46 courses with the subject HIST, 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 1062001/00368 M W 11:40am - 12:55pm Matthew 4.00 12/90
Ll003 Barnard Hall Delvaux HIST BC1302 EUROPEAN HISTORY SINCE 1789. 4.00 points. Emergence of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary mass political movements; European industrialization, nationalism, and imperialism; 20th-century world wars, the Great Depression, and Fascism HIST BC3062 Medieval Economic Life and Thought ca 1000 to 1500. 4 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). Preregistration required. Traces the development of economic enterprises and techniques t in their cultural context: agricultural markets, industry, commercial partnerships, credit, large-scale banking, insurance, and merchant culture. Examines usury and just price theory, the scholastic analysis of price and value, and the recognition of the market as a self-regulating system, centuries before Adam Smith. HIST BC2116 The History of Money. 3 points. t Examining the history of money and the history of ways of thinking about money. We investigate how different monetary forms developed and how they have shaped and been shaped by culture, society, and politics. Tracing money from gift-giving societies to the European Monetary Union, the focus is on early modern Europe. HIST BC2180 Merchants, Pirates, and Slaves in the Making of Atlantic Capitalism. 3 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL). Examines how the Atlantic Ocean and its boundaries were tied together through the flow of people, goods, and ideas. Studies the cultures of the communities formed by merchants, pirates, and slaves; investigates how their interactions and frictions combined to shape the unique combination of liberty and oppression that characterizes early modern capitalism.
Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15.
HIST 1101001/00035 T Th 1:10pm - 2:25pm Deborah 4.00 28/7
328 Milbank Hall Valenze HIST BC1302 EUROPEAN HISTORY SINCE 1789. 4.00 points. Emergence of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary mass political movements; European industrialization, nationalism, and imperialism; 20th-century world wars, the Great Depression, and Fascism HIST BC1401 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1865. 4.00 points. Themes include Native and colonial cultures and politics, the evolution of American political and economic institutions, relationships between religious and social movements, and connecting ideologies of race and gender with larger processes such as enslavement, dispossession, and industrialization HIST BC1402 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN HISTORY SINCE 1865. 4.00 points. Examines the major social, political, economic, and intellectual transformations from the 1860s until the present, including industrialization and urbanization, federal and state power, immigration, the welfare state, global relations, and social movements Fall 2025: HIST BC1402 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 1402001/00575 T Th 8:40am - 9:55am Matthew Vaz 4.00 48/60
152 Horace Mann Hall HIST BC2413 UNITED STATES 1940-1975. 3.00 points. Emphasis on foreign policies as they pertain to the Second World War, the atomic bomb, containment, the Cold War, Korea, and Vietnam. Also considers major social and intellectual trends, including the Civil Rights movement, the counterculture, feminism, Watergate, and the recession of the 1970s Fall 2025: HIST BC2413 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 1760001/00319 M W 11:40am - 12:55pm Abosede 4.00 56/70
Ll003 Barnard Hall George HIST BC1801 Colonialism and Nationalism in South Asia. 3 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL). Not offered during 2024-2025 academic year. Introduction to South Asian history (17-20 c.) that explores the colonial economy and state formation; constitution of religious and cultural identities; ideologies of nationalism and communalism, caste and gender politics; visual culture; and the South Asian diaspora. Barnard College Catalogue 2025-2026 279 HIST BC2116 The History of Money. 3 points. Examining the history of money and the history of ways of thinking about money. We investigate how different monetary forms developed and how they have shaped and been shaped by culture, society, and politics. Tracing money from gift-giving societies to the European t Monetary Union, the focus is on early modern Europe. HIST BC2180 Merchants, Pirates, and Slaves in the Making of Atlantic Capitalism. 3 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL). Examines how the Atlantic Ocean and its boundaries were tied together through the flow of people, goods, and ideas. Studies the cultures of the communities formed by merchants, pirates, and slaves; investigates how their interactions and frictions combined to shape the unique combination of liberty and oppression that characterizes early modern capitalism. HIST BC2321 COLONIAL ENCOUNTERS. 3.00 points. Examines the shaping of European cultural identity through encounters with non-European cultures from 1500 to the post-colonial era. Novels, paintings, and films will be among the sources used to examine such topics as exoticism in the Enlightenment, slavery and European capitalism, Orientalism in art, ethnographic writings on the primitive, and tourism HIST BC3062 Medieval Economic Life and Thought ca 1000 to 1500. 4 t points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). t Preregistration required. Traces the development of economic enterprises and techniques in their cultural context: agricultural markets, industry, commercial partnerships, credit, large-scale banking, insurance, and merchant culture. Examines usury and just price theory, the scholastic analysis of price and value, and the recognition of the market as a self-regulating system, centuries before Adam Smith. HIST BC3119 Capitalism and Enlightenment. 4 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). t Preregistration required. Traces the lively debates amongst the major European Enlightenment figures about the formation of capitalism. Was the new market society ushering in an era of wealth and civilization or was it promoting corruption and exploitation? Particular emphasis on debates about commerce, luxury, greed, poverty, empire, slavery, and liberty.
Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15.
HIST 2099001/00896 M W 11:40am - 12:55pm Matthew 3.00 58/70
405 Milbank Hall Delvaux HIST BC2101 HISTORY OF CAPITALISM. 3.00 points. The aim of this course is to provide students with analytical tools to think critically and historically about the concept of capitalism. By studying how philosophers, economists, and political theorists have defined and described the concept of capitalism throughout its history, students will be provided with a set of terminologies and analytical frameworks that enable them to interrogate the various dimensions of capitalism HIST BC2116 The History of Money. 3 points. Examining the history of money and the history of ways of thinking about money. We investigate how different monetary forms developed and how they have shaped and been shaped by culture, society, and politics. Tracing money from gift-giving societies to the European Monetary Union, the focus is on early modern Europe. HIST BC2180 Merchants, Pirates, and Slaves in the Making of Atlantic Capitalism. 3 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL). Examines how the Atlantic Ocean and its boundaries were tied together through the flow of people, goods, and ideas. Studies the cultures of the communities formed by merchants, pirates, and slaves; investigates how their interactions and frictions combined to shape the unique combination of liberty and oppression that characterizes early modern capitalism. Barnard College Catalogue 2025-2026 401 HIST BC2195 Gender and Sexuality in European History. 3.00 points. This course examines the history of gender and sexuality in Europe, from the Renaissance to the present day. We will take a thematic approach, tracing the shifting operations, definitions, and understandings of both gender and sexuality within European culture and society. Topics include: Renaissance visual culture, the witchcraft trials, Enlightenment philosophy, European imperialism and colonialism, revolutions (both political and sexual), moral reform campaigns, the birth of sexology, queer and trans histories, sex work, and the politics of control. Central to this course is an examination of the ways gender and sexuality function at the intersections of class, race, nation, ethnicity, and religion, and how these intersections speak to dynamics of social, cultural, and political power. In our work throughout the semester, we will draw from a range of sources, including film, painting, photography, literature, and music. We will lment regularly engage with primary sources, which will allow students to learn the skills and techniques necessary for the work of historians. Throughout the course, students will examine how historians write, interpret, and construct histories of gender and sexuality, and question what place these histories have in our contemporary world Spring 2026: HIST BC2195 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 2195001/00897 M W 10:10am - 11:25am Dale Booth 3.00 40/70
418 Barnard Hall HIST BC2199 A History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. 3.00 points. This lecture course examines the social, cultural, and legal history of witchcraft, magic, and the occult throughout European history. We will examine the values and attitudes that have influenced beliefs about witchcraft and the supernatural, both historically and in the present day, using both primary and secondary sources. This course will pay specific attention to the role of gender and sexuality in the history of witchcraft, as the vast majority of individuals charged in the witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were indeed women. We will also study accusations of witchcraft, breaking down the power dynamics and assumptions at play behind the witch trials, and the impacts of these trials on gender relations in European society. This class will track the intersections of magic and science throughout the early-modern period, and the reconciliation of belief systems during the Enlightenment. We will carry our analysis into the modern period, touching on Victorian spiritualism and mysticism, McCarthyism in the United States, and contemporary goddess worship. We will conclude the semester with an investigation into the role of witchcraft in discussions of gender, race, and sexuality in popular culture Fall 2025: HIST BC2199 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 2199001/00038 M W 11:40am - 12:55pm Dale Booth 3.00 71/90
408 Zankel HIST BC2321 COLONIAL ENCOUNTERS. 3.00 points. Examines the shaping of European cultural identity through encounters with non-European cultures from 1500 to the post-colonial era. Novels, paintings, and films will be among the sources used to examine such topics as exoticism in the Enlightenment, slavery and European capitalism, Orientalism in art, ethnographic writings on the primitive, and tourism
HIST 2375001/00717 T Th 4:10pm - 5:25pm Angelo 3.00 63/70
504 Diana Center Caglioti HIST BC2401 PLTCS CRIME# POLICING IN U.S.. 3.00 points. This course will examine the historical development of crime and the criminal justice system in the United States since the Civil War. The course will give particular focus to the interactions between conceptions of crime, normalcy and deviance, and the broader social and political context of policy making Fall 2025: HIST BC2401 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 2385001/00040 T Th 4:10pm - 5:25pm Angelo 3.00 28/70
328 Milbank Hall Caglioti HIST BC2388 Introduction to History of Science since 1800. 3 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). How has modern science acquired its power to explain and control the world? What are the limits of that power? Topics: the origins of scientific institutions and values; the rise of evolutionary thought and Darwin's impact; the significance of Einstein's physics; ecology and environmental politics; the dilemmas of scientific warfare. HIST BC2401 PLTCS CRIME# POLICING IN U.S.. 3.00 points. This course will examine the historical development of crime and the criminal justice system in the United States since the Civil War. lment The course will give particular focus to the interactions between conceptions of crime, normalcy and deviance, and the broader social and political context of policy making Fall 2025: HIST BC2401 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 2401001/00041 M W 6:10pm - 7:25pm Matthew Vaz 3.00 57/60
504 Diana Center AHIS UN2425 Visual Activism. 4.00 points. How has visual culture played a role within the social movements of the last several decades, such as #BlackLivesMatter and Extinction Rebellion? How, we might ask, is activism made visible; how does it erupt (or disappear) with collective fields of vision? Drawing upon Black South African queer photographer Zanele Muholi’s term “visual activism” as a flexible rubric that encompasses both formal practices and political strategies, this lecture class interrogates contemporary visual cultures of dissent, resistance, and protest as they span a range ent of ideological positions. We will examine recent developments in and around recent intersections of art and politics from around the world, looking closely at performances, photographs, feminist dances, graffiti, murals, street art, posters, pussy hats, and graphic interventions, with a special focus on tactics of illegibility and encodedness. Topics include visual responses to structural racisms, global climate change, indigenous land rights, state violence, gentrification, forced migration, and queer/trans issues ANTH BC2427 ANTHROPOLOGY OF CLIMATE CHANGE. 3.00 points. This course focuses on some of the present, and possible future, socio-ecological conditions of life on planet earth. In particular we will work to understand the historic, economic, political, and socio- cultural forces that created the conditions we call climate change. With this we will take a particular interest in the question of how race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, class, and gender articulate with the material effects of climate change. The course also focuses on how we, as scholars, citizens, and activists can work to alter these current conditions in ways that foster social and ecological justice for all living beings. Although we will ground our scholarship in anthropology, to encourage interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary thought, weekly readings will be drawn from across scholarly and activist canons. While becoming familiar with scholarly and activist conversations about space and place, risk and vulnerability, and ontology and epistemology, we will work through a series of recent events as case studies to understand causes, effects, affects, and potential solutions Spring 2026: ANTH BC2427 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 2413001/00042 M W 11:40am - 12:55pm Mark Carnes 3.00 169/2
304 Barnard Hall HIST BC2440 INTRO AFRICAN-AMERCN HISTORY. 3.00 points. Major themes in African-American History: slave trade, slavery, resistance, segregation, the New Negro, Civil Rights, Black Power, challenges and manifestations of the contemporary Color Line.General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS) HIST BC2477 RACE, CLASS, AND POLITICS IN NEW YORK CITY. 3.00 points. The objectives of this course are: to gain familiarity with the major themes of New York History since 1898, to learn to think historically, and to learn to think and write critically about arguments that underlie historical interpretation. We will also examine and analyze the systems and structures--of race and class--that have shaped life in New York, while seeking to understand how social groups have pursued change inside and outside of such structures Spring 2026: HIST BC2477 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrol
HIST 2477001/00576 M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm Matthew Vaz 3.00 64/60
408 Zankel SOCI UN2500 Mass Incarceration and Beyond. 4.00 points. This course for undergraduate students provides a sociological perspective on mass incarceration and examines alternative politics and policies for reform. Through seminar discussions and presentations, students will engage with key lines of scholarship examining the emergence and consequences of historically large prison populations in the United States and review current policy debates. Key themes of the course will include the close connection between mass incarceration and racial inequality, contemporary criminal justice policy, and alternative visions of justice. Building on a collaboration between a researcher in the field of criminal justice policy (Western) and a leading advocate for reform (Nixon), this course will offer a systematic review of research while also employing strong images and language that convey the moral urgency of America’s incarceration crisis. Enlisting theoretical and empirical analysis paints a clear and convincing picture that mass incarceration is not just a solution to a criminal justice problem, but is a sociological problem itself. Seminar discussions each week will introduce students to key lines of research, present current community justice initiatives, and explore strategies that could significantly reduce incarceration HIST UN2523 HEALTH INEQUALITY: MODERN US. 4.00 points. Through assigned readings and a group research project, students will gain familiarity with a range of historical and social science problems at the intersection of ethnic/racial/sexual formations, technological networks, and health politics since the turn of the twentieth century. Topics to be examined will include, but will not be limited to, black women's health organization and care; HIV/AIDS politics, policy, and community response; benign neglect; urban renewal and gentrification; medical abuses and the legacy of Tuskegee; tuberculosis control; and environmental justice. There are no required qualifications for enrollment, although students will find the material more accessible if they have had previous coursework experience in United States history, pre-health professional (pre-med, pre-nursing, or pre-public health), African-American Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, or American Studies Barnard College Catalogue 2025-2026 437 ARCH UN2530 Life Beyond Emergency: Domesticities of Displacement, Inhabitations of Migration. 3.00 points. Life Beyond Emergency examines constructed environments and spatial practices in contexts of displacement, within the connected histories of colonialism and humanitarianism in the postcolonial world. People migrating under duress, seeking refuge, practicing mutual aid, and sheltering in governmental or nongovernmental settings invest architecture with a critical heritage value and imaginaries of life beyond emergency. The course considers a politics and poetics of an architecture of partitions, borders, and camps: territories and lment domesticities of concern to authorities and inhabited by ordinary people forging solidarities and futures. We will investigate the connected histories and theories of humanitarianism and colonialism, which have not only shaped lives as people inhabit spaces of emergency, but produced rationales for the construction of landscapes and domesticities of refuge, enacted spatial violence and territorial contestations, and structured architectural knowledge. The course examines iconic forms such as refugee camps in relation to histories of colonial institutions such as archives and prisons. From Somalia to Palestine to Bangladesh and beyond, our inquiry into contested ‘borderlands’ where the greatest number of people have been forced to migrate as ‘refugees’ invites students to interrogate normalized discourses and spaces in order to imagine and analyze emergency environments as constructions that people have resisted, endured, and transcended Fall 2025: ARCH UN2530 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 2549001/00043 M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm Andrew 3.00 18/70
Ll002 Milstein Center Lipman HIST BC2567 Women, Race, and Class. 3.00 points. lment Using an intersectional framework, this course traces changing notions of gender and sexuality in the 20th century United States. The course 00 examines how womanhood and feminism were shaped by class, race, ethnicity, culture, sexuality and immigration status. We will explore how the construction of American nationalism and imperialism, as well as the development of citizenship rights, social policy, and labor organizing, were deeply influenced by the politics of gender. Special emphasis will be placed on organizing and women's activism HIST UN2661 LATIN AMERICAN CIVILIZATION II. 4.00 points. CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement This course explores major themes in Latin American history from the independence period (ca 1810) to the present. We will hone in on Latin Americas “chronic” problems of social inequality, political polarization, authoritarianism, incomplete democratization, and troubled memory politics. The course covers economic, social, and cultural histories, and gives special weight to the transnational aspects of Latin American ideological struggles – from its dependency on Western capital to its ideological “inner Cold War” – and the way they influenced the lment subaltern strata of society. The section discussions are a crucial component of the course, and will focus on assigned historiography. While the lecture centers on constructing a cogent meta-narrative for Latin America’s modern era, in the section we will explore not only the historical “facts,” but will instead ask: how do historians know what they know about the past? What sources and analytic methods do they use to write history? And what ethical dilemmas do they confront when narrating politically-sensitive topics?
HIST 2697001/00658 M W 4:10pm - 5:25pm Alfonso 4.00 44/70
504 Diana Center Salgado HIST BC2699 Latin American Civilization II. 4.00 points. This course is intended to offer a survey of the history of a complex and vast region through two centuries. In order to balance the specificity of particular histories and larger processes common to Latin America, units will often start with a general presentation of the main questions and will be followed by lectures devoted to specific countries, regions, or themes. We will look closely at the formation of class and ethnic identities, the struggle around state formation, and the links between Latin America and other regions of the world. We will stress the local dimension of these processes: the specific actors, institutions and experiences that shaped the diversity and commonalities of Latin American societies. The assignments, discussion sections, and lectures are intended to introduce students to the key conceptual problems and the most innovative historical research on the region and to encourage their own critical reading of
HIST 2699001/00322 M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm Alfonso 4.00 48/70
504 Diana Center Salgado HIST BC2803 Gender and Empire. 3 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). Not offered during 2024-2025 academic year. Examines how women experienced empire and asks how their actions and activities produced critical shifts in the workings of colonial societies worldwide. Topics include sexuality, the colonial family, reproduction, race, and political activism. Spring 2026: HIST BC2803 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 2803001/00722 M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm Anupama Rao 3 19/35
207 Milbank Hall HIST BC2840 Topics in South Asian History. 3 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). Not offered during 2024-2025 academic year. recommended. Examines caste and gender as an important lens for understanding the transformations of intimate life and political culture in colonial and post-colonial India. Topics include: conjugality; popular culture violence, sex and the state; and the politics of untouchability. HIST BC2855 Decolonization: Studies in Political Thought and Political lment History. 3 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). Not offered during 2024-2025 academic year. This course will take the historical fact of decolonization in Asia and Africa as a framework for understanding the thought of anticolonial nationalism and the political struggles that preceded it, and the trajectories of postcolonial developmentalism and the contemporary new world order.
HIST 2859001/00157 M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm Anupama Rao 3.00 10/2
111 Milstein Center HIST BC2865 GENDER AND POWER IN CHINA. 3.00 points. HIST BC2920 Urban Healthscapes: A Spatial History of Public Health, c 1200-1900. 3.00 points. This course examines the landscapes of urban public health from the medieval era to the 19th century using spatial analysis. It has two objectives. Thematically, it introduces students to the concept and study of “urban healthscapes” in Europe and the Americas before the age of modern bacteriology. Weekly lectures advance through a sequence of four related themes: (1) medieval and early modern communal, infrastructural, and regulatory spatial practices of public health; (2) urban mortality regimes, epidemics, and societal responses; (3) the relationships between urban form, spatial governance, planning, and public health; and (4) problems of environmental justice, including unequal exposure to health risks and access to health amenities. Methodologically, the course approaches these topics via the lens of historical Geographic Information Systems. In weekly labs, students acquire technical skills of GIS mapping. They learn how to work with spatial data, create GIS maps, conduct spatial analysis, and develop spatial historical arguments and narratives. Labs integrate recently released public hGIS datasets on a variety of cities—such as medieval Bologna and 19th-century New York—directly relevant to the themes covered in lectures. For course assignments, students use these datasets to conduct spatial analyses of urban healthscapes. The course is open to all undergraduates. Previous GIS knowledge is not needed Fall 2025: HIST BC2920 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enro
HIST 2920001/00341 T Th 10:10am - 11:25am Gergely Baics 3.00 29/2
111 Milstein Center Barnard College Catalogue 2025-2026 405 HIST BC2963 History of Globalization. 3.00 points. Globalization emerged as a concept in the 1990s to describe the various supranational forces that shape the contemporary world. Its history, however, is much older, and it encompasses major historical developments such as the formation and global spread of empires, of trade and capitalism, slavery, and migratory movements, as well as environmental and ecological issues. Processes of globalization and deglobalization affect central categories with which to interpret social, political and economic dynamics such as sovereignty, hegemony, and inequality. This course will offer students the critical instruments to discuss globalizing dynamics and how they have affected human societies historically. We will proceed both thematically and chronologically, to develop the analytical instruments to understand how various dimensions of globalization emerged and transformed over time, as well as the different interpretations that scholars have offered to interpret them Fall 2025: HIST BC2963 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 2963001/00044 M W 8:40am - 9:55am Michele 3.00 12/60
504 Diana Center Alacevich HIST UN2972 Unsettling Science. 4.00 points. Unsettling Science invites students to do exactly that: ask big questions about science and interrupt preconceived ideas about what science is and who does it. This course is an introductory dive into the interplay between science, technology, health, environment, and society. By offering deep historical and contemporary perspectives, this course equips students with skills essential to critically exploring not only longstanding questions about the world but also urgent issues of our time. Unsettling Science will provide students with the critical and methodological tools to think creatively about local and global challenges and develop interventions. To do so, the course focuses on a series of fundamental questions that underpin the study of science and society from a variety of perspectives POLS BC3003 POLITICAL THEORY AT THE BORDER. 4.00 points. This lecture course in political theory examines pressing questions related to borders, migration, exile, and displacement: Why do we have borders, and how are they constructed and governed? How do borders relate to political membership and rights? What can borders teach us about modern sovereign power? Are there any limits to state coercion and violence in border enforcement? In what ways do borders manifest racial hierarchies and divides within the global order? How do we rethink political responsibility in response to problems of rightlessness generated by borders? In addressing these questions, the course prioritizes borders as crucial sites for understanding and interrogating key political concepts such as sovereignty, membership, rights, and violence Spring 2026: POLS BC3003 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 2980001/00346 T Th 8:40am - 9:55am Jose Moya 3.00 12/45
328 Milbank Hall HIST BC3546 The Fourteenth Amendment and Its Uses. 4 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). Not offered during 2024-2025 academic year. Preregistration required. The role of the 14th Amendment in shaping the modern American Constitution; theories of judicial review; the rise and fall of economic due process; the creation of civil liberties; the civil rights revolution; and the end of states' rights. HIST BC3587 Remembering Slavery: Critiquing Modern Representations of the Peculiar Institution. 4 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). Preregistration required. The enslavement of people of African descent signifies a crucial historical and cultural marker not only for African-Americans but also for Americans in general. We will interrogate how and why images of slavery continue to be invoked within the American sociocultural landscape (e.g., in films, documentaries, historical novels, and science fiction). HIST BC3669 Inequalities:Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Latin America. 4 points. Not offered during 2024-2025 academic year. Preregistration required. A general background on Latin America recommended but not absolutely required. Course limited to 15 students. Latin America has long been characterized by extreme and enduring inequalities - of class, income, race, and ethnicity. Examines patterns of inequality from different disciplinary perspectives, both historically and in the present. Examines not only causes and solutions but how scholars have approached inequality as an intellectual problem. HIST BC3672 Perspectives on Power in 20th Century Latin America. 4 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). Not offered during 2024-2025 academic year. Preregistration required. Examination of recent Latin American historiography concerns with power in the context of 20th-Century Latin America. Focus on such diverse topics as the Mexican Revolution and migrant culture in Costa Rica, labor mobilization in Chile and the dirty war in Argentina. Themes include the relationship between popular culture and the state; the power of words and the power of symbols; structure and agency; the role of the law; the relationship between leaders and followers; and the llment intersections of gender, race, and power.
Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15.
HIST 2985001/00323 M W 8:40am - 9:55am Michele 3.00 11/50
140 Horace Mann Hall Alacevich HIST BC3076 The Science of World History. 4.00 points. This seminar prepares students to engage with material sciences used in historical studies. Students will examine how ice cores, tree rings, isotopes, bone morphology, genetic materials, and chemical compositions have all been used as keys into the human past, appraising successes and failures. Assignments will offer temporal depth and geographic breadth, ranging from the micro to the global. This course contributes to curricula for the Columbia Center for Science and Society, emphasizing connectivity, migration, and the environment to support the Climate Humanities minor while examining to how material studies are used in broader support of the Science and Society minor. Students from the sciences will meanwhile have an opportunity to develop skills in navigating and communicating within humanistic understandings of rigor. This course will culminate in students selecting a site, collection, or method to evaluate how studies have measured against apparent possibilities for scientific research and historical interpretation in that field Spring 2026: HIST BC3076 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrol
HIST 3030001/11065 Th 12:10pm - 2:00pm Jessica Lee 4.00 15/17
302 Fayerweather POLS BC3035 Feminist Political Thought. 3.00 points. Feminism is often recognized as a political movement. But is there a feminist way of thinking about politics? In this course, we’ll investigate the core premises, provocations, proposals, and tensions of feminism as they relate to specifically political problems, focusing particularly on feminist political thought as it developed in the twentieth century. Who is the subject of feminist politics? What is the meaning of “difference,” and how can—or should—feminists seek to organize across it? What are appropriate topics for politics, and what should remain private? Is the family a space for politics? The household? The body? How much of the personal can, and should, be made political? Are there feminist ways of doing politics? We will consider these questions with reference t to texts from both feminist activists and feminist scholars Fall 2025: POLS BC3035 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 3108001/00343 M 2:10pm - 4:00pm Dale Booth 4.00 9/15
214 Milbank Hall lment HIST BC3119 Capitalism and Enlightenment. 4 points. BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS). Preregistration required. Traces the lively debates amongst the major European Enlightenment figures about the formation of capitalism. Was the new market society ushering in an era of wealth and civilization or was it promoting corruption and exploitation? Particular emphasis on debates about commerce, luxury, greed, poverty, empire, slavery, and liberty.
HIST 3825001/00727 T 4:10pm - 6:00pm Anupama Rao 4.00 2/15
111 Milstein Center HIST BC3830 BOMBAY/MUMBAI AND ITS URBAN IMAGINARIES. 4.00 points. Preregistration required. Preregistration required. Explores the intersections between imagining and materiality in Bombay/Mumbai from its colonial beginnings to the present. Housing, slums, neighborhoods, streets, public culture, contestation, and riots are examined through film, architecture, fiction, history and theory. It is an introduction to the city; and to the imaginative enterprise in history
Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15.
HIST 3870001/00366 W 9:00am - 10:50am Jose Moya 4.00 4/15
318 Milbank Hall ANTH UN3878 Neoliberal Urbanism and the Politics of Exclusion. 4 points. Enrollment limit is 20. This seminar examines the impact of neo-liberal strategies and practices of urban development and governance on contemporary American cities with special emphasis on the dividing practices that have led to the segregation, stigmatization and exclusion of urbanites on the basis of class, race, sex/gender and other power- laden ascriptions of difference and pathology. We will situate the formative period of neoliberal urbanism in the urban renewal or "slum clearance" programs of the 1950s and 1960s-initiatives that registered post-war anxieties concerning civil defense, urban disinvestment and growing populations of racial-cum-ethnic "minorities." Through a reading of key anthropological ethnographies and other literature across disciplines, we will examine topics including: deindustrialization and the construction of the inner city and "ghetto underclass," the cultural politics of neo-liberal governance, the privatization and policing of public space, gated communities, gentrification and socioeconomic polarization, and homelessness RELI UN3881 Indigenous Peoples in International Law I. 4.00 points. How did European-Christians justify the colonization of the Americas? Did these justifications vary between different European empires, and between the Protestant and Catholic faiths, and if so, how? Do these justifications remain in effect in modern jurisprudence and ministries? This class explores these questions by introducing students to the Doctrine of Discovery. The Doctrine of Discovery is the defining legal rationale for European Colonization in the Western Hemisphere. The Doctrine has its origins in a body of ecclesiastic, legal, and philosophical texts dating to the late-fifteenth century, and was summarized by Chief Justice John Marshall of the United States Supreme Court, in the final, unanimous decision the judiciary issued on the 1823 case Johnson v. M’Intosh. Students will be introduced to the major, primary texts that make up the Doctrine, as well as contemporary critical studies of these texts and the Doctrine in general SOCI BC3909 Ethnic Conflict and Unrest. 4 points. Not offered during 2024-2025 academic year. instructor. Enrollment limited to 20 students. Post-1965 immigration in the U.S. has prompted conflicts between new immigrant groups and established racial and ethnic groups. This lment seminar explores ethnic conflict and unrest that takes place in the streets, workplace, and everyday social life. Focus is on sociological theories that explain the tensions associated with the arrival of new immigrants.
Sophomore Standing. SOCI BC1003 or permission of the
HIST 3910001/00367 M 12:10pm - 2:00pm Nara Milanich 4.00 10/15
214 Milbank Hall HRTS UN3001 INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN RIGHTS. 3.00 points. Evolution of the theory and content of human rights; the ideology and impact of human rights movements; national and international human rights law and institutions; their application with attention to universality within states, including the U.S. and internationally Fall 2025: HRTS UN3001 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollmen
HIST 4518001/10355 T 10:10am - 12:00pm Karl Jacoby 4 10/13
311 Fayerweather PSYC GU4612 Frontiers of Justice. 4.00 points. Frontiers of Justice is designed to encourage students and equip them with the skills to become active and effective “Change Agents” within their academic institutions and larger communities.. Oriented by the question, What does justice look like?, this course aims to raise political and social awareness and engagement with the challenges facing New York City and strengthen ties between Columbia University, disadvantaged communities, and city government agencies and community organizations. Through sharing ideas about how to make structural and systemic change in ways that integrate science, law, politics, history, narrative and community engagement, the course is intended to support students in working to break down racial and ethnic barriers and toward a more fair and just society Spring 2026: PSYC GU4612 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
311 Fayerweather RELI GU4619 Islam in Popular Culture. 4.00 points. This course interrogates seminal issues in the academic study of Islam through its popular representation in various forms of media from movies and television to novels and comic books. The class is structured around key theoretical readings from a range of academic disciplines ranging from art history and anthropology to comparative literature and religion. The course begins by placing the controversies surrounding the visual depiction of Muhammad in historical perspective (Gruber). This is followed by an examination of modern portrayals of Muslims in film that highlights both the vilification of the “other” (Shaheen) and the persistence of colonial discourses centered on the “native informant” (Mamdani). Particular emphasis is given to recent pop cultural works that challenge these simplistic discourses of Islam. The second half of the course revisits Muhammad, employing an anthropological framework (Asad) to understand the controversies surrounding Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. The obsession with a gendered depiction of Islam is then examined through an anthropological framework that sheds light on the problems of salvation narratives (Abu Lughod). The course ends with a look at the unique history of Islam in America, particularly the tension between immigrant and African-American communities Barnard College Catalogue 2025-2026 163 MDES GU4627 Significant Others. 4.00 points. What is the relationship between homoeroticism and homosociality? How does this relationship form conceptions of gender and sexuality in ways that might be historically unfamiliar and culturally or regionally specific? We pursue these questions through the lens of friendship and its relationship to ideas and expressions of desire, love, and loyalty in pre-modern times. We begin by considering the intellectual basis of the modern idea of friendship as a private, personal relationship, and trace it back to earlier times when it was often a public relationship of social and political significance. Some of these relationships were between social equals, while many were unequal forms (like patronage) that could bridge social, political or parochial differences. Thinking through the relationships and possible distinctions between erotic love, romantic love and amity (love between friends), we will draw on scholarly works from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, particularly philosophy, sociology, political theory, literature, history, and art history. We will attend to friendship’s work in constituting, maintaining and challenging various social and political orders in a variety of Asian contexts (West, Central, South and East Asian), with comparative reference to scholarship on European and East Asian contexts. Primary source materials will include philosophy, religious manuals, autobiographies, popular love stories, heroic epics, mystical poetry, mirror for princes, paintings, material objects of exchange, and architectural monuments, largely from Islamic and Asian contexts MDES GU4629 Transregional. 4.00 points. History, Politics, Literature, Society -- all these are studied as within national, or, at best, regional frames. What other scales and approaches might be appropriate to the study of particular phenomena or categories in the past, as well as some of the challenges of the llment present? This course introduces advanced undergraduates and graduate students to transregional studies. We explore topics, approaches, methods, problems, and disciplines through which we can cross the regions, particularly the regions of MESAAS. Case studies will consider thinking through and with oceanic studies, circulation, diaspora, shared hermeneutical traditions, lingua francas and their stories (world literatures?), and connected histories to rethink concepts of societies, collective affiliations, cosmopolitanism, and world history. Undergraduates must have taken at least one of the following: Intro to Islamic Civ (UN 2003), Intro to Indian Civ (UN 2357), African Before Colonialism (UN 2915), Societies and Cultures across the Indian Ocean (UN 3445), or some equivalent (check with me) RELI GU4637 TALMUDIC NARRATIVE. 4.00 points. This course examines the rich world of Talmudic narrative and the way it mediates between conflicting perspectives on a range of topics: life and death; love and sexuality; beauty and superficiality; politics and legal theory; religion and society; community and non-conformity; decision-making and the nature of certainty. While we examine each text closely, we will consider different scholars’ answers – and our own answers – to the questions, how are we to view Talmudic narrative generally, both as literature and as cultural artifact? Fall 2025: RELI GU4637 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 4708001/12949 W 10:10am - 12:00pm Tunc Sen 4.00 12/1
311 Fayerweather HIST GU4709 Race and Enslavement in the Middle East. 4.00 points. 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
HIST 4721001/10330 W 4:10pm - 6:00pm Edhem Eldem 4.00 12/17
311 Fayerweather HIST GU4736 Ottoman Westernization and Orientalism in the Long 19th Century. 4.00 points. “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 Fall 2025: HIST GU4736 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollm
HIST 4736001/10329 W 12:10pm - 2:00pm Edhem Eldem 4.00 13/17
311 Fayerweather HIST GU4743 MANUSCRIPTS OF THE MUSLIM WORLD. 4.00 points. 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 Barnard College Catalogue 2025-2026 165 SOCI GU4801 Israel and the Palestinians. 4.00 points. The seminar will examine the main political, economic, and social processes that have been shaping contemporary Israel. The underlying assumption in this seminar is that much of these processes have been shaped by the 100-year Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict. The first part of the course will accordingly focus on the historical background informing the conflict and leading to the Palestinian refugee problem and establishment of a Jewish, but not Palestinian, state in 1948. The second part of the seminar focuses on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank (and Gaza) and the settlement project, as well as on USA's role and its impact on the conflict, the occupation, and Israel. These topics ent did not get much academic attention until recently, but as researchers began to realize that the Occupation and the West Bank settlements are among the most permanent institutions in Israel, they have come under the scrutiny of academic research. The third part the seminar will concentrate on the development of the conflict after the establishment of Israel and its effects on sociological processes and institutions in contemporary Israel. Analyzing patterns of continuity and change in the past seven decades, we will discuss immigration and emigration patterns, as well as issue relating to ethnicity, gender, religion and politics, and the Israeli military POLS GU4845 NAT SECURITY STRAT OF MID EAST. 4.00 points. At the crossroads of three continents, the Middle East is home to many diverse peoples, with ancient and proud cultures, in varying stages of political and socio-economic development, often in conflict. Following the Arab Spring and subsequent upheaval in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, ent Libya and more, the region is in a state of historic flux. The Sunni- Shia rivalry, especially between Saudi Arabia and Iran, growing Iranian- Israeli conflict, population explosion, poverty and authoritarian control, Russian ascendance and US retrenchment, are the primary regional drivers today. Together, these factors have transformed the Middle Eastern landscape, with great consequence for the national security of the countries of the region and their foreign relations. The primary source of the worlds energy resources, the Middle East remains the locus of the terror-WMD-fundamentalist nexus, which continues to pose a significant threat to both regional and international security. The course surveys the national security challenges facing the regions primary players (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinians and Turkey,) and how the convolutions of recent years have affected them. Unlike many Middle East courses, which focus on US policy in the region, the course concentrates on the regional players perceptions of the threats and opportunities they face and the strategies they have adopted to deal with them. It thus provides an essential vantage point for those interested in gaining a deeper understanding of a region, which stands at the center of many of the foreign policy issues of our era. The course is designed for those with a general interest in the Middle East, especially those interested in national security issues, students of comparative politics and future practitioners, with an interest in real world international relations and national security Fall 2025: POLS GU4845 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
A survey of the history of the American South from the colonial era to the present day, with two purposes: first, to afford students an understanding of the special historical characteristics of the South and of southerners; and second, to explore what the experience of the South may teach about America as a nation. Group(s): D Field(s): US Barnard College Catalogue 2025-2026 55
CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement This course offers a survey of main themes in West African history over the last millenium, with particular emphasis on the period from the mid-15th through the 20th century. Themes include the age of West African empires (Ghana, Mali, Songhay); re-alignments of economic and political energies towards the Atlantic coast; the rise and decline of the trans-Atlantic trade in slaves; the advent and demise of colonial rule; and internal displacement, migrations, and revolutions. In the latter part of the course, we will appraise the continuities and ruptures of the colonial and post-colonial eras. Group(s): C Field(s): AFR
A remarkable array of Southern historians, novelists, and essayists have done what Shreve McCannon urges Quentin Compson to do in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!--tell about the South--producing recognized masterpieces of American literature. Taking as examples certain writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, this course explores the issues they confronted, the relationship between time during which and about they wrote, and the art of the written word as exemplified in their work. Group(s): D Field(s): US Limited enrollment. Priority given to senior history majors. After obtaining permission from the professor, please add yourself to the course wait list so the department can register you in the course.
HIST W4768Writing Contemporary African History. 4 points
SEMINAR SECTION OF THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT'S WEBSITE. An exploration of the historiography of contemporary (post-1960) Africa, this course asks what African history is, what is unique about it, and what is at stake in its production. Field(s): AFR
HIST W4928Comparative Slavery and Abolition in the Atlantic World4
points. Not offered during 2024-2025 academic year. SEMINAR SECTION OF THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT'S WEBSITE. This seminar investigates the experiences of slavery and freedom among African-descended people living and laboring in the various parts of the Atlantic World. The course will trace critical aspects of these two major, interconnected historical phenomena with an eye to how specific cases either manifested or troubled broader trends across various slaveholding societies. The first half of the course addresses the history of slavery and the second half pertains to experiences in emancipation. However, since the abolition of slavery occurs at different moments in various areas of the Atlantic World, the course will adhere to a thematic rather than a chronological structure, in its examination of the multiple avenues to freedom available in various regions. Weekly units will approach major themes relevant to both slavery and emancipation, such as racial epistemologies among slaveowners/employers, labor regimes in slave and free societies, cultural innovations among slave and freed communities, gendered discourses and sexual relations within slave and free communities, and slaves’ and freepeople’s resistance to domination. The goal of this course is to broaden students’ comprehension of the history of slavery and freedom, and to promote an understanding of the transition from slavery to freedom in the Americas as creating both continuities and ruptures in the structure and practices of the various societies concerned. Group(s): ABCD Field(s): US/LA
