For Students: Courses

HISTH285B01 India and Britain: The East India Company, 1600-1857

NEW COURSE.
This course is structured around Indian and British histories of the British Empire in India with a special focus upon the East India Company. We will begin with the emergence of the East India Company and ends with the rebellion of 1857, focusing primarily on the last hundred years of this period. Prerequisites: Sophomore standing or above.

ICPRH243B01 Documentary Video Production

This class will focus on the craft of documentary filmmaking. Students will learn the basics of video production and post-production, including use of HDV cameras, lighting and sound techniques, and nonlinear video editing using Final Cut Pro. They will engage in production and editing exercises, culminating in the completion of short documentaries during the semester.

In the process of learning to make their own documentaries, students will also confront key questions of the documentary genre, including: How does one person represent another? How does a maker represent her/himself? How are power relations expressed and challenged through these representations? What is the role of documentary in the construction of history? What is the relationship of documentary to memory? How do documentary representations differ from fictional representations? The course will include readings on documentary film history and theory, participation in class critiques of student projects, and a weekly Sunday evening documentary screening series (attendance required).

ARTSH229B01 Topics in Rhetorical Theory: Roland Barthes and the Image

An exploration of the rhetoric of visual culture through an examination of 20th century French critic Roland Barthes' many writings on photography, film, and what he calls the "civilized code of perfect illusions." We will spend the semester reading his texts, charting the trajectory of a career that begins with the euphoria of an ever-expanding semiotic and ends with a meditation on the limits of this very project.

ANTHH226B01 Women's Narratives in the Arab Middle East

NEW COURSE.
This course will examine narratives written by women in the Arab Middle East from the early 20th century to the present. The underlying assumption of the course is that literary works can be read ethnographically. As such, this course will provide an alternative approach to understanding the region. Rather than dealing with scholarly works, we will read narratives, particularly memoirs and novels. While it is taken for granted that memoirs document the social and political life under which an author lived, novels can also be deeply rooted in historical contexts. In addition to their literary values, memoirs and novels provide a rich source to understand social questions, political struggles, and historical events. The first part of the course will address the representation of the Arab world in Western thought, namely Orientalism, and its impact on self-understanding and internal Orientalization. We will be particularly attuned to the role women play in these Orientalist and Orientalizing depictions. We will also discuss the historical and political contexts of the region. The major part of the course will focus on novels and memoirs written by Arab women. Some of the questions that we will discuss are: modernity vs. tradition, social and political changes following the rise of the modern nation-states and colonial rule, representation of the self and the other, the relation between "the West" and "the East," gender and sexuality, and questions of (undermining) national histories.

HISTH335A01 Sex, Law, and the State in Europe and the Ottoman Empire
Co-taught with Lisa Jane Graham.

NEW COURSE.
In the past couple of decades, legal records have served as the basis for many of the most groundbreaking works in the history of sexuality. Leslie Pierce, Cynthia Herrup, and Isabel Hull are amongst the many who have used legal evidence in innovative and revealing ways. In this upper-level seminar, we will read these works closely and draw from their insights in our own examinations of primary sources. We will eschew facile East-West comparisons and consider how the complexities of state formation shaped the histories of the law as it applied to matters of sexuality in Europe and the Ottoman Empire.