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By most accounts, the 16th century ushered in an age of reason that replaced an age of credulous belief in spells and miraculous transformations. This class evaluates such claims, positioning scientific methods and discoveries within the social, economic, cultural, and religious contexts in which they were produced. How did alchemy, magic, and witchcraft, as well as inductive reasoning and technologies of observation all play a part in the constitution of new disciplines and truths?

Taught by

Ellen Wurtzel

This class examines the major themes of existentialism (authenticity vs. inauthenticity, meaninglessness, absurdity, freedom and anguish) through reading philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. We will be looking at the development of existentialism as a philosophical trend as well as the ways existentialist philosophers anticipated, inspired and responded to political events including the rise of Nazism and the end of European Imperialism.

Taught by

Annemarie Sammartino

From Singapore to the Swahili Coast, the Union Jack appeared across nineteenth-century Asia and Africa. Yet the largest empire the world had ever known first emerged and then remained rooted in India. This seminar offers a tour of Indian Ocean horizons in the age of empire, from Elizabethan seadogs to the dissolution of empire and indigenous anticolonialism. We will be especially interested in debating how aspects of today's international order originated in an imperial past.

Taught by

Rishad Choudhury ’07

This course is premised on the idea that violence functions as both a destructive and generative force in American life.  From pre-Columbian times through the mid-nineteenth century, violence and fears thereof provided the context within which people understood themselves, related to one another, and charted their futures. Throughout the semester students will investigate the role of violence in both the demise and growth of early modern identities, attitudes, and institutions.

Taught by

Matthew Bahar