Global Learning Community: Themes in Global History
HIS 1003-EMWA
MW 2:30-3:45
Course Description
From Columbus’s first voyages and other moments of “first contact,” intimacy and intimate relations provided the foundation for a new Atlantic culture. In this section of the Intimate Domains global learning community, we will take an historical approach to the study of the Atlantic World. Drawing on primary and secondary historical sources as well as literary texts we will work to answer three guiding questions: How did forms of intimacy shape understandings of race, gender, and power in the Atlantic World? How can we use analyses of intimate domains to uncover voices and counternarratives normally left out of dominant historical accounts, thereby creating a more nuanced understanding of structures of power in the Atlantic World? How does looking at forms of intimate relations (some, but not all, sexual in nature) and intimate domains enable historians to make sense of the “tense and tender ties” that linked people, goods, and ideas in a world marked by slavery, imperialism, and various forms of unfreedom? We will spend the first half of the semester working with primary sources, using them to trace the movement and thoughts of people who crisscrossed the Atlantic (voluntarily or not) in the period from 1500-1888 (the date of the abolition of slavery in Brazil, the last to do so in the Western hemisphere). Through a blend of historical and literary analysis, we will examine these documents in order to understand how intimate connections shaped Atlantic commerce, slavery, colonialism, gender relations, and revolutionary movements. During the second half of the semester we will shift to the modern period, pairing contemporary literature and historical scholarship that have used the concepts of intimacy, race, and gender to make sense of the past and the continuing legacy of slavery and imperialism on life in the modern Atlantic.
Learning Goals
In the course of this semester, students will develop interdisciplinary knowledge of a specific geographical region, the Atlantic World. By the end of the semester students will be expected to demonstrate the following historical, literary, and writing competencies:
- Demonstrate knowledge of the historical development of the Atlantic World. This includes an ability to:
- define the Atlantic World as a geographical region and explain its importance to global history and world culture
- trace the movement of people, ideas, and goods over time and space and identify the economic, political, social, and cultural factors contributing to these circulations
- analyze the ways that local communities and cultures living in proximity to the Atlantic Ocean have been shaped by global processes including but not limited to colonization, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, revolution, decolonization and neocolonialism.
- analyze the ways power differentials have informed relations between historical agents
- Analyze primary and secondary historical sources. This includes, but its not limited to an ability to:
- Situate texts within historical contexts
- Identify authors and situate them and their ideas within historical contexts
- Analyze narratives and arguments with attention to the way that they are informed by dominant social, political, and economic structures and forms of power
- Identify arguments and evaluate their persuasiveness on the basis of evidence provided
- Identify counternarratives within texts (i.e. to read against the grain)
- Identify and articulate potential counterarguments
- Connect historical and literary sources and identify the ways that these different kinds of sources can be used together to understand the development of major trends within the Atlantic World
- Demonstrate knowledge of various literary genres and their conventions
- Develop a technical vocabulary to analyze literary and visual texts
- Formulate original arguments based on evidence drawn from historical and literary sources
- Articulate arguments orally
Professor
Dr. Elizabeth Heath
Office: VC 5-256
e-mail: Elizabeth.Heath@baruch.cuny.edu
Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:00-2:00 and by appointment