You can find a link to the History Major Undergraduate Requirements and Course Catalog here.
You can find a link to the History Minor Undergraduate Requirements and Course Catalog here.
Online (U800, U700) Classes: Online History Courses are set up through The College of Professional Studies (formerly known as University College or UC), not through the History Department. The majority of the seats in these classes are reserved for College of Professional Studies Students. Any other available seats can be taken on a first come, first served basis. If you are unable to enroll in the course during the enrollment period, you will have to wait until the first day of class, when any remaining reserved seats are released. We are unable to offer permissions or increase enrollment caps at this time.
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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: US/Global / Period: Modern
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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A survey of modern African history since 1800. Are you curious about African History? Do you want to understand the causes and consequences of colonialism in Africa? How about understanding how Africans navigated colonialism oftentimes to their advantage while opposing its excesses? How did some Africans manage to evade colonialism? Do you wonder about the role of African states in the Cold War? How has Africa come to be a part of the global community by default? 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 slave trade in shaping nineteenth century Africa, nineteenth century commerce, European imperialism and African responses, colonial economies, the effects of colonization on African societies, rise of African nationalism, decolonization, Africa and the Cold War, postcolonial successes and challenges, the state of Africa in the twenty-first century and digital age.
Concentration: Global / Period: Modern
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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
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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
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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.
Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-Modern
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This course will examine the long history of Asians and Asian Americans in the United States, while exploring how they have narrated their experiences and family histories, fought for human and civil rights, and grappled with marginalization and unbelonging. The class begins with historical overviews beginning in the mid-19th century when Asian migrants arrived on the Pacific Coast and encountered fierce nativist reactions and discriminatory laws. We look at subsequent policies (Immigration Acts of 1924, 1965, Executive Order 9066, etc) that impacted Asian and Asian-American demographics in the United States. The course then focuses on various memoirs, graphic novels, and art produced by American authors of Asian descent (east, south, southeast and west Asian) across the last century. Engagement with these sources will allow students to familiarize themselves with the ways Asian-American writers and artists have experimented with narrative voice and pushed against stereotypes and myths. Readings will cover topics ranging from mental health and well-being to intergenerational trauma, memory and erasure, inter-racial and inter-ethnic relations, humor and joy. We will explore how the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, gender, citizenship and immigration status have impacted ways of understanding and navigating identities. Students will also have the opportunity to hone their own narrative voice by working on various creative-non-fictional pieces.
Concentration: US/Global / Period: Modern
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HST 300: Native American History 1830-Present
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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 expansion of the French empire into Asia, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic world, and the ways this expansion triggered tensions among France's Three estates and with non-French populations. It will study the radical transformations in French society, politics and culture generated in the age of Enlightenment and Revolutions. 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? 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, slaves, Jews, and Muslims 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 the nineteenth century? On future revolutions, socialism, totalitarianism? On the present? Course documents will include novels, political treatises and policy memos, images, plays and journal excerpts.
Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern
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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
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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
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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
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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?
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This course will examine the complex and varied African American experiences from Reconstruction to the present period. The course’s goal is twofold: first, to introduce you to the history and culture of African Americans; and second, to determine the manner in which these experiences relates to the contemporary world. Specifically, this course emphasizes Black people lives and quests for freedom through a thorough examination of: Reconstruction; de jure and de facto racial discrimination; race, class, and gender; political expression; community formation; migration; sociogeographical place; culture and representation; Black freedom movement; and current affairs.
Concentration: US / Period: Modern
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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
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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: Pre-Modern
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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
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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
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American political thought from the Puritans to Lincoln. American Revolution, establishment of the Constitution, and Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian systems.
Concentration: U.S / Period: Modern
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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
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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
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This course examines the history of Western attitudes towards China. In particular, we will focus on experts: the relatively small group of individuals we have relied upon for our knowledge of China. Among their numbers have been journalists, historians, missionaries, fiction writers, poets, and philosophers. Some have been famous, such as Pearl Buck and Marco Polo; and some infamous, such as the forger Sir Edmund Backhouse. One famous expert even boasted he’d never been to China. Why, he asked, should he permit the real China to interfere with the more glorious China of his mind? How experts have seen China has been determined in some sense by how they wanted to see it, and by how they wanted to convey it to the people back home. Students choose a China expert to research in depth, and prepare a substantial research paper based on original sources.
Concentration: Global / Period: Modern
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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
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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
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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
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Instructor Consent Required
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Please refer to Class Search/Shopping Cart for more information when classes are being offered.
You can find a link to the History Major Undergraduate Requirements and Course Catalog here.
You can find a link to the History Minor Undergraduate Requirements and Course Catalog here.
HST 101 American History to 1865 - Murphy
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: 1350 to 1815 - Kyle
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 mid-semester midterm, a final, and two short (c. 5 page) papers.
Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern
HST 121 Global History to 1750 - G. Kallander
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
HST/MES 208 Middle East Since the Rise of Islam - Cheta
This course is an introductory survey of Middle East history from the rise of Islam in the seventh century to 1900. There are no pre-requisites, and no prior knowledge of the Middle East is expected. We will discuss the origins of Islam, and aspects of major Islamic empires such as the Umayyads (7th-8th centuries), the Abbasids (8th-13th centuries), the Fatimids (10th-12th centuries) with greater focus on the Ottomans (14th-20th centuries). In approaching this long history, which unfolded over a vast geography from the Iberian Peninsula and West Africa to Central and South Asia, we will not confine our study to high politics but will also explore intellectual, cultural and social issues such as gender relations, sectarianism, consumerism (coffee, tulips!), gossip and disease. We will also learn how to critically read documentary and material historical traces in order to understand how historical knowledge is constructed as well as the tensions between popular memory and written history.
Concentration: Global / Period: Pre-modern
HST 210 The Ancient World - Diem
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
HST 213 Africa: Ancient Times to 1800 - Shanguhyia
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
HST 300: Absent Presence: History of Palestine - A. Kallander
A history of Palestine and Palestinians from the nineteenth century to the present. It begins with Palestinian urban experiences, village histories, and family life in the late Ottoman era. We will then turn to nationalist movements, and anti-colonial resistance under the British Mandate before covering Palestinian histories over the remainder of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. This will include the experiences of Palestinians with occupation whether in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Palestinian refugees, Palestinians living inside the Green Line, and in the diaspora. Topics also include women and gender, human rights and international law, poetry, fiction, and film.
Concentration: Global / Period: Modern
HST 300 Economic History of Africa Since 1500 - Shanguhyia
This course analyzes economic trends in Africa from circa 1500 to today. The focus is on the qualitative development of various African sectors such as trade, agriculture, mining, tax regimes, labor regimes, development, oil economies, to mention just a few. It includes an analysis of economic frameworks within which these sectors have evolved, as well as understanding the roles of certain historical agencies in shaping these sectors, notably African peoples/communities, African states—precolonial, colonial, and post-colonial—as well as international/external factors such as Western imperialism and capitalism, global markets/demands, global conflicts, Global Financial Institutions, and international aid.
Concentration: Global / Period: Modern
HST 300/HNR 360 Whose Middle Ages? - Herrick
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.
Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-Modern
HST 300 The Big Game: Cultural History through Sports Films - Lasch-Quinn
This course explores cultural history through selected sports films, including documentaries, game reportage, and feature films, connecting filmic sources with readings in history, theory, and literature on the cultural meaning of sports and games. The course involves close-readings of primary and secondary sources, understanding and discussion of differing perspectives and ideas, and reading and writing intensive assignments.
Concentration: US/Europe / Period: Modern
HST 300 Cultural History in Images - Lasch-Quinn
This is a research and writing seminar on selected ideas/movements/episodes in cultural history, ancient and modern, as seen in images. Through close-reading, students investigate texts, images, and other cultural artifacts. Research centers especially on representations of the self, emotion, and the art of living as reflected in a range of primary sources, including philosophy, literature, art, architecture, music, and film.
Concentration: U.S./Europe/Global / Period: Pre-Modern/Modern
HST 300 World War II in Europe- Allport
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
HST/LIT300: Mystics, Knights and Drunks - Van der Meer
This course introduces students to the surprising width and depth of medieval literature from the Mediterranean and Western Europe, debunking a great deal of commonly held assumptions, such as that these times were ’dark ages’, obsessed with life-denying religiosity, and full of valiant crusaders. Instead, we will discover the cosmopolitan nature of many texts and authors, we will engage with the political and social – at times remarkably advanced - aspects of medieval literatures, and indulge in some really great humor.
Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern
HST 301 Practicum - Cheta, Diem, Hagenloh
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.
HST 311 Medieval Civilization - Herrick
This course explores European civilization from about 800 to about 1200. We will study kings, saints, and villains; faith and violence, love and hatred; ideas and beliefs. Our questions include: how did these people make sense of their world? How did they respond to crisis and opportunity? How did their civilization work? What was life like in medieval Europe? To answer these questions, we will mainly read primary sources that show us what medieval people themselves had to say about their world. Our goal will be to understand the past on its own terms. We will also emphasize the skills of close reading, strong argumentation, and clear expression of ideas.
Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern
HST 315 Europe in the Age of Hitler and Stalin - Ebner
This course covers the major political, social, and cultural developments in Europe during the period of the two world wars. During this era, liberal democracy and capitalism failed, authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorships proliferated, and, ultimately, political violence and warfare obliterated European civilization. In order to understand these developments, we will focus on themes such as political ideology, class conflict, racism, gender, the persecution of “internal enemies” and social outsiders, violence, and Europe’s general “crisis of modernity.”
Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern
HST 320 Traditional China - Kutcher
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
HST/SAS 329 Making Modern India - Kumar
This course surveys the history of modern South Asia from the beginnings of British colonial rule in the eighteenth century, through the moment of decolonization in the mid-twentieth century, to present-day politics in independent India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Using fiction, memoirs, maps, films, as well as academic literature, we will sequentially address themes ranging from violence and famine to cricket and cuisine
Concentration: Global / Period: Modern
HST 341/PSC 329 Modern American Presidency - Thompson
This course analyzes the evolution of the modern presidency and its present operation. The focus of our attention will be on the years since 1960. The decision-making process and operation of presidential administrations from Nixon to Trump will be studied in particular detail. We shall consider the various roles that the president plays in government, politics, and society. We will examine the presidency as an institution and as an individual office to identify factors that have contributed to the successes and failures of particular administrations. This course also shall examine the roles and influence of unelected officials (especially senior White House staff), and popular attitudes toward both the symbolic and the practical presidency—particularly as they have been shaped by the traditional and “new” media. We will consider what lasting effects, if any, events during the past quarter century have had on the presidency as an institution.
Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern
HST 347/HNR 360 Modern American Politics Through Film - Thompson
In this course we will examine major themes in the political consciousness and popular culture of modern America, as they are reflected in contemporary films. 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. 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 and businesspeople) 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.
HONORS ONLY
Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern
HST 354/LIT 300 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Van der Meer
At its height in the second century CE, Rome was one of the most powerful states the world had ever seen. By the sixth century, however, the Western part of the Roman world had fractured into a number of smaller kingdoms and the Empire’s Eastern half was forced to reinvent itself, away from the West. The question of how to interpret these dramatic changes and the literary products generated in this time has occupied ancient historians and literary scholars alike. This class will examine the political, social, religious, and literary transformations of the Roman world, west and east. We will not only focus upon the political, military, and social changes that accompanied Rome’s decline, but also devote attention to the impact that these developments had on the lives of individual Romans. We will discuss such themes as the relationship between paganism and Christianity, the impact of social and political change on daily life, and role of violence in the lives of Romans. Students will come to appreciate both the variety of source materials that historians and literary scholars use to analyze details of ancient life and thought, and the challenges that these materials can present.
Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-Modern
HST/JSP 362 Nazi Germany and the Holocaust - Terrell
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
HST 364 The Origins of Modern Russia - Hagenloh
The Russian Empire emerged relatively late in the modern era, but it quickly rose to dizzying heights of military power, cultural prestige, and influence on international politics. Powerful rulers like Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, literary giants like Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevsky, radical socialists like Alexander Herzen and Vladimir Lenin – these figures placed Russia at the center of trends that transformed European society for five hundred years. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire was in the midst of a period of precipitous decline, which led to the collapse of the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty during the First World War. This course examines the history of Russia from the emergence of the Tsarist autocratic system in the 1400s to the revolutions of 1917, focusing on the Russian state, serfdom, the Russian intellectual tradition, Russia’s imperial policies, and nineteenth-century working-class activism. We will also examine the lived experiences of various social groups within the Empire, including peasants, urban women, ethnic minorities, factory workers, and the intelligentsia.
Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern
HST 370 American Military History - Allport
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 ongoing campaigns in Afghanistan and Syria. Class meetings will be a mixture of lectures and discussion. Students will complete primary and secondary source readings. Assessment will be based on class discussion and several reading and writing assignments.
Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern
HST/WGS 379 Race, Gender and Colonialism - A. Kallander
This course explores the centrality of gender (ideas about what it means to be a man or woman, understandings of masculinity and femininity) and race (whether biological, cultural, or otherwise) in France, England, and their colonial empires. The focus is the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will examine the hierarchies and presumptions that justified colonial occupation, domination, and exploitation, and the ways they infused politics, science, literature, and the arts in shaping world systems that endure to this day.
Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern
HST 386 Crime and Society in US History - Cohen
This course focuses on the history of crime and criminal justice in the United States from the colonial period to the present. We will consider the ways in which the state encouraged order among its constituents, as well as the ways that people defied the norms established by law. Students will examine how industrialization, immigration, urbanization, emancipation, and war transformed American society, causing the breakdown of older forms of social control, such as religion, while producing significant discontented and dispossessed populations.
Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern
HST 393 East Asia and the Socialist Experience - G. Kallander
Examines the adoption of socialism in East Asia. Historical account of how socialist China, Mongolia, North Korea and Vietnam arose, developed, “failed” and responded to globalization in the 20th century.
Concentration: Global / Period: Modern
HST 401 Genocide in the Modern World - Ebner
The goal of this seminar is to produce a research paper (20-25 pp.) that explores one topic related to the history of genocide in the modern world. The term genocide initially referred to the Nazi massacre of millions of European Jews during WWII. Since the defeat of Nazism, the term has been applied to many instances of mass killing that occurred before and after the Holocaust. This course seeks to answer several important questions about genocide. What constitutes genocide? Why does genocide happen? Why do ordinary people kill? Finally, can genocide be prevented? If so, how? During roughly the first half of the semester, the seminar will examine readings that explore these issues. After the sixth or seventh week, members of the seminar will work exclusively on conducting research, giving presentations, and writing their final papers.
Concentration: Europe/Global
HST 401 China in Western Minds - Kutcher
This course examines the history of Western attitudes towards China. In particular, we will focus on experts: the relatively small group of individuals we have relied upon for our knowledge of China. Among their numbers have been journalists, historians, missionaries, fiction writers, poets, and philosophers. Some have been famous, such as Pearl Buck and Marco Polo; and some infamous, such as the forger Sir Edmund Backhouse. One famous expert even boasted he’d never been to China. Why, he asked, should he permit the real China to interfere with the more glorious China of his mind? How experts have seen China has been determined in some sense by how they wanted to see it, and by how they wanted to convey it to the people back home. Students choose a China expert to research in depth, and prepare a substantial research paper based on original sources.
Concentration: Global / Period: Modern
HST 425 Food in Modern Europe - Terrell
In the last two and a half centuries, food has transformed dramatically. Global integration and new agrarian and industrial systems of production have displaced many earlier relationships with the land and its products. The people who grow, harvest, prepare, and serve food and how they do so have transformed due to accelerating social processes from urbanization to mass migration and the culture of domesticity. Eating, too, has become both deeply politicized and intensely refined—the stuff of regulation, identity formation, and emotional connection. The production, consumption, abundance, and scarcity of food create boundaries, political or otherwise, defining people and shaping bodies from obesity to genocide. This course anchors the study of these transformations in European history in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern
HST 427/IRP 327/NAT 300 Native America and the World - Luedtke
This course is a study of Native America in an international context. Organized thematically, this course will begin with a discussion of the 2007 United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the issues faced by Native Americans in the present day. We will then touch on critical points in the history of North America that place Native Americans in contact/conflict with other nations from across the world. This course is an even split of lectures and discussions with major topics ranging from colonialism to migration to the global whaling industry to the sport of Lacrosse to environmental activism and justice.
Concentration: US/Europe / Period: Pre-Modern/Modern
HST 428/NAT 300 Native American History to 1830 - Luedtke
This course is part one of the Native North American Survey. Spanning from the pre-colonial era to 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, cultural conflict, the Doctrine of Discovery, international/inter-imperial warfare, settler colonialism, Native survivance, and other forms of Native resistance and cultural perseverance.
Concentration: US / Period: Pre-Modern/Modern
For any questions regarding the History Program please contact:
Director of Undergraduate Studies: Mark Schmeller at mschmell@syr.edu or
Office/Undergraduate Professor Albrecht Diem at adiem@syr.edu or
Academic Coordinator: Christina Cleason at cmcleaso@syr.edu or 315-443-2210
All undergraduate forms should be submitted electronically to Christina Cleason via email for processing.
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