Course Offerings by term

Continues History 1001, from the Renaissance and the Reformation through commercialism, Absolutism, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the industrial and social revolutions of the 19th century to nationalism and socialism in the contemporary Western world.

This course examines the major civilizational development of civilization in East Asia from prehistory to the end of the sixteenth century. We will examine the histories of China, Korea, Japan, with a focus primarily on China. You will also be asked to think comparatively, examining not only how the different countries and regions developed in East Asia, but also how East Asian developments compare with the “West.”

This course surveys major themes in the ancient (pre-Islamic) and medieval history of the Middle East. It is organized around two parts. The first surveys successive civilizations and empires that rose in the region or invaded and dominated it, from the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, the Phoenicians, the Persians, to the Greeks and the Romans/Byzantines. The birth of Judaism and Christianity is presented in this part. The Second covers the rise of Islam, its expansion and the Caliphate it established from the 7th to the late 13th century, when the Mongol seized Bagdad.

This course offers an introduction to the first century and a half of Islamic society, 600-700 AD. It builds on knowledge of ways of writing about the past which students have acquired in earlier courses. The focus of the course is the rise and development of the religion of Islam and the key events and figures in the process. They will read extracts by those who wrote history in the early Islamic centuries – and those who have approached early Islam and is history in the global North, notably since he nineteenth century.
Essentially, the course offers:
- Substantive detail about the rise of the last of the Abrahamic monotheism;
- Theoretical reflection on the interplay between mediated communication, history and organized religion;
- An exploration of the history writing practices of early Muslims;
- An introduction of the intellectual history of nineteenth and twentieth century historiographies of the early Islamic Middle East and North Africa;
- An introduction to pilgrimage practices in Islam.