Surviving Dark Times or Special Topics in Calamity History

Catalog description

This seminar will explore several periods in western history that have dark reputations, and several strategies that people have used to help them survive. Some of the units cover crises that most historians would describe as affecting entire societies (like The Black Death); others (like the one on Jim Crow) focus on threats to particular communities within a society. The final unit will engage with the crises of the 21st-century United States. As a whole, the course should spark questions about how we decide what matters most about being human and should underline the way in which the practice of history is itself a survival strategy. (HIST-HNA)