HIST 381:
What, exactly, is a "city?" Who defines the city? What is its role? Why are cities so often linked to visions of modernity and mobility, or prejudice and poverty? Since the rise of the modern city, the urban landscape has been a space of contradiction: simultaneously full of hope and possibility, as well as loneliness and despair. Meanwhile, cities are constantly changing and evolving, in ways both expected and surprising. This course hopes to unpack not only the history of urban space, but also examines how urban space has been imagined and how those imaginings have translated into reality. We will examine cities and city life from the mid-1800s through the present, in sites across the globe--from Chicago to Moscow to Dar es Salaam to the fictional "Capitol" of the Hunger Games series--in an attempt to find some answers to the questions above. As a tool to examine the idea of the city and urban experience, we will look through the lens of utopia. Utopia in this case means no only dreaming or fantasizing about an alternative vision of life, but actually taking concrete steps to put that vision into practice. By looking at both utopian dreams and implementation, we will be able to study not only what the city is, but also how it has been imagined and reimagined, even up to the current day.
HIST 400:
The modern nation-state, the inter-connectedness of 21st century global markets, the triumph of the English language, the shift from predominantly rural to overwhelmingly urban culture, and the principles of self-determination, liberty, and equality all have violent and sometimes profoundly unpleasant histories. Understanding these histories, and recognizing the profound role conflict played in the genesis of globalized 21st century societies is vital and necessary if we wish to understand the world around us.
Together we will survey how the experience of war has fundamentally transformed human societies, politics, culture, economics, and religions over the past 800 years. We will begin with the sudden and spectacular rise of the Mongol Empire, a nomadic society of horse-archers who managed to bloodily carve out the largest empire in human history. Our course concludes in August 1945 and the beginning of the Atomic Age, which offered the promise of unprecedented human prosperity and the potential for man-made apocalyptic destruction.
