History

Courses

HIST 500a, Approaching History: Problems, Methods, and Theory  Daniel Botsman

An introduction to the professional study of history, which offers new doctoral students an opportunity to explore (and learn from each other about) the diversity of the field, while also addressing issues of shared concern and importance for the future of the discipline. By the end of the term participants have been exposed to some of the key methodological and theoretical approaches historians have developed for studying different time periods, places, and aspects of the human past. Required of all first-year doctoral students.
T 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 502b / ANTH 531b / ARCG 531b / CLSS 815b / EALL 773b / HSAR 564b / JDST 653b / NELC 533b / RLST 803b, Sensory Experiences in Ancient Ritual  Carolyn Laferriere and Andrew Turner

A comparative exploration of the role the senses played in the performance of ancient and premodern ritual, drawing from a range of ancient traditions including those of Greece, Rome, and Egypt, and from cultural traditions of the Near East, India, China, and the New World. Placing particular emphasis on the relationship between art and ritual, we discuss the methods available for reconstructing ancient sensory experience, how the ancient cultures conceived of the senses and perception, and how worshipers’ sensory experiences, whether visual, sonic, olfactory, gustatory, or haptic, were integral aspects in their engagement with the divine within religious ritual. This seminar incorporates material in the Yale Art Gallery.
Th 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 503b / CLSS 861b, Recent Trends, Current Problems, and New Approaches to Ancient History  Joseph Manning

Current trends in the field and an examination of recent work, new theory, and new material. An overview of theory and method in ancient history. Each week is devoted to a case study or a recent monograph in the field.
F 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 508a / CLSS 847a, Climate, Environment, and Ancient History  Joseph Manning

An overview of recent work in paleoclimatology with an emphasis on new climate proxy records and how they are or can be used in historical analysis. We examine in detail several recent case studies at the nexus of climate and history. Attention is paid to critiques of recent work as well as trends in the field.
F 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 531b / MDVL 661b, Medieval Hagiography: Reading the Saints  N. Raymond Clemens

This course examines the lives of the saints and their cults in the late antique and medieval period (to 1500) in Western Christian culture. We attempt to isolate what is unique to medieval Western Europe and what features are common across cultural and chronological boundaries. We examine the attributes of the saints—their special powers and relationship with a transcendent power. We pursue some of the differences between men’s and women’s treatment at the hands of their hagiographers. Finally, we pay special attention to the saints’ relics (body parts) and how they were treated, what powers they had, and how one determined their identify and authenticity.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 536a / MDVL 536a, Charters, Cartularies, and Archives  Paul Freedman and N. Raymond Clemens

An examination of medieval documentation and how to use it to answer questions about medieval politics, society, and religion. Charters are single documents representing transactions, ranging from wills to grants of rights to sales contracts. Cartularies are collections of documents that show how an institution (usually an ecclesiastical institution) acquired property; and they back up and prove rights over those properties. The course looks at archives and ways in which documents end up in archives, how they are organized, and what that can tell us about the issues they focus on.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 560a / RLST 691a, Society and the Supernatural in Early Modern Europe  Carlos Eire

Readings in primary texts from the period 1500–1700 that focus on definitions of the relationship between the natural and supernatural realms, both Catholic and Protestant. Among the topics covered: mystical ecstasy, visions, apparitions, miracles, and demonic possession. All assigned readings in English translation.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 565b / RLST 522b, Early Modern Spain  Carlos Eire

Reading and discussion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish texts (all available in English translation) and also in recent scholarship on early modern Spain.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 582b / AMST 705b / RLST 705b, Readings in Religion in American Society, 1600–2018  Tisa Wenger

This seminar explores intersections of religion and society in American history from the colonial period to the present as well as methodological problems important to their study. It is designed to give graduate students a working knowledge of the field, ranging from major recent studies to bibliographical tools. In short, the seminar is a broad readings course surveying religion in American history from colonization to the present. It is not a specialized research seminar, but it does require a basic understanding of historiography.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 587b / JDST 793b / RLST 799b, Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought  Eliyahu Stern

An overview of Jewish philosophical trends, movements, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. Topics include enlightenment, historicism, socialism, secularism, religious radicalism, and Zionism.
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

HIST 597a / JDST 861a / RLST 797a, Twentieth-Century Jewish Politics: Holocaust, Israel, and American History  David Sorkin

This course explores the changing nature of Jewish politics in relationship to three of the twentieth century’s major events. First we examine Jewish political behavior during the Holocaust, especially the notion of “resistance” vis-à-vis the so-called Jewish councils and the controversy surrounding Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem. Second, we probe the continuities and discontinuities in the establishment of the State of Israel, focusing on the politics of the “Yishuv” (Jewish settlement in Mandatory Palestine) and its relationship to British imperialism. Third, we analyze shifts in the domestic and foreign policies of the organized American Jewish community during the era of the civil rights movement (1946–64).
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 600b / JDST 802b / MDVL 670b, Jewish Everyday Life in the Middle Ages  Micha Perry

Medieval Jewish history has been based primarily on written sources and hence has tended to concentrate on the intellectual male elite, institutions, and events. In recent years, historians are increasingly interested in everyday, or quotidian, history, looking beyond the intellectual elite to society as a whole and using, alongside texts, archaeology and the material world. Following the “material turn,” this seminar focuses on Jewish material culture, using archaeology and art history in the service of cultural history. Among the subjects considered are the Jewish quarter and street; the synagogue; the ritual bath (mikve); the cemetery and gravestone; book culture; charters; jewelry; fashion; and food.
T 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 601a / JDST 790a / RLST 776a, Jewish History, Thought, and Narratives in Medieval Societies  Ivan Marcus

Research seminar that focuses on the two medieval Jewish subcultures of Ashkenaz (northern Christian Europe) and Sefarad (mainly Muslim and Christian Spain).
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 613a / ENGL 592a, English Paleography and Manuscript Culture, 1500–1750  Kathryn James

This course provides a detailed introduction to early modern English paleography and manuscript cultures. The primary objective is for students to acquire fluency in reading the main English hands encountered in the early modern archive. Students become familiar with the documentary forms and methods of production of early modern British manuscripts and with the techniques and terms by which these are understood and described. Topics include Anglicana, secretary, chancery, and italic hands; alphabets; writing techniques; abbreviations; numbers; shorthand and cipher; transcription; the forms and vocabulary associated with early modern letters, sermon-notes, diaries, annotations, inventories, and other documentary forms. The course meets in the Beinecke Library and is based on the library’s early modern English manuscript collections.
F 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 619a, Readings in the Social and Cultural History of Britain, 1500–1750  Keith Wrightson

Reading and discussion of central works in the social and cultural history of the period. The class begins with the fundamental issues of social structure and population dynamics. Thereafter the weekly agenda is decided in consultation, selecting from such topics as urbanization; poverty; household and family relationships; gender and sexuality; community structures; crime and the law; protest and rebellion; education, literacy, and print culture; material culture; popular religion; witchcraft; national identities; agrarian custom and change; history and social memory.
Th 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 654a, Readings in European Cultural History  Carolyn Dean

This course covers readings in European cultural history from 1789 to the present, with a focus on Western Europe.
W 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 656a / PLSC 629a, Histories of Political Thought  Isaac Nakhimovsky

The intersection between political theory and intellectual history, examined from a historiographical rather than an exclusively methodological perspective. The course aims to develop a comparative framework for discussing the kinds of preoccupations and commitments that have animated various important contributions to the history of political thought since the nineteenth century.
W 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 667b / FREN 900b / WGSS 667b, History of Sexuality in Modern Europe  Carolyn Dean

An introduction to the various lines of inquiry informing the history of sexuality. The course asks how historians and others constitute sexuality as an object of inquiry and addresses different arguments about the evolution of sexuality in Europe, including the relationship between sexuality and the state and sexuality and gender.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 677b, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great  Paul Bushkovitch

An introduction to the principal events and issues during the transformation of Russia in the years 1650 to 1725. Topics include political change and the court; Russia in Europe and Asia; religion and the revolution in Russian culture.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 687a, Russia, the USSR, and the World, 1855–1945  Paul Bushkovitch

Political and economic relations of Russia/Soviet Union with Europe, the United States, and Asia from tsarism to socialism.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 701a / AMST 920a, Writing Workshop in U.S. History  Joanne Meyerowitz

For advanced graduate students in History, American Studies, and related fields. Students share and comment on draft dissertation chapters, article manuscripts, and conference papers.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 703a / AMST 803a, Research in Early National America  Joanne Freeman

A research seminar focused on the early national period of American history, broadly defined. Early weeks familiarize students with sources from the period and discuss research and writing strategies. Students produce a publishable article grounded in primary materials.
W 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 704b, Research in Early American and Atlantic History, 1500–1815  Mark Peterson

The Atlantic turn in historical scholarship on colonial America has made it clear that there is a great deal of fundamental work to be done to understand the interconnected world of European colonial projects and their fraught relationships with the peoples of Africa and the Americas. Yale’s archival resources housed in the Beinecke Library, Sterling Library, and the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Divinity School, and other archives offer a treasure trove of materials to form the basis for such research projects. This seminar, to be taught in the Beinecke Library, is designed to introduce graduate students to an array of such source materials and to address challenges and questions in using these sources ranging from orthography to contextualization. The goal is for each student to produce an article-length original research paper grounded in Yale’s collections.
M 9:25am-11:15am

HIST 711a / AFAM 738a / AMST 706a / WGSS 716a, Readings in African American Women’s History  Crystal Feimster

The diversity of African American women’s lives from the colonial era through the late twentieth century. Using primary and secondary sources we explore the social, political, cultural, and economic factors that produced change and transformation in the lives of African American women. Through history, fiction, autobiography, art, religion, film, music, and cultural criticism we discuss and explore the construction of African American women’s activism and feminism; the racial politics of the body, beauty, and complexion; hetero- and same-sex sexualities; intraracial class relations; and the politics of identity, family, and work.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 715a / AFAM 764a / AMST 715a, Readings in Nineteenth-Century America  David Blight

The course explores recent trends and historiography on several problems through the middle of the nineteenth century: sectionalism, expansion; slavery and the Old South; northern society and reform movements; Civil War causation; the meaning of the Confederacy; why the North won the Civil War; the political, constitutional, and social meanings of emancipation and Reconstruction; violence in Reconstruction society; the relationships between social/cultural and military/political history; problems in historical memory; the tension between narrative and analytical history writing; and the ways in which race and gender have reshaped research and interpretive agendas.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 737b, Research Seminar in U.S. Political Economy  Jennifer Klein

Research seminar oriented around themes and issues in U.S. political economy from the late nineteenth century through the end of the twentieth. Readings in the first part of the term look at various approaches to writing about political economy: for example, business history, intellectual history, labor history, biography, local monograph, or transnational history. Research projects explore new possibilities for writing about labor, business, the state, and capitalism.
M 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 746a, Introduction to Public Humanities  Ryan Brasseaux

What is the relationship between knowledge produced in the university and the circulation of ideas among a broader public, between academic expertise on the one hand and nonprofessionalized ways of knowing and thinking on the other? What is possible? This seminar provides an introduction to various institutional relations and to the modes of inquiry, interpretation, and presentation by which practitioners in the humanities seek to invigorate the flow of information and ideas among a public more broadly conceived than the academy, its classrooms, and its exclusive readership of specialists. Topics include public history, museum studies, oral and community history, public art, documentary film and photography, public writing and educational outreach, the socially conscious performing arts, and fundraising. In addition to core readings and discussions, the seminar includes presentations by several practitioners who are currently engaged in different aspects of the Public Humanities. With the help of Yale faculty and affiliated institutions, participants collaborate in developing and executing a Public Humanities project of their own definition and design. Possibilities might include, but are not limited to, an exhibit or installation, a documentary, a set of walking tours, a website, a documents collection for use in public schools. Required for the M.A. with a concentration in Public Humanities.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 747a / AFAM 763a / AMST 731a, Methods and Practices in U.S. Cultural History  Matthew Jacobson

This sampling of U.S. cultural history from the early national period to the present is designed to unfold on two distinct planes. The first is a rendering of U.S. culture itself—a survey, however imperfect, of the major currents, themes, and textures of U.S. culture over time, including its contested ideologies of race and gender, its organization of productivity and pleasure, its media and culture industries, its modes of creating and disseminating “information” and “knowledge,” its resilient subcultures, and its reigning nationalist iconographies and narratives. The second is a sampling of scholarly methods and approaches, a meta-history of “the culture concept” as it has informed historical scholarship in the past few decades. The cultural turn in historiography since the 1980s has resulted in a dramatic reordering of “legitimate” scholarly topics, and hence a markedly different scholarly landscape, including some works that seek to narrate the history of the culture in its own right (Kasson’s history of the amusement park, for instance), and others that resort to cultural forms and artifacts to answer questions regarding politics, nationalism, and power relations (Melani McAlister’s Epic Encounters). In addition to providing a background in U.S. culture, then, this seminar seeks to trace these developments within the discipline, to understand their basis, to sample the means and methods of “the cultural turn,” and to assess the strengths and shortcomings of culture-based historiography as it is now constituted.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

HIST 748a, American Conservatism in the Twentieth Century  Beverly Gage

. An examination of historical and historiographical problems in the study of American conservatism ultural, social, and political...