The 1979-80 Iran hostage crisis, in which Iranian university students held U.S. citizens in captivity for 444 days inside the American embassy in Tehran, has left an indelible mark on U.S.-Iranian relations.  In this course we will study the economic, political, cultural, historical, and other factors that have shaped today's Iran.  We will take, as our point of departure, one of the most important events in modern Iranian history:  The CIA-sponsored coup that overthrew the democratically-elected government of Iran in 1953.  We will study this event, and the subsequent 25 years of repression and de-democratization, in the context of Iran's anti-colonial struggles and modernization efforts of the previous 150 years or so.  This approach will illuminate the genesis of the 1979 revolution, and the hostage crisis, and the evolution of the Islamic Republic since then.

The goal is to enable students to contextualize, and thus better understand, current issues such as the role of petroleum and nuclear energy in Iran's political economy and in its relationship with the rest of the world, the role of Islam in Iran, the position of women in society, and related issues.  In this journey, students will develop an appreciation of Iran as a complex, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, modern, vibrant society with an ancient history and a rich cultural heritage.

The focus of the course is the history of Cuba from the 1959 triumph of a revolution led by Fidel Castro and the 26th of July Movement, through the several decade-long period in which Cuba was the site of tension between the Soviet Union and the United States, and into the current decades since the end of the Cold War and emergence of Cuba as an influential, non-aligned socialist state.  The course will examine changes within Cuba in revolutionary ideology, problems of scarcity and tensions among different sectors of Cuban society, gender and race relations, economic and political relations with the US, Latin America, and the rest of the world.

Seminar participants will present at least one oral report in class, based on an assigned reading, will write a research paper based on both primary and secondary sources, and will be expected to participate actively in evaluating the work of their classmates and in revising their own work based on suggestions from others in the class.

This is an introductory course on contemporary feminist theories that analyze the impac--both pro and con--of digital technology on women.  Some of the feminist theories covered in the course promote cyberculture as beneficial, while others challenge technological and biological programs aiming to replace natural humans with cyborgs.  Cyberfeminist theories explore our gender identity and personal identity, with specific attention to how women enter cyberspace to express their ideas, to develop connections with other women around the world, to undertake political action through the web, and to create new forms of literature, music and visual art.  Some cyberfeminists have even become hackers, promoting revolution through outlaw computer ventures.  Drawing upon postmodern theory, communication studies and anthropological theories of human evolution.  Cyberfeminism raises philosophical questions about the relation between mind and body, the impact of digital technology on consciousness, and the future of the human species.

Four films will be shown and discussed in class: "Hackers"; "eXistenz"; "The Ghost in the Machine"; "Final Fantasy." These films present different images of cyberfeminist heroines--the revolutionary, the programmer, the cyborg, and the cyber-scientist. Combined with the readings, these films will give us an opportunity to discuss specific issues related to women's education, labor, sexuality and mothering.

Because the course focuses on digital technology, students will experiment with the possibilities and the drawbacks of this technology.  The course will meet in one of the most technologically advanced classrooms on campus; it will be a Blackboard course, with all assignments, course requirements, course policies and communications posted online.  Although the writing assignments for this course discuss the reading assignments and require significant, independent library research, instead of the traditional term paper format, the format for presentation of all writing assignments will be digital: students will design a webpage to post the equivalent of a 15-page paper, in 3 stages of drafts; they will debate philosophical issues raised in the reading assignments on blogs; they will experiment with various forms of digital text technologies (e.g., hypertext, TEI, podcasting scripts, etc.).  Student webpages and blogs will make creative use of links, graphics, and other digital features available for expression of one's ideas.

The shifts in gender roles, and their repercussions for family life and in the workplace are among the most important changes of recent decades.  This course will apply the skills and tools of social science to the investigation of change in gender, work and family.  The social sciences in general, and sociology in particular, seek to answer questions about the causes and consequences of social change.  They deploy a set of skills and tools (methods) that seek to link ideas (theories) with evidence (data) to investigate those changes.  We will examine a series of recent articles by social scientists on the issues of gender, work and family and a short book on research methods in the social sciences.

his seminar will examine the phenomenon of witch hunting in Early Modern Europe through a detailed study of several Scottish Witch Trials between 1590 and 1660.?  Scotland had no medieval witch trials.?  Only after the Reformation, when witchcraft became a secular as well as religious crime, did the trials begin.?  Course readings will include a general history of early modern witchcraft, two early treatises on witchhunting (the infamous Hammer of Witches [1486] and James VI?s Demonology), a collection of original documents concerning the so-called North Berwick Witches (1590-93), and trial records from several seventeenth-century cases.?  Using these resources, the course will reconstruct the political, social, economic, intellectual, religious, and gender context of the witch trials with the goal of understanding why people were willing to burn their neighbors for crimes they not only did not commit, but could not have committed.?

Readings consist of Levack, Brian.?  The Witch-hunting Early Modern Europe, Summers, M. (ed.)?  The Malleus Maleficarum? (1486), Barstow, Anne.?  Witchcraze, Normand, L. & Roberts, and Gareth.?  Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland.

This course will explore the history of European colonial rule in Africa from the period of exploration and conquest during the nineteenth century to the era of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s.  The course will explore different interpretations of imperialism and colonialism, through a careful examination of case studies drawn from diverse colonial contexts.  Topics will include technology and empire, colonial warfare, colonial occupation and African resistance, colonial government and economics, and religious and cultural change under colonialism.  The central questions for the course will be:  How and why did Africans lose control over their lands following the wars of conquest? What impact did European colonialism have on Africa? How did colonial states manage to stay in power?

The course will be structured as a seminar, which means the focus will be on the discussion of readings.  Furthermore, we will spend considerable time focused on student research projects.

Three years after the US Census Department announced that a fixed line demarcating the American frontier could no longer be drawn, Frederick Jackson Turner delivered his famous address, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History."  For Turner, the existence of the frontier had defined the rugged independence of the American individual, i.e., self-reliant, optimistic, adaptable, and ingenious.  Furthermore, he warned that with the loss of the frontier the nation required a new means of defining American character.

Concurrent with this development, the last decades of the nineteenth century witnessed an explosion of interest in sports.  Long distained, especially by those who held Victorian values, athletic activity and sports developed during this period into an important institution with a vital social purpose in American life.  In particular urban, middle-class men and women envisioned sport as an activity that taught the values fundamental to American identity, the values of a frontier society, the values of the rugged individual, of free enterprise, of community, of adaptability, of creativity, and of success.   The intertwining of sport and American identity (whether by class, gender, ethnicity, or race) only deepened during the whole of the 20th century.

The linkage of sport to the development of the distinctive traits often associated with American identity can be researched from a variety of perspectives.  In addition to the expansion and acceptance of particular sports (perhaps especially professional baseball and college football) as well as the lives of late 19th and 20th century sports heroes and personalities, social reformers, business executives, and political leaders embraced and popularized this relationship.

Union College was among the wave of college foundings after the Revolution.  For much of the antebellum period, Union was ranked among the foremost colleges in the United States, along with Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, the College of New Jersey (Princeton), and King's College (Columbia).  During this time, higher education in America moved from an exclusive, classical emphasis to a much more democratic and practical orientation (along with the rise of the research university).  According to one historian, American colleges,  "perhaps more than any other institutions in the 19th century, were dynamic caldrons where the democratic ideals of a new nation were worked out in practice to address the growing needs of a population that was only beginning to understand and give voice to its many constituencies. "  This Sophomore Research Seminar will trace the history of Union College within this context, along with the development of higher education in general as a reflection of American culture, using the important primary resource collections of the Union College Special Collections Department.  The course will focus on the discovery, interpretation, and evaluation of a variety of kinds of historical evidence-and on reporting the results in written papers and projects.

Beginning in the 1970s, Islamist movements emerged in a huge number of Muslim countries.  These movements have challenged (sometimes toppling) governments, cared for and mobilized the dispossessed, and, in some cases, bred terrorism - all in the name of effecting their vision of the "right" mix of religion and politics.  Why did these movements emerge when they did?  What kinds of leaders, goals, and tactics characterize these movements? How have governments responded to them?  What do these movements teach us about the relationships between Islam and terrorism?  Islam and women?  Islam and democracy?  What should it all mean for U.S.  foreign policy? Seminar students will explore all these issues, and more.

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the US Gulf coast and New Orleans, Louisiana. For weeks after, the popular media framed the almost total failure of institutions to adequately respond to the disaster and raised stark questions about the role of race and class. And, New Orleans' history of 'social problems' were painted in ugly terms.  Katrina was a social as well as a natural disaster.

Since then, social scientists have been studying the many issues raised by these events and some good studies are now becoming available.  In this seminar, we will attempt to �unpack� the Katrina disaster by examining this research and by doing some of our own.   We will use content analysis techniques to examine media representations of the disaster, documenting their key themes.  Then we will ask what social science can tell us about the adequacy of these media images:  What, after all, is a disaster?  How do people usually react to disasters?  How do social scientists study such fluid social phenomena? What are the ethics of studying people in crisis situations?  How does the existing social structure of a community make it more or less vulnerable to disaster?  What issues do relief activities raise? What do we know so far about how these issues played out in New Orleans before, during and after Katrina?  Each student will research and write a paper on a specific issue concerning the hurricane's impact.

his seminar will examine the phenomenon of witch hunting in Early Modern Europe through a detailed study of several Scottish Witch Trials between 1590 and 1660.?  Scotland had no medieval witch trials.?  Only after the Reformation, when witchcraft became a secular as well as religious crime, did the trials begin.?  Course readings will include a general history of early modern witchcraft, two early treatises on witchhunting (the infamous Hammer of Witches [1486] and James VI?s Demonology), a collection of original documents concerning the so-called North Berwick Witches (1590-93), and trial records from several seventeenth-century cases.?  Using these resources, the course will reconstruct the political, social, economic, intellectual, religious, and gender context of the witch trials with the goal of understanding why people were willing to burn their neighbors for crimes they not only did not commit, but could not have committed.?

Readings consist of Levack, Brian.? The Witch-hunting Early Modern Europe, Summers, M. (ed.)?  The Malleus Maleficarum? (1486), Barstow, Anne.?  Witchcraze, Normand, L. & Roberts, and Gareth.?  Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland.