Foundations Courses

GenEd 1017: Forced to Be Free: Americans as Occupiers and Nation-Builders
Andrew Gordon & Erez Manela

Big Question: How have US military occupations abroad, such as in the Philippines, Japan, and most recently Afghanistan and Iraq, shaped both the United States and the world?

With the recent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the question of the United States as an occupier and nation-builder has again been in the headlines. In fact, the United States has launched numerous projects of military occupation and nation-building in foreign lands since the late nineteenth century. These have been contradictory enterprises in at least two ways. Americans have often sought to make other peoples more like them, while at the same time insisting on their difference. And in the name of enabling freedom, Americans have often imposed policies by direct military force or in collaboration with hand-picked leaders. In this course we seek to explain how these contradictory aspects of “Americans as occupiers and nation-builders” played out over the past century-plus, and how they remain relevant to us now.

This course assesses the meanings and legacies of these projects by examining the ideas, strategies, policies, and outcomes of occupations ranging from the Philippines and Haiti early on to Japan, Germany, Korea, and Vietnam in mid-century to, most recently, Afghanistan and Iraq. The course focuses on American activities and ideas but also examines the responses of the occupied.

GenEd 1068: The United States and China
William Kirby 

Big Question: Are the United States and China destined for conflict or can they lead the world in addressing common challenges? 

The United States and China are global economic and military powers. They have a rich history of commerce, friendship, alliance, and antagonism, and both countries have been shaped and re-shaped by the nature of their mutual relations. Their relationship, however, is in crisis, the outcome of which will do much to define the world of the 21st century. In this course, you will explore the present and future of U.S.-China relations in the light of their past. What are the enduring patterns and issues in China’s relations with the United States? How have these two countries perceived each other over time? How has trade defined the relationship from the Opium War to Huawei? How has war shaped experiences in the United States and China, and what are the risks of military confrontation today? What are the prospects for cooperation on global crises such as climate change? What is the role of American and Chinese universities, such as Harvard and Tsinghua, in shaping mutual relations in a time of global pandemic? 

The course emphasizes active, participant-centered discussions of major issues, texts, and contemporary events, and will engage with Harvard Business School cases, experts on the U.S.-China relationship, and the rich resources of Harvard’s schools and the Harvard Center Shanghai. In their final project, students, working in groups, will address a central challenge in the Chinese-American relationship and propose a solution.

GenEd 1088: The Crusades and the Making of East and West
Dimiter Angelov 

Big Question: How did we come to think of the world as split into East and West? 

The course explores the birth of the civilizational categories of East and West during the era of the Crusades, one of the most significant and deeply symbolic events in human history. A series of wars in the Middle Ages fought between Latin Christians and the perceived enemies of Christendom, the Crusades saw the first experiments of European colonization, the rise of Western commercial capitalism, and the emergence of new cultural identities and boundaries across Europe and the Mediterranean. Students will learn about the origins of the Crusades, the most important expeditions, and the long-term consequences. This course is about the Crusades both in history and in memory, about communities in war and peace, and about stories and memories that have endured to the present day. 

GenEd 1159: American Capitalism
Sven Beckert 

Big Question: What is capitalism and how has it unfolded in American history? 

How did capitalism emerge, expand and transform daily life in North America over the past 500 years? In this course, you will gain an in-depth understanding of how North America turned from a minor outpost of the Atlantic economy into the powerhouse of the world economy; how Americans built a capitalist economy; and how that capitalism, in turn, changed every aspect of their lives. In the process, you will come to understand how contemporary capitalism is the result of centuries of human engagement, struggle, and aspirations. Topics range from the structure of Native-American economies to the economic consequences of the Civil War; from the impact of capitalism on gender relations to the changing structures of American businesses; and from the position of the United States in the world economy to the role of the government in channeling economic development. Boston merchants and Georgia sharecroppers, enslaved cotton growers and reforming statesmen, workers at the Ford assembly line and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs will all appear in the story. This course will put particular emphasis on the global context of American economic development and situate it deeply in political and social changes, and course assignments will ask you to think about contemporary problems from historical perspectives. By the end of the semester, you will understand how the contemporary capitalism that so powerfully shapes all of our lives has emerged over the course of several centuries, and how the tools to understand the history of American capitalism can be applied to understanding our contemporary situation. 

GenEd 1160: Harvard Gets Medieval
Daniel Smail 

Big Question: How did our world come to be suffused with medieval images and motifs, and what do we learn about the past and ourselves as we begin to explore the fascinating time on the other side of the stereotypes? 

Starting in the late nineteenth century, Harvard got medieval. Through direct purchase and through the collecting activity of numerous alumnae/i, we began collecting all sorts of texts and artifacts generated by the medieval world of Arabic, Greek, and Latin civilizations. The things that arrived in Harvard’s collections came in many forms, ranging from great architectural monuments and motifs to little stuff such as belt buckles, pilgrims’ flasks, and fragments of pottery. 

Why did we want medieval stuff? And what have we since learned about the world from which it came? This is a course about objects and their meaning, focusing on the objects in Harvard’s collections that derive from western Eurasia and North Africa between the fall of the Roman Empire to the eve of contact with the New World. The five modules in the course begin by introducing you to five objects—things, images, texts—in Harvard’s collections. Each of these objects lies on the edges of canonical knowledge and therefore pose mysteries and invite questions. Our own exploration starts with the context of the object’s acquisition and briefly explores what was happening in the world at the moment of its arrival. What did the acquisition of the medieval mean a hundred years ago? From there, we plunge into the past to explore the objects in their own context, working to grasp technologies, economies, social relations, and beliefs. Among other topics, we explore how medieval people imagined saints, miracles and witchcraft, as well as hell and other nasty regions of the afterworld. We explore trade networks and power structures and beliefs about others. We see how medieval peoples mapped visions of their own world, and work our way into the deep inner structures of their cognition, such as their understandings of time and calendar. Starting from the particular and moving to the general, lectures and assignments seek to frame the cultural context of each object and model how students can develop the skills they need to unpack and explain the unfamiliar. A major course-long assignment will invite students to make their own discoveries in Harvard’s collections and elsewhere and to curate their own virtual gallery of objects that engages with the medieval world. The semester ends with a concrete proposal to the museum regarding areas of the collection that we need to build up to promote the concerns and issues of our own day. 

GenEd 1206: Asian Americans as an American Paradox
Ju Yon Kim, Erika Lee, Taeku Lee

Big Question: How have paradoxical conceptions of Asian Americans informed Asian American history, culture, and politics, shaping modern America and the world?

This course examines how paradoxical conceptions of Asian Americans have informed the identities, experiences, and political and creative contributions of peoples of Asian descent in the United States while shaping national debates concerning race relations, immigration, and foreign policy. We will explore the contradictory positions Asian Americans have had to occupy as both colonial subjects and settlers, “model minorities” and “the yellow peril,” foreign friends and enemies, and people of color and “honorary whites,” and consider their implications for US and transnational histories, politics, and culture.

Hist 12: Conspiracy! A Possibly History of U.S. Politics and Culture
Aaron Jacobs 

Big Question: What kinds of historical insights do conspiracy theories provide? 

From QAnon to vaccine skepticism to false claims of a stolen presidential election, many observers regard the proliferation of conspiracy theories in American society as evidence of a democracy in decline. But what if these recent developments were instead the product of lasting tensions visible through studying the history of American political culture? From the Salem Witch Trials to the January 6th insurrection, this course adopts conspiracy as a lens through which to examine deep-seated anxieties concerning the vitality of the modern public sphere and the historical relationship between power and knowledge.

Hist 14: The First World War
Jamie Martin

Big Question: How can we understand the First World War as a global conflict with far-reaching effects?

The First World War was one of the largest and most devastating conflicts the world has ever seen. It was also one of the first wars that was waged across the entire earth – from Europe to Africa, China, and the Middle East. This course examines the First World War not only as a European conflict, but as a truly global one. Students will explore the origins, course, and legacies of the war and the impact it had on politics and societies around the world. As such, this course will focus not only on the military and economic aspects of the war in its principal European and Middle Eastern theaters but also on how the war transformed conceptions of democracy, the state, gender, race, and art around the world. This course will conclude by looking at how the war’s outcome permanently reshaped international relations and sowed the seeds for many future conflicts.

Hist 21: Labor, Liberty, and Conflict in American History
Joel Suarez

Big Question: How does the perspective of labor history illuminate evolving conceptions of freedom from the colonial period to the present?

This course offers a sweeping survey of the labor history of the United States, tracing how working people have shaped—and been shaped by—evolving ideals of freedom and unfreedom from the colonial period to the present. We will follow the arc of major transformations: the shift from household and agricultural production to industrial capitalism; the rise and fall of slavery; the emergence of unions from craft traditions to industrial organizations; the ascendance and unraveling of the New Deal order; the upheavals of deindustrialization and the restructuring of work and life under neoliberalism. Alongside these familiar themes, we will extend our view to domains often left at the margins of labor history: the economic lives of Native Americans, unwaged reproductive labor, informal labor markets, and the history and politics of money and monetary policy.

At the center of the course is the question of class—how it is defined, how it is lived, and how it has been continually reshaped. We will consider how identity has mediated the composition of the working class, and how workers themselves—enslaved and free, organized and precarious, rural and urban, industrial and service—have unsettled and remade the economic and political order around them. While grounded in social history, the course also engages political, economic, and intellectual debates, offering labor as a lens through which to reconsider the American past and its enduring struggles over liberty and equality.

Hist 32A: The Ottoman Empire and the World, Part One: c. 1000–1550
Cemal Kafadar

Big Question: How can we understand the history of the Ottoman Empire as a global history?

This course surveys the transformation of the medieval world into an early modern one through the vantage point of southern Europe and the Middle East, as the two regions came under the sway of the Ottoman empire. The emergence of a frontier principality into a world empire is explored through topics such as: the eastern Roman and the Perso-Islamic background; the Crusades and the Mongol onslaught; mass migrations and conquests; empire-building; land regime and peasantry; religious conversions; the emergence of a newly-gendered urban life and architecture; management of diversity.

Hist 33: The Holocaust
Jules Riegel

Big Question: What was the historical context from which the Holocaust arose and how do we understand its continuing relevance in the contemporary world?

This course will examine the Holocaust—“the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies and collaborators,” to use the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s concise definition, as well as the persecution and murder of millions of people from other groups: Roma and Sinti (“Gypsies”), disabled people, some Slavic people, Soviet prisoners of war, Black people, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. We will address topics including historical antisemitism, World War I, Weimar Germany, the Nazi rise to power, Hitler’s role in the Nazi dictatorship, the persecution and murder of European Jewry, Jewish responses to persecution, and the attitude of the Allied nations. We will also place the Holocaust in the larger context of mass murder and genocide, and address some of its theological, moral, and political implications. 

Hist 38: Modern China: 1894–Present 
Arunabh Ghosh

Big Question: How has China redefined itself over the past one hundred eventful years? 

This lecture course will introduce you to the history of post-imperial China (1912- ). Beginning with the decline of the Qing and the dramatic collapse of China’s imperial system in 1911, the course examines how China has sought to redefine itself anew over the past one-hundred years. The revolutionary years of 1911, 1949, and 1978 will serve as our three fulcra, as we investigate how China has tussled with a variety of ‘isms’ (such as republicanism, militarism, nationalism, socialism, and state capitalism) in its pursuit of an appropriate system of governance and social organization. In so doing, we shall also explore the social, economic, cultural, and scientific changes wrought by these varied attempts at state-building. 

Hist 46: Life after Hitler: How Decolonization and Global Cold War Shaped Germany after WW2
David Spreen 

Big Question: How do we understand Germany’s global role in the aftermath of World War II? 

This course surveys the political, cultural, and social history of the three Germanies following Germany’s defeat in 1945. We will explore a multitude of different perspectives within and about German history. Students will learn about the ways in which identity, belonging, and “Germanness” were negotiated and renegotiated in the postwar period. To this end, the course will embed Germany’s Cold War in the broader contexts of the postwar order, the liberation of Europe’s former colonies, and the violent and economic upheavals of the global Cold War.

Hist 47: The Cold War
Serhii Plokhii

Big Question: How do we understand relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in the broader context of the global Cold War?

This course introduces students to major topics in Cold War history. It begins with a discussion of the diplomatic legacy of the two world wars, proceeds to an analysis of postwar rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, and ends with the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), the disintegration of the Soviet Union (1991), and the making of the post-Cold War world order. The course discusses the major crises of the Cold War era, focusing on the role of diplomacy in preserving peace between the two nuclear superpowers. While its main emphasis is on government and society in the United States and the Soviet Union, lectures and readings will also cover aspects of the political, economic, social, and cultural history of other lands involved in the great-power rivalry, including the countries of Eastern Europe, the Far East, the Middle East, and Central America. Special attention will be paid to the role of ideology and culture in Cold War rivalry. Class discussions will be based on an analysis and interpretation of primary sources.

Hist 57: Empire, Nation, Partition: Modern South Asia in Global Perspective
Sugata Bose

Big Question: What insights do we gain when we recast South Asian history in a global framework?

This course provides an analytical survey of the Mughal, British and late Ottoman empires; anti-
colonial nationalism in South Asia and its connections with freedom struggles elsewhere in the
world; the partitions of India, Ireland and Palestine at the moment of British decolonization in
comparative perspective; and their long shadow on post-colonial history.

Our discussions with cover the entire spectrum of modern South Asian history—social, cultural, economic, and political—with a focus on the last three centuries from c. 1700 to the present. Selected primary sources will be made available through the Canvas site. The course seeks to embellish a lively historical narrative told through lectures with the perception and articulation of vision and sound. We plan to use a wide array of photographs, slides, voice tapes, music recordings and film footage that will evoke and interpret the subcontinent’s modern history.

Hist 66: The Coming of the Civil War
Walter Johnson

Big Question: How do we understand the Civil War in the context of 19th-century imperialism?

This course treats the history of the 19th-century US and the Civil War in light of the history of US imperialism, especially the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the illegal invasions of Cuba and Nicaragua in the 1850s. Likewise, it relates the history of slavery in the US to the Haitian Revolution, the Louisiana Purchase, Indian removal, Atlantic cotton, land and money markets, and the hemispheric history of antislavery.

Hist 68: The 20th-Century United States: Politics, Society, Culture
Lisa McGirr

Big Question: How did the US become the most powerful country in the world during the twentieth century?

This course charts key developments in the history of the 20th century United States beginning with United States emergence as a leader of global capitalism. Topics include World War I, twenties culture wars, the New Deal, World War II, the Cold War, sixties social movements, neo-liberalism, and the rise of mass incarceration. The contest over the meaning of American freedom at all levels of American society—from Congressional debates to the picket line—forms a central theme. The course includes discussion of high and low politics, political economy, and shifting patterns of culture. The course has two goals: First, to provide you with the foundational knowledge about past political struggles that will help students understand the roots of issues still wrestled with today; and second, to introduce you to historical thinking and interpretation through the analysis of primary and secondary sources.  

Hist 70: The History of Sub-Saharan Africa to 1860
Emmanuel Akyeampong 

Big Question: Which tools and methods are most helpful for constructing the history of Sub-Saharan Africa before 1860? 

This course provides you with an introduction to the history of sub-Saharan Africa until 1860, with attention to the range of methodologies used in writing early African history, including oral history, archaeology, and anthropology. We will examine crucial themes such as the impact of climate change on migration and settlement; trade and commerce; state formation; slavery; and the impact of Islam and Christianity on the continent. By the end of the course, you will have gained a methodological and historiographical framework with which to understand specific historical processes and events.