Department of History

Within the thematic and cross-national emphasis of the history doctorate at Stony Brook, Latin American history remains a thriving area concentration. Indeed, Stony Brook is recognized as one of the country’s top Ph.D. training centers in Latin American history. Since 1990, Stony Brook has awarded more than two dozen doctorates in [...]

Popular perceptions and representations of Islam and Muslims are often founded on ignorance and outright prejudice.  Fundamental to these understandings are narrow and highly politicized notions of history, frequently accepted uncritically.  Accordingly, this course seeks first to introduce analytical approaches crucial to developing nuanced understandings of historical and contemporary depictions of Islam and Muslims.  In [...]

This course will provide an advanced introduction to South Asian history and historiography from the early modern period to the present. We will cover major works on key themes, including precolonial cultural relations, colonialism and imperialism, the politics of religious identity, anti-colonialism and nationalism, decolonization and partition, and postcolonial developments. Readings of classics [...]

WOMEN, MINORITIES, and SUB-GROUPS IN PRE-MODERN AND MODERN URBAN COMMUNITIES
In the modern west, the nation state was long considered the paradigmatic political entity. But in the post-modern world, the importance of the nation state has declined, and we must get used to thinking about other forms of political and communal organization. This course focuses on [...]

An advanced survey of American history from Reconstruction to the present. This is a reading-intensive course designed to familiarize the student with most major issues of this period, with special emphasis on the intersection of politics and society. Assignments will average over 300 pages per week of core readings. In addition, each student will deliver [...]

Coming to grips with the twentieth century started early and is a historical challenge that will probably stimulate interesting responses for a long time. This seminar will explore some of the first exemplary efforts to “understand” that pivotal century:
Barraclough, Geoffrey. An introduction to contemporary history. New York: Basic Books, 1964.
Von [...]

This course surveys American history from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the end of the Cold War in the early 1990’s. It explores the consequences of a federal victory in the Civil War and the incomplete reconstruction that followed in shaping the emergence of a distinctly American state [...]

This course will explore the writing of history from two organizing principles: first, as a theoretical and historical subject that raises complex questions of epistemology and even political philosophy, and secondly, as a craft with its own set of techniques and tools that must be practiced to be mastered. From [...]