Undergraduate Courses Fall 2026

AFST 33687 (10391)

Commodities of Colonialism in Africa

Robert Harms

W 1:30-3:25pm

Areas HU, WR

This course examines historical case studies of several significant global commodities produced in Africa to explore interactions between world market forces and African resources and societies. Through the lens of four specific commodities–ivory, rubber, cotton, and diamonds–this course evaluates diverse industries and their historical trajectories in sub-Saharan Africa within a global context from ~1870-1990s. Students  become acquainted with the historical method by developing their own research paper on a commodity using both primary and secondary sources.

 

AMST 0097 (12473) / ER&M 0097

Food, Race, and Migration in United States Society

Quan Tran

TTh 2:35-3:50pm

Areas SO

Exploration of the relationship between food, race, and migration in historical and contemporary United States contexts. Organized thematically and anchored in selected case studies, this course is comparative in scope and draws from contemporary work in the fields of food studies, ethnic studies, migration studies, American studies, anthropology, and history.  

 

AMST 1197 (12001) / ARCH 2600 / HIST 1125 / HSAR 3219 / URBAN1101

American Architecture and Urbanism

Elihu Rubin

TTh 11:35am-12:25pm

Areas HU

An introduction to the field of American architecture and urbanism: the study of buildings, architects, designs, styles, and urban landscapes, viewed in economic, political, social, and cultural contexts. Organized chronologically, from pre-Colonial times to the present, as well as thematically, the course studies the formation and meaning of the built environment in America. The many topics encountered along the way include the public and private investment in the built environment; history of housing in America; transportation and infrastructure; architectural practice; and the social and political nature of city building and urban change. Attention also paid to the transnational nature of American architecture—the role of colonialism, the global exchange of architectural ideas, and the international careers of some architects. We will take advantage of our local setting, New Haven, as a cross-section of American architectural and urban history and a storehouse of key examples of building types, urban landscapes, and architectural styles. Upon completion, students should be expected to grasp the basic periods, trends, and processes in American architectural history and their connection to urban patterns. This course aims to give students the tools to appreciate and interpret the built environments that surround them, from impressive monuments to ordinary structures

 

AMST 1199 (10092) / HIST 1199 / EVST 1199 / HSHM 2070

American Energy History

Paul Sabin

TTh 10:30am-11:20am

Areas HU

The history of energy in the United States from early hydropower and coal to present-day hydraulic fracturing, deepwater oil, wind, and solar. Topics include energy transitions and technological change; energy and democracy; environmental justice and public health; corporate power and monopoly control; electricity and popular culture; labor struggles; the global quest for oil; changing national energy policies; the climate crisis.

 

AMST 2265 (10079) / CPSC 2265

Topics in Critical Computing

Julian Posada and Teddy Kim

M 1:30-3:25pm

Areas HU, SC

This course introduces the social, cultural, and political contexts shaping the contemporary development and use of computing and information technology. Through structured discussions, lectures, and collaborative activities, participants will explore computing’s historical evolution, ethical and societal implications, and tangible impacts, including its reliance on transnational infrastructures and environmental effects. Emphasis will be placed on analyzing computer-related social issues through theoretical and critical approaches, empirical research, and governance frameworks, as well as both technical and social strategies for addressing key challenges. The course is designed for students from diverse academic backgrounds across all divisions, aiming to develop a nuanced understanding of computation’s intersection with broader social systems and to equip them with tools to engage with critical issues in the rapidly shifting digital landscape.

 

ANTH 2215 (12034) / ARCG 2215

Archaeology of China

Anne Underhill

MW 9am-10:15am

Areas SO

Archaeology of China, one of the world’s oldest and most enduring civilizations, from the era of early humans to early empires. Methods of interpreting remains from prehistoric and historic period sites.

 

ANTH 2232 (12042) / ARCG 2232 / LAST 2232

Ancient Civilizations of the Andes

Richard Burger

Time TBA

Areas SO

Survey of the archaeological cultures of Peru and Bolivia from the earliest settlement through the late Inca state.

 

ANTH 2264 (12039) / ARCG 2264 / SPAN 4320

Aztec Archaeology and Ethnohistory

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos

TTh 9am-10:15am

Areas SO

An anthropological and ethnohistorical examination of the Aztec civilization that dominated much of Mexico from the fourteenth century until the Spanish Conquest of 1521.

 

ANTH 2835 (10762) / AFST 2277

Introduction to Critical Border Studies

Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen

Th 1:30-3:25pm

Areas SO

This course serves as an introduction into the major themes and approaches to the study of border enforcement and the management of human mobility. We draw upon a diverse range of scholarship across the social sciences as well as history, architecture, and philosophy to better understand how we find ourselves in this present “age of walls” (Tim Marshall 2019). In addition, we take a comparative approach to the study of borders—examining specific contemporary and historical cases across the world in order to gain a comprehensive view of what borders are and how their meaning and function has changed over time. And because there is “critical” in the title, we explicitly evaluate the political consequences of borders, examine the sorts of resistances mobilized against them, and ask what alternative social and political worlds might be possible.

 

ANTH 3839 (11532)

Urban Ethnography of Asia

Erik Harms

T 9:25am-11:20am

Areas SO

Introduction to the anthropological study of contemporary Asian cities. Focus on new ethnographies about cities in East, Southeast, and South Asia. Topics include rural-urban migration, redevelopment, evictions, social movements, land grabbing, master-planned developments, heritage preservation, utopian aspirations, social housing, slums and precariousness, and spatial cleansing.

 

ANTH 4809 (11155) / EVST 4422 / ER&M 3594 / GLBL 4394

Climate and Society: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities

Michael Dove

Th 1:30pm-3:25pm

Areas SO, WR

Discussion of the major currents of thought regarding climate and climate change; first looking at disaster, the social origins of disastrous events, and the attribution of societal ‘collapse’ to extreme climatic events; then causality, the revelatory character of climatic perturbation, politics and the history of efforts to control weather/climate, and modern theories of environmental determinism; next history and culture, the ancient tradition of explaining differences among people in terms of differences in climate, and cross-cultural differences in views of climate; and finally knowledge, the study of folk knowledge of climate, local views of climatic perturbation and change, and story-telling and landscape. The goal of the course is to examine the embedded historical, cultural, and political drivers of current climate change debates.

 

ANTH 4823 (11546) / ANTH 5823

The Anthropology of Possible Worlds

Paul Kockelman

W 9:25-11:20am

Areas SO

This course focuses on the nature of possible worlds: literary worlds (Narnia), ideological worlds (the world according to a particular political stance), psychological worlds (what someone remembers to be the case, wishes to be the case, or believes to be the case), environmental worlds (possible environmental futures), virtual worlds (the World of Warcraft), and—most of all—ethnographic works in which the actual and possible worlds of others are represented (the world according to the ancient Maya). We don’t focus on the contents of such worlds per se, but rather on the range of resources people have for representing, regimenting, and residing in such worlds; and the roles such resources play in mediating social relations and cultural values.

 

ANTH 4838 (125244) / ANTH 5838

Culture, Power, Oil

Douglas Rogers

M 9:25am-11:20am

Areas SO

The production, circulation, and consumption of petroleum as they relate to globalization, empire, cultural performance, natural resource extraction, and the nature of the state. Case studies include the United States, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, and the former Soviet Union.

 

ARCG 0231 (12240) / NELC 0260 / EVST 0030

Origins of Civilization: Egypt and Mesopotamia

Harvey Weiss

TTh 9am-10:15am

Areas HU, SO

The origins of the earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt along the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates Rivers explored with archaeological, historical and environmental data for the origins of agriculture, the classes and hierarchies that marked earliest cities, states and empires, the innovative monumental architecture, writing, imperial expansion, and new national ideologies. How and why these civilizational processes occurred with the momentous societal collapses at periods of abrupt climate change.

 

ARCG 1171 (12044) / ANTH 1171

Great Civilizations of the Ancient World

Piphal Heng

TTh 1:30pm-2:20pm

Areas SO

A survey of selected prehistoric and historical cultures through examination of archaeological sites and materials. Emphasis on the methodological and theoretical approaches by which archaeologists recover, analyze, and interpret the material remains of the past.

 

ARCH 0002 (11896)

Architecture as Space

Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen

TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

Areas HU

This first-year seminar explores how architectural spaces, large and small, both public and private, have been designed, discussed, and experienced throughout history. The focal point of the course is to explore how architects, writers, artists, and filmmakers have mined the evocative richness of architectural space through various media. Ideas about multi-sensory and multi-temporal space, intimate and infinite space, domestic space, as well as modalities of excitement and belonging, as well as terror and anxiety will be discussed and explored. The goal is to sensitize students to the power of space to shape our mood and behavior. In addition, the course familiarizes students with Yale’s campus architecture and its vast archival and museum collections. Enrollment limited to first-year students.

 

ARCH 2001 (10128) / HSAR 3326

Architecture Before Modernity

Kyle Dugdale

TTh 10:30am-11:20am

Areas HU

Introduction to the history of architecture from antiquity to the dawn of the Enlightenment and beyond, focusing on narratives that continue to inform the present. The course begins in Africa and Mesopotamia, follows routes from the Mediterranean into Asia and back to Rome, Byzantium, and the Middle East, and then circulates back to mediaeval Europe, before juxtaposing the indigenous structures of Africa and America with the increasingly global fabrications of the Renaissance and Baroque. Emphasis on challenging preconceptions, developing visual intelligence, and learning to read architecture as a story that can both register and transcend place and time, embodying ideas within material structures that survive across the centuries in often unexpected ways.

 

ARCH 2105 (12480) / HIST 1755 / HSHM 2390 / URBN 3320

Reckoning Environmental Uncertainty: A Global History since 1100

Anthony Acciavatti

TTh 4pm-5:15pm

Areas HU

How have people made decisions about the future when the environment is uncertain? This lecture class provides a global perspective on how societies have tried to understand and live with an unpredictable world. Beginning in 1100, we examine a series of historical episodes when communities faced environmental dangers, uncertain futures, and how they managed risk. Case studies include water and landscape management in the Song Dynasty, navigation across the Pacific Ocean, utopian cities in the Americas, agricultural and urban systems in South Asia, environmental design in West Africa, and the global rise of weather observatories to monitor atmospheric changes. Rather than telling a linear history of progress or decline, the course asks a more fundamental question: how do people claim to know the environment, and how does uncertainty shape that knowledge? Throughout the semester, we examine how different cultures develop their own strategies for understanding a world that has never been entirely predictable. Drawing on the histories of science, technology, architecture, and the environment, students see how debates about risk, planetary health, and expertise have deep historical roots.

 

ARCH 2600 (12000) / AMST 1197 / HIST 1125 / HSAR 3219 / URBN 1101

American Architecture and Urbanism

Elihu Rubin

TTh 11:35am-12:25pm

Areas HU

An introduction to the field of American architecture and urbanism: the study of buildings, architects, designs, styles, and urban landscapes, viewed in economic, political, social, and cultural contexts. Organized chronologically, from pre-Colonial times to the present, as well as thematically, the course studies the formation and meaning of the built environment in America. The many topics encountered along the way include the public and private investment in the built environment; history of housing in America; transportation and infrastructure; architectural practice; and the social and political nature of city building and urban change. Attention also paid to the transnational nature of American architecture—the role of colonialism, the global exchange of architectural ideas, and the international careers of some architects. We will take advantage of our local setting, New Haven, as a cross-section of American architectural and urban history and a storehouse of key examples of building types, urban landscapes, and architectural styles. Upon completion, students should be expected to grasp the basic periods, trends, and processes in American architectural history and their connection to urban patterns. This course aims to give students the tools to appreciate and interpret the built environments that surround them, from impressive monuments to ordinary structures.

 

ARCH 3308 (13338) / URBN 3201

Reimagining the City: Mediums of Speculation

Joyce Hsiang

T 1:30-3:25pm

This course examines how “the city” has been deployed not only as a subject of speculation, but also as a medium for reimagining worlds. This seminar studies and explores the ways architects, urbanists, designers, writers, artists, and filmmakers have reimagined the city to uncover, probe, and critique ideas, ideals and values about urbanism and the built environment contained and imbricated by these representations. It focuses on the architecture of the built environment depicted in paintings, photographs, films, drawings, maps, models, urban plans, virtual reality machines, and games as well as literary fiction. The course is structured according to various mediums of speculation reimagining the city, montaging a visual history of urbanism and architectural theories about the city. The course toggles between close reading/viewing and analysis of creative forms of writing, art, architecture, and film, and a series of in-class workshops in support of creative exercises. Discussion of assigned readings and course materials is interspersed with organized screenings, viewings of collections, and visits to archives. Workshops engage a range of creative mediums to provide students opportunities and tools to experiment with and develop methods of speculation as they critique and create their own re-imaginings of the city.

 

ART 0513 (11831)

Temperamental Spaces

Lachell Workman

MW 9am-10:15am

Areas HU

Spaces can sometimes appear as idiosyncratic as the people within them, taking on characteristics we usually ascribe to ourselves. They can appear erratic, comforting, uncanny–even threatening. Working like a therapy session for architecture, the body, and the objects around us, this seminar analyzes a diverse collection of readings and works, ranging from Renaissance mysticism to conceptual art and film, to explore how the visual arts have utilized a productive, but skeptical, relationship with space. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Enrollment limited to first-year students.

 

ART 3997 (11869)

Hardware for People

Tiriree Kananuruk

MW 9:25am-11:20am

Graphic design shapes how people interact with objects, interfaces, and environments. In physical computing, graphic design extends beyond static form to systems that sense, respond, and change in real time. This course focuses on designing physical devices and interfaces that we interact with using our bodies, introducing physical computing as a design practice centered on the relationship between body, object, and computation. Using electronics, sensors, and microcontrollers such as ESP32, students explore how touch, movement, and presence become inputs that influence visual and interactive outcomes. Hardware is approached as a form of interface and communication. Throughout the course, students examine questions such as: What does it mean to design a moveable interface? What does an interface look like when it can change in real time? How do design decisions shape interaction? How can designers sense space and context? Can the audience become part of the work? Permission of instructor. Prior experience with programming and interactive media is strongly recommended. Completion of ART 3769 or a similar course is ideal. Students should be comfortable building simple interactive systems and working with basic programming concepts. Experience with JavaScript or other programming languages such as Processing, Python, Java, C, or C++ is sufficient. No prior experience with electronics or hardware is required.

 

BLST 3165 (11652)

What is Racial Capitalism?

Destin Jenkins

Th 1:30pm-3:25pm

Areas HU

This seminar starts from the position that the historical movement, settlement, and hierarchical arrangements of the racial subaltern and even those deemed ‘white’ are inseparable from regimes of capital accumulation. But is that all there is to racial capitalism? What more can be said about these regimes? And what of the varied responses to racial capitalism, from accommodation to the Black Radical Tradition to other forms of subterfuge? Major topics and themes include: war, money, ecology, crime and punishment. The course also exposes students to the various sources, archives, methods, theoretical frameworks, and narrative strategies employed by scholars in the field.

 

BLST 3713 (11656) / TDPS 3301 

Embodying Story

Renee Robinson

MW 9:25am-11:20am

Areas HU

The intersection of storytelling and movement as seen through historical case studies, cross-disciplinary inquiry, and studio practice. Drawing on eclectic source materials from different artistic disciplines, ranging from the repertory of Alvin Ailey to journalism, architectural studies, cartoon animation, and creative processes, students develop the critical, creative, and technical skills through which to tell their own stories in movement. No prior dance experience necessary. Limited Enrollment. See Canvas for application.

 

CLCV 1711 (10445) / HSAR 3247 / ARCG 1161

Art and Myth in Greek Antiquity

Milette Gaifman

MW 10:30am-11:20am

Areas HU, WR

Visual exploration of Greek mythology through the study of ancient Greek art and architecture. Greek gods, heroes, and mythological scenes foundational to Western culture; the complex nature of Greek mythology; how art and architecture rendered myths ever present in ancient Greek daily experience; ways in which visual representations can articulate stories. Use of collections in the Yale University Art Gallery.

 

CPLT 2940 (10708) / PORT 3940 / LAST 3394 / PORT 9600

World Cities and Narratives

Kenneth David Jackson

T 1:30-3:25pm

Areas HU, WR

Study of world cities and selected narratives that describe, belong to, or represent them. Topics range from the rise of the urban novel in European capitals to the postcolonial fictional worlds of major Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone cities. Conducted in English.

 

CPLT 3020 (12398) / FREN 3070

France by Rail: Trains in French Literature, Film, and History

Morgane Cadieu

W 4pm-5:55pm

Areas HU

Exploration of the aesthetics of trains in French and Francophone literature and culture, from the end of the nineteenth century and the first locomotives to the subway in contemporary Paris. Focus on the role played by trains in industrialization, colonization, deportation, decolonization, and immigration, as well as on the representation of free will. Corpus includes novels, films, paintings, poems, and a play, as well as theoretical excerpts on urban spaces and technology. Activities include building a train at the CEID and visiting the Beinecke collections and the Art Gallery. No knowledge of French required; no prior training at the CEID required either. May not be taken after FREN 306.

 

ENGL 2151 (12130) / FILM 2540

Skin and Surface: Fashion and Culture

Moeko Fujii

W 4pm-5:55pm

Areas HU

What do we mean by fashion? This course explores the intimate relationship between film, fashion, and various modes of self-fashioning and unfashioning. By examining the sartorial—what, or whom, we wear—in literature and film, we consider the ramifications of style in discourses on race and gender. We study films, novels, and photography that focus on garments in ways that highlight the complex relationship among material histories, social fabrics, and notions of the corporeal and the human. Along the way, we unsettle the easy yet stubborn distinction between surface and interiority. From Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Wendell B. Harris’s Chameleon Street, Frederick Wiseman’s documentary of department stores to Lee Bul’s cyborg sculptures, this course asks: how does fashion constitute—or unravel—our notions of the self and of the world as “surface” activity? Sunday evening course screenings from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. will be held occasionally

 

ENGL 2846 (10711) / ER&M 3046

Critical Reading Methods in Indigenous Literatures

Tarren Andrews

MW 4pm-5:15pm

Areas HU, WR

This course focuses on developing critical readings skills grounded in the embodied and place-based reading practices encouraged by Indigenous literatures. Students are expected to think critically about their reading practices and environments to consciously cultivate place-based reading strategies across a variety of genres including: fiction and non-fiction, sci-fi, poetry, comic books, criticism, theory, film, and other new media. Students are required to keep a reading journal and regularly present critical reflections on their reading process, as well as engage in group annotations of primary and secondary reading materials. This course is offered during the fall and spring term and may be taken both terms for credit. During the fall term the focus is on Indigenous literatures and new media from North America produced primarily in the 21st century. Critical readings include some historical context, both pre- and post-contact, as well as Indigenous literary theory. During the spring term, the focus becomes Indigenous literatures and games in a global context with emphasis on Indigenous land relations and ecocriticism across the 20th and 21st centuries.

 

ENGL 4459 (11165) / MB&B 4590 / EVST 4469

Writing about Science, Medicine, and the Environment

Carl Zimmer

M 1:30-3:25pm

Areas WR

Advanced non-fiction workshop in which students write about science, medicine, and the environment for a broad public audience. Students read exemplary work, ranging from newspaper articles to book excerpts, to learn how to translate complex subjects into compelling prose. Admission by permission of the instructor only. Applicants should email the instructor at carl@carlzimmer.com with the following information: 1. One or two samples of nonacademic, nonfiction writing. (No fiction or scientific papers, please.) Indicate the course or publication, if any, for which you wrote each sample. 2. A note in which you briefly describe your background (including writing experience and courses) and explain why you’d like to take the course. Formerly ENGL 459.

 

EVST 1109 (10377)

Climate & Environment in American History: From Columbian Exchange to Closing of the Frontier

Mark Peterson

MW 2:35pm-3:50pm

Areas HU

This lecture course explores the crucial role that climate and environmental conditions have played in American history from the period of European colonization to the end of the 19th century. Its focus is on the dramatic changes brought about by the encounters among Indigenous, European, and African peoples in this period, the influence of climate and climate change on these encounters, and the environmental transformations brought about by European colonization and conquest and the creation of new economies and polities (including chattel slavery). The lectures offer a new framework for organizing and periodizing North American history, based on geographical and environmental conditions rather than traditional national and political frameworks. The course provides a historical foundation for understanding contemporary American (and global) climate and environmental issues.

 

EVST 2232 (11988) / SPAN 2155

Ecological Mindfulness: Poetics and Praxis in the Spanish-Speaking World

Sarah Glenski

MW 9am-10:15am

Areas HU, LA (5)

What is our relationship with nature? What constitutes ecological mindfulness? Does the practice of ecological mindfulness constitute a poetics? Is art a form of ecological mindfulness? These are some of the questions that we consider as we examine the concept of ecological mindfulness as an intersection of poetics and praxis. Throughout the semester, we explore a wide array of artistic expressions (essays, short stories, sound, poetry, photography, painting, etc.), which allows us to both appreciate and interrogate the many ways in which interactions with nature are depicted and performed in different Hispanophone cultures. Our analysis of these texts is complemented by carrying out and reflecting upon our own practice of ecological mindfulness. This course is taught in Spanish.Prerequisite: SPAN 140, or SPAN 142, or SPAN 145, or equivalent

 

EVST 2270 (10477) / HSHM 2270 / HIST 1275

Botanical Bodies: Plants, Medicine and Colonial Science

Elaine Ayers

TTh 4pm-4:5pm

Areas HU

Plants weave their way into every aspect of our lives. From the food that we eat to our growing obsession with houseplants, from the pharmaceutical industry to recent meditations on queerness and reproductive freedom, plants are inescapable, offering both practical and metaphoric roots, tendrils, and blossoming ideas about our own bodies and our engagement within changing social, political, and cultural structures. This course considers the ways that plants (and fungi) have shaped ideas about gender, sexuality, race, health, medicine, capitalism, power, and consciousness from the early modern period to the present, moving chronologically to examine our complicated relationships with the natural world. Working within the (broadly construed and ongoing) colonial context, we follow plants and their collectors, cultivators, and stewards across oceans and continents, charting the rise of plantation agriculture and specious ways of classifying species to twentieth-century focuses on breeding and genetics, attempts to patent plants as medicines, and, in recent years, calls to use plants as models for new (or, perhaps, very old) models for kinship that upturn these very systems of power.

 

EVST 3365 (13009) / SPAN 3380 / HSAR 3380 / HUMS 3452 / LAST 3350

Ecologies of Culture: Latin American Environmental Aesthetics

Santiago Acosta

TTh 4pm-5:15pm

Areas HU, LA (5)

In the age of rising sea levels, mass extinction, and carbon-driven climate change, can culture and the arts remain unchanged? This course focuses on the intersections between aesthetics and ecological practices in the context of the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch wherein humans have become a major geological force shaping the planet. It challenges traditional approaches by examining how culture and the arts can help to understand and respond to environmental crises. Discussions and readings emphasize the role of culture and aesthetics as agents and producers of environmental knowledge, highlighting their potential to challenge socio-ecological relations. Throughout the semester, students explore various themes, including colonialism, anthropocentrism, human-animal relations, fossil capitalism, indigenous ontologies, and the impact of extractive industries on territories and bodies in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Latinx world. Students engage with works by established and emerging artists, aiming to produce ecocritical knowledge about the current climate and environmental crisis. The course also offers a panoramic view of Latin American culture by examining some key historical events and authors whose works can shed light on cultural and ideological processes at the root of climate change. By the end of the semester, students can formulate research questions that are critical to the field of Latin American environmental humanities, as well as produce papers that are relevant to a broader debate about culture and ecology. Lastly, the course hopes to motivate students—beyond the classroom—to examine their place in an increasingly warming world. Taught in Spanish.

 

 

EVST 3473 (12244) / NELC 3730 / ARCG 4273 / NELC 5880 / ANTH 7273 / ARCG 7273

Climate Change, Societal Collapse, and Resilience

Harvey Weiss

Th 4pm-5:55pm

Areas HU, SO

Collapse documented in the archaeological and early historical records of the Old and New Worlds, including Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and Europe. Analysis of politicoeconomic vulnerabilities, resiliencies, and adaptations in the face of abrupt climate change, anthropogenic environmental degradation, resource depletion, “barbarian” incursions, or class conflict.

 

EVST 4630 (12350) / FILM 4550 / AMST 4463 / TDPS 4023

Documentary Film Workshop

Charles Musser

T 7pm-10pm; W 3:30pm-6:20pm

A yearlong workshop designed primarily for majors in Film and Media Studies or American Studies who are making documentaries as senior projects. Seniors in other majors admitted as space permits.

 

ER&M 1691 (10383)

Urban History in the United States, 1870 to the Present

Jennifer Klein 

M 4pm-5:55pm

Areas HU, WR

The history of work, leisure, consumption, and housing in American cities. Topics include immigration, formation and re-formation of ethnic communities, the segregation of cities along the lines of class and race, labor organizing, the impact of federal policy, the growth of suburbs, the War on Poverty and Reaganism, and post-Katrina New Orleans.

 

FILM 3440 (11950) / GMAN 3440

Landscape, Film, Architecture

Fatima Naqvi

W 7pm-10pm, Th 9:25am-11:20am

Areas HU

Movement through post-1945 landscapes and cityscapes as a key to understanding them. The use of cameras and other visual-verbal means as a way to expand historical, aesthetic, and sociological inquiries into how these places are inhabited and experienced. Exploration of both real and imaginary spaces in works by filmmakers (Wenders, Herzog, Ottinger, Geyrhalter, Seidl, Ade, Grisebach), architects and sculptors (e.g. Rudofsky, Neutra, Abraham, Hollein, Pichler, Smithson, Wurm, Kienast), photographers (Sander, B. and H. Becher, Gursky, Höfer), and writers (Bachmann, Handke, Bernhard, Jelinek). Additional readings by Certeau, Freytag, J.B. Jackson, L. Burckhardt.

 

HSHM 2090 (10455) / EVST 2090 / HIST 1765

Making Climate Knowledge

Deborah Coen

TTh 11:35am-12:25pm

Areas HU

This course explores the history of scientific knowledge of Earth’s climate from Europeans’ first encounters with the Americas to the politics of climate knowledge in the 2020s. We see how scientists learned to track interactions among phenomena of radically different dimensions, from the molecular to the planetary, and how they conceived the ambition of predicting and even controlling the climate system. Ironically, the rise of modern climate science depended on the very processes of industrialization that it later called into question. It was also indelibly shaped by European imperialism and by the theories of human difference that Europeans used to justify colonization and enslavement. Coming to terms with the historical entanglement of climate science with colonialism and racial capitalism is a necessary step towards climate justice. To make vivid the multiplicity of ways of knowing climate, the course includes visits to the Yale Farm, the Medical Historical Library, and the Center for British Art.

 

HIST 0567 (12505)

A Pan-Amazonian History of a Rainforest

Manoel Rendeiro Neto

MW 4pm-5:15pm

Areas HU, WR

This course examines the contested history of the largest rainforest on the planet and one of the world’s most complex fluvial ecosystems: Amazonia, in equatorial South America, from its pre-human history to the present day struggles over Indigenous autonomy, land reclamation by Afro-Indigenous and Maroon communities, extractivist industries of oil and mining, and environmentalism debates. The course includes readings and discussions on the region’s ecological origins; the social history of its diverse Indigenous populations, immigrant groups, and African-descended populations; exploration myths and European colonial projects; and more recent efforts to exploit and protect Amazonia’s extraordinary natural and human resources. The course uses tools and resources from archaeology, anthropology, biology, and social and cultural history, and also examines popular representations of the Amazon through novels, newspapers, and film. Enrollment limited to first-year students.

 

HIST 0623 (10575) / RLST 0035 / HUMS 0360 / JDST 0035

Jerusalem: Judaism, Christianity, Islam

Sarit Kattan Gribetz

MW 2:35pm-3:50pm

Areas HU

The Old City of Jerusalem is just 0.35 square miles large, about half the size of Yale’s campus. Have you ever wondered what makes this tiny city so beloved to—and the object of continual strife for—Jews, Christians, and Muslims? Through engagement with a wide range of sources—including biblical lamentations, archeological excavations, qur’anic passages, exegetical materials, medieval pilgrim itineraries, legal documents, maps, poetry, art, architecture, and international political resolutions—students develop the historiographical tools and theoretical frameworks to study the history of one of the world’s most enduringly important and bitterly contested cities.  Students encounter persistent themes central to the identity of Jerusalem: geography and topography; exile, diaspora, and return; destruction and trauma; religious violence and war; practices of pilgrimage; social diversity; missionizing; the rise of nationalism; peace efforts; the ethics of storytelling; and the stakes of studying the past. Enrollment limited to first-year students.

 

 

HIST 0701 (12131)

Empires of Coffee

Zeinab Azarbadegan

TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

Areas HU, WR

It is estimated that 2 billion cups of coffee are consumed daily worldwide, making it one of the most popular beverages, second only to water.  How did coffee conquer the world in a span of a few centuries? In this course, we study coffee’s origins from Ethiopia and Yemen to its spread across the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Americas, and Africa from the sixteenth to the twenty first centuries. We consider the intertwined history of coffee with religious practices, imperial expansions, renaissance, exchange houses, industrialization, colonialism, slavery, revolutions, civil wars, decolonization, genocides and much more! We examine politics and economics of coffee production, processing, and consumption by considering the spaces within which these activities happen. From farms to plantations, ports to factories, and coffee houses to coffee shops, we study the significance of coffee in the lives of billions of people throughout the world and history. The final project for this course is a podcast, where you get to research and present your study of one country’s history of coffee. Enrollment limited to first-year students.

 

HIST 0737 (10347) / SAST 0210

History of Indian Ocean Crossings

Nurfadzilah Yahaya

TTh 1:05pm-2:20pm

Areas HU, WR

This seminar explores the history of the Indian Ocean from the Red Sea region to South Asia, and onward to Southeast Asia through two creative works by Amitav Ghosh. The first work is In an Antique Land, an autobiographical account of his time in Egypt as an anthropologist in the late twentieth century that he interspersed with that of the history of a Jewish merchant in Aden and Malabar in the twelfth century when Indian Ocean trade formed the backbone of international economy. The second book, Sea of Poppies is the first novel in his epic trilogy on the Indian Ocean, which traces the journey of a diverse group people from the Indian subcontinent to Southeast Asia and China during the nineteenth century. This seminar breaks out of conventional regional fields by closely following historical actors on the ground. Each session explores several core themes for historical research namely commerce, mobility, labor, climate, cosmopolitanism, colonialism, and modernization. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.

 

HIST 0798 (10348)

Little Ice Ages: Climate Crises and Human History

Fabian Drixler

TTh 1:05pm-2:20pm

Areas HU, WR

Anthropogenic global warming is one of the defining crises of our time. Before the 20th century, it was cooling and drought that posed the greatest challenges to human flourishing. Temperatures could drop for centuries, such as in the Little Ice Age (ca. 1300-1850). Volcanic winters typically lasted only a year or two but rattled the ecological foundations of many societies. Through a focus on such periods of climatic disruption, this seminar serves as an introduction to the broader study of climate history. This is a rapidly developing field that combines methodologies across many disciplines, from ice core analysis and volcanology to tree rings and the analysis of written records. Our readings are often authored by multi-disciplinary teams, but our focus is on how historians understand the past interactions of human beings and the climate. The scope of the course is global and ranges from the collapse of ancient societies to the prospects for (deliberately) engineering the climate of the future. Our temporal center of gravity is the early modern period─already exquisitely documented but still highly vulnerable to changes in temperature. Enrollment limited to first-year students.

 

HIST 2510 (10357)

Environmental Insurgency, Dispossession, and Slavery in Latin America

Manoel Rendeiro Neto

TTh 9am-10:15am

Areas HU

Exploration of when, how, and why processes of dispossession and enslavement have been shaped by environmental insurgency amidst  European colonization of Latin America. This lecture course emphasizes on correlated human and nature interventions in the shaping of colonial societies and the disputes over domesticated environments in Latin America by Indigenous peoples and Afro-descended communities.Therefore, this course adopts various scales of analysis, from local and regional to hemispheric, to approach key themes of colonial Latin American history (15th-19th centuries) from an environmental lens to adress policies and social mobilization over colonization, dispossession, enslavement, environmental degradation, but also adaptive usages of emancipatory technical knowledge to navigate exploitation and unfreedom regimes. 

 

HIST 3214 (10365)

History of the Night

Maria Jordan

T 9:25am-11:20am

This seminar is dedicated to the reality and the perception of the night across time and in different cultures. We explore how religious and philosophical beliefs, political and economic forces, changes in technologies of lighting, human biology, and the shift from rural to urban and agrarian to industrial societies affected attitudes toward time in general and the night in particular. These changes influenced the perceptions, uses, and the ways different groups experienced nocturnal time, and how we act, sleep, work, interact, and even dream. The traditional binary view of day and night is questioned by presenting a more complex “and dynamic face” of the night. Nightfall provides multiple opportunities for dissent and rebellion and becomes an ideal space for marginal and subordinate people. Historical analysis, literary texts, medical and scientific writings, and primary sources provide the class with a cross-disciplinary approach to examine how the night became the abode of the ghost, the devil, the witch, and the dead, and how the night became criminalized, commercialized and even politicized. In our time, improvements in lighting changed the nocturnal world, but also had detrimental effects on sleep and dreams, and caused contemporary movements–aesthetic and scientific–to “rescue” the night.

 

HIST 3744 (10374)

Early Photography: Global Tech, Local Histories 1839-1914

Zeinab Azarbadegan

W 9:25am-11:20am

Areas HU

Photos are windows onto known and unknows places; they are an inseparable part of how we see and understand the world. In the age of Instagram, smartphones, and #Filter-#NoFilter we are all photographers, our very own curators of visual microcosms. We produce and consume photographic images almost constantly. We are now simultaneously master, subject, and audience in a transnational consumerist visual culture. This is remarkable seeing as the technology of photography has only been around for the past 180 years. No one could have foreseen the selfie as a potential technological application. The advent of photography in 1839 as a means of visual knowledge production was entangled with the rise of modern disciplines of ordering and categorizing knowledge about both people and places. Going beyond looking at photography merely as a technology invented in and disseminated from Europe, this course attempts to analyze “other histories” of photography, by looking at how this global technology was appropriated locally in Asia, Africa and the Americas. It is thus a global social history of the technology of photography. This course endeavors to give students the tools to analyze photos contextually, materially, and in terms of their content by looking at the first sixty years of photography. Specifically, this course looks at the intertwined histories of early photography and the formulation of modern disciplines by focusing on how early non-European anthropologists, geographers, and archaeologists incorporated photography in their methods of picturing place and the populace. Through thematic analysis and examination of different types of archival photos, students learn how to analyze photos both in the larger context of other visual sources, such as paintings, as well as textual sources.

 

HIST 3755 (11178)

Planet of the Apes: Primates in Human History

Chris Gratien

W 4pm-5:55pm

Areas HU

Throughout human history, we have lived side by side with other primates. This course studies the human relations with monkeys, apes, and other primates through history, focusing on how simian others have been used to construct ideas about human society, morality, and psychology.

 

HSAR 4457 (10442)

Japanese Gardens

Mimi Yiengpruksawan

W 1:30-3:25pm

Areas HU

Arts and theory of the Japanese garden with emphasis on the role of the anthropogenic landscape from aesthetics to environmental precarity, including the concept of refugium. Case studies of influential Kyoto gardens from the 11th through 15th centuries, and their significance as cultural productions with ecological implications.

 

HSAR 4476 (10443)

Energy Cultures of Modern Architecture

Craig Buckley

W 9:25am-11:20am

Areas HU

It is estimated that the construction and operation of buildings accounts for nearly 40% of carbon emissions globally. If a radical decarbonization of architectural practice stands as the discipline’s central challenge today, this calls not only for new solutions, but for different engagement with architecture’s history. This discussion seminar reinterprets histories of modern architecture through the concept of “energy cultures.” An energy culture (Sheller, 2014; Szeemann and Diamanti, 2019) can be defined as the specific assemblage of fuel, matter, practice, labor, and meaning that have informed architecture’s conceptualization and construction. In contrast to approaches that stress quantitative, technical, and instrumental approaches to energy accounting and energy efficiency, this course looks at how different representations, concepts, and behaviors emerged in response to historic shifts in energy production and consumption. The first portion of the course surveys a range of historical approaches to concepts of energy and environmental justice within and adjacent to architecture. The bulk of the course then turns to case studies, examining particular buildings and projects in order to develop new interpretations and questions about these monuments based on an energy cultures approach.

 

HUMS 2620 (10161) / CPLT 2004 / ENGL 2802

Modernism and Domesticity

Katie Trumpener

M 1:30pm-3:25pm

Areas HU, WR

This course explores turn-of-the-century European attempts to craft modernist lives: how new ideas of women’s roles, childhood, the family, the domestic shaped modernist literature and art—even as modernist designers tried to change people’s experience of daily surroundings. Reform drama (Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov), experimental novels and memoirs (Joyce, Woolf, Andrei Bely, Proust, Walter Benjamin) stage the house as bourgeois comfort zone and psychic trap, while modernist architects and designers envisioned aestheticized or communal housing, experimental furniture design, reform fashion changing the parameters of daily experience. Children too were to be raised as modernists, sleeping in constructivist cradles, imbibing avant-garde picture books. The course examines modernist literature, New Woman novels and children’s books (Robert Louis Stevenson, A.A. Milne, Mary Poppins) in relationship to modernist design, fashion, stage sets, paintings, film, exemplary artists’ houses as designs for living—and their present-day posterity (Karl Ove Knausgård; “shelter magazines”, IKEA).

 

HUMS 3891 (11886) / CPLT 3891 / AMST 3391

Introduction to Critical Sleep Studies: The Politics of Sleep and Sleeplesssness

Moira Fradinger

Time TBA

Areas HU

Although we spend approximately one third of our lives asleep, since the industrial revolution and the emergence of uninterrupted city lighting, industrialized societies seem to have developed an ambivalent relation to sleep: both protected and devalued for the sake of higher standards of productive work. The devaluation of sleep, in particular, has produced, during the twentieth and the first two decades of the twenty-first centuries, an array of social, political, and medical discourses to study the impact of changing patterns of sleep and sleeplessness at the global level. This seminar studies topics in the politics and cultures of sleep and sleeplessness, which posit sleep as a human practice. As any human practice, it is framed by cultural and political settings, so that how, when, why, where, and who sleeps vary across sectors of society, across past and present and across world cultures. We study historical, literary, philosophical, sociological, political, and filmic texts. A cultural, social, and political understanding of sleep and sleeplessness can reveal how sleep has been transformed into a bodily site upon which social values are imposed, social surveillance is enacted, ideas about “normality” are instrumentalized, resulting in a demand that humans adapt to human-made changing conditions of production, rather than universally unchanging health needs.

 

PORT 1100 (call number varies by section)

Elementary Portuguese I: Spaces of Identity

Instructor varies by section

Time varies by section

Areas LA (1)

Portuguese 1100: Spaces of Identity introduces students to Portuguese and its cultures through an in-depth engagement with a thematic exploration of identity and urban spaces in the Portuguese-speaking world. The course invites reflection on how cities influence our daily experiences, and how urban environments can inspire belonging, social change, or resistance. The course is organized into three units - Who Are You in the City? Who Is the City Space in You? and What Do You See from Your Window? - through which students engage with questions about identity, cultural spaces, and urban architecture. Students learn to describe, formulate context, and bring histories to people, places, and experiences while expressing their perspectives through creative projects, including collages, videos, exhibitions, and a collaborative digital book. Activities are exclusively based on authentic materials; no textbook is required, as in all Portuguese courses. At the end of this course, students will have gained an understanding of the language across a range of textual genres, focusing on diverse aspects of the Portuguese-speaking world. Students will have the opportunity to submit their productions for publication in our digital magazine: Revista dos Estudantes de Português da Yale. Conducted in Portuguese.

 

PORT 1300 (call number varies by section)

Intermediate Portuguese I: Ancestral Future

Instructor varies by section

Time varies by section

Areas LA (3)

This course is a continuation of Portuguese 1200 and is guided by a central thread: how different forms of representation - visual, digital, and philosophical - organize how reality is imagined and narrated. The course is organized in three units and examines (1) the relationship between museum art, street art, and Afro-Lusophone artistic expression; (2) the circulation of fake news and digital misinformation; and (3) Indigenous cosmovisions as responses to environmental crisis and deforestation. The units move from visual representation (how art constructs and dialogues with cities), to media representation (how digital discourse structures public perception), to epistemological frameworks (how different worldviews reorganize reality and time in light of ecological crises). Students analyze how these narratives from Portuguese-speaking countries produce meaning and diverse perceptions of the world. Activities are based entirely on authentic materials; no textbook is required. Students expand their ability to narrate and describe in present and past time frames and to refer to future possibilities. Each unit leads students to create diverse projects, with the opportunity to submit for publication in our digital magazine. By the end of the course, students can interpret and produce Portuguese across diverse genres while articulating complex analyses. Conducted in Portuguese.

 

RLST 1140 (10562)

What’s the Matter (with Religion)?

Stephen Davis

T 9:25am-11:20am

Areas HU

We (and everything around us) matter and are made of matter. When it comes to common cultural conceptions, however, religion is all too often conceived of as a purely spiritual, transcendent, and supernatural domain. This course challenges those assumptions by drawing on recent approaches that emphasize and also interrogate the power and agency of things, whether human or non-human, organic or inorganic, tangible or intangible. Part one of the course equips students with key theoretical frameworks, including thing theory, vital materialism, animacies, entanglements, symmetrical archaeology, and affect and emotion. Part two consists of deep dives into selected case studies, organized under the following thematic headings: aniconism and the immaterial, materializations of ritual practice (oracles, magic, and fetishes), apparitions and hauntings, movements and migrations, consumption and consumerism, illness and contagion, and ecology and the environment. As we traverse these topics, we encounter materialities ranging from ancient Greek rock art, Roman oracle shrines, and recipes for magical spells and visions of saints in Egypt, to devotional items confiscated from undocumented immigrants, the marketing of religion by Goldman Sachs and Kanye West, viral epidemics, and “natural” disasters. Students come away from this seminar better able to recognize and act upon what matters in the world.

 

RUSS 3329 (11215) / HISt 3498 / MMES 3300 / RSEE 3329

Introduction to Modern Central Asia

Claire Roosien

TTh 1:05-2:20pm

Areas HU

An overview of the history of modern Central Asia—modern-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. This course shows Central Asia to be a pivotal participant in some of the major global issues of the 20th and 21st centuries, from environmental degradation and Cold War, to women’s emancipation and postcolonial nation-building, to religion and the rise of mass society. It also includes an overview of the region’s longer history, of the conquests by the Russian and Chinese empires, the rise of Islamic modernist reform movements, the Bolshevik victory, World War II, the perestroika, and the projects of post-Soviet nation-building. Readings in history are supplemented by such primary sources as novels and poetry, films and songs, government decrees, travelogues, courtly chronicles, and the periodical press. All readings and discussions in English.

 

SPAN 3545 (12817) / CPLT 4010 / HUMS 1960

The End of the World

Jesus Velasco 

T 1:30pm-3:25pm

Areas HU

In this course we study different kinds of narratives about the end of times and its consequences in Iberian and Latin American cultures. We include political, theological, social, and environmental narratives across periodizations in Iberian and Latin American Cultures. Instruction is in Spanish.

 

URBN 1102 (11671) / ARCH 2601

Introduction to Urban Design

Instructor TBA

Time TBA

Areas HU

This course provides an introduction to the theory and practice of urban design within the context of the broader fields of urbanism and urban history. That is to say that the design of the built environment will be considered in relation to patterns and practices of urban life and culture, and as a response to historical transformations of the political, economic and technological forces that have shaped cities since antiquity, but especially since the industrial revolution. The course will attempt to negotiate between the broader landscape suggested by these forces and the specifics of particular cities at critical moments in their development and the projects which represent the efforts of those cities and their designers to come to terms with the dynamics of urban change. Thus the lectures will include monographic treatments of specific cities and exemplary urban design projects, as well as the general issues and principles of city design suggested by those case studies, including consideration of their implications for contemporary practice. The weekly classes will provide opportunities for the introduction of supplementary examples from the wider field of international urbanism, as well as introducing techniques of urban representation and analysis relevant to the assignments and to student work in studios. Classes will also provide time for discussion of readings and lectures and issues of current interest.