This course will explore the environmental history of the city. We will immerse ourselves in a series of cities to really get to know the stories of these streetscapes. By studying art, cartography, literature, and archival materials, we’ll ask how these places took shape over the past four centuries, their changing relationship with the natural world, and how they reflect larger historical and ecological dynamics. How can we make our cities more blue, more green, and more livable? Topics will include: the intentions and results of city planning; urban water and shorelines; gardens, parks, and public spaces; public and ecological health; environmental restoration; and many others. We will also look critically at Lewisburg, rich in evidence of urban aspirations and environmental impacts. FRST
Since 1776, humans have initiated and participated in over 300 revolutions. This course will introduce students to the global history and theory of revolution in the modern period. Its basic premise is that revolution, and the attendant attempts to counter, cordon, or direct it, has defined the modern era of humanity. FRST
This course will provide a basic knowledge of modern European history, tracing how a continent built through imperial plunder was torn apart by two world, one cold, and multiple civil wars. In examining this history, students will discuss and evaluate the incredible array of ideologies, institutions, and practices Europeans invented for the purposes of liberation and domination. AHLG, ARHC, GBCC, FRST
World History II: the Ancient World to 1500CE focuses on the history of the globalization of societies, cultures, and economies after 1500CE, emphasizing trade and exchange while examining local innovations, adaptations, and hybridization. The course considers carefully the relationship of changing religious belief to cultural practices and social concerns; the interplay of economy, technology, and environmental transformation; and, the impact of political change, especially imperial and colonial enterprises, to the course of world history. ARHC, FRST
What does environmental health mean, and who gets to define it? This course examines the historical intersections of environment, race, economics and health in the United States. ARHC, DUSC, EVCN, NPJ, RPI
This course focuses on the 100 Years War (1337-1453) and the Black Plague of 1348-49 that occurred in its middle through a cultural perspective. The course will feature works of medieval literature, medieval historiography, myths and legends, art, and religious writings as a means of understanding how people of various rank and nationality experienced the war and the plague, and how they made sense of these events. The course will also focus upon the political, economic, social, religious, and literary changes that the war and the plague engendered. Special units of the course will focus on changes to knighthood and chivalry, and to the experience of women. FRST, AHLG, ARHC
This course examines the major developments in United States history from 1940 to the present day with particular focus on structural racism. We explore radical and reform politics; changes in the labor force; formal equality and structural inequality; and the criminalization of race and dissent. Students should expect an intermediate reading and writing load. AHLG, ARHC, DUSC, RPI, W2
This course is part of the Inside/Out program with Muncy Women’s Prison. Permission of the instructor required.
This course explores the origins and development of capitalism in the United States. Property rights, how notions of time and space changed markets, prolitarianization, alienation, commodification, and the role the government played (or not) in shaping the economy are some of the topics that we will cover. AHLG, ARHC, DUSC, W2, FRST.
The course will present students with a series of specific past events which will serve as case studies of critical historical and geographical thinking so as to ascertain the usefulness of those events for understanding the present. To this end, students will explore different notions of space and time, place and event, scale and narrative. In particular, the course will examine “hidden histories” and “residual geographies” to address how counternarratives have helped non-dominant peoples preserve and defend their identities and influence and sometimes overturn the politics of oppression. ARHC, CCIP
Crosslisted with UNIV 243/GEOG 243
This course explores the history of Russia, the Soviet Union, and the present Russian Federation through the lens of empire to discover how and why Russia expanded to become the largest country on the globe. The course aims to incorporate both central narratives based in Moscow and Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) and the history of “peripheries” and regional actors in order to provide a nuanced and inclusive picture of all the pieces as part of an interrelated whole. AHLG, ARHC, GBCC, FRST W2
This course will explore both the conceptions of, and experiences of, early modern women in numerous contexts, including marriage and domestic life, the economic sphere, sexuality, religion, legal and judicial procedures, and cases of witchcraft and prostitution. We will consider how events such as the Renaissance and Reformation affected conceptions of women and women’s experiences. Students will read and analyze a variety of secondary and primary sources, including, among the primary sources, literature from the period, works of theology, transcripts of court cases, laws and decrees, paintings of women, and handbooks used by inquisitors in their dealings with suspected witches. AHLG, ARHC, GBCC
“Black Women’s History” is the first course of its kind at Bucknell University: putting Black women at the center of history for an entire semester. We provide a chronological and thematic overview of Black women’s history in the United States, Africa, and Latin America. Together we explore aspects of Black women’s experiences from the 16th century to the present through the themes of slavery, colonialism, post-abolition societies, migration, racial regimes, activism and social justice, decolonization, and post- 1968 social movements. We follow Black women’s various voices – famous, underrecognized, or unknown – and their fight for autonomy, respect, and power with attention to family life, entrepreneurship, activism, work, migration, sexuality, and intra-community gender relations. This course is framed through the interdisciplinary field of Black women’s history. Black women’s voices will vibrate in the critical essays, prose, fiction, poetry, art, and film we read and watch. These texts are by or about Black women. “Black women’s history” illustrates Black women’s unique role as historical actors in the Americas and Africa and their social, political, and culture significance in a global context. AHLG, ARHC, DUSC, GBCC, RPI, W2
Description. AHLG, ARHC, GBCC, SSLG
In the United States, our perception of Mexico and Central America is shaped by our interests: migration and border walls, drug wars and trade deals, tacos and calendars that prophesize the end of the world. But beyond these tropes, what else can we learn about our neighbors south of us? This course provides a survey of Mexican and Central American history from the perspectives of its inhabitants, from 1519 to the present. Through engagement of primary sources, debates of key topics, and cultural immersion, we will get a sense of Mexican and Central American trajectories on their own terms. AHLG, ARHC, GBCC
Environmental history asks us to consider our relationships with nature in the past: how nature has shaped human thought and actions, and in turn, how humans have shaped the world around them. Environmental history includes physical or material dimensions of human intervention (extraction, settlement, transportation, etc.). But it also encompasses the imaginative and ideological: how cartography, art, and science help us absorb the new and unknown in nature into competing empires, bodies of knowledge, networks of exchange, and identities. Throughout, we ask how knowledge of the past might contribute to imagining a better future. For 2024-25 the theme of the seminar will be urban landscapes and the environmental history of the city. The seminar format for this class will allow for extensive, wide-ranging discussion. Each student will also write an in-depth research paper on a topic (issue or place) of their choosing, using primary as well as secondary materials. AHLG, ARHC, EVCN, NPJ, W2
Description. ARHC.
Topics to be considered include Russian participation in international trade and diplomacy, the role of European and Asian cultures in Russian intellectual and cultural life, (im)migration and colonization processes, the status of minorities in the Russian empire and the Soviet Union, and Russia’s role in transnational ideologies and movements. This is a reading-intensive seminar taught at the undergraduate level, suitable for history majors and anyone interested in Russia/Eurasia broadly construed. ARHC, W2
Race is a construction, but its history and consequences are real and stranger than fiction. Even stranger and more compelling are the histories of race south of the border. What happens when we put those two trajectories of race, that of the U.S. and that of Latin America, in conversation?
This seminar engages the history of race and ethnicity in a hemispheric and interdisciplinary context, from 1492 to present. Centering Latin American and Caribbean perspectives, we will investigate how race has been central to social hierarchies, public policy, popular culture, and nation building across the Americas, to illuminating, disturbing, and surprising effect. ARHC
Senior Captsone. Students will be pre-registered for the couse.