This course is an introduction to the history of North America, from the arrival of Europeans to the middle of the nineteenth century. This course also serves as an introduction to the practice of history. Students are expected to develop their historical literacy through critical evaluation and analysis of historical evidence, contextualization of ideas and events, appreciation of differing scholarly interpretations, consideration of diverse historical research methods, and written and oral articulation of logical, rigorous, and creative thinking. ARHC AHLC
This course
This course examines how the diplomatic and domestic relations of the United States are intertwined in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and underpinned by a politics of fear. Course themes include efforts to define and advance democracy during the global Cold War and the “War on Terror.” Although focused on the US, this course will take a global perspective and discuss democracy, Communism, imperialism, and terrorism.
This course examines maps as records of environmental, cultural, and political history, focusing especially on North America and the North Atlantic world, as a way to develop critical thinking and visual literacy.
| This course seeks to answer the quintessential question of the American Revolution: How revolutionary was the Revolution? In order to do so, we assess who led the Revolution, what it entailed, how it was perceived and experienced, and why we might interpret it as a radical moment in history. Thus, several exploratory themes guide our analysis, including: imperial and colonial governance; settler colonialism; imperial contestation; Native-American agency; the war beyond the Atlantic Seaboard; soldier experiences; the role of slavery and enslaved people; African-American initiatives and contributions; gender ideologies; the activism of women; liberalism, republicanism, egalitarianism, and democracy; consumerism and identity; and nation-building. ARHC, DUSC, AHLG |
“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.
W2, RPI, ARHC, AHLG, GBCC, DUSC
| This course examines some of the most significant aspects of popular culture in Africa and the Diaspora. This course is an exercise in looking closely at and asking questions about popular culture as a social, political, cultural, artistic, and personal act of resistance and protest as well of one that is visionary towards the future in Africa and its Diasporas. AHLG, ARHC, EGHU, GBCC, SSLG, W2 |
The course will treat the conflicts as a set of interrelated local and international conflicts rather than a series of isolated and unrelated episodes. It will emphasize the local perspectives – Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, highlander – and the philosophical, political, and intellectual struggles surrounding the military conflicts. Although the instructor will pay ample attention to the military and political background to each of these conflicts, their social, cultural, and intellectual components will receive the greatest amount of attention. To this end, the instructor will address events closely related to the conflicts, including the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge regime and the exodus of refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia after 1975.
AHLG ARHC GBCC
This course
This course
| Through topics of human trafficking and enslavement historically (from ancient times to the present), students will examine the fine lines between human aspiration and human exploitation that has brought about Trafficking and enslavement. In different historical eras, the right quantities, qualities, and types of labor have often been unattainable or costly in a given location. At the same time social, environmental, and political crises have created circumstances in which individuals have needed economic resources to subsist. These challenges have created circumstances ripe for human trafficking. AHLG ARHC W2 |
This course
Senior Capstone. Students will be pre-registered for the course.