Oct 13, 2024  
Catalogue 2024-2025 
    
Catalogue 2024-2025

Global Nineteenth-Century Studies Program


Global Nineteenth-Century Studies

Director:  Jeffrey Schneider;

Steering Committee: Charles Arndt III (Russian Studies), Wendy Graham (English), Susan Hinerb (French and Francophone Studies), Kenisha Kelly (Drama), Kathryn Libin (Music), Daniel Mendiola (History),  Lydia Murdoch (History), Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert (Hispanic Studies), Jeffrey Schneider (German Studies), Elliot Schreiberb (German Studies), Blevin Shelnutt (English), Mark Taylor (English), Susan Zlotnickb (English).

a On leave 2024/25, first semester

On leave 2024/25, second semester

ab On leave 2024/25

 

The Program in Global Nineteenth-Century Studies is designed to enable students to combine courses offered in several departments/programs with independent work to explore the long nineteenth century, from the beginnings of the American Revolution to the First World War.

A time of intense globalization and modernization, the nineteenth century is marked by political, scientific, technological, and industrial revolutions, the expansion of empires, the abolition of slavery, and the struggle of women, workers, and colonized subjects for civil and political rights. It is an era of increasing interconnectedness made possible by such inventions as the railroad, the steamship, and the telegraph. The long nineteenth century shaped the world we live in now, through revolutions and imperial conflicts (such as the Haitian Revolution, the Opium Wars, the Crimean War, the Indian Rebellion), new cultural practices (the rise of print culture, the birth of the department store, photography, and film), and scientific developments (the emergence of psychiatry, evolutionary theory, germ theory, time zones). The Program in Global Nineteenth-Century Studies insists that the transformative impact of the long nineteenth century is to be understood through a multidisciplinary lens.

Recommendations

Reading knowledge of a foreign language is highly recommended. The program encourages students to study foreign languages at Vassar to work toward the goal of going to the original sources and developing a more nuanced global understanding. Students thinking about graduate school or further study should find out about language requirements for those fields.

Programs

Major

Correlate Sequence in Global Nineteenth-Century Studies

Courses

Global Nineteenth-Century Studies