Not Like US? Americans as Occupiers and Nation Builders

Harvard Extension School

HIST E-1900

Section 1

CRN 27036

View Course Details
The United States has launched numerous projects of military occupation and nation-building in foreign lands since the late nineteenth century. These have been contradictory enterprises, in which Americans often sought to make other peoples more like them, while at the same time insisting on their difference. This course assesses the meanings and legacies of these projects by examining the ideas, strategies, policies, and outcomes of occupations ranging from the Philippines and Haiti early on to Japan, Germany, and Korea in mid-century to, most recently, Afghanistan and Iraq. The course focuses on American activities and ideas but also examines the responses of the occupied.

Registration Closes: January 22, 2026
Credits: 4

View Tuition Information

Term

Spring Term 2026

Part of Term

Full Term

Format

Online

Credit Status

Graduate, Noncredit, Undergraduate

Section Status

Open

Instructor Info

Erez Manela, PhD

Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History, Harvard University


Andrew Gordon, PhD

Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Harvard University


Meeting Info

1/26 to 5/16

Participation Option: Online Asynchronous

In online asynchronous courses, you are not required to attend class at a particular time. Instead you can complete the course work on your own schedule each week.

Deadlines

Last day to register: January 22, 2026

Additional Time Commitments

Required sections to be arranged.

Notes

The recorded lectures are from the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences companion course Gen Ed 1017. Registered students can ordinarily live stream the lectures Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:30-2:45 pm starting January 27 or they can watch them on demand. The recorded sessions are typically available within a few hours of the end of class and no later than the following business day. Class sessions for this course may include students enrolled in the FAS companion course. Accordingly, when you participate in live class sessions, you will do so alongside both Division of Continuing Education (DCE) and FAS students. If you participate in a way that causes you to appear in recordings of the class, those recordings may be shown to DCE students enrolled in this course or FAS students enrolled in the companion course, according to the policies of the two schools on accessing recordings of class sessions.

Tuition

View Tuition Information

All Sections of this Course

CRN Section # Participation Option(s) Instructor Section Status Meets Term Dates
27036 1 Online Asynchronous Team Taught Open Jan 26 to May 16

This Course May Contribute to: