Major developments in the political, social, and religious history of Western Europe …
Major developments in the political, social, and religious history of Western Europe from the accession of Diocletian to the feudal transformation. Topics include the conversion of Europe to Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam and the Arabs, the "Dark Ages," Charlemagne and the Carolingian renaissance, and the Viking and Hungarian invasions.
This course examines European music from the early Middle Ages until the …
This course examines European music from the early Middle Ages until the end of the Renaissance. It includes a chronological survey and intensive study of three topics: chant and its development, music in Italy 1340-1420, and music in Elizabethan England. Instruction focuses on methods and pitfalls in studying music of the distant past. Students’ papers, problem sets, and presentations explore lives, genres, and works in depth. Works are studied in facsimile of original notation, and from original manuscripts at MIT, where possible.
Word Count: 190685 (Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by …
Word Count: 190685
(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)
This subject examines the interactions of East Asia with the rest of …
This subject examines the interactions of East Asia with the rest of the world and the relationships of each of the East Asian countries with each other, from ca. 1500 to 2000 A.D. Primary focus on China and Japan, with some reference to Korea, Vietnam, and Central Asia. Asks how international diplomatic, commercial, military, religious, and cultural relationships joined with internal processes to direct the development of East Asian societies. Subject addresses perceptions and misperceptions among East Asians and foreigners.
This course offers a comprehensive survey of world economic history, designed to …
This course offers a comprehensive survey of world economic history, designed to introduce economics graduate students to the subject matter and methodology of economic history. Topics are chosen to show a wide variety of historical experience and illuminate the process of industrialization. A final term paper is due at the end of the course.
This course is a survey of world economic history, and it introduces …
This course is a survey of world economic history, and it introduces economics students to the subject matter and methodology of economic history. It is designed to expand the range of empirical settings in students’ research by drawing upon historical material and long-run data. Topics are chosen to show a wide variety of historical experience and illuminate the process of industrialization. The emphasis will be on questions related to labor markets and economic growth.
This course gives a historical perspective on financial panics. Topics include the …
This course gives a historical perspective on financial panics. Topics include the growth of the industrial world, the Great Depression and surrounding events, and more recent topics such as the first oil crisis, Japanese stagnation, and conditions following the financial crisis of 2008.
This course will explore the relation of women and men in both …
This course will explore the relation of women and men in both pre-industrial and modern societies to the changing map of public and private (household) work spaces, examining how that map affected their opportunities for both productive activity and the consumption of goods and leisure. The reproductive strategies of women, either in conjunction with or in opposition to their families, will be the third major theme of the course. We will consider how a place and an ideal of the “domestic” arose in the early modern west, to what extent it was effective in limiting the economic position of women, and how it has been challenged, and with what success, in the post-industrial period. Finally, we will consider some of the policy implications for contemporary societies as they respond to changes in the composition of the paid work force, as well as to radical changes in their national demographic profiles. Although most of the material for the course will focus on western Europe since the Middle Ages and on the United States, we will also consider how these issues have played themselves out in non-western cultures.
When John Locke declared (in the 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding) that …
When John Locke declared (in the 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding) that knowledge was derived solely from experience, he raised the possibility that human understanding and identity were not the products of God’s will or of immutable laws of nature so much as of one’s personal history and background. If on the one hand Locke’s theory led some to pronounce that individuals could determine the course of their own lives, however, the idea that we are the products of our experience just as readily supported the conviction that we are nothing more than machines acting out lives whose destinies we do not control. This course will track the formulation of that problem, and a variety of responses to it, in the literature of the “long eighteenth century.” Readings will range widely across genre, from lyric poetry and the novel to diary entries, philosophical prose, and political essays, including texts by Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Mary Astell, David Hume, Laurence Sterne, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Hays, and Mary Shelley. Topics to be discussed include the construction of gender identities; the individual in society; imagination and the poet’s work. There will be two essays, one 5-6 pages and one 8-10 pages in length, and required presentations.
This class explores the changing roles of physics and physicists during the …
This class explores the changing roles of physics and physicists during the 20th century. Topics range from relativity theory and quantum mechanics to high-energy physics and cosmology. We examine the development of modern physics and the role of physicists within shifting institutional, cultural, and political contexts, such as Imperial Britain, Nazi Germany, and the US during World War II, and the Cold War.
This course surveys the social, cultural, and political development of western Europe …
This course surveys the social, cultural, and political development of western Europe between 500 and 1350. A number of topics are incorporated into the broad chronological sweep of the course, including: the Germanic conquest of the ancient Mediterranean world; the rise of a distinct northern culture and the Carolingian Renaissance; the emergence of feudalism and the breakdown of political order; contact with the Byzantine and Islamic East and the Crusading movement; the quality of religious life; the vitality of the high medieval economy and culture; and the catastrophes of the fourteenth century.
This course is an investigation of the Roman empire of Augustus, the …
This course is an investigation of the Roman empire of Augustus, the Frankish empire of Charlemagne, and the English empire in the age of the Hundred Years War. Students examine different types of evidence, read across a variety of disciplines, and develop skills to identify continuities and changes in ancient and medieval societies. Each term this course is different, looking at different materials from a variety of domains to explore ancient and mideveal studies. This version is a capture of the course as it was taught in 2012, and does not reflect how it is taught currently.
This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) …
This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the growth of ideas about nature and the natural environment of mankind. The term nature in this context has to do with the varying ways in which the physical world has been conceived as the habitation of mankind, a source of imperatives for the collective organization and conduct of human life. In this sense, nature is less the object of complex scientific investigation than the object of individual experience and direct observation. Using the term “nature” in this sense, we can say that modern reference to “the environment” owes much to three ideas about the relation of mankind to nature. In the first of these, which harks back to ancient medical theories and notions about weather, geographical nature was seen as a neutral agency affecting or transforming agent of mankind’s character and institutions. In the second, which derives from religious and classical sources in the Western tradition, the earth was designed as a fit environment for mankind or, at the least, as adequately suited for its abode, and civic or political life was taken to be consonant with the natural world. In the third, which also makes its appearance in the ancient world but becomes important only much later, nature and mankind are regarded as antagonists, and one must conquer the other or be subjugated by it.
This course will explore how Americans have confronted energy challenges since the …
This course will explore how Americans have confronted energy challenges since the end of World War II. Beginning in the 1970s, Americans worried about the supply of energy. As American production of oil declined, would the US be able to secure enough fuel to sustain their high consumption lifestyles? At the same time, Americans also began to fear the environmental side affects of energy use. Even if the US had enough fossil fuel, would its consumption be detrimental to health and safety? This class examines how Americans thought about these questions in the last half-century. We will consider the political, diplomatic, economic, cultural, and technological aspects of the energy crisis. Topics include nuclear power, suburbanization and the new car culture, the environmental movement and the challenges of clean energy, the Middle East and supply of oil, the energy crisis of the 1970s, and global warming.
Energy policy sits at the crossroads of science and policy. And now, …
Energy policy sits at the crossroads of science and policy. And now, energy and climate policy are inextricably linked; the policies we choose have very real consequences for our climate. This intersection of science and policy is chaotic and bustles with activity motivated by various competing (and conflicting) interests and factors. We must understand the motivations driving them and bridge the divides between our reliance on fossil fuels and our need to transition to less carbon-intensive and renewable alternatives. While the science and math behind these problems is often fairly straightforward, the politics and behavioral changes are not. Come stand at this busy intersection with us as we navigate toward progressive climate policy alternatives at all scales of governance!
A survey of how America has become the world’s largest consumer of …
A survey of how America has become the world’s largest consumer of energy. Explores American history from the perspective of energy and its relationship to politics, diplomacy, the economy, science and technology, labor, culture, and the environment. Topics include muscle and water power in early America, coal and the Industrial Revolution, electrification, energy consumption in the home, oil and U.S. foreign policy, automobiles and suburbanization, nuclear power, OPEC and the 70’s energy crisis, global warming, and possible paths for the future.
Short Description: Les manières de faire de la science aujourd’hui sont multiples …
Short Description: Les manières de faire de la science aujourd’hui sont multiples et innovantes. Pourtant, un modèle normatif continue d’écraser les autres : le modèle positiviste. Il soutient que la science vise l’étude objective de la réalité en s’appuyant sur l’application rigoureuse de la méthode « scientifique » dont la neutralité est un des emblèmes. Cette vision est vivement contestée dans plusieurs champs de recherche, tels que les études sociales des sciences, l’histoire des sciences et les études féministes et décoloniales. Ces critiques considèrent que les théories scientifiques sont construites et influencées par le contexte social, culturel et politique dans lequel travaillent les scientifiques, ainsi que par les conditions matérielles de leur travail. Cet ancrage social de la science rend impensable, pour ces critiques, l’idée même de neutralité. Faut-il donc renoncer à cette exigence normative? Par quelle autre norme la remplacer?Né d’un colloque tenu en 2017 à Montréal, ce livre propose les réflexions et analyses de 25 auteurs et autrices issues de sept pays sur ces questions. Études de cas, analyses réflexives et discussions théoriques s’entrecroisent pour permettre une réflexion collective approfondie sur ces enjeux anciens, mais constamment renouvelés, notamment dans le contexte du nouveau statut précaire de l’expertise scientifique dans l’espace public.
Long Description: Les manières de faire de la science aujourd’hui sont multiples et innovantes. Pourtant, un modèle normatif continue d’écraser les autres : le modèle positiviste. Il soutient que la science vise l’étude objective de la réalité en s’appuyant sur l’application rigoureuse de la méthode « scientifique » dont la neutralité est un des emblèmes. Cette vision est vivement contestée dans plusieurs champs de recherche, tels que les études sociales des sciences, l’histoire des sciences et les études féministes et décoloniales. Ces critiques considèrent que les théories scientifiques sont construites et influencées par le contexte social, culturel et politique dans lequel travaillent les scientifiques, ainsi que par les conditions matérielles de leur travail. Cet ancrage social de la science rend impensable, pour ces critiques, l’idée même de neutralité. Faut-il donc renoncer à cette exigence normative? Par quelle autre norme la remplacer?
Né d’un colloque tenu en 2017 à Montréal, ce livre propose les réflexions et analyses de 25 auteurs et autrices issues de sept pays sur ces questions. Études de cas, analyses réflexives et discussions théoriques s’entrecroisent pour permettre une réflexion collective approfondie sur ces enjeux anciens, mais constamment renouvelés, notamment dans le contexte du nouveau statut précaire de l’expertise scientifique dans l’espace public.
Word Count: 189292
ISBN: 978-2-924661-54-3
(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)
This project discovers the history of Modern Europe, starting at the Hundred …
This project discovers the history of Modern Europe, starting at the Hundred Years War and ending at the present time. A chronological perspective of history is attempted within this text. Although this is the case, it is also important to understand patterns within European History, therefore chapters will attempt to cover a breadth of material even though their titles might be that of a specific pattern in history rather than a time period.
From pineapples grown in Hawaii to English-speaking call centers outsourced to India, …
From pineapples grown in Hawaii to English-speaking call centers outsourced to India, the legacy of the “Age of Imperialism” appears everywhere in our modern world. This class explores the history of European imperialism in its political, economic, and cultural dimensions from the 1840s through the 1960s.
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