This course will explore the history of the Indian subcontinent from the 18th century to the present day. We will begin by examining the twilight of the Mughal empire on the one hand, and the gradual expansion of European power across the region on the other. After looking at the ways in which the Portuguese and the Dutch established themselves around the Indian Ocean littoral at a time when terri...

Southeast Asia is one of the world’s most diverse and multifaceted regions. Bounded by India to the west, China to the east, and Australasia to the south, and some of the world’s largest oceans and most contested waterways, it has long been a region in flux. This course aims to introduce students to the Southeast Asian world and its past, from the early modern period through to the end of the twen...

In our modern environment, lit up by electric lights, connected by combustion engines and produced by power stations, we often forget the extent to which society is ultimately powered by the sun. And yet the means through which societies gather and deploy sun power affects the very way in which we organize our social and political lives. This course will introduce students to the transformations s...

The Silk Roads were a network that connected peoples and regions across the Afro-Eurasian landmass. The circulation of people, information, and cultural and material wares through this network impacted the history of all societies involved, shaping political interactions and bringing new technologies, art forms, and ideas. This course will examine how the Silk Roads linked and transformed regions...

This course applies perspectives from Performance Studies to the study of history. Whether we are looking at historical actors or those who interpret their actions for future generations, performance offers a creative and critical lens through which to engage with the past. Throughout the term we will explore how individuals who live in different times and places can be likened to performers on a...

In 1692, hundreds of people, including men, women, and children, were accused of witchcraft. Twenty were executed. What led the members of a small community in Salem, Massachusetts, to persecute and even kill each other? Historians have sought to answer this question for decades. They have approached Salem from a variety of angles, using economic, social, legal, anthropological, and gender studies...

This course explores how attitudes towards death and management of the dead transformed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. How did scientific-medical development, secularisation, imperial expansion, rise of nationalism and rapid urbanisation affect how societies and individuals viewed death and treated the dead? Have death and the dead become increasingly invisible in the modern ag...

This course will introduce students to the relatively new but increasingly important field of environmental history. After looking at how the field has evolved over the last few decades, during a time of increasing environmental instability, this course will examine the central themes that have dominated this field and track how these have changed over time. In the process, this course will highli...

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake – Robert Penn Warren. For as long as we have existed, humans have expressed ourselves through fiction, whether as stories spoken around a bonfire, etched onto cave walls, or printed in books. This course examines...

This course approaches the 'Persianate World' as a connected social and material zone stretching from the Balkans to Bengal and reaching into the borderlands of China and the coast of Oman. We will view this region through the lens of 'connected history' to understand how diverse societies were integrated by shared social practices, circulating commodities, and administrative n...