HST 119 - Frontiers in History

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR (students beginning prior to Fall 2024): Meets general academic requirement HU.
This course uses the frontier as an excellent perspective from which to study history – an approach that is particularly useful when placed in a comparative context. The course will first examine the theoretical and historiographic study of frontiers, including Frederick Jackson Turner’s ‘Frontier Thesis’ of American history and its critics, attempts to apply Turner’s ideas to other parts of the world, Owen Lattimore’s work on Inner Asia, and recent anthropological studies of frontiers and colonial expansion. This will be followed by an analysis of specific problems and cases from a variety of cultures and historic periods, including frontiers in ancient Rome; frontier conflicts in medieval Spain and England; the interactions between the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires in the early modern period; European expansion in North America and Southern Africa; ethnicity and identity among frontier populations; and depictions of frontiers in literature and film.