History

• CAS HI 505: The American South in History, Literature, and Film
  Explores the American South through literature, film, and other sources. Considers what, if anything, has been distinctive about the Southern experience and how a variety of Americans have imagined the region over time. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS HI 462. Also offered as CAS AM 505.
• CAS HI 506: The Transformation of Early New England: Witches, Whalers and Warfare
  Explores how religious schisms and revival, warfare with native Americans, political revolution, and commercial development transformed New England from a Puritanical agricultural society into an urbanized, industrial society by the outbreak of the American Civil War. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
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  • Historical Consciousness
  • Social Inquiry I
• CAS HI 507: Three Revolutions
  Examines how the English Civil Wars, the Glorious Revolution, and the American Revolution altered Anglo-American political thought and changed governance practices. Writers from Milton to Hamilton and Jefferson grappled with these transformations that created modern understandings of government. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS HI 453.
• CAS HI 510: Topics in Legal History
  Seminar examining current debates in American and international legal history alongside current legal controversies. Students explore legal history through theory and case-studies. Annual topics include religious tolerance, refugees, and sovereignty. Topic for Fall 2016: Global History of Tolerance.
• CAS HI 514: Enlightenment and Its Critics
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor.
  Explores how eighteenth-century criticisms of the Enlightenment have been taken up by twentieth-century thinkers such as Heidegger, Horkheimer, Adorno, Gadamer, and Foucault; discusses recent defenses of Enlightenment ideals of reason, critique and autonomy by Habermas and others. Also offered as CAS PO 592 and CAS PH 412.
• CAS HI 518: Histories of Food and Society
  Introduces themes of the history of food-production, consumption, aesthetics, and ritual through specific historical examples of food and culture(s) and food diasporas of the modern era.
• CAS HI 524: The Cold War in Latin America
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor.
  Meets with CAS IR 524. Examines Cold War in Latin America through chronological examination of "hot- spots" in Latin America. Examines government policies, social movements, economic conditions and power struggles. Compares direct and indirect intervention by U.S. and local efforts to resist or exploit intervention.
• CAS HI 526: Poverty and Democracy: Modern India and the United States in Comparative Perspective
  Through an examination of historical, empirical, and journalistic evidence, students examine the peculiar and pernicious nature of modern and contemporary poverty in the context of two large democracies, India and the United States.
• CAS HI 533: Empire and Power: British Foreign Policy, 1782-Present
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor.
  Examines the evolution of British foreign policy over time as well as the nature of Great Power rivalry. Key themes include formulation of national diplomatic strategies, policy coordination, diplomatic vs. military considerations, alliance politics, and policy over-stretch. Also offered as CAS IR 514.
• CAS HI 537: World War II: Causes, Course, Consequences
  Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and 75 million ordinary and extraordinary dead. From 1939-1945, the whole world waged total war in cruel ways unknown to any history before or since. Explore the causes, course, and consequences of these events.
• CAS HI 541: Comrades & Competitors: US and Soviet Cultural Exchange
  Many of attitudes that color US-Russia relations today come from their history of friendship and enmity in the 20th century. This seminar investigates US-Soviet culture wars, which shaped not only each society's "way of being," but also international relations.
• CAS HI 543: The Prevention of Genocide
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous course in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, or consent of instructor.
  (Meets with CAS IR 437.) Examines various approaches to and challenges in prevention of genocide, including ability of existing international institutions to develop early warning systems. Evaluation of effectiveness of unilateral military action and multilateral options at the UN and regional levels to stop genocide.
• CAS HI 546: Places of Memory: Historic Preservation Theory and Practice
  Covers key aspects of the history, theory, and practice of historic preservation. Preservation is discussed in the context of cultural history and the changing relationship between existing buildings and landscapes and attitudes toward history, memory, invented tradition, and place. Also offered as CAS AM 546 and CAS AH 546.
• CAS HI 549: Nationalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor.
  Explores the origins of modern nationalism as a major force, molding identity and motivating politics. Examines the relationship between nationalism, revolution, and war, as well as the challenges presented by ethnic revivalism, ethnonational conflicts, and globalization.
• CAS HI 560: The American Transcendentalists
  Led by Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and others, the Transcendentalists constituted the first "counter-cultural" movement in American history. Seminar focuses on how and why they did so within the philosophical, religious, literary, antislavery, communitarian, and ecological currents they inhabited.
• CAS HI 568: The Modern Metropolis: Approaches to Urban History
  Cities such as New York, Paris, London, and Shanghai captured the worst problems and most exciting possibilities of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This course investigates how urban spaces facilitated commerce, social life, and the forging of modern identities.
• CAS HI 569: Boston Architectural and Community History Workshop
  This course focuses on class readings, lectures, and research on a single neighborhood or community in Boston (or Greater Boston). Greatest emphasis is on using primary sources-- land titles and deeds, building permits, fire insurance atlases and other maps. Also offered as CAS AH 554 and CAS AM 555.
• CAS HI 580: The History of Racial Thought
  Study of racial thinking and feeling in Europe and the United States since the fifteenth century. Racial thinking in the context of Western encounters with non-European people and Jews; its relation to social, economic, cultural, and political trends. Also offered as CAS AA 580.
• CAS HI 582: Protest and Resistance in the Americas
  How do ordinary people rise up to challenge economic exploitation, racism, police violence, and environmental harm? This course examines protest movements in Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, and the US from the Mexican Revolution to Black Lives Matter.
• CAS HI 584: Labor, Sexuality, and Resistance in the Afro-Atlantic World
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing.
  The role of slavery in shaping the society and culture of the Afro-Atlantic world, highlighting the role of labor, the sexual economy of slave regimes, and the various strategies of resistance deployed by enslaved people. Also offered as CAS AA 514.