Classes

HL90EG

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2020

Human rights is often considered a bulwark against authoritarianism and fascism, our “last utopia," but others have critiqued human rights as either a new form of imperialism or as an imposition of western values on the rest of the world. These debates demonstrate that human rights is both a powerful way of calling attention to matters of injustice as well as an idea that is itself the subject of critique. How did this come to be? In this class, we will track the increased attention on human rights in the latter half of the 20th century. Together we will explore how organizers,...

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HIST-S-1646

Semester: 

Summer

Offered: 

2020
This course offers an in-depth survey of Asian American history and culture from the early twentieth century to the present, starting with Congress's passage of the 1924 Asian Exclusion Act and culminating with an exploration of the experience of Asian Americans in society today. Drawing on an array of primary sources, novels, films, and contemporary scholarship, we examine the historical role Asian Americans have played in shaping our ideas of race, gender, labor, empire, and migration, and we take a critical look at the category Asian American, examining how it has been used to racialize... Read more about HIST-S-1646

HIST 1673

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2019

This course will explore the connections between histories of migration and labor throughout the 19th and 20th century United States. We will explore how race, gender, and empire inform our understanding of work and mobility.

Our aim for the course will be to grapple with just a few of the major historiographical issues in migration and labor. We will emphasize depth over topical coverage. The sources selected for this class are intended to give us a glimpse into approaches to labor and migration history that focus primarily on the intersection...

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HL90 DT

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2019
This course will focus on Asian American history from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Our aim will be to engage the longer history of Asian migration and labor in the United States. As such, we will focus on topics prior to the Immigration Act of 1924 (also sometimes known as the Asian Exclusion Act). We will explore how empire, capital, and labor informs the transnational movements of ideas, commodities, and people. Topics we will discuss include coolie labor, immigration exclusion, and U.S. empire. Readings and discussions will aim to think through how ideas... Read more about HL90 DT

HL97

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2019
American media headlines, from across the political spectrum, often express anxiety over the downfall of America, or more specifically, the American “Empire” as a 2018 headline in The New Republic asked, “Are We Witnessing the Fall of the American Empire?” But what does it mean to consider the United States as an empire? How is culture deployed for the ends of empire? How does empire undergird military, economic, and humanitarian intervention? How do individuals and groups make claims for rights in the shadow of empire? In this course, we will analyze various... Read more about HL97

HL 90 BY

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2018
We will focus on U.S. popular films produced during the Cold War to gain insight into circulating cultural understandings of the time period. The course will be organized around questions such as how popular culture productions characterized the United States and the world as well as how these films produced and reproduced conceptions of race, gender, and nation. We will also investigate how these films were related to and reflected understandings of United States foreign policy. Course readings, lectures, and discussions will be focused on developing an understanding of the international... Read more about HL 90 BY