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Networks of Gothic brings together art historians, computer scientists, film and digital media experts to advance the teaching and research of Gothic buildings.

Description

This course examines the histories of hundreds of indigenous peoples in North America from early human habitation to the present day, with a focus on those residing in what is now the United States and Canada. We will study their experiences; their encounters with one another, Europeans, and Africans; and the different histories that people have told about those experiences and encounters. Class materials, which include art, film, and fiction as well as history and anthropology, stress the diversity of Native lifeways as well as the ways in which the history of American Indians has often been ignored, changed, appropriated, and distorted, as well as reclaimed and re-evaluated over time. Some of the questions we will consider throughout the semester include: How much can we know about Native peoples before they had an alphabetic written history? What can European sources teach us about the Native peoples they encountered? How did the Native peoples of North America live before 1492? Does it make any sense to generalize about “Indians,” given that they include a large number of diverse peoples? How did contact with Europeans and Africans (and their diseases and technologies) change Native societies? How did Natives affect Europeans and Africans? Why did Natives lose ground (literally and figuratively) in the nineteenth century? How have Natives experienced and reacted to the changes of the twentieth century? What does it mean to be a Native in the United States today?

Description

The literary movements and periods featured on this site represent the broad spectrum of American literature before the Civil War. For each category, students in two sections of Honors American Literature have provided an introduction to the period, biographical information about several authors important to the period, and some contextual historical information to help viewers better understand the literature of the period––the broader “literary landscape.”

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Description

From “Royal Game of Ur” (2500+ BCE) to “Monopoly” (1933) , “Pac-Man” (1980), “Magic: the Gathering” (1993), and “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” (2011), tabletop games have been a constant form of entertainment, enlightenment, and cultural propaganda in human history. The forms of games, their experiential qualities, and their cultural significance have varied enormously from era to era and place to place. This class will examine particular games and game genres in their historical context using a case study format. We will focus on “board” and “video” games—those of chance and skill as opposed to physical games and sports.

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In this course, we explore America’s history before permanent European settlement through the Civil War and Reconstruction. You will study broad themes such as concepts of citizenship and the nation, the role of Native Americans, politics, economic changes, territorial shifts, gender roles, religion, race, slavery, and intellectual and cultural patterns. We will focus on the various and competing definitions given by a wide variety of people to “America,” “freedom,” “citizen,” and “revolution.” What was America, and who counted as Americans? What rights, duties, and privileges came with being Americans? What did it mean to be excluded from this identity? What revolutions changed people’s lives, and how?

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Writers writing about the Great Depression often argue that the stories and remembrances of ordinary people interweave to help us better understand the social, economic, political, and personal struggle of the 1930s in the U.S. And they remind us that these stories—vital threads in our nation’s fabric—are fraying away. Writers tackling The Great Depression mention both the forgotten and the forgetting. What happens when people and the places they inhabited are lost to passing time? What understanding—of our nation and of our own family or community—vanishes when we forget? Are our stories lost forever? Or, can the forgotten be somehow recovered, raised, recalled? And, if recovered, how do they fit into the larger context of our nation’s history? How can we make them endure?

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This oral history archive has been created by students in Dr. Sarah Steinbock-Pratt’s class on the Vietnam War. The course explores the long history of the Vietnam War, beginning with early Vietnamese history and colonization.