The Premodern World at War

Fulfills the Group 3 Requirement for History Majors

There are three overarching goals for this course. First, students will gain an understanding of the central role played by warfare in world history in the period up through 1600. Among the topics treated in this context are the nature of military obligation, the relationship between military service and political rights, the role of warfare in defining gender roles, the development of military technology, and the relationship between large-scale warfare and the development of governing institutions. Secondly, students will gain an understanding of the discipline of history. Important topics that students will examine in this context are the range of historical sources available for pre-modern history, and particularly for the investigation of military matters, the problems of historical epistemology, with a particular focus on source criticism, and the techniques used by historians to gain information about the past from the broad array of available source materials. Finally, this course will provide students with an opportunity to improve their critical reading skills, their writing skills, and their oral communication skills. Of these three sets of goals, improving reading, writing and speaking are the most important. 

Epidemics in American History

In this course, students will explore the American past through the careful examination of 8 outbreaks and epidemics between the colonial era and the present: smallpox, yellow fever, polio, typhoid fever, influenza, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19. Students will use case studies to uncover the impact of these diseases on American medicine, politics, economy, demographics, and the daily lives of affected individuals. Students will gain research skills through extensive use of primary sources including newspapers, diaries, archaeological findings, and oral traditions of illness as well as modern sources like photographs, blogs, news, and digital media, and representations of disease on television and film. We will seek to explore the ways that past Americans reacted differently to outbreaks of disease, as well as the ways that our modern experience mirrors the past.