Table of Contents - Hartwick College

of leisure time, race and segregation, immigration and ethnicity, gender,
labor, and national identity.
245 World War II on the Home Front (3 credits) When students
enroll in this course, they enlist “for the duration,” in order to
“reconstruct” the Home Front from Pearl Harbor to “V-J” Day. This
course is normally taught in January Term with its daily classes in only
one subject, giving students the opportunity to solely and totally
concentrate their attention on this goal, making it easier to reconstruct
the home front. Daily exercises in recreating the home front include music
of the period, letters, diary entries, columns by war correspondent Ernie
Pyle, excerpts from oral histories, and incorporation of WWII home front
artifacts. Besides this “hands-on” approach to history, students critically
analyze WWII as “The Good War” and examine the historiography,
especially the debate over WWII as a “watershed” in the 20 th century,
addressing the question, was WWII’s impact on society an “example of
continuity or change?”
261 Indian Ocean World, 1300-1800 (3 credits) An introduction to
the history of the peoples and societies of India, Arabia, and East Africa,
with an emphasis on the role of trade, religion, and cultural exchange in
shaping the civilizations of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, cities
of the East African Swahili Coast and the Ottoman Empire. The course
will examine the thriving indigenous shipping and other exchange
networks before the arrival of Europeans in 1498, with a primary focus on
the Indian Ocean as a hub of human exchanges between India, Arabia,
and Africa in the era of the classical Islamic world. (NTW)
262 Politics of Identity: Globalization, Diaspora, and Cultural
Diversity (3 credits) In our “global” age identity continues to be an
extremely fascinating as well as complicated phenomenon. By utilizing
journalistic accounts on contemporary issues, narratives, theoretical
readings, feature movies, and documentary films, this course seeks to
understand who and what we are, both at individual and collective levels,
with special emphasis on globalization, Diaspora, and cultural diversity.
(SBA)
263 Modern East Asia (3 credits) Following a brief survey of Imperial
Chinese under the Ming dynasty and the relations between the Chinese
empire and its political neighbors, this course will examine the social and
cultural tensions within the region and the disruptive impact of the initial
European contact. European imperialism increased the internal tensions
in all East Asian states as elites struggled to find an effective balance
between modernization and westernization. The difficulties in achieving
such a balance led to murderous wars and bloody revolutions of the
political left and right in the 20 th century. Throughout centuries, old
cultural traditions continue to inform aspects of family life, philosophy,
aesthetics, gender relations, and cultural identity. (NTW)
273 The American South (3 credits) Is the South “different” from
other parts of the United States? Is there one South, or many Souths? Is
the very title of this class an oxymoron? In this course we will examine
that part of the United States bounded by the Edwards Plateau, the Red
River, the Ohio River, and, of course, the Mason-Dixon Line, and pose
these very questions. Our starting assumption is that Southernness is
essentially a historical creation. Course themes include: conceptualizing
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