sort by: Relevancy | Title try advanced search for more options
Professor Mazzotta lectures on the final cantos of Paradise (XXX-XXXIII). The pilgrim's journey through the physical world comes to an end with his ascent into the Empyrean, a heaven of pure light beyond time and space. Beatrice welcomes Dante into the Heavenly Jerusalem, where the elect are assembled in a celestial rose. By describing the Empyrean as both a garden and a city, Dante recalls the poles of his own pilgrimage while dissolving ...more
In this lecture, Professor Holloway documents the "Great Migration," beginning in the first decade of the twentieth century and continuing with increasing pace until the mid-1920s. During this time, black Americans relocated from the rural South to the urban North. This general shift in the population marked a moment of self-determination for African Americans, demonstrating that they were prepared to leave behind the lives they had made i...more
The final Enlightenment tradition left to be explored in this course is social contract theory, for which we must return to Locke and somehow secularize his views and reconcile them with the refutation of natural rights. Modern social contract theorists replace natural rights with Kant's categorical imperatives, and accept the Aristotelian notion that there is no such thing as pre-political man. They approach the social contract as a hypot...more
The early 1970s marked a moment of social confusion, violence, and cultural excitement carried over from the late 1960s. In this lecture, Professor Holloway canvasses some of the political turmoil of this era and the ways that it was reflected in popular culture. By examining musical achievements like Marvin Gaye's album, What's Going On?, and some of Stevie Wonder's songs recorded around this time, it becomes clear that black cultural pro...more
In this lecture, Professor Holloway expands our understanding of "The Great Migration" by looking at what happens when African Americans settled in Northern and Midwestern cities. He examines the 1917 East St. Louis race riot, the 1919 Chicago race riot, and the NAACP's Silent Protest Parade from New York City's Fifth Avenue to Harlem. The second portion of the lecture is on African American soldiers' experiences abroad during World War, t...more
Professor Blight continues his discussion of the political history of Reconstruction. The central figure in the early phase of Reconstruction was President Andrew Johnson. Under Johnson's stewardship, southern whites held constitutional conventions throughout 1865, drafting new constitutions that outlawed slavery but changed little else. When the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress reassembled late in 1865, they put a stop to Johnson's leni...more
The lecture first concludes the discussion of the First Continental Congress, which met in 1774. Ultimately, although its delegates represented a range of opinions, the voices of the political radicals in the Congress were the loudest. In October 1774, the Continental Congress passed both the radical Suffolk Resolves and the Declaration and Resolves, which laid out the colonists' grievances with Parliament. The Congress also sent a petitio...more
In this lecture, Professor Holloway presents an overview of the civil rights events that took place between the end of World War II and Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. A critical survey of the histories behind such famous events as the desegregation of the Armed Forces, the formation of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), the elimination of the all-white primary, and the Supreme Court'sBrown decision demonstrate how complicated th...more
Professor Freedman focuses on the question of how the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire survived, while the West collapsed in the fifth century. He begins with a brief overview of Procopius' Secret History, a work which presents a highly critical account of the reign of the emperor Justinian. The more urbanized, economically stronger, and geographically more stable Eastern Empire was able to survive while the West was dismantled by barbaria...more
In this lecture, Professor Kagan traces the development of Athens. He argues that Athens, like other poleis, undergoes political and social turmoil due to the rise of the hoplite farmer. This unrest is first seen in the attempted coup d'état of Cylon and the Law of Draco. Professor Kagan also points out that in response to these developments, Solon was made sole archon of Athens to establish peace in a time of unrest. It should also ...more
This lecture opens with a discussion of the myriad moments at which historians have declared an "end" to Reconstruction, before shifting to the myth and reality of "Carpetbag rule" in the Reconstruction South. Popularized by Lost Cause apologists and biased historians, this myth suggests that the southern governments of the Reconstruction era were dominated by unscrupulous and criminal Yankees who relied on the ignorant black vote to rob a...more
Asiatic cholera was the most dreaded disease of the nineteenth century. While its demographic impact could not compare to that of the bubonic plague, it nonetheless held a tremendous purchase on the European social imagination. One reason for the intense fear provoked by the disease was its symptoms: not only did cholera exact a degrading and painful toll on the human body, it also struck suddenly, and was capable of reducing the seemingly...more
