The Politics of Human Rights
V28.0104  Downs. 4 points.
This course offers an introduction to the political history of the current international human rights regime, the major sources of prominent contemporary human rights problems, the extent to which major human rights problems are being successfully addressed by the international system and its institutions, and the strategies that are currently being advocated to more effectively reduce the high level of human rights violations. A major emphasis of the course is on analyzing the political inspirations behind the creation of the human rights regime, the role that politics plays in generating human rights crises, and the political forces that operate to limit the effectiveness of international and regional institutions in addressing human rights problems and the suffering that they create.

Urban Collective Violence in America
V28.0105  Walkowitz. 4 points.
This seminar examines the urban origins, character, and changing patterns of violence in American cities. It focuses on collective violence rather than on individual acts of violence, regardless of how many victims an individual may have claimed. One part of the course considers the extent to which American culture and political institutions encourage, sanctify, or militate against aggressive behavior and create a climate for or against violence. In that context, some of our concerns must be comparative, cross-cultural, and transnational. In addition, we address broad interdisciplinary conceptual questions that anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists, in particular, ask about human nature, gender conditioning in Western cultures, and "deviant" subcultures. In creating a typology for the analysis of violence in American cities over time, we distinguish between forms of violence, the direction of changes sought, and the social and material characteristics of the antagonists—is the conflict generated, for example, by a privileged elite seeking to protect the authority that it feels is being jeopardized by aspiring newcomers, or is it rooted in efforts by the dispossessed struggling to gain some notion of a fair share?

Vergil's Aeneid
V28.0106  Santirocco. 4 points.
While not everyone agrees on what books constitute the Western "canon," Vergil's Aeneid is surely one of those texts that, for better or worse, has influenced how we think and act. The book is the epic story of a hero, Aeneas, who escapes from his homeland in Asia, Troy, after it has been sacked by the Greeks. Aeneas wanders westward in search of a new home, arrives in Italy, and then wages a war with the native population to set in motion a divinely ordained process that culminates, centuries after his death, in the founding of Rome. Apart from being a gripping story, the Aeneid can also be read as a foundation myth for the West. It explores the tension between public and private, and between duty and desire; it raises questions about the benefits—and costs—of empire; and it explores increasingly timely questions about the effects that war has on nations and on individuals. The poem also problematizes knowledge, raising very real questions about how (or even if) we know what we think we know. Involves close analysis of this single book, in English translation and collateral readings from other ancient texts as well as a discussion of recent scholarly literature. Students participate in special study trips to several major museums and develop their own special projects.

Cinema and Society in Europe Since 1945
V28.0112  Judt. 4 points.
This seminar addresses aspects of the history of European history since World War II through postwar European cinema. The seminar pays attention to the films themselves, as art and as entertainment; but also and above all is concerned with their subject matter, their contemporary setting, and their impact (at the time and since). Participants meet twice weekly: once to see that week's film, once for discussion. In addition to watching the films, students are required to read assigned works of history dealing with the period. Among the themes to be addressed—in the films, the readings, the class discussion, and, eventually, the final papers—are the following: war and civil war as represented and remembered in the postwar decades; the Cold War; decolonization; the European "economic miracle" and its attendant social impact; the "sixties"; different generations of migration, both into Europe and within and between countries; national identities and the attached stereotypes; the Yugoslav Wars; remembering (and forgetting) Communism; the Holocaust in postwar European consciousness. A final paper requires students to choose one theme and then, with instructor's assistance, identify a body of related films to see and discuss.

The History of Disbelief
V28.0113  Stephens. 4 points.
This seminar takes up an extended history of atheism and doubt (in the context of a history of religion). It begins in Greece and then moves on to a brief discussion of anthropological perspectives on belief, before returning to Greece, to the Hebrews and Rome, to India and Baghdad, and then back to Europe during the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Romantic period. Time is spent in England and America in the 19th century, when disbelief was being tied to radical politics, before moving on to the connection between disbelief and realism, modernism and postmodernism. The main arguments for and against the existence of God are considered. However, the main purpose of this course is to force students to confront and grapple with some of the most sophisticated and profound human expressions of disbelief. Authors whose works are read may include Cicero, Hume, Holbach, Paine, Shelley, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Woolf, and Freud, among others.

From Civil Rights to Gay Liberation: U.S. Social Movements, 1950–1980
V28.0118  Gordon. 4 points.
Social movements have been theorized primarily by social scientists; a typical sociological definition is, episodes of collective behavior and action that create significant social change and command significant grassroots participation. We consider these theories but also ask various questions: What do "organizers" do? How do social movements construct identities and how do identities affect social movements? How do social movements use or repress multiple identities? When are social movements political? How and when do social movements yield or grow out of organizations and what is the impact of the relation between movements and organizations? Are there elite social movements? Are social movements always democratic? When do social movements become violent? Are social movements inevitably vulnerable to demagoguery and authoritarianism?

Jesus and Muhammad
V28.0119  Peters. 4 points.
Jesus and Muhammad were the founders, though in very different senses, of the world's two most populous religious traditions, Christianity and Islam. As such they have been the objects of veneration since their own lifetime and also, since the 19th century, the subjects of intense historical scrutiny by both believers and nonbelievers. The "quest for the historical Jesus" has become in fact almost a laboratory experiment in historiography, and with increasing confidence in the results. The same quest for the "Muhammad of history," as opposed to the "Muhammad of faith," though conducted in much the same way, and with much the same kind of evidence—the testimony of believers—has been somewhat less successful. This seminar attempts to investigate why and, in the process, to expose the participants to the basic tools of "text" historiography: source, form, and redaction criticism, in a comparative setting and as applied to two very similar and yet very different—and very important—men of the past.