America in the Age of Sail

Catalog description

This course explores the social, cultural, and environmental histories of the American maritime people from roughly the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Topics will include the expansion of European maritime empires, sea-born piracy, maritime labor, the transatlantic slave trade, scientific exploration, fishing, whaling, and merchant trade. Fundamental to course analyses will be examinations of race, class, gender, and the environment both on shore and at sea.