2007-08 - Pitzer College

132 HISTORY
171BK. History of African-American Women in the United States. (See Black Studies 171BK.)
R. Roberts (Scripps). [not offered 2007-08]
172. Empire and Sexuality. The construction of gender and sexuality was central to
British and French imperialism. This course examines the formation of genders in
colonial Asia and Africa from the 18th through the early 20th-centuries. We will look at
men and women, colonizers and colonized, and hetero- and homosexualities in order to
understand the connections between gender, sexuality, race, and power. Themes will
include gendered discourses that defined political authority and powerlessness; the roles
that women’s bodies played in conceptualizing domesticity and desire; and evolving
imperial attitudes toward miscegenation, citizenship, and rights. C. Johnson.
[not offered 2007-08]
173. Religion, Violence, and Tolerance, 1450-1650. This course examines religious and
social transformations in Europe from 1450 to 1640. Focusing on common people’s
experiences, we will explore the relationship of religion to social action and tolerance
during an era when Latin Christendom broke apart into a religiously divided Europe. We
will examine how religious ideas, practices, and debates fueled social conflict and protest
and under what circumstances religious toleration and intolerance were possible.
C. Johnson. [not offered 2007-08]
174. Holiness, Heresy, and the Body. What was holiness to pre-modern Europe? How
was it expressed physically. What made someone a saint rather than a heretic or a witch?
How did the relationship between sanctity and the body change in Europe from waning
days of the Roman Empire to 1600 C.E.? What are the connections between such people
and the evolution of Christianity in Europe? In order to answer these questions, we will
study people either praised or holy or condemned as heretics, and how their
contemporaries figured out the difference. We will examine the significance of gender,
attitudes towards body and mind, charisma, social status, and relationships to
supernatural or divine powers. C. Johnson. [not offered 2007-08]
175. Magic, Heresy, and Gender in the Atlantic World, 1400-1700. This course examines
the history of witchcraft, magic, and forbidden versus approved belief in the trans-
Atlantic world from 1400 to 1700. We will begin in Europe, and then turn to Spanish
America and New England to examine the contributions of Africans and Native
Americans to both the practice and ideas of witchcraft. Special focus will be given to the
role of the devil and the ways that gender influenced decisions to condemn or accept
ideas about magic and nature. Spring, C. Johnson.
176BK. Is This America: The Modern Civil Rights Movement. (See Black Studies
176BK) R. Roberts (Scripps). [not offered 2007-08]
184. Women and Gender, 1300-1650. Since gender historians asked-”Did women have a
Renaissance?”-debates have raged about how women and gender roles were affected by
the Renaissance and the Reformation. This course examines women’s positions in the
household (as daughters, wives, mothers, and widows) and in the broader community
(as nuns, humanists, artists, prostitutes, and witches) during these economic, social, and
cultural transitions. C. Johnson. [not offered 2007-08]
HISTORY
187. The History and Politics of World Soccer. [also Post 187] This course surveys the
history and politics of world soccer. We will see how culture, politics and history play
themselves out upon the stage of stadium and field, from fascist Italy to visionary
Uruguay to indomitable Cameroon. We will see how the World Cup has become a
catalyst for political and cultural debate, and how it has made, and destroyed, political
regimes. And we will try to understand the game as others, in different times and places,
have seen it: a game freighted with meaning and beauty. N. Boyle/A. Wakefield.
[not offered 2007-08]
196. Explorations in Deep Time. At the end of the 17th century, the bottom dropped out
of time. Those accustomed to thinking of the Earth, and of humanity, according to biblical
timescales now had to confront the possibility of “deep time,” the possibility of a time
whose magnitude defied the imagination. We will examine that shift, and its
consequences, as it played itself out through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
with ramifications into the present. A. Wakefield. [not offered 2007-08]
197. Seminar in History. An introduction to selected major European, American, and
Third World historians, and to problems in the philosophy of historical writing. Required
of all history majors for graduation. Should be taken in junior year. Open to non-history
majors with consent of instructor. May be repeated for credit. Spring, A. Wakefield.
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