HIST 1056: The New Science of the Human Past: Case Studies at the Cutting Edge
Archaeoscience
Michael McCormick

Big Question: How can we use DNA, ice cores, and ancient coins to rewrite history?

Science is powering History into a revolutionary age of discovery through microarchaeology. We will learn how ancient DNA reveals our ancestors’ migrations out of Africa and across the globe and recovers ancient pathogens and their impact from Rome to the Black Death and sixteenth-century Mexico; how paleoclimate science reconstructs ancient environments from ice cores and historical records; and how IT changes everything from shipwrecks to Roman coins, via medieval manuscripts. We’ll explore the new archaeoscience as the discoveries unfold by reading, discussing, and doing—from ancient genomes to tree rings, from Roman coins to ancient pots, and more.

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GENED 1044: Deep History
Deep History
Daniel Smail/Matthew Liebmann

Big Question: How can we understand the entirety of the human past, from the long ago to the present day?

When does history begin? To judge by the typical history textbook, the answer is straightforward: six thousand years ago. So what about the tens of thousands of years of human existence described by archaeology and related disciplines? Is that history too? This introduction to human history offers a framework for joining the entirety of the human past, from the long ago to the present day, in a single narrative that stretches across many disciplines. We will explore a series of interrelated themes each of which invites questions that travel across time and space. The material presented through lectures, discussions, and activities will not only guide students through a collaborative exploration of human experience, but will also encourage them to contemplate how such experiences mirror and contrast with their own. To help anchor ourselves in the timeline of past and present, we will engage with the world-class collection of artifacts in Harvard’s museums, giving students a unique, hands-on opportunity to experience human history through material remains.

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HIST 1301: Western Intellectual History: The Prehistory of Modern Thought
Early Modern Philosophy
James Hankins

Big Question: How do medieval and early modern thinkers continue to shape our world today?

This course surveys major themes in medieval and early modern intellectual history, and our readings include selections from Anselm, Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, Petrarch, Machiavelli, Thomas More, Martin Luther, Montaigne, Francis Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes.

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HIST 1281: The End of Communism
End of Communism
Terry Martin

Big Question: Why did communism collapse in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1989 & 1991?

This course examines how and why communism collapsed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Although the events of 1989/1991 are usually considered sudden and shocking, we’ll question this assumption within the political, economic, social, and cultural contexts of the surrounding decades (1970-2000). As we do so, we’ll consider both international and domestic factors, including the Cold War and the arms race; ideology and dissent; consumption and culture; oil, economics and the environment; nationalism and civil war; gender and health. Fundamentally, in this class we’ll debate how structural conditions and contingency affect the course of history.

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HIST 1473: Environmental History
Environment
Phil Deloria

Big Question: How has nature acted as both an agent and object of historical change?

The relations between human beings and the non-human world have never seemed as urgent or troubled as today. Or so it seems. Every crisis we confront—climate change, extinctions, invasive species, energy, regulation, and more—has a deep and complex history. We have arrived at our anthropocenic present through a series of human choices, made within the constraints imposed by the non-human world in which we live. Environmental history studies this past. We aim to craft historical narratives that focus on “nature”—as a set of biological processes and systems, the object of changing political economies, and a site for cultural meaning-making. This course will explore the ways in which these different “natures” have acted as both agents and objects of historical change. It is not a course on environmental ethics or policy, although students should expect to encounter both during the academic term. The course will deal primarily with the history of the United States as seen through the lens of the natural world, and of our perceptions, imaginings, and interactions with it.

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HIST 1206: France and the World since 1870
France and the World
Mary Lewis

Big Question: How was modern French democratic culture crafted, and when and how has this culture failed?

This course explores the history of France from the foundation of the Third Republic to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Topics include the advent of modern left-wing, right-wing, and anti-Semitic politics; France’s empire in Asia and North Africa and its consequences; the devastating impact of the First World War; the tumultuous interwar era; the Second World War and the politics of resistance, collaboration with the Germans, and memory; decolonization; the May 1968 student revolt; and immigration from France’s former colonies and identity politics since the 1970s.

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HIST 1265: Germany, 1848–1949
German Empires
Alison Frank Johnson

Big Question: How can German history help us understand both the German past and our world today?

German History loomed like a specter over the twentieth century. In the twenty-first century, Americans have been debating the relevance and legitimacy of comparisons between German history and our contemporary world. How useful is German history for understanding our current moment? How might our present-day concerns distort what we see in the past? This course will examine the history of Germans in Europe and elsewhere, starting with the revolutions of 1848 and ending with the separation of Austria, West Germany, and East Germany following the Second World War. Themes will be war, insurrection, and terrorism, revolution and counter-revolution, gender and sexuality, reform, violence, anti-Semitism, racial thinking and racism, and migration.

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HIST 1036: Modern South Asia
Modern South Asia
Sugata Bose

Big Question: How do we understand the global role of modern South Asia?

This course provides the historical depth in which to understand modern and contemporary South Asia in broad Indian Ocean and global contexts. It explores the history, culture, and political economy of the subcontinent, which provides a fascinating laboratory to study such themes as colonialism, nationalism, partition, the modern state, democracy development, religious identities, and relations between Asia and the West.

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HIST 1026: Rise and Fall of Postwar Japan
Postwar Japan
Andrew Gordon

Big Question: How can we understand the history of Japan after 1945?

From the literally devastated landscape of August 1945, Japan has been likened to the mythical phoenix rising from the ashes, becoming a global economic power by the 1970s with a large and optimistic middle class. Then, from the 1990s, the stock market crashed, the economy stagnated, the population began to decline, and social inequality increased. The natural catastrophe of one of history’s largest earthquakes then brought on social and environmental disaster whose consequences are still unfolding. Yet describing this history as a rise and fall fails to capture many essential aspects of the history of postwar Japan. In this class, by contrast, we will explore the wide range of experiences and understandings held by the Japanese throughout this period, focusing, for example, on differences of city and country, and of gender and social class within Japan, and on divergent understandings of Japan’s modern past both inside and outside of Japan.

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HIST 1223: The American Century? A History of the United States since World War II
Post-War U.S.
Aaron Bekemeyer

Big Question: How can we understand the tumultuous past 75 years of American history as a coherent whole?

In this course, we will explore the history of the United States since it became the world’s preeminent economic and military power. Since 1945 the country has moved from a “Golden Age” of capitalism to the neoliberal era of inequality and erratic growth; from immigration restriction to attracting people from across the world; from the hegemony of liberalism to the ascendance of conservatism; and from the Cold War to the War on Terror. We will analyze the causes and consequences of this dynamic history by studying the social movements, political parties, and international forces that propelled an ever-changing nation.

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GENED 1034: Texts in Transition
Texts 101
Ann Blair & Leah Whittington

Big Question: What makes some texts long-lived while others are ephemeral, whether a manuscript from Renaissance Europe or a digital publication today?

As our communication becomes ever more digital—and, therefore, simultaneously more ephemeral and more durable—the attitudes and tools we have for preserving our culture have come to seem less apt than they may have seemed as recently as a generation ago. This course examines how texts have been transmitted from the past to the present, and how we can plan for their survival into the future. We will examine what makes texts durable by considering especially the media by which they are transmitted, the changing cultural attitudes toward their content, and the institutions by which they are preserved. The European Renaissance will provide a central case study. During this period scholars became aware of the loss of ancient texts and strove to recover and restore them insofar as possible. These interests prompted new developments in scholarly conservation techniques which we still value today (philology, libraries, and museums) but also the creation and transmission of new errors, ranging from well-intentioned but overzealous corrections and “improvements” to outright forgeries. What can the Renaissance teach us about how to engage productively with these problems, both as the source of our current attitudes toward preservation and loss, and as a case study of another culture dealing with anxiety over preservation and loss? Ultimately, we hope that students will be able to think productively about preservation in the past and in the future, while recognizing that all preservation inherently involves some kind of transformation.

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HIST1270: Frontiers of Europe: Ukraine since 1500
Ukraine
Serhii Plokhii

Big Question: How do we understand the history of Ukraine on its own terms and also as a cultural frontier of Europe?

In this course, we will explore the history of the Ukrainian territory and its people within a broad context of political, social and cultural changes in Eastern Europe during five hundred years. Our work together will emphasize the role of Ukraine as a cultural frontier of Europe, positioned as it is on the border between settled areas and Eurasian steppes, Christianity and Islam, Orthodoxy and Catholicism, as well as a battleground of major imperial and national projects of modern era.

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HIST 1001: The War in Vietnam
Vietnam War
Fredrik Logevall

Big Question: Why did the Vietnam War begin, and what were its legacies?

The struggle for Vietnam occupies a central place in the history of the 20th century. How did it happen? Why did first France and then the United States wage large-scale war there, and why did both powers fail in their effort to subdue the revolutionary Vietnamese forces? And what is the legacy of the struggle for our world and for U.S. foreign policy today? This course examines these and related questions, with particular attention to the long period of direct American involvement. The events will be considered in their relationship to Vietnam's history, to American politics and society, and to the concurrent Cold War.

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