The History of the End of the World
For thousands of years, people have been getting ready for the end of the world, giving rise to millenarian movements that have sometimes changed history. More than once, large numbers of people have experienced events such as the Black Death, the Little Ice Age, colonial conquest, and “strategic” bombing that seemed very much like the end of their world. And over the last seventy-five years, governments and international organizations have made major investments in predicting and preparing for catastrophic threats. Efforts to manage or mitigate these dangers have had world-changing consequences, including “preventative” wars and new forms of global governance. The very idea of the end of the world, in other words, has a long history with a demonstrable impact, which provides instructive lessons as we contemplate things to come.
Secrecy, Privacy and Surveillance
To many, the growth of official secrecy and state surveillance in the U.S. and other countries threatens to undermine the whole basis of open and accountable government. Theorists suggest that secrecy is intrinsic to bureaucracy, while others celebrate transparency as an unmitigated good. In this course, students will consider whether such theories can actually predict the future by testing them against the evidence of the past, especially as it relates to enduring debates about individual rights and international security. We will examine how history has already witnessed many periods when the perceived growth of secrecy and surveillance inspired public outcry and attempts at reform. We will also consider how the actual practice of collecting, classifying, mining, and releasing information varies both between states and within government departments. And we will analyze why norms about secrecy — especially when it comes to personal privacy — vary over time and across cultures, from the ancient world to the information age.
Hacking the Archive
Historians now have access to unprecedentedly large and rich bodies of information generated from the digitization of older materials and the explosion of “born digital” electronic records. Machine learning and natural language processing make it possible to answer traditional research questions with greater rigor, and tackle new kinds of projects that would once have been deemed impracticable. This course aims to create a laboratory organized around a common group of databases in international history which can be used for multiple research projects. Students will begin by learning about earlier methodological transformations in literary, cultural, and historical analysis, and consider whether and how the “digital turn” might turn out differently. They will then explore new tools and techniques, including named-entity extraction, text classification, topic modeling, geographic information systems, social and citation network analysis, and data visualization.
The Future, as History
This undergraduate seminar explores how people have thought about their future and tried to change it. It examines the philosophical aspects of studying history and the future, and how they are related. It begins with the origins of future thinking in eschatology and millenarian movements, the enlightenment challenge to revelation and religious authority, and fictional accounts of utopia and dystopia. Classic texts and scholarly analyses will illuminate modern approaches to the future, such as socialism, imperialism, and “modernization” theory, and areas where they have had a particular impact, including urban planning, eugenics, and space exploration.