A survey of U.S. History from the post-Civil War period to the present. Topics include American industrialization, two world wars, New Deal, and the Civil Rights movement. Includes study of Georgia history during this period

Introduction to social theory, providing students with skills for reading theory and examining works of major social theorists, including Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Du Bois.

This course looks at how changing technologies, scientific theories, and medical practices have shaped, and been shaped by, our understandings of race. It focuses on the intellectual history of scientific work on heredity, eugenics, genetics, and genomic science. The geographical center of the course is the United States, but case studies and vignettes will explore how scientific, medical, and racial concepts function both internationally and globally. Beginning in the late nineteenth century with early views on human evolution and human "improvement", the course ends with an extended examination of commercial DNA tests and how they have been taken up and used by different groups within the United States.

Technologies have formed the basis of material culture and influenced the course of social change throughout human history. Yet the shape of technologies’ influence on society has varied significantly with time and place in a way that often goes unnoticed by engineering students. The present course combines the history of technology with world history. While the word “innovation” is modern, creative technical activity, along with changing social practices, is as old as humankind. Through a series of historical case studies – prehistoric fire, medieval cathedrals, artisanal French bread, railways, and smart phones – we will see how engineering (broadly defined) evolved over major eras of the past. In the process, we address three basic questions concerning technology and society. First, what exactly is technological change – how does it actually occur and how does it differ from the way we talk about the topic? How has its form changed over time? Second, what are the social roots, or origins, of technological change, or “innovation” – what role do different social groups and institutions, as well as various ideas, play in encouraging or inhibiting such change? And, third, what are the social consequences (and costs) of technological change and who benefits from its gains? Put differently, how should we discuss “progress”? We cannot answer any of these questions in the abstract. Instead, we must address them in specific historical settings, and we do well to go back as far back in time as humanly possible – hence, our case studies.

Survey of the complex social web of identity, culture, politics, economics, history, and power behind food systems in the U.S. and globally.

Why do social movements emerge? Why might they succeed? This course examines how ordinary people challenge powerful segments of society and contribute to social change.This course explores the lives of Black Women and considers their contributions to various social movements across the diaspora. Beginning in the late 18^th century and ending in the 20^th century, we will examine women’s lived experiences from the western shores of Africa to the Americas.