17 courses with the subject HIST GU, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
HIST GU4012HISTORY OF THE CITY IN LATIN AMERICA4.00
This course covers the historical development of cities in Latin America. Readings examine the concentration of people in commercial and political centers from the beginnings of European colonization in the sixteenth century to the present day and will introduce contrasting approaches to the study of urban culture, politics, society, and the built environment. Central themes include the reciprocal relationships between growing urban areas and the countryside; cities as sites of imperial power and their post-colonial role in nation-building; changing power dynamics in modern Latin America, especially as they impacted the lives of cities’ nonelite majority populations; the legalities and politics of urban space; the complexity and historical development of urban segregation; the rise of informal economies; and the constant tension between tradition and progress through which urban societies have formed. Reading knowledge of Spanish and/or Portuguese will be helpful but is not required. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students; graduate students will be given additional reading and writing assignments
We are used to thinking of history in national terms, or at least in reference to major civilizations (“Western civilization,” “Near Eastern civilization,” etc.). In “real life,” however, interactions among people, linguistic communities, and cultures frequently cut across political divisions. Water – rivers, streams, seas – is often an invitation to settlement, commerce, and conquest. This course offers a look (inspired in part by Fernand Braudel's Mediterranean) at a body of water – the Black Sea – and the lands around it, in sweeping historical perspective. Focus is on those moments when the various civilizations and empires that originated and flourished around the Black Sea met and intersected in friendship or in enmity. We will look at ancient civilizations, Greek colonization, Byzantine-Slav interactions, the period of Ottoman dominance, Russian-Turkish rivalry, and decolonization and wars in the 19th and 20th centuries. We hope that we will be able to pay particular attention to questions of ecology, language, religion, and cultural interaction throughout. Fall 2026: HIST GU4218 Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment HIST 4218 001/11192 W 4:10pm - 6:00pm 301m Fayerweather Catherine Evtuhov 4 15/13
This seminar, which focuses on Montaigne’s Essays, is one of a series on the history of the modern self. The series has included seminars on figures like Pascal, Rousseau, and Tocqueville, and will continue to expand
HIST GU4394Britain and the end of empire in Southeast Asia, 1941-684.00
This course examines the contraction of British imperial power in Southeast Asia from the opening of the Pacific War in 1941/42 to the decisions of the Labour Government in 1967/68 to withdraw from ‘East of Suez’. As well as analysing the explanations offered for the retreat from formal colonial rule, the course explores how attempts were made to preserve influence and control the pace of change. The interactions between metropolitan weakness and local nationalisms will be emphasised, as will be the effects of the Cold War. Attention will also be paid to Anglo-American relations and the wars in Indochina
HIST GU4471JEWS AND RELIGION IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN HISTORY: ARCHIVAL, THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES4.00
In what ways has religion been deployed as an analytical category in 20th century American history? Through a case study of how Jews and antisemitism have been conceptualized, theorized and narrated within the annals of American history, we will ponder what to American historians think about religion. What is the heuristic value of such a category? We will also research in Columbia’s archives to see how Jews and Judaism are discussed. This course will also introduce students to the theoretical innovations in the field of contemporary religion and to suggest ways that the study of religion intersects, intervenes and complicates the fields of American urban, cultural, and political history
HIST GU4518Research Seminar: Columbia and Slavery4
In this course, students will write original, independent papers of around 25 pages, based on research in both primary and secondary sources, on an aspect of the relationship between Columbia College and its colonial predecessor King's College, with the institution of slavery.
This course introduces the central historical issues raised by ancient Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic literature through exploration of some of the crucial primary texts and analysis of the main scholarly approaches to these texts
HIST GU4708Topics in Ottoman History, 1300–18004.00
The Ottomans ruled Southeast Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Anatolia for nearly half a millennium. The objective of this seminar is to explore the rich and growing literature on the social, cultural, political, and economic history of this bygone empire, whose legacy still persists, in one way or another, in some twenty-five contemporary successor states from the Balkans to the Arabian Peninsula. The seminar is designed to contextualize the Ottoman experiences within the broader structures of global and regional histories during the late-medieval and early modern eras. Each week, we will focus on a particular theme, assess the current state of scholarship on the topic, and reflect upon a specific set of primary sources useful for the study of the issue. The themes we will explore include, but are not limited to, identities and mentalities, governance of the empire and its bureaucracy, the status of minorities and confessional politics, literacy and the use of the public sphere, legal culture and pluralism, the environment, and science and technology. Please be advised that this seminar will avoid the mere chronological narrative of Ottoman political and institutional history, which often recounts the transformation from the 'terror of Europe' to its 'Sick Man.' Throughout the course, we will emphasize the gradually evolving nature of the multi-layered, multi-ethnic, and multi-lingual Ottoman polity, society, and culture to challenge such essentialist and ahistorical assessments of past Ottoman experiences
HIST GU4709Race and Enslavement in the Middle East4.00
This research seminar explores the nexus between race and enslavement in the Middle East and broader Indian Ocean world. This course will re-envision the contours of the Middle East as part of a larger geography that extends beyond Southwest Asia and North Africa, highlighting its deep ties to what is often called “Black Africa.” It also looks at Blackness within the Middle East and examines its long history of belonging, exchange, and migration. It investigates the kinds of knowledge production required to erase these ties and connections, and to produce a vaguely “brown” racial sphere that both homogenizes the Middle East and removes any references to Blackness from its history and societies. Throughout the course, we will probe the memories and legacies of enslavement across the Middle East and Indian Ocean world. How has enslavement and the lives of those enslaved been remembered, defined, written about, and narrated in both academic and non-academic texts? What were the factors that enabled remembering or forgetting these pasts and the people’s lives they controlled? And how do these narratives relate to the questions of race? This course considers narratives and their afterlives from throughout North Africa, the Nile Valley, West Asia, and South Asia
This seminar is designed to explore the rich but sorely understudied occult scientific lore in the pre-modern Islamic world. For over a millennium, from the seventh through even the twenty-first century, and spanning a broad geographical spectrum from the Nile to Oxus, different forms and praxis of occult scientific knowledge marked intellectual and political endeavors, everyday lives and customs, and faith-based matters of individuals constituting the so-called Islamicate world. However, despite the impressive array of textual, material, and visual sources coming down to us from the Muslim past, the topic has been severely marginalized under the post-Enlightenment definitions of scientific knowledge, which also shaped how the history of sciences in the Islamicate world was written in the last century. One of this seminar’s main objectives is to rehabilitate such biased perspectives through a grand tour of occult knowledge and practice appealed in the pre-modern Muslim world. Over the semester, by relying on a set of secondary studies and translated primary sources, we will revisit the question of the marginalization of Islamicate occult sciences, explore the actors’ definitions and discussions about the epistemic value of these sciences, trace their social and political implications in everyday life and imperial politics, and examine the key textual, technical, and material aspects of the occult tradition. In several of our sessions, we will have hands-on practice to better familiarize ourselves with the instructed techniques and methods in different branches of occult sciences. We will also regularly visit the Columbia University Rare Book ＆ Manuscript Library to view texts and materials available in our collection
HIST GU4713Orientalism and the Historiography of the Other4
This course will examine some of the problems inherent in Western historical writing on non-European cultures, as well as broad questions of what itmeans to write history across cultures. The course will touch on therelationship between knowledge and power, given that much of the knowledge we will be considering was produced at a time of the expansion of Western power over the rest of the world. By comparing some of the "others" which European historians constructed in the different non-western societies they depicted, and the ways other societies dealt with alterity and self, we may be able to derive a better sense of how the Western sense of self was constructed. Group(s): C Field(s): ME Fall 2026: HIST GU4713 Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment HIST 4713 001/11158 W 4:10pm - 6:00pm 311 Fayerweather Marwa Elshakry 4 21/20
HIST GU4716Imag(in)ing the Ottoman Empire: A visual history, 18th-20th centuries4.00
“Imag(in)ing the Ottoman Empire: A visual history, 18th-20th centuries” is an undergraduate/graduate seminar focusing on visual representations of the Ottoman Empire during the last two centuries of its existence, from the early eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The objective is to study the development of visual representations both by and about the Empire, from Ottoman miniatures to early European paintings, and from the surge of Western illustrated magazines to the local uses of photography. The seminar’s chronological thread will be complemented by a thematic structure designed to explore different aspects and influences concerning the production and diffusion of images: curiosity, documentation, exoticism, propaganda, orientalism, modernity, self-fashioning, eroticism, policing, to name just a few
HIST GU4721Archaeology and Heritage in the Ottoman Lands in the Long 19th Century4.00
“Archaeology and Heritage in the Ottoman Lands” is an undergraduate/graduate seminar focusing on archaeology, museology, and the notion of heritage throughout the lands under Ottoman rule during the ‘long’ nineteenth century. The objective is to critically reassess the nature of Western antiquarian and archaeological endeavors, and to focus on the local dimension of the question to fill numerous gaps and inconsistencies in the ‘grand narrative’ of Near Eastern archaeology and heritage
HIST GU4736Ottoman Westernization and Orientalism in the Long 19th Century4.00
“Ottoman Westernization and Orientalism in the Long 19th Century” is an undergraduate/graduate seminar focusing on the intricate relationship between Westernization and Orientalism in the context of the Ottoman Empire. Based on the assumption that these two concepts cannot be dissociated from one another, it sets out to explore Western/Orientalist perceptions of the empire, Ottoman efforts to Westernize, the emergence of Ottoman Orientalism, and other local reactions such as Occidentalism and anti-Westernism
This course is designed to provide the foundations for exploring the rich and fascinating history of Islamic manuscripts from the 9th through the 19th century. Its structure is shaped mainly by thematic considerations in a notable chronological fashion. The meetings amount to a series of “cuts” through the topic and cover themes such as the paper revolution, authorship, scribal culture, technologies of book production, readers and their notes, libraries and book collections, or textual as well as extra-textual components of manuscripts. Over the semester, we will study key material, textual, and visual elements of Islamic book culture spanning many centuries and continents, and visit major historiographical questions on the millennium-long history of Islamic manuscript tradition before the widespread adoption of print technology
HIST GU4872North Korean History, Culture and Politics4.00
North Korea is widely regarded as a country without a history; as enigmatic as it is isolated. Dispensing with this cliché, this course invites students to engage with North Korean history using a variety of primary and secondary sources. We begin in the medieval period to trace the distinct features of the northern region that made it uniquely receptive to outside ideas. Understanding the north as a frontier zone of experimentation and adaption allows us to examine the attractive power of modernity in the north during the early twentieth century via the influence of Christianity, capitalism and communism. Utilizing texts and materials made in North Korea and internationally, including feature and documentary films, women’s magazines, graphic novels, literary fiction and testimony, the course investigates the conditions within which knowledge about North Korea has been produced, circulated and repressed. Key topics to be explored include the history of Christianity and capitalism in Pyongyang and the northern provinces, communist cadres in the 1930s, the allure of the North in the 1940s, the Korean War and the purges that followed, North Korea’s relations with neighbors and the world, and the high cost its citizens pay for the country’s brutal sanction economy
