not offered 2017-18.

H 119

Early American Rebellions and Revolutions, 1607-1800

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

This course explores incidents of rebellion, revolt, resistance, and revolution on the North American continent between the first Anglo-Powhatan War in colonial Virginia to the election of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency in 1800. We will cover slave conspiracies, witch trials, religious struggles, impressment riots, Native uprisings, imperial wars, American independence, agrarian protest, and various manifestations of political opposition, organization, and violence. We will also critically interrogate the "naming" of these various forms of resistance and modes of conflict. Not offered 2017-18.

H 120

American History: The Long Nineteenth Century

9 units (3-0-6) | third term

This course examines the history of the "long" nineteenth century in the United States. We will begin with the formation of the republic in the aftermath of the American Revolution and end in the Progressive Era. Particular emphasis will be placed on political and social history. Topics include: the formation and destruction of political party systems, reform movements, religious revivalism and identity, Indian removal, continental expansion, the Civil War and Reconstruction, Jim Crow, labor movements, immigration, and transformations in transportation, communication, and consumption. Not offered 2017-18.

H 121

American Radicalism

9 units (3-0-6) | offered by announcement

The course will cover a number of radical social, political, and artistic movements in 20th-century America. A focus on the first two decades of the century will center around the poet, journalist, and revolutionary John Reed and his circle in Greenwich Village. Topics will include their involvement with artistic experimentation, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Mexican Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the movements for birth control and against American involvement in World War I. Other areas of concentration will be the Great Depression of the '30s, with its leftist political and labor actions, and the freewheeling radicalism of the '60s, including the anti-Vietnam protests, Students for a Democratic Society, and the ethnic struggles for social and political equality. Some reference will be made to the anti-globalization movements of today. Not offered 2017-18.

H 122

Household and Family Forms over Time

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

This course examines the wide variety of family forms and household structures in past societies, as well as the social, cultural, institutional, and economic variables that influenced them. The course focuses mainly on Europe from about 1600 to the present, as this is the area for which most research has been done, but there will be some discussion of other parts of the world, including Asia, Africa, and North and South America. Special attention is given to comparisons among different societies. Not offered 2017-18.

H/SS 124

Problems in Historical Demography

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

Birth, marriage, and death-the most basic events in people's lives-are inextricably linked to larger economic and social phenomena. An understanding of these basic events can thus shed light on the economic and social world inhabited by people in the past. In this course students will be introduced to the sources and methods used by historical demographers to construct demographic measures for past populations. In addition, the course will cover a broad range of problems in historical demography, including mortality crises, fertility control, infant mortality, and the role of economic and social institutions in demographic change. While the emphasis is on societies in the past, there will be some discussion of modern demographic trends in various parts of the world. Not offered 2017-18.

H 125

Soviet Russia

9 units (3-0-6) | third term

Why was the Russian Revolution of 1917 successful? And how did the Soviet system survive nearly 75 years? These questions will be addressed in the wider context of Russian history, with a focus on political, economic, and social institutions in the pre- and post-revolutionary period. Subjects covered include the ideological underpinnings of Bolshevism, Lenin and the Bolshevik coup, the rise of Stalin, collectivization, socialist realism, the command economy, World War II, the Krushchev 'thaw', dissident culture and the arts, popular culture, and Gorbachev's perestroika. A variety of sources will be used, including secondary historical literature, fiction, film, and art.

Instructor: Dennison

H 127

History and the Anthropocene

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

In 2000, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen and his colleague Eugene Stoermer argued that we should adopt a new term-the Anthropocene-to recognize the central place of humanity in shaping the earth's geological, chemical, and biological systems. Since then, the term has become increasingly prominent among academic and popular writers. The concept of the Anthropocene, although ostensibly a question of geologic periodization, has implications for many other disciplines, particularly history. This course will explore the development of the concept, the history of ideas about the relationship between people and the natural world, and implications for how we understand and talk about the past.

Instructor: Pluymers

H 128

Sustainability and Conservation in the Early Modern World

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

Sustainability-from corporate boardrooms to communes, the term has been the subject of protests, marketing campaigns, and government policies. Scientists, activists, and politicians have proposed new methods for achieving it; however, the history of the term remains murky. In this course, we will explore how early modern people understood and regulated resources to try to uncover examples of sustainable farming, forestry, and industry from the past. Unlike many courses that focus on specific regions, we will reach beyond borders to examine the intersections of the modes of regulation of resources in Asia, Europe, and North America during the early modern period. Not offered 2017-18.

H 129

Rivers and Human History

9 units (3-0-6) | third term

For thousands of years, rivers have been central to human history. They have served as crucial sources of food and water, the sites for religious and political ceremonies, and corridors for transportation. Rivers have also flooded, become polluted, and even caught fire. In this course we will explore how human beings around the world have attempted to manage rivers and the people who live alongside them examining topics such as damming, diversion, and flood control. We will conclude by examining the history and future of the Los Angeles River and its tributaries, which, as concretized flood control channels, offer a unique example of the transformative power of engineering. For this section, students will take a field trip to explore the Los Angeles River.

Instructor: Pluymers

H 130

Innovative History

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

In recent years some historians have experimented with new and innovative ways of telling the past-on the printed page, using film and video, and on the Internet. The course will focus on these new approaches to historical presentation and knowledge. Students will read, watch, and interact with various examples of these innovative historical works. They will also be exposed to the critiques of traditional historical writing from philosophers, literary critics, and postmodern theorists, which provide intellectual underpinning for experimenting with new forms of history. Not offered 2017-18.

H 131

History of Extinction

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

Humans are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction - the first to be caused by human activity. Extinction has been viewed in changing ways over the past 200 years, and this course takes an interdisciplinary approach to learning about the extinction process from a historical as well as a modern perspective. Our focus will be on the extinction of biological entities, but we will also touch on other systems that have disappeared: languages, technologies, habitats, and ways of living. Central to our endeavors will be asking what it means to live in this time of loss: Should we mourn? And if so, how do we mourn for what many or most of us do not see, but only read about? Finally, we will scrutinize what the practical effects of extinction have been, are, and will be. We will also make at least one visit to a natural history museum to view some extinct species behind the scenes.

Instructor: Lewis

H 132

Humanistic Ecology

9 units (3-0-6) | third term

Humans' conceptions of nature have changed dramatically over time. Ecological systems influence human culture, politics, law, and many other spheres, and in turn, humans influence those systems. This class introduces students to the field of humanistic ecology - a discipline that looks to a number of cultural, political, historical and economic elements to better understand the role of ecology in a larger sphere outside of its scientific structure and uses. Humanistic ecology is designed to provide context for the study of ecology, and in a fundamental way, focuses on the appropriate role of humanity in its relationship to nature: what is ethical, or not, what is useful, or not, and a variety of other matters that should be considered when taking a fully three-dimensional view of ecological science.

Instructor: Lewis

H 135

War, Conquest, and Empires

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

This course will use historical examples of war and conquest and ask why some periods of history were times of warfare and why certain countries developed a comparative advantage in violence. The examples will come from the history of Europe and Asia, from ancient times up until World War I, and the emphasis throughout will be on the interplay between politics, military technology, and social conditions.

Instructor: Hoffman

H 136

Caltech in the Archives

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

This class will introduce students to the methods of archival work in the humanities and social sciences. Over the course of the quarter students will receive an introduction to factors surrounding the collection, organization, and use of various types of archives as a background to several small-scale projects working in an archival collection of their own choosing. The seminar will center around weekly projects and synthetic analytical essays about the archival process and archival discoveries. Students hoping to combine their course work with an archive-based research paper may sign up for a separate independent study and conduct research concurrently, with instructor approval.

Instructor: Dykstra

H 137

Criminals, Outlaws, and Justice in a Thousand Years of Chinese History

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

This course explores the shifting boundary between discourses of crime and disobedience over the last millennium or so of Chinese history. It offers fictional, philosophical, political, propagandistic, official, and personal writings on crime and those who commit it as a basis for a wide-ranging series of discussions about when breaking the law is good, when breaking the law is bad, and who gets to decide where the line between a criminal and an outlaw should be drawn. Not offered 2017-18.

H 138

From Sage Kings to the CCP: A Primer on Ruler, State and Empire in the History of Chinese Government

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

This course surveys a large sample of writings on the craft of governance from across the span of Chinese history. It offers students a chance to explore new and old perspectives on leadership, organization, discipline, bureaucracy, justice, and other classic themes of statecraft writings. These materials will be placed in the context of several shifts in and disagreements about the methods of governance in Chinese history so that students may reflect on the dynamic tension between theory, belief, intention, and action in dictating the way that individuals describe the state. Not offered 2017-18.

H 139

Translation Theory and Practice (Chinese Historical Sources Seminar)

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

For description, see L 139.

Instructor: Dykstra

H/L 142

Perspectives on History through Russian Literature

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

The Russian intelligentsia registered the arrival of modern urban society with a highly articulate sensitivity, perhaps because these changes-industrialization, the breakdown of traditional hierarchies and social bonds, the questioning of traditional beliefs-came to Russia so suddenly. This gives their writings a paradigmatic quality; the modern dilemmas that still haunt us are made so eloquently explicit in them that they have served as models for succeeding generations of writers and social critics. This course explores these writings (in English translation) against the background of Russian society, focusing especially on particular works of Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Goncharov, Tolstoy, and Turgenev.

Instructor: Dennison

H 144

The History of Women and Art

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

According to Pliny, the history of art began with a woman tracing the profile of her sleeping lover on the wall by candlelight to preserve his memory. Yet women's artistry has rarely been seen as true art in the eyes of posterity, though female creativity has constantly outstripped narrow definitions of art practice and found expression in myriad forms. This course sweeps from the Renaissance city states to New Mexico, from the Baroque courts of the Popes and Catholic Spain to the Dutch Golden Age, from Bohemian Paris to the dust bowl of the Great Depression.

Instructor: Vickery

H 145

Women in Modern America and Britain

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

This course covers women's lives from the Civil War to the Second Wave of Feminism. The long twentieth century has been dramatically transformed by the participation of women in war, work, protest, and education. We will determine the constraints on women in war and peace, education and paid work, marriage and family, while also exploring women's dreams and disappointments in romance, sex, home-making, consumerism and fashion. The elaboration of femininity in the glossy media of advertising, women's magazines, fiction and film is a continuous theme of the course. Together we will look at expectations and outcomes, promise and its containment.

Instructor: Vickery

HPS/H/Pl 157

The Mathematization of Natural Philosophy in 17th- and 18th-Century Europe

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

The mathematization of "natural philosophy" (namely, the discipline whose aim was to explain the causes of natural phenomena) in early-modern Europe is one of the deepest transformations in the history of scientific thought. In the 17th century a group of innovative mathematicians began to apply mathematics to the study of nature with unprecedented success. This innovative approach was often rejected and opposed, However, amongst its defenders it was unclear which mathematical methods could, and should, be deployed. The debate that ensued on the nature and aims of mathematized natural philosophy intersected with many philosophical themes. The course explores these debates by focusing on the positions held by some protagonists of the so-called scientific revolution, such as Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, Hooke, Newton, and Leibniz.

Instructor: Guicciardini

HPS/H 160

Einstein and His Generation: The History of Modern Physical Sciences

9 units (3-0-6) | third term

An exploration of the most significant scientific developments in the physical sciences, structured around the life and work of Albert Einstein (1879-1955), with particular emphasis on the new theories of radiation, the structure of matter, relativity, and quantum mechanics. While using original Einstein manuscripts, notebooks, scientific papers, and personal correspondence, we shall also study how experimental and theoretical work in the sciences was carried out; scientific education and career patterns; personal, political, cultural, and sociological dimensions of science.

Instructor: Kormos-Buchwald

H 161

Selected Topics in History

9 units (3-0-6)

; offered by announcement.

Instructors: Staff, visiting lecturers

HPS/H 162

Social Studies of Science

9 units (3-0-6) | third term

A comparative, multidisciplinary course that examines the practice of science in a variety of locales, using methods from the history, sociology, and anthropology of scientific knowledge. Topics covered include the high-energy particle laboratory as compared with a biological one; Western as compared to non-Western scientific reasoning; the use of visualization techniques in science from their inception to virtual reality; gender in science; and other topics. Not offered 2017-18.

HPS/H 166

Historical Perspectives on the Relations between Science and Religion

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

The course develops a framework for understanding the changing relations between science and religion in Western culture since antiquity. Focus will be on the ways in which the conceptual, personal, and social boundaries between the two domains have been reshaped over the centuries. Questions to be addressed include the extent to which a particular religious doctrine was more or less amenable to scientific work in a given period, how scientific activity carved an autonomous domain, and the roles played by scientific activity in the overall process of secularization.

Instructor: Feingold

HPS/H 167

Experimenting with History/Historic Experiment

9 units (3-0-6)

Prerequisites: Ph 1 abc, and Ph 2 abc (may be taken concurrently).

This course uses a combination of lectures with hands-on laboratory work to bring out the methods, techniques, and knowledge that were involved in building and conducting historical experiments. We will connect our laboratory work with the debates and claims made by the original discoverers, asking such questions as how experimental facts have been connected to theories, how anomalies arise and are handled, and what sorts of conditions make historically for good data. Typical experiments might include investigations of refraction, laws of electric force, interference of polarized light, electromagnetic induction, or resonating circuits and electric waves. We will reconstruct instrumentation and experimental apparatus based on a close reading of original sources. Not offered 2017-18.

HPS/H 168

History of Electromagnetism and Heat Science

9 units (3-0-6) | offered by announcement

Prerequisites: Ph 1 abc, and Ph 2 abc (may be taken concurrently).

This course covers the development of electromagnetism and thermal science from its beginnings in the early 18th century through the early 20th century. Topics covered include electrostatics, magnetostatics, electrodynamics, Maxwell's field theory, the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics as well as related experimental discoveries. Not offered 2017-18.

HPS/H 169

Selected Topics in the History of Science and Technology

9 units (3-0-6) | offered by announcement

Instructors: Staff, visiting lecturers

HPS/H 170

History of Light from Antiquity to the 20th Century

9 units (3-0-6) | second, third terms

Prerequisites: Ph 1 abc, and Ph 2 abc (may be taken concurrently).

A study of the experimental, mathematical, and theoretical developments concerning light, from the time of Ptolemy in the 2nd century A.D. to the production of electromagnetic optics in the 20th century.

Instructor: J. Buchwald

HPS/H 171

History of Mechanics from Galileo through Euler

9 units (3-0-6)

Prerequisites: Ph 1 abc, and Ph 2 abc (may be taken concurrently).

This course covers developments in mechanics, as well as related aspects of mathematics and models of nature, from just before the time of Galileo through the middle of the 18th century, which saw the creation of fluid and rotational dynamics in the hands of Euler and others. Not offered 2017-18.

HPS/H 172

History of Mathematics: A Global View with Close-ups

9 units (3-0-6) | offered by announcement

The course will provide students with a brief yet adequate survey of the history of mathematics, characterizing the main developments and placing these in their chronological, cultural, and scientific contexts. A more detailed study of a few themes, such as Archimedes' approach to infinite processes, the changing meanings of "analysis" in mathematics, Descartes' analytic geometry, and the axiomatization of geometry c. 1900; students' input in the choice of these themes will be welcomed. Not offered 2017-18.

HPS/H 175

Matter, Motion, and Force: Physical Astronomy from Ptolemy to Newton

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

The course will examine how elements of knowledge that evolved against significantly different cultural and religious backgrounds motivated the great scientific revolution of the 17th century. Not offered 2017-18.

H 184

Travel, Mobility, Migration

9 units (3-0-6) | third term

People, objects, and knowledge in the European Age of Revolutions, 1770-1848. The aim of this course is to examine the movement of peoples, cultural artifacts, and the dissemination of different sorts of knowledge, during and after the Revolutionary upheavals and nationalist struggles of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Topics will include nationalism and multi-national communities; political and intellectual exile; imperial ambition, science and knowledge; the effects of warfare on patterns of migration; looting, theft and cultural property. The class will include a number of in-depth case studies, including Italy and South Asia. Not offered 2017-18.

H/HPS 185

Angels and Monsters: Cosmology, Anthropology, and the Ends of the World

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

This course explores late medieval European understandings of the origins, structure, and workings of the cosmos in the realms of theology, physics, astronomy, astrology, magic, and medicine. Attention is given to the position of humans as cultural creatures at the intersection of nature and spirit; as well as to the place of Christian Europeans in relation to non-Christians and other categories of outsiders within and beyond Europe. We will examine the knowledge system that anticipated racializing theories in the West.

Instructor: Wey-Gomez

H 187

The Constitution in the Early Republic

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

This course will trace many of the major constitutional debates that occurred during the first half-century of U.S. History. We will look to the courts, to the legislatures, to Presidents, and to constitutional theorists of the Early Republic to gain insight into how the first generations of Americans understood their Constitution and the governments and rights it recognized. During this formative period, Americans contemplate the location of sovereignty in a federated republic, the rights and privileges of citizenship, and the role of judicial review in a democratic society. Though we will remain firmly entrenched in the period before the Civil War, we will find that many of the issues that created constitutional strife two centuries ago are still relevant to the constitutional questions of today. Not offered 2017-18.

H 188

Origins of the US Civil War

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

The purpose of this course is to investigate the various causes of the US Civil War. Students will be exposed to prevailing interpretations, which rely mostly on national frames of reference when identifying the economic, political, and constitutional causes of the Sectional Crisis and War. Half of the term will be devoted to these themes. Subsequently, we will be spending the second half of the term examining recent scholarship that examines the international factors on the brewing Sectional Crisis, from the ramifications of British Emancipation to the fluctuating global cotton market. During the last week, we will discuss these interpretative differences and identify possible avenues of synthesis. Students will leave the course with a thorough understanding of the causes of the Civil War and an introduction to transnational influences on American historical development. Not offered 2017-18.

H 189

The Ethics of War

9 units (3-0-6) | third term

We tend to think of violence as a breakdown in social order, but warfare, as an organized form of violence, complicates this perspective. Can waging war and upholding justice go hand in hand? In this seminar, we will explore theories of just war from Classical antiquity through the Middle Ages, paying particular attention to methods of categorizing warfare, women at war, and pacifist critiques. The course will conclude by assessing depictions of medieval warfare in contemporary culture, such as Vikings or Game of Thrones. Readings may include Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, medieval handbooks of chivalry, Ã†lfric of Eynsham, documents from the trial of Joan of Arc, and Thomas More. Not offered 2017-18.

H/L 191

Perspectives on History through German Literature

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

Industrialization, economic growth, and democracy came to Germany much later than to England and France, and the forms they took in Germany were filtered through the specific institutional character of Central Europe. German-speaking writers and intellectuals saw these trends from the perspective of indigenous intellectual traditions, and the resulting collisions of values and priorities largely shaped European and American social, political, and literary debates for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This course explores these writings (in English translation) against the historical background of Central European society, focusing on particular works of Goethe, Hoffmann, Heine, Nietzsche, Kafka, Rilke, and Mann. Not offered 2017-18.

H 192

The Crusades

9 units (3-0-6) | third term

This course will introduce students to the series of religiously motivated European invasions of the Middle and Near East that began at the end of the eleventh century and that led to the creation of Latin Christian principalities in Palestine. Though the crusading movement came to embroil much of Europe itself, the course will focus strictly on the military expeditions to what the Crusaders called the Holy Land, and the history of the Crusader states up to the point of their destruction at the end of the thirteenth century. The course will be guided by the following questions: how did medieval Christianity justify wars of aggression against foreign peoples and religions? What motivated western Europeans to leave their homes and march into a hostile environment, where they often faced impoverishment if not death and where maintaining a Christian presence was a constant struggle? How did they manage to erect stable political entities in alien territory that lasted as long as they did, and how did they have to adapt their own culture to do so? Finally, how did the native peoples of the regions the Crusaders invaded and conquered-Muslim but also Christian and Jewish - perceive the Crusaders? How did the Crusaders' presence affect life in a region whose populations had their own ancient histories and patterns of life? Not offered 2017-18.

En/H 193

Cervantes, Truth or Dare: Don Quixote in an Age of Empire

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

Studies Cervantes's literary masterpiece, Don Quixote, with a view to the great upheavals that shaped the early modern world: Renaissance Europe's discovery of America; feudalism's demise and the rise of mass poverty; Reformation and Counter-Reformation; extermination of heretics and war against infidels; and the decline of the Hapsburg dynasty. The hapless protagonist of Don Quixote calls into question the boundaries between sanity and madness, truth and falsehood, history and fiction, objectivity and individual experience. What might be modern, perhaps even revolutionary, in Cervantes's dramatization of the moral and material dilemmas of his time? Conducted in English.

Instructor: Wey-Gomez

H 195

Vesuvius and Pompeii: Geology, Archaeology and Antiquity from the Enlightenment to the Present

9 units (3-0-6) | first term

This course examines Vesuvius and Pompeii and the relations between them from the earliest Pompeian discoveries to the present debate about the fate of the buried city, and the plans to cope with an impending Vesuvian eruption. It analyses the changing debates about the volcano - and its place in earth sciences - the development of archaeological techniques and their discoveries, the relationship between a tourist economy and the region, and the public debates about how to deal with disasters and conservation in a rapidly changing political environment. Not offered 2017-18.

En/H 197

American Literature and the Technologies of Reading

9 units (3-0-6) | second term

This course explores the material forms of American literature from the colonial era through the nineteenth century. We will study how and by whom books and other kinds of texts were produced, and how these forms shaped and were shaped by readers' engagement with them. Possible topics include the history of such printing technologies as presses, types, paper, ink, binding, and illustration; the business of bookmaking and the development of the publishing industry; the rise of literary authorship; the career of Benjamin Franklin; print, politics, and the American Revolution; and manuscript culture. Not offered 2017-18.

Published Date: July 28, 2022