History Department

WORLD HISTORY: FRENCH REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT (9 th Grade) (The Department)
This course covers the 19 th and 20 th centuries. Europe is the main actor in the 19 th century, but with the Europeanization of much of the world in the 20 th century, our focus becomes more global. Starting with the impact of the Enlightenment on politics and of the Industrial Revolution on economics and society, we study the “isms” that have dominated the modern world. All students are required to write a term paper on a topic selected from these two centuries.

AMERICAN HISTORY SURVEY (10 th Grade) (The Department)
This course covers American history, from Columbus to the present. Students learn about exploration and colonization, and about the important traditions brought from the old world to the new. The course encompasses the events that have shaped this American republic straight through to where we are today. A basic text, along with source documents, is used.

JUNIOR/SENIOR ELECTIVES  

AMERICA SINCE 1945 (Schragger)
This course examines the political, economic, social, cultural, and intellectual history of the United States during the years since the end of World War II. Topics covered include foreign policy issues such as the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War; social developments such as the civil rights movement, feminism/women’s rights, the rise of the New Right/neoconservatism; economic issues such as the War on Poverty, Reaganomics; cultural and intellectual trends such as the counterculture, the “me” generation, and other relevant topics through the present day. This course uses both primary and secondary sources including relevant photographs, films and documentaries that relate to this time period. There is also a substantial independent research component, and students are responsible for creating several research projects.

AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (McShane)
In the United States , every political question eventually becomes a judicial question.
– Alexis de de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in the Supreme Court.
– Article III, Section 1, Constitution of the United States

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.
– Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury vs. Madison (1803)

The Supreme Court of the United States is the storm center of American political controversy. We spend the year in the eye of that storm. Within the Court’s marble walls, questions between rival political forces in the United States are decided by justices who are at once in a struggle among themselves and in a larger struggle for power in society. In the end, for better or for worse, the law – the Constitution – is what the judges say it is, at least for as long as any of the Court decisions stand; that is, until the Court changes its interpretation of the law, or we the people change the Constitution by formal amendment. The greatest questions in American political life have come to the court to be decided, including slavery and abortion. We study the Court’s decisions, the people and politics that helped make them, and what they wrought.

We follow the Court’s interpretive journey from its early days in the Republic as a weak, struggling branch of government then (and still?) considered the least dangerous branch, through its claim of power and its use of it down through the years – deciding questions of federalism and commerce, foreign affairs and civil rights, executive power and eminent domain. We see it give voice and meaning to the “great silences” in the Constitution such as equal protection and due process of law, and we wonder about privileges and immunities, a matter that awaits real definition. We look at settled law and unsettling decisions, and even see dissent eventually become law.

The storm center: compelling, exciting, fraught with challenges and danger, clothed in the majesty of the law and aided by the image of the enduring marble of its halls. In this course, we watch the Court as it has made law, recovered from self-inflicted wounds, and continues to affect our lives in ways great and small, for better or for worse.

ANCIENT ROME : SOCIETY AND EMPIRE (Deimling)
The Roman Republic , like all states in ancient times, was conceived as a religious and political association, primarily among aristocrats. This course is organized around three topics. First, we examine the richly documented culture of the Romans. Approaching the period from the perspective of social history, we trace the Hellenization of the Romans and consider individual cultural practices and beliefs. Ideas of Roman identity and attitudes toward slavery, family life, and the role of women are carefully addressed. Second, we look at the growth and development of Roman political and imperial power, especially from the third century BC on, and focus on both institutions and famous personalities (including Rome’s enemies like Hannibal, Mithridates, and Cleopatra) to prepare for our third topic. Finally, we seek to answer how it is that a militaristic but fairly broad and essentially constitutional oligarchy collapsed over the course of the late republic, leaving a dictatorship representing only the most powerful elements of Roman society. We attempt to relate this process to cultural, economic, political, personal and imperial factors that we have discussed over the course of the year.

Two source books, Roman Civilization and As the Romans Did, supplement readings drawn from the Histories of Polybius and the Lives of Plutarch. Polybius, a Greek of the Hellenistic period (contemporary with the Roman Republic ), seeks to explain to his urbane Greek audience how these “barbarians from Italy ” came to dominate the whole of the civilized Mediterranean world. Plutarch, writing in the time of the emperor Hadrian, describes the lives and characters of great figures in Roman and Greek history and offers a valuable and entertaining picture of the late republic, the era of civil strife and violence that led to the Rome of Augustus, Caligula, and Nero.

MEDIA AND POLITICS IN 20 TH CENTURY AMERICA (Kapp)
Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.
– Thomas Jefferson

People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true.
– Lewis Lapham

We live in a media-driven culture, a world practically unthinkable without the media, and yet many Americans distrust or even hate the media. What is the role of media in American democracy? What does it mean to have a free press? Can the news be both “entertaining” and “true”? If newspapers don’t report the truth, who is responsible – journalists, media owners, the government, or the consumers? How did we get where we are today, and what can be done?

In this course we pursue a historical understanding of the role of media in American politics from the 18 th century to the present day. We begin with the First Amendment, the history of journalism, the changing role of the media, and the revolutionary changes in the media itself, from political circulars to internet blogs. We then advance through the 20 th century by zooming in on defining moments in media history: William Randolph Hearst’s “production” of the Spanish-American war, FDR’s radio broadcast “fireside chats,” the prime-time televised debated between Kennedy and Nixon, and press coverage of the Vietnam war and Watergate. A major goal is to illumination our larger themes: the media’s power and responsibility, the role of the media during wartime, and the relationship between the presidency and the press.

There is lots of reading and writing in this course, and you can count on becoming a smarter consumer of the news by the year’s end. Alongside our historical survey, you are expected to stay on top of current events. There are conventional writing assignments, one research paper, and at least one project challenging you to express your ideas in the very media being considered. Readings include: Darrell West, The Rise and Fall of the Media Establishment; Tom Patterson, Out of Order; Joe McGinnis, The Selling of the President; and articles by media critics James Fallows, Eric Alterman, Ben Bagdikian, Bernard Goldberg, and Daniel Okrent, among others.

MEDIEVAL HISTORY THROUGH LITERATURE (Stevens)
This course introduces and explores the history of the medieval era (c. 500-1500 AD) through the prism of writing produced during the period. Beginning with early examples of poetry and prose, we travel the length and breadth of the European continent and examine a wide range of both sacred and secular literature in the context of the period that produced it. Works to be read may include Y Gododdin (the oldest extant epic from the British Isles), Beowulf, The Song of Roland, Njal’s Saga (from the Viking settlements of Iceland), The Death of King Arthur (and possibly other Arthurian goodies), Renard the Fox (a 13 th century satire), and the Irish epic Tain Bo Cualinge, as well as examples of hymns, religious mysticism, and student poetry.

Students in this class may expect a fairly heavy and consistent reading load, as well as frequent essays of varying lengths.

REVOLUTIONS (Weickert)
When people rise up against their leaders, they most often have done so to replace an individual ruler or restore traditional privileges and forms of authority. But on rare occasions, they have sought – and achieved – a fundamental change in the structure of a government and even the values of a society. These occasions form the subject matter of this course. We touch on a variety of revolutions and revolutionary movements, closely examining a few: the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the Russian Revolution. Finally, we choose some case studies from the decolonization and nationalist movements that followed World War II and the Cold War.

We study the origins, events and consequences of each revolution with a few basic questions in mind: What social, material, or ideological forces must come together for such a dramatic upheaval to take place? Who, if anyone, controls the process? How are governments overthrown and formed? Do revolutions tend to increase freedom or despotism? And what are the prospects for more and/or different revolutions in the near future?

Readings consist of a wide variety of primary and secondary sources by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Gordon Wood, Bernard Bailyn, Jeremy Black, Alexis de Tocqueville, Lynn Hunt, William Doyle, Joan Landes, Laurent Dubois, David Armitage, Michael Braddick, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Edmund Wilson, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Richard Pipes, Robert Tucker, Ryszard Kapuscinski, and others. There are quizzes and papers, both research and analytical.

RUSSIA , CHINA AND INDIA : EURASIAN GIANTS (Swacker)
The 20 th century was a turbulent period for the three giants of the Eurasian land mass. This course takes a close look at Russia , China and India with the aim of understanding the basic parameters of their respective histories and learning something of their present challenges and changes. International relations, economic issues, religious developments, general cultural trends, politics, and ethnic relations are examined.

Russia is struggling to adjust to individual freedoms and some semblance of a market economy. How are the Russians handling the new freedoms suddenly thrust upon the whole country, and what kind of economic and political system is emerging? The Russian component of this course begins with Kievan Rus in 862 in order to examine basic patterns and trends throughout Russian history. Books include: Ware, The Orthodox Church; Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia’s Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia; Moynahan, The Russian Century.

The segment of the course addressing China surveys the Middle Kingdom’s entire history but emphasizes the 19 th and 20 th centuries. Basic philosophies of antiquity, internal growth and development, the emergence of a syncretized Chinese religion, China ’s response to the West, and the series of convulsive periods of invasion, civil war, revolution, and radical restructuring are addressed. Books include: Watson (ed.), Basic Writings of Chuang Tzu; Spence, The Death of Woman Wang; Snow, Red Star over China.

India is the world’s largest democracy but struggles with ethnic and religious tensions and a bimodal economy in which some industries surge ahead to lead the world while others flounder in backwardness. India ’s success in holding together a diverse country is analyzed. An examination of the rich cultural traditions from Buddhism to Bollywood rounds out the course. Books include: Wiser & Wiser, Behind Mud Walls; Fischer, Gandhi; Friedman, The World Is Flat.

THE TROJAN WAR IN THE WESTERN TRADITION (Marchioro)
The Greeks were fascinated by the war at Troy and the return of their heroes; the Romans were equally intrigued by the story of the band of Trojans who made their way to Latium under Aeneas. This course retraces the tale from the judgment of Paris and the abduction of Helen to the victory of Aeneas over Turnus, and follows the echo of this fundamental myth through Western literature, art and music.

Along the way, we read highlights from three epics (the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid), several plays ancient and modern (by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sartre and O’Neill) and selections from Dante, Goethe, Tennyson and Cavafy). We listen to highlights from operas by Purcell, Monteverdi, Gluck, Berlioz and Strauss, and view slides of art works from Greek vases and Roman wall paintings to masterpieces by Matisse and Dali. The final weeks are devoted to a close reading of several passages from the greatest novel of the Modernist movement, Joyce’s Ulysses.

Come set sail for Troy !

THE TWELFTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE (Bertram)
Clerical passions, comital raids, massing of pilgrims, theft of relics, communal violence, and crusades set the historical backdrop for our study of the High Middle Ages. Using an actual medieval chronicle – the Vézelay Chronicle – as our primary text for the class, we examine in close detail life in the 12 th century. Topics include the Second Crusade, the design and construction of the Basilica of the Magdalene, the Cult of the Saints and the relic trade, the rise of towns and the bourgeoisie, medieval law and high medieval literature, as well as the daily lives of monks and commoners in medieval Burgundy .

In addition to the Chronicle, readings may include sections from Chrétian de Troyes’ Yvain, Brian Tierney’s Crisis of Church and State, The Pilgrim’s Guide to Compostela, P.J. Geary’s Furta Sacra, William of Tyre’s Historia, and Usamah ibn Munqidh’s Memoirs. Written assignments are commensurate with a course of this level, and conclude with a 10-15 page research paper.

WORLD HISTORY: 19 TH AND 20 TH CENTURIES (Everdell)
This course is the basic course, everything you need to know to surprise your legislators with serious opinions on the global economy, the global environment, global culture (High as Modernism and Pop as soccer), global politics and American foreign policy. We do it with a fat but colorful textbook (probably Bulliet), some documentary and faux-documentary film, quizzes and essays, and (to jigsaw the world) one research report on an African or Asian nation, due in February. To target the theme of gender and get the flavor of the turn of the century we read either Freud’s Dora, Kokoschka’s Murderer, the Hope of Women, or Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and view and discuss Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. We hew closely to the timeline (probably by going through it forwards); and since 1750 to 2000 are the last two of the five periods specified by the AP World History course designers, this course – with some review – prepares those who might want to take that particular exam.