This course provides an introduction to key theoretical works that animate historical research and practice, as well as connect historical scholarship with debates and problematics in other disciplines. We will read classic texts of social theory such as Foucault, Marx, Spivak, Chakrabarty, Butler, Braudel, Fanon, and Trouillot in conjunction with problems and methods explored by historians, past and present. Selected themes pertinent to the historian’s craft — temporality and archives, scale, translation — and to the philosophy of history — universalism and alterity, modernity and capitalism — will be taken up to prepare students to craft their research trajectory and projects.