Content Comparison

This introductory course will survey American history from the pre-colonial era to the Civil War. We will approach this period of history through a discussion of three themes. The first covers the period from the founding down to the middle of the eighteenth century and focuses on how Europeans from a medieval culture became Americans. The second theme explores the political, social and economic impact the Revolution had upon American society. And finally, we will focus on the modernization of American society in the nineteenth century and how that modernization was a major factor in causing the sectional crisis.

In addition to the two lecture classes a week, you will attend a small discussion class taught by one of the teaching assistants once each week.

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Pre-Modern

HST 111: Early Modern Europe

*This course includes the lecture and a weekly discussion section. By enrolling in discussion, you automatically enroll in the lecture.

This course covers the history of Europe from the Black Death, which marked the end of the Middle Ages, to the French Revolution – the beginning of the modern world. While it will cover the major events of the period – the Renaissance, the Reformation, the English, French and scientific revolutions, the rise and fall of Napoleon, the growth of the modern state – the emphasis will be on changes in the lives of ordinary men and women. There will be a midsemester, a final, and two short (c. 5 page) papers.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern

HST 121: Global History Until 1750

This course introduces students to global history from the thirteenth century through 1750 by focusing on social, economic, political, intellectual, and religious developments in major regions of the world: Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. Beginning with the Mongol’s Eurasian empire, their transformation of the continent, and the spread of Islamic empires from Central Asia to the Atlantic, it traces the historical patterns of different world regions in the fifteenth century through the trans-Atlantic slave trade and European imperialism.  What types of exchanges were facilitated by maritime trade and trade diasporas? How were human interactions with their environment circumscribed by climate change and disease? The latter part of the course looks at global connections and local particularities facilitated by the spread of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Course themes include empire, disease, environment, slavery, religion, state-formation, and the rise of global trade. Topics will be covered thematically in general chronological order. Lectures will be supplemented by maps, visual materials, music, documentaries and films. All students are required to attend lectures and one discussion a week.

Concentration: Global / Period: Pre-modern

This course is an introductory survey of Middle East history from the rise of Islam in the seventh century to 1900. It discusses major empires in Middle East covering topics such as culture and society, science and technology, and women and politics. We will approach the Middle East through the theme of exchange, considering the connections between Southwest Asia and North Africa and neighboring regions, as the crossroads of Asia and Europe. Other prominent themes include multiculturalism, reform, and modernization.

The course meets twice each week. There is no discussion section.

Concentration: Global / Period: Pre-modern

This course surveys the history of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, and explores the classical roots of modern civilization. We will begin with the first civilizations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the roots of western religion in ancient Israel; then proceed through Bronze Age, archaic and classical Greece, the Persian wars, the trial of Socrates, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Hellenistic world, the rise of Rome, and end with the fall of the Roman Empire and the coming of Christianity. The course will treat political, social, cultural, religious and intellectual history. We will focus on issues that the ancients themselves considered important – good and bad government, the duties of citizens and the powers of kings and tyrants – but we will also examine those who were marginalized by the Greeks and Romans: women, slaves, so-called "barbarians." The course will emphasize reading and discussion of primary sources, in order to provide a window into the thought-worlds and value systems of past societies.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern

This course is a survey of pre-modern African history, presenting an overview of the main themes and chronology of the development of African culture and society. It provides an exposition of the regional and continental diversity and unity in African political, economic, social and cultural histories with special emphasis on major African civilizations, processes of state formation, encounters with the Euro-Asia world, Africa’s role in the international Trans-Saharan, Indian Ocean and Atlantic trades, ecology, and urbanization.

Concentration: Global / Period: Pre-modern

This course explores interstate systems of ancient Greece and Rome through international relations theory.  The theoretical framework is applied to two famous historical narratives: Thucydides' portrayal of the great Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, and Polybius' account of the Second Punic War between the Roman Republic and its arch nemesis Carthage, led by the commander Hannibal.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-Modern

The Second World War in Europe lasted for six years and cost the lives of more than 50 million soldiers and civilians. It transformed the continent's politics, economics, society, and culture. Its memory continues to haunt Europe and influences every aspect of the region's current affairs. Studying its causes, conduct, and consequences, then, is an essential precondition for understanding modern Europe. In this seminar we will combine close classroom readings of important primary and secondary sources with independent research on aspects of the conflict chosen by the students themselves. The end goal for each participant will be an original research paper drafted and presented to the class.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

This course is about the history of development in Modern Africa from 1800 to the present. Development here is defined as the quest for progress/improvement in human economic and social conditions. Focus is on the origins, meaning, and implementation of development as an idea and practice in modern Africa. Readings challenge the students to develop a critical assessment of these processes. The readings examine roles of several agencies and institutions in Africa’s development history, particularly states, administrators, international institutions, knowledge regimes, as well as geography, natural resources, labor, policy frameworks of postcolonial states. What has motivated these institutions and agencies to engage in development in Africa? What has been the vision of ordinary Africans regarding developments? Assignments include critical writing reflections and tests. The course is relevant to students interested in the historical, political, and international contexts of Africa’s development question. Students of history, economics, development, political science, international relations will particularly find the course relevant to their fields.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

Commodities and the meanings we give them dominate the modern world. This seminar focuses on the means of producing and acquiring, the modes of consuming, and the cultural worlds constructed around material objects in the 19th and 20th centuries. Discussions will include topics such as empire, capitalism, politics, ideologies, identities, and globalization. As we progress, we will ask how these historical themes manifested in, and were transformed by changes in material life. 

Concentration: Europe/Global  / Period: Modern

HST 300/HNR 360: Modern American Politics Through Film

This Class is open to Honors Students ONLY

This Class is open to Honors Students ONLY 

In this course we will examine major themes in the political consciousness and popular culture of modern America, as they are reflected in contemporary film. The focus will be both on particular events and movements and on more generalized and persistent concerns (discrimination, alienation and depersonalization, authoritarianism, violence, gender, sexuality, bureaucratization, corruption). We shall be examining “politics” broadly understood, through the lens of popular culture. The goal is to explore a range of movies as ways of interrogating how Americans understand themes of power, intersectionality, conflict and consensus.

We will meet as a class twice each week: once to discuss a film’s social and political context, and once to discuss the film itself. The week’s film will be shown online, in between those two meetings.

This class differs from most at SU in that it is intergenerational. In addition to those enrolled for credit, participants will include approximately ten people from Oasis, a program for “mature learners” (generally, retired professionals) in the Syracuse community. Their lived experiences and perspectives on both the movies and the themes they illuminate will be a major component of what this course is all about.

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern

Entwined with the intellectual and cultural achievements for which the Renaissance is justly famous grew new approaches to power, money, and technology that laid the foundations for the modern world. This course traces how core Renaissance developments in state-building, diplomacy, warfare, technology, and a developing market economy interacted with new historical, observational, and mathematical approaches to knowledge woven into new epistemologies that unlocked religious and scientific revolution. From the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution to the growth of a system of powerful states underpinned by a mathematized fiscal-military establishment that drew on the financial resources of a burgeoning capitalist economy and the weapons of a society with an increasingly sophisticated approach to technological development, the course traces how the project of restoring the pure glories of classical antiquity culminated instead in Industrial Revolution, a permanently fractured and militarized Europe, and a secularizing Enlightenment that believed firmly in reason and progress.  

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

An introduction to Islam and the lives of Muslims in the Middle East and around the globe through movies, tv, music, and other media. Introduces students to Islam as a living faith through the lives of Muslims and their representation. By combining history and religious studies, the course provides important context for understanding the role of Islam and Muslims in the world today. Drawing examples from the contemporary Middle East and Middle East history, the course situates Islam as a global religion and in relation to transnational social and political movements. Examples consider the place of Islam in secular states whether majority Muslim (Egypt) or majority Christian (the U.S.) and in relation to religious nationalism (Saudi Arabia) to examine how religion intersects with socio-economic class, gender, and race. Drawing examples from television, fiction, documentary film, and multiple musical genres to expose students to popular culture made by and for Muslims, we combine critical media literacy with an understanding of the development of media infrastructure, commercialization, and the politics of production and consumption.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

HST 102: American History Since 1865

*This course includes the lecture and a weekly discussion section. By enrolling in discussion, you automatically enroll in the lecture.

This semester offers a broad look at the history of the United States in the 150 years from the end of the Civil War through the first decade of the 21st Century. Throughout the course, we will engage with the social, political, and cultural changes, ideas, and events that have profoundly shaped modern American society.

Key questions include: How have we defined being American? How has the nation’s relationship with the world changed?  How have the rights of citizens evolved over time? How have various groups in American society articulated their claims to citizenship and national belonging? What factors have affected the development of American political leadership?

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern

HST 112: Napoleon to the Present 

*This course includes the lecture and a weekly discussion section. By enrolling in discussion, you automatically enroll in the lecture.

This course examines the major developments in European history since the late 18th century, including the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era, the Industrial Revolution, imperialism, the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Fascist and Nazi seizures of power, the Second World War, the Holocaust, the Cold War, and European Unification. The thematic focus of this course is the relationship between the individual and the state. How does this relationship change over time – what makes it “modern”? To address this question, we will examine ideologies (liberalism, conservatism, socialism, nationalism, fascism), the birth of mass society, poverty, violence, women’s rights, and racism. There are two lectures and one discussion section per week. Discussions emphasize primary sources and historical debates. Grades are based on in-class exams, papers, and discussion.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

HST 122: Global History 1750-Present

*This course includes the lecture and a weekly discussion section. By enrolling in discussion, you automatically enroll in the lecture.

This course introduces students to global history beginning in 1750 by focusing on social, economic, political, intellectual and religious developments in major regions of the world: Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. Beginning with the Mughal Empire in India, the Ottomans, and the empires of the New World, it will trace the growing interaction of these areas with Europe through colonialism and trade. From the age of revolutions to the age of empires and the age of nation-states, this course studies the relevance of the early modern world for understanding today’s global patterns and economic interdependency. We will explore twentieth-century developments including the spread of Marxism, secular nationalism, and decolonization. The course ends by looking at current issues in world history, including the environment, global capitalism, and religious revivalism. Topics will be covered thematically in general chronological order. Lectures will be supplemented by maps, visual materials, music, documentaries and films. All students are required to attend lectures and one discussion section a week. Students need not have taken HST 121 Global History to enroll.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

The course will analyze the complex histories and transnational forces that influenced the migration of diverse communities from their homelands. In addition to assessing forces that influenced these developments, such as colonization, imperialism, and globalization in the global north and south, the course will attempt to understand the transnational experiences, struggles, and activisms of diasporic communities across race, class, gender, and sexuality. Drawing on a diverse range of case studies, for example the global South Asian and African diasporas, the course will draw connections between a diverse array of experiences while also appreciating and understanding the nuances between them. Exploring these trajectories from the late colonial period to the present day, students will critically analyze what categories like diaspora, migration, and immigration mean to communities that are given these labels and to what extent these categories are tied to global power dynamics.   

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern  

Did ancient people feel the same emotions as we do? How did people in the past cope with depression and anxiety? What makes people ultimately happy? Why did some medieval Christians think that angels don’t feel pity? These and similar questions are central to this course that focuses on conceptions of the 'soul', the force felt to animate and energize a human body for as long as it was considered alive, and to activate virtually all aspects of its behavior through time. The emphasis will lie on texts on the care of the soul and on the relationship between body and soul – the latter topic being especially important in Christian discourses regarding the bodily resurrection.

Interested in the Middle East but not sure where to begin? This course is the perfect introduction to understanding a fascinating and dynamic part of the world today. It covers major aspects of Middle East history from the twentieth century to the present, including the countries from Turkey and Iran in the east, to Palestine, Israel, Syria and the Arabian Peninsula, and from Egypt across northern Africa to Morocco in the west. Lectures combine political basics with a insights on social and cultural life, and women’s rights. Readings blend specific details of political and economy change in each country while indicating broader regional trends, from as European imperialism, the impact of the two world wars, to revolutionary aspirations and radical social movement. These are supplemented by primary sources that incorporate the words, perspectives, and self-representations of individuals across the Middle East. Additional topics include intellectual life, constitutionalism and democracy, anti-colonial nationalism, feminism and women’s movements, the radical left, political Islam, and contemporary debates.

There are no prerequisites for this class.

This class meets twice a week, there is no discussion section.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

HST 211: Medieval and Renaissance Europe

*This course includes the lecture and a weekly discussion section. By enrolling in discussion, you automatically enroll in the lecture.

This introductory survey traces Europe’s transformation during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, from roughly 300 CE to roughly 1500 CE. It begins as the Roman Empire slowly gave way to new societies in both East and West, and then follows the fortunes of these societies over more than 1000 years. It explores the religious, political, economic, social, cultural, intellectual, and artistic aspects of these societies and how they changed over time. Readings will include both primary sources (those written at the time) and secondary sources (by modern scholars). Students will learn to analyze these sources in order to find out what happened in this period, how people understood events, and how historians use evidence to explain the past. Requirements include reading and participation, midterm and final exams, and two papers.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern

Are you curious about African History? Do you want to understand the causes and consequences of colonialism? Do you wonder about the role of African states in the Cold War? Do you want to go beyond stereotyped images of Africans presented in movies and TV shows? This course will answer those questions and more through surveying the history and transformations of the African continent over the last two hundred years. Some of the themes and topics this course will examine include: the role of slaver in the nineteenth century Africa, precolonial social, economic, and demographic transformations, the effects of colonization on African societies, African anti-imperialism and nationalism, decolonization, Africa and the Cold War, postcolonial successes and challenges, the state of Africa in the twenty-first century and digital age.

Crosslisted with: AAS 214

A survey of modern African history since 1800. Themes include nineteenth-century western images of Africa, pre-colonial changes, Western Imperialism, African anti-imperialism, colonial economic and social transformation, nationalism, cold war, decolonization, post colonial developments and changes.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

Elizabeth I: Cultural icon? Virgin queen? ‘Father/Mother’ of the nation? This course will examine the images, personality, words and actions of one of the most important monarchs in English history. How did Elizabeth manage to negotiate her rule of a patriarchal society as a ‘weak-willed woman’? Did she exploit her considerable political skills to benefit the country or simply to maintain her position on the throne? And what of those who sort to assassinate or replace her? How did she react to threats of foreign invasion, domestic rebellion and a barely concerned hostility among many in the governing classes? Using both early modern and modern iconography, we will explore the images and representations of Elizabeth to unravel her life and examine how she sought to portray herself and how others have seen her through the years.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-Modern

Capitalism is not only a Western economic system. It is a more comprehensive mode of organizing society that is being continuously adopted, modified and subverted around the globe. In this course, we will explore the multiple, and often counter-intuitive ways, in which capitalism became entrenched in the modern Middle East. Drawing on social, intellectual, environmental and business histories, we will examine how the encounter with modern capitalism shaped such pervasive political phenomena as European imperialism, post-colonial nationalism, and contemporary sectarianism. Additionally, we will dissect common modern practices, like smuggling and consumerism, to uncover how they came to define the culture of capitalism in the Middle East over the past two centuries.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

This course examines two concurrent developments in medieval history and historiography. The first is scholarship reevaluating race (and ideas about race) in the European Middle Ages. Second is how ideas about race continue to frame discussions about the Middle Ages today, both in academia and in the broader culture. Examples include debates among medievalists about the study of race, and the misappropriation and misrepresentation of the Middle Ages by white supremacists. By discovering that medieval Europe was more diverse than is generally assumed and that ideas about race go further back than most historical accounts recognize, students will better understand how the medieval era shaped the present and is being distorted in the present.

HST 300: Native American History 1830-Present

This course is part two of the Native North American Survey. Beginning with the Indian Removal Act of 1830, this course will take a chronological approach to Native North America to understand how major historical events and themes connect the past to the present. This is mostly a discussion-based course with major topics including Native sovereignty and self-determination, forced removal, forced assimilation, the Red Power movement, Landback, Native repatriation, and other forms of Native resistance and cultural perseverance.

Concentration: U.S./Native / Period: Modern

This course explores the history of representations of Native Americans and their culture in popular media by both Native and non-Native peoples. Through analyses of both films and literature, this course will investigate major several major themes that affect Native people in the present-day such as colonialism, erasure, survivance, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, forced assimilation and boarding schools, the myth of the vanishing Indian, and Natives dealing with a post-apocalyptic future. The course will be accompanied by a weekly film viewing series where we watch movies from several different genres, mostly written and produced by Native filmmakers.

Concentration: U.S./Native / Period: Modern

What is History? How do scholars “do” history? This seminar introduces history majors to the methods and goals of historical study, and to the skills needed to conduct independent historical research. The first part of the course will be spent discussing what exactly history is and has been. We will then move on to discussing the kinds of history that have developed across the century in the American Historical profession. Finally, students will spend a large portion of the course familiarizing themselves with the analytical and practical skills needed to develop their own research projects. 

The Civil War was a second American Revolution, and considerably more transformative than the first. Through lectures, readings of primary and secondary-source texts, discussions, and films, this course will show why. We begin by asking what led Southern states to secede in 1861, why the North resolved to restore the union by force of arms, and how emancipation evolved from a military expedient to a defining war aim. We will ask how changing military strategies and tactics related to political struggles over the objectives of the war, and why the war took so many lives. The role of political and military leaders – Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, to name a few – will be placed alongside the experiences of soldiers, slaves, and civilians. Our examination of Reconstruction will pay particular attention to the efforts of freedmen and women to secure their freedoms despite the hostility of white Southerners and the indifference of Northerners. Care will also be taken to understand the Civil War and Reconstruction in relation to larger social, economic, and cultural developments in nineteenth-century America, and to place them in global context. Finally, we will look at how Americans have remembered the war, from struggles over memorialization, to the persistence of "Lost Cause" mythology, to changing interpretations of the war advanced by historians in the twentieth century.

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern

What is History? How do scholars “do” history? This seminar introduces history majors to the methods and goals of historical study, and to the skills needed to conduct independent historical research. The first part of the course will be spent discussing what exactly history is and has been. We will then move on to discussing the kinds of history that have developed across the century in the American Historical profession. Finally, students will spend a large portion of the course familiarizing themselves with the analytical and practical skills needed to develop their own research projects. 

The course explores and analyzes the place of Africa and Africans as victims and players in historical events of global implications from the late nineteenth century (circa 1870) to the present. By utilizing interpretations from history of international relations, the course puts Africa and Africans at the center and periphery of these global currents as important role players and victims. Examples of  global events/processes examined include, but are not limited to: integration of Africa into global economies; nineteenth century European imperialism; Colonial Economies; Global conflicts; health and disease; environmental issues; the Cold War; decolonization; Neocolonialism; International institutions and Africa; the Development Question; global war on terror; to mention but a few. Readings combine primary documents with secondary sources.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

This course

provides a survey of the most important political, cultural and social developments in the period between 300 and 900, or roughly between the reign of Constantine and end of the rule of the Carolingian kings, mostly focusing on Western Europe. In this period falls one of the most dramatic historical breaks: the “Fall of the Roman Empire” and the “Beginning of the Middle Ages.” But was there really a “Fall of the Roman Empire?” When, how and why did the Roman Empire come to an end? This still ferociously debated question will play a central role in the course. Other topics will be the rise of Christianity, the development of medieval institutions (such as kingship, church structures, and feudalism), and the continuity and discontinuity of intellectual traditions. A special emphasis will be laid on reading and interpreting (translated) primary sources and on methods of historical research.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern

This course covers the major political, social, and cultural developments in Europe during the period of the two world wars. Major themes include the failures of liberal democracy and capitalism, the rise of authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorships, and the decline of Europe. In addition to a textbook, course materials include historical monographs, memoirs, novels, and films. Assignments include papers, in-class exams, and quizzes.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

In this course we will survey Chinese history from earliest times to the end of the Ming dynasty in 1644.  This seemingly remote time witnessed the formation of a complex government and society whose influence extended to much of East Asia. Ranging over the centuries, the class will explore some of the main currents in Chinese political, cultural, social, and intellectual history. These include:  Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Legalism as competing and sometimes intersecting philosophies; the imperial system and major changes in its form over time; the changing roles of women in society; popular rebellion and heterodox religion; and the place of science and technology in the Chinese past.

We will read a variety of texts in addition to a concise textbook.

Concentration: Global / Period: Pre-modern

This course surveys the history of the Indian subcontinent from 2000 BCE, when an urban civilization was thriving in the Indus Valley, to the seventeenth century, when the Great Mughals ruled over one of the most powerful empires in the contemporary world. While covering this vast time period, we will focus on specific topics pertaining to ancient and medieval Indian politics, economy, religion, society, and culture. Selected readings will examine forms of kingship, the rise of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, the position of women in society, the role of temples as social and political centres, the importance of overseas trade, and the Indian Ocean world.

Did the Aryans invade India? Was the Ramayana a central text for all Hindus? Was the Gupta Empire truly a golden age? What was the impact of the Mughal conquest of Delhi? Through primary and secondary texts, lectures, and class discussions, students will find answers to these questions, and gain a fresh understanding of the Indian past and present.

Concentration: Global / Period: Pre-modern

This course will analyze the evolution of the modern presidency and its present operation. The focus of our attention will be on the years since the Second World War, and especially on those since 1960. The decision-making process and operation of presidential administrations from Kennedy through Trump will be studied in detail; we also will discuss the early challenges faced by the Biden administration. We shall consider the various roles that the president plays in government, politics and society. The presidency as an institution and as an individual office will be examined to identify factors that have contributed to the successes and failures of particular administrations. This course shall also examine the roles and influence of unelected officials (esp. senior White House staff), and popular attitudes toward both the symbolic and the practical presidency—especially as they have been shaped by the traditional mass media and the “new media” (especially online interactivity). We will consider what lasting effects, if any, events during the last quarter century have had upon the presidency as an institution.   Finally, we will leave space for discussion of breaking news and unexpected developments, especially those related to presidential politics.

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern

Survey of ancient Greek political, economic, social and cultural history based on interpretation of primary sources, both literary and archaeological, from the Bronze Age through Alexander the Great.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern

In 1933, a radical and dictatorial regime came to power in Germany, remade the German state, and went on to orchestrate a vast program of mass murder in pursuit of a vision of biological purity and to launch a war of world conquest, ultimately killing millions. This course examines the history of German fascism, the Nazi state, and the Holocaust according to three primary lines of inquiry. In the first part of the course, we will address the question of how the Nazis came to power. What was Nazism, and why did it gain a popular following? Why did the Weimar Republic, the parliamentary democracy founded in 1918, fall (first to dictatorship and then to Nazism) in the early 1930s? In the second part of the course, we will examine the politics of Nazism in power. What was everyday life like for various Germans under the Nazi state, and why did many Germans come to support the regime? The course’s third section addresses war, genocide, and the legacies of Nazism and the Holocaust.  How did Nazi genocide policies develop, and how was it possible to implement them? What can the history of Nazi Germany teach us about other state-run mass murder programs?  How have Germans grappled with the aftermath of Nazi Germany?

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

This course examines the historical experiment in communism that played out in the lands of the former Russian Empire in the twentieth century. In 1917, radical revolutionaries seized control and attempted to create a multi-ethnic state dedicated to the realization of Karl Marx’s utopian plans for a communist society. Yet the seventy years that followed were dominated by mass repression, genocide, world war, and crushing dictatorship in all spheres of life. When the USSR abruptly disappeared in 1991, few mourned its passing. What (if any) promise did the communist revolution hold for the residents of Tsarist Russia? Why did the utopian ideals propounded by Russian Marxists lead to Stalinist dictatorship? And did the USSR have any chance to reform after Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, or was the system fatally flawed and doomed to collapse? In addition to addressing these issues, this course will provide a glimpse of what life was like for people who lived through the “experiment” itself.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

Is there, as some historians have claimed, a distinctive ‘American way of war’ traceable over the four centuries since the beginning of the European colonization of North America? If so, what are its characteristics, how has it changed over time, and what does it reveal about a peculiar American attitude to state violence and the relationship between military and civilian society? In this course, we will examine the ‘small’ and ‘big’ wars of the United States from the colonial period to the recent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Class meetings will be a mixture of lectures and discussion. Students will complete a number of primary and secondary source readings. Assessment will be based on class discussion and several reading and writing assignments.

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern

This seminar explores history, social change, and culture in the Middle East through the lens of film, music, television, fashion, and the internet. How are sensitive political issues portrayed or elided on the screen?  How are gender roles and national identities constructed and depicted through music, film, and social media?  How are significant political events and conflicts represented and remembered through film?  How does popular culture challenge or reinforce dominant stereotypes about the Middle East?  In feature film, documentaries about music, and cartoons, we will read these cultural texts alongside academic analysis to broaden our understanding of the complexity, diversity, and richness of the modern Middle East.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

This course will explore the intersection of gender, race, and colonialism in colonial ideologies and imperial practices in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Beginning with a theoretical approach to the study of gender (as distinct from the study of either women or men), colonialism, and Orientalism, themes include the role of gender and race in discourses of modernity, civilization, and domesticity, the construction of national identity, imperial masculinity, race and science in colonial empires, the representation of women in consumer culture and imperial propaganda and contemporary issues relevant to the understanding of race, gender, and power. The readings concentrate on British and French colonialisms in the Middle East, India, and the Caribbean in comparison American and Japanese imperialism. These include the examination of how colonial expansion and racial ideologies influenced gender and social relations within Europe.  Though our focus is on the historical contexts of colonialism, our readings represent a variety of disciplines including anthropology, literature, feminist theory, and cultural studies, in addition to history.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

What caused the French Revolution?  How did an absolutist regime transform into the First Republic?  How did the ideals of democracy, equality and liberty lead to Terror?  How did Napoleon rise out of the ashes of the French Revolution?  The class will examine the social and cultural foundations of the Old Regime, the contradictions of the French state, and the grievances of various social groups.  It will then study radical transformations in French society, politics and culture generated in the age and movement known as the Enlightenment.  How did Enlightenment thinkers redefine concepts such as reason, nature, civilization and sociability?  How did Enlightenment ideals regarding universalism and human rights impact politics, state, and culture?  Commerce and the market?  The arts, morals, and manners?  How did they lay the groundwork for reform while also creating a new vocabulary for the exclusion of others?  The final segment of the class will study the transition from reform to revolution.  What political languages were in play at the start of the revolution?  How did women and slaves participate in revolutionary upheaval?  The class will examine the development of the Terror, Robespierre’s Republic of Virtue, and the rise of Napoleon.  What was the impact and legacy of the Revolution on nineteenth century conservatism and romanticism?  On future revolutions, socialism, totalitarianism?  On the present?  Course documents will include novels, political treatises, images, plays and operas.  Authors include Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, Beaumarchais, Tocqueville, Robespierre, and others.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

In 1945, the hopes and ideals of classical liberalism and even the enlightened spirit of Europe itself seemed to have been destroyed by the European descent into bloody cataclysm. The shattered continent found itself the chessboard of an emerging American and Soviet conflict—a conflict that would unmistakably shape European history for the next half century. While war in Europe went cold, proxy wars and wars of decolonization chipped away at centuries of imperial dominance. Refugees, migrants, and laborers flooded into Europe bringing with them new challenges that tested the limits of tolerance. Within this commotion Europeans simultaneously recast historic ideals, struggled for social justice, and sought to stabilize the international political order. By the turn of the 21st century, unprecedented economic growth across the continent and the emergence of the EU announced that Europe had risen from the ashes anew. But today, Russian expansionism in the east, massive waves of African and Middle Eastern refugees, the rapid rise of right-wing populism, and the British secession from the EU undermine stability and echo catastrophes of the past.

This class will have four main themes. The first is to consider this period of history as postwar history, an era unmistakably shaped by legacies, memories, and narratives of the Second World War. Second, this period is Cold War history, a story of dividing Europe into conflicting political and cultural spheres. Third, Europeans in this era did a great deal of work to redefine themselves and we will focus on efforts of reinvention, political purges, conflicts with the past, social mobilizations, and political cooperations both before and after 1989. Finally, European history since 1945 has been global history, driven by advanced globalization, decolonization, and migration.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

This course will survey the history of China from the seventeenth century to the present. Our focus will be on revolution and reform: the primary means through which Chinese people responded to the challenges of a new world, and, most particularly, to Western encroachment and invasion. Topics to be considered in depth include:  politics and society under the Qing dynasty (1644-1911); the end of the dynastic system and the continuing quest for a viable political system; reform of Chinese culture through revolution; the challenge of changing old attitudes about gender roles; conflicting visions for the new nation; the critique of communism by dissident Chinese; the persistence and resurgence of traditional ways, and the renewed interest in Maoism during the 2000’s. Assigned readings include a slim textbook to provide chronology and a variety of historical materials including memoirs, fiction and poetry.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

This course surveys the history of modern South Asia from the beginnings of British colonial rule in the eighteenth century to the formation of independent India and Pakistan in the mid-twentieth century.

The course has two broad themes. First, we will explore how colonial rule transformed Indian society, its political forms, culture, and economy. Second, we will study the emergence of the Indian nationalist movement, the challenges it faced, and the fissures within society – along lines of class, caste, and religion – that underlay the formation of modern India. We will also examine how the politics of nationalism impacted the histories of postcolonial India and Pakistan. Students will be exposed to a range of primary sources including fiction, memoirs, maps, documentaries, and films.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

During the era of the transatlantic slave trade, more than 350,000 Africans disembarked as slaves in what is now the United States. While significant, these women, children, and men were only part of the more than 12.5 million people who were forcibly trafficked from Africa to the Americas during the same period, and of the countless other people forced into unfree labor. How did the experiences of enslaved men and women in the colonial and early republican United States compare with those of people in other parts of the Atlantic World? How might learning about and comparing their experiences shape our understanding of the meanings of race and national belonging?

Rather than focusing on the slave regimes of individual empires or nations, this course emphasizes the centrality of slavery to the creation of a shared Atlantic World by focusing on the diverse experiences of enslaved people and their descendants in the Americas (North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean), while also touching on the practice of slavery in Africa and Europe. Adopting a broad geographic and temporal perspective allows us to examine evolving relationships between labor, gender, and race, and to consider how and why these relationships have been remembered or forgotten in imperial and national histories. Although the majority of this course focuses on the Americas during the colonial and early-independence eras, consideration will also be given to how the acknowledgement, denial, or ignoring of histories of racial slavery shape the present day.

Major themes and issues to be elaborated include:

• How did labor practices affect the place of—and relations between—white, Black, and Indigenous peoples in the Atlantic World?
• What place were Afro-descended peoples afforded in different European colonies and in independent American nations? What spaces did they seek to create for themselves?
• How has slavery been remembered, forgotten, and/or silenced in modern American nation states? What are the consequences of this remembrance and forgetting?

Concentration: U.S./Global / Period: Pre-Modern/Modern

A comprehensive survey of ancient Roman political, economic, social and cultural history based on the interpretation of primary sources, both literary and archaeological, from the foundation of the city through the dissolution of the Empire in the west. Special focus is given to important topics and themes in Roman history, including Roman foundation legends, the interrelationship of Roman statecraft and Roman religion, Roman aristocratic ethical values and imperialism, the Roman reaction to Greek culture and literature, the imperial cult of the Roman emperor, the position of women in Roman society, the Roman institution of slavery, the origins and early growth of Christianity, the third century CE military and economic crises, and modern ideas on Rome's transformation into medieval Europe. Short paper, mid-term and final examinations.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern

This course examines the political, cultural and social history of Early Modern England. Topics covered will include the power and image of the monarchy (cases studies - Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Charles I); the role of the printing press in both ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture; the impact of crime and the treatment of criminals; the importance of London as a center of commerce and culture; the myth and reality of Shakespeare and the role of the theater; witchcraft and the dominance of religion in everyday life; and the role of women in a patriarchal society. The course will emphasize reading, discussion, visual culture and the use of primary sources.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

This course addresses crime, deviance, and dissent in American history from the colonial period to the present, considering the ways in which the state has encouraged order and conformity among its constituents. We will examine how industrialization, immigration, urbanization, emancipation, and war transformed American society, causing the breakdown of older forms of social control such as church and community while producing significant discontented and dispossessed populations. This course also examines the expanding role of the state in controlling "deviant" behavior beginning in the late-nineteenth century and the reordering of legal priorities in the latter half of the twentieth century. Major topics include police, radicalism, alcohol, vice, sexuality, and organized crime.

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern

Before globalization became the buzzword in East Asia, socialist thought based on Marxist-Leninism was the dominant discourse and played a major role in shaping the region from the beginning of the twentieth century to today.  Socialism has been one of the most influential forms of “modernity” for over a billion people in communist East Asia (China, North Korea, Vietnam and pre-1990s Mongolia).  Non-socialist countries (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and today’s Mongolia) have also been influenced or “subverted” by socialism.  Since its introduction to East Asia, socialism has crossed borders, classes, groups, gender and cultures, shaping and reshaping the maps, lives, politics, economies, scholarship, art, literature and public and private spaces of East Asia, altering how the various peoples of the region construct their realities, define themselves and their pasts, and view the world.

This course examines how socialist theory was adapted to fit East Asia and the resulting historical consequences.  It is not a rigorous analysis of political theory or governmental structures, nor does it idealize socialism. Rather, it provides a sweeping historical account of how socialist East Asia arose, developed, “failed” and responded to the challenges of globalization in the twentieth century. The course begins by briefly examining socialist thought and its introduction to East Asia at the end of the nineteenth century, its popularity among radical study groups in the 1920s and its appeal to anti-foreign and anti-colonial nationalist movements. Next, we examine how socialism in one form or another became the dominant scholarly, political, and cultural trend or “threat” in East Asia.  It ends with the political, economic and social changes taking place throughout socialist East Asia today. Through a chronological, geographical and topical approach, the course examines such issues as: the tensions between tradition and “socialist” modernity; the formation of communist parties in China, Japan and colonial Korea, and the various reactions against them; the role of the Soviet Union in East Asia; communist “revolutions” in Mongolia, China, North Korea and Vietnam; revolution and women; spaces and places in public and private socialist architecture; art and literature; economic development and lifestyles; “subversion” by radical socialist groups and leftist scholarship in South Korea and Japan; US involvement in East Asia during the Cold War (including the Korean and Vietnam Wars); the crisis for socialist East Asia after the collapse of the USSR; and the transition underway from centrally-planned to market-oriented economies and the resulting implications for these societies and the peoples who live in them.

Goals: By the end of the semester, students will be able to think and write critically about nuanced historical issues; understand the major differences between Chinese, North Korean, Vietnamese and Mongolian forms of “socialism”; have an in-depth knowledge of the degree to which socialism has influenced all levels of society throughout East Asia; and articulate how the collision between socialism and globalization has radically altered East Asian societies today.

Concentration: Global/Period: Modern

This research seminar challenges the phrase, “history is written by the victors.” In the first hundred and fifty years of its existence, the United States pushed its boundaries westward by dispossessing hundreds of Native nations of their lands through acts of violence, coercion, manipulation, and deceit. The United States then claimed a second victory through the monopolization of the historical narrative. These narratives typically whitewash the violence of dispossession and erase Native Americans from the present and future by mythologizing them as vanishing in the past. This seminar focuses on the Native authors who adapted to the United States’ growing print culture to continually maintain cultural survival by boldly writing themselves back into existence. By exploring Native writings from throughout the long nineteenth century, students in this class will produce several short primary-source research papers, ultimately leading up to a 25-page final paper on Native authorship.

Concentration: U.S., Global and Period: Pre-Modern, Modern

There are two ways of understanding the ‘Barbarian Middle Ages’: The period we define as the European middle ages begins with the establishment of “barbarian” kingdoms within the borders of the Roman Empire. “Barbarian” is, in this context, largely a descriptor of the ‘others’, i.e. those who are not Roman. This term does not necessarily hold the same meaning as the term holds today.

There is, on the other hand, the negative verdict of the entire middle ages as a barbarian  period – a period of violence, intolerance, fanaticism and dire life circumstances. In modern colloquial discourse, ‘medieval’ is, generally, a very pejorative term, often used in problematic contexts.

After reading primary sources and scholarship on the barbarian origins and on modern perceptions of the middle ages, students in this class are invited to develop individual research projects that explore either aspect of the ‘barbarian middle ages’.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-Modern

This is a research and writing seminar that will focus on the relationship between the United States and the World. The seminar will examine how the transformation from colony to hyperpower influenced America’s interactions with and perceptions of the rest of the world. Students will examine a particular aspect of that relationship (political, social, economic, military, or cultural) during a defined time-period in a 25-page final paper that relies largely on primary sources.

Possible paper topics include:

• An examination of the relationship between the U.S. and a particular state or non-state actor
• An analysis of America’s interactions and policies toward political and religious movements
• An assessment of the U.S.’s role in a particular conflict;
• A study of the role and influence of international institutions and transnational corporations
• Popular culture (media, literature, and movies)
• American Missionaries
• Immigration

Concentration: US, Global / Period: Modern

In this 401 seminar, students will learn about the many ways in which globalization affected the transmission of disease and circulation of epidemics from the fifteenth century to the present. In the first seven weeks, we will discuss and read about several historic cases, including plague, smallpox, cholera, syphilis, and flu. We will pay close attention to the dynamics of stigmatization, racialization, social inequities, and imperialism across Europe, the Americas, the Atlantic World, the Mediterranean, Pacific and Indian Ocean worlds. We will learn about the ways in which communication networks and circulation of misinformation and disinformation affected how various societies responded to various epidemics. Around mid-semester, students will begin meeting independently with the professor to plan their 25pp senior research paper.

Among the ancient world’s most enduring legacies, democracy continues to exert a powerful influence over the modern political imagination. This course examines forms of ancient democracy and democratic participation in government to help understand and problematize today's so-called democracies. Throughout the course, we probe questions like why democracy arose, what factors limited participation, who benefited most from it, and why twenty-first century versions of it are failing.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-Modern/Modern

This course will examine the history of one of the world’s most famous cities. Today the city is known as a major tourist destination. But for many centuries, Venice was one of the economic powerhouses of Europe and on the frontlines of the conflict between Western Latin Christendom and Islam. Venice was also duly famous throughout the late medieval and early modern periods for its republican form of government. After a brief introduction to the origins of Venice as a Byzantine outpost in the lagoons of the northwestern Adriatic, this course will examine the development of Venice as a colonial and trading power, the evolution of its republican form of government, the peculiar configuration of its society, and the role of art and ritual in Venetian life. The final part of the course will be devoted to a consideration of Venice’s role in the world after its fall as an independent republic. Among other topics we will consider are the Romantic preoccupation with Venice, the development of mass tourism, and the city’s response to looming ecological catastrophes.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern

American political thought from the Puritans to Lincoln. American Revolution, establishment of the Constitution, and Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian systems.

Concentration: U.S / Period: Modern

The role that religion may have played in women’s understandings of themselves as abolitionists and social reformers. A selected group of women will be studied, with considerable attention given to Frances Harper.

Concentration: U.S / Period: Modern

This course examines the way women and gender have shaped international movements for social change since 1945. Students will study international social movements, including feminism/#Metoo, anti-apartheid, student movements, and AIDS activism, and explore how these movements have shaped international relations. Students will conduct original research on women or gender in an international social movement of their choice.

Concentration: U.S/Global / Period: Modern

Americans have frequently resorted to conspiracy theories for simple explanations of complex events and social developments, to demonize "outsiders" or expose "insiders," and to rouse popular anger for political gain. Through lectures, discussions of assigned readings, and research projects, this course examines conspiratorial thinking and its consequences across the broad span of American history, from the witch hunts of colonial New England, to revolutionary-era fears of British plots against American liberties, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century anxieties over the conspiratorial designs of Freemasons, Roman Catholics, abolitionists, the "slave power" and the "money power," Mormons, Jews, communists, and "the media." Particular attention will be devoted to the question of what a "conspiracy theory" is and what distinguishes it from other modes of explanation, especially in its peculiar use of evidence.

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern

How diverse and inclusive were medieval societies? How did they deal with people of different believes, sick or disabled people, queer people or non-conformists? Was the medieval world a world of repression and structural violence against minorities or were there also spaces that fostered diversity and tolerance? Can observations on the Middle Ages help us understanding and resisting modern forms of othering and discrimination?

We will discuss these questions and develop individual research projects that are based on studying and contextualizing medieval primary sources and engaging with recent scholarship on medieval diversity.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-Modern

This course focuses on modern Iraq from the early 20th century to the present. While Iraq features prominently in current news headlines about violence, sectarian strife, hardship and civic disintegration, what did it look like before Saddam Hussein? The course explores Iraqi cultural life, its labor movement and successful socialist politics before turning to the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War and sanctions, and the 2003 invasion. It introduces students to the dynamism of modern Iraq through a range of texts by anthropologists and historians as well as works of fiction and a popular blog.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

Instructor Consent Required

Students doing the thesis will take 3 credits of HST 495 the first semester and 3 credits of HST 496 the second semester (2 semesters for a total of 6 credits), which may begin in their junior or senior year.  Students should register for HST 495 and 496 upon approval from the faculty advisor and Undergraduate Director.