This is an archived course. A more recent version may be available at ocw.mit.edu.

Assignments

Essays

First Essay Topic (PDF)
Second Essay Topic (PDF)

Semi-Optional Film Series/Project (PDF)

Reading Questions

Week #1 (PDF)

  • Nzinga Mbemba (Affonso I). "Letters to the King of Portugal" (1526).
  • Unnamed author. "Letter to the King and Queen of Spain."

Week #2 (PDF)

  • Bartolomé de Las Casas. Excerpts from Apologia (ca. 1548-1550), translated into English as In Defense of the Indians.
  • Diego Durán. Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar (ca. 1580).

Week #3 (PDF)

  • Galeote Pereira. "Certain Reports of China…" (1565).
  • Tokugawa Iemitsu. "The Edict of 1635 Ordering the Closing of Japan," and "Completion of the Exclusion, 1639."

Week #4 (PDF)

  • Documents on Witchcraft Persecutions (1486-1631).
  • William Monter. "Women in the Age of the Reformation."

Week #5 (PDF)

  • John Locke. The Second Treatise of Government (1698).
  • Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania.

Week #6 (PDF)

  • Michael Craton. Excerpts from Searching for the Invisible Man: Slaves and Plantation Life in Jamaica (1978).

Week #7 (PDF)

  • Excerpts from Paul Beik, ed. The French Revolution.
  • Excerpts from Darline Gay Levy et al., eds. Women in Revolutionary Paris.
  • Excerpts from George F. Tyson, ed. Toussaint L'Ouverture.

Week #8 (PDF)

  • Documents from British Parliamentary Committees during the "Industrial Revolution" (1832, 1842).
  • William Blake. "Chimney Sweeper," "London," and "The Human Abstract" (1794).

Week #9 (PDF)

  • Karl Marx. Excerpts from Capital. Vol. 1 (1867).
  • Iwasaki Yataro. "Letter to Mitsubishi Employees" (1876).

Week #10 (PDF)

  • Roger Casement. "Correspondence Respecting the Treatment of British Colonial Subjects and Native Indians Employed in the Collection of Rubber in the Putumayo District" (1911).

Week #11 (PDF)

  • Ivan Turgenev. Excerpts from Fathers and Sons (original Russian edition 1861; translation 1867). Chap. 1-10.
  • Vera Figner. Part I from Five Sisters.

Week #12 (PDF)

  • W. E. B. DuBois. "The Concept of Race" (1940), and "The Damnation of Women" (1920).

Week #13 (PDF)

  • V. I. Lenin. Excerpts from "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government" (1918).
  • Miklós Haraszti. Excerpts from A Worker in a Worker's State, and "The Culture of Censorship."

Week #14 (PDF)

  • Patrick Buchanan. Excerpts from Death of the West (2002).