Courses

For at least a century, the spy has been a staple of popular culture. Countless books and films have featured intelligence officers, secret agents, double agents, and now even cryptographers as heroes and adversaries. Only recently, however, have espionage and intelligence become subjects for historical investigation. Historians now ask how spies and intelligence agencies have operated in crucial phases of modern history. How have they collected sensitive information, employed agents, planted moles, cultivated defectors, and designed elaborate campaigns of deception? And how have they adapted to astonishingly rapid advances in information technology? At the beginning of the 20th century, espionage still proceeded by intercepting letters; less than a half-century later, during World War II, cryptographers in Britain and the United States broke formidable German and Japanese encryption machines by using early versions of computers.

We will also examine certain notorious intelligence blunders: from Stalin’s and Hitler’s egregious failures to anticipate invasions of their empires to American failures in the counterintelligence war against the Soviet Union. On a lighter note, if James Bond were as old as his creator, he would be celebrating his 107th birthday this year. How can we account for his longevity? Our course will follow the trajectory of the spy in popular culture, from the heroic playboys of John Buchan and Ian Fleming to the disillusioned protagonists of the novels of Alan Furst and John le Carré.