This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.

This course examines the emergence, operation, collapse, and legacy of the South African apartheid regime. To do so, we will consider not only the formation of the South African legal apparatus around apartheid in this country, but its extension into greater Southwest Africa and place in continental African history in the twentieth century. This course examines the political landscape that produced and maintained this political-legal regime, its effects on diverse groups of people, and the ways it came to prominence in international law and debates about systems of governance based on racial exclusion. As such, we will situate apartheid in South Africa within broader global currents that shaped the political, legal, and cultural history of colonialism and decolonization in Africa and elsewhere. Through a comparative examination of contexts in South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique, the United States, and elsewhere, our aim will be to develop a nuanced understanding of how the institutionalization and policing of race have shaped the course of events in world history both during the 20th century and since.

Instructor bio: Dr. Christian Alvarado (Ph.D., History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz) is a historian of Africa with broad interests in the continent's culture, politics, and role in global life. His courses examine the intellectual and material networks that connect societies on the African continent with other parts of the world. Dr. Alvarado has particular expertise in the history of colonialism and decolonization during the 19th and 20th centuries.

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