Course Catalog
101-6 – First-Year Seminar: European History Focused
The first-year seminar, each limited to 15 undergraduates, introduce students to modes of historical analysis through the student of various topics in history.
Various topics by instructor. Specific topics and descriptions can be found in Caesar.
Open to first-year students only.
101-6-20 – Finding People Lost to History
In recent years historians have developed a new technique called microhistory for capturing the lives of the people who have been lost to history—peasants, religious heretics, poor women, gays, ethnic minorities, and con-conformists of all sorts. These were the people who because of their low social status, rural origins, illiteracy, or unpopular beliefs were ignored, despised, or persecuted by the dominant society. Microhistory is a method of investigation that usually relies on the evidence from judicial trials of otherwise obscure people who found themselves in trouble with the authorities. The method gives a voice to those who otherwise left no written record of their lives. The result of the studies has been a remarkable re-evaluation of the experiences and beliefs of the common people of the past.
This is a first-year seminar. The first-year seminar, each limited to 15 undergraduates, introduces students to modes of historical analysis through the study of various topics in history.
How have people explained the meaning of their lives? What historical circumstances have driven them to try?
How have people throughout history understood more abstract features of their societies -including politics, nationalism, religion, race, gender, and sexuality - in relation to themselves?
What do we discover about these big, abstract issues when we look closely at the human experience of them in historical context?
To address these questions, we will engage with autobiographical historical sources ranging from medieval love letters to memoirs of the Holocaust; discover experiences of fighting wars, adopting new religious beliefs, and escaping from slavery; see what can be learned from lives changed by claiming new identities and reinventing old ones.
This is a first-year seminar. The first-year seminar, each limited to 15 undergraduates, introduces students to modes of historical analysis through the study of various topics in history.
101-6 – Ukraine Why Should We Care
Using the current Russia-Ukraine war as a springboard, this course provides a historical and cultural backdrop of the conflict outlining Ukraine as a colonial addendum of Poland, Russian Empire, and the USSR. Students will focus on thirty-year long history of Ukraine after the 1991 collapse of the USSR against a broad historical, political, socio-economic, and cultural perspective. Students will discuss the formation of a modern post-colonial nation bringing together insights into art history, comparative literature, nationalities and imperial studies, social and political history, and genocide studies. We will use op-eds by the famous world poli sci pundits, journalism blogs of Ukrainians who write during air raids, video clips and movies filmed over last thirty years in the independent Ukraine, poems and novels reflecting the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Based on high level of interaction, this course will explain why Ukraine suddenly moved from a peripheral position in the new and minds of European scholars into the central place of the world politics.
101-6 – Mediterranean Migrations
The Mediterranean Sea is currently the world's deadliest border. According to the International Organization for Migration's Missing Migrants Project, more than 23,000 people have drowned in the attempt to reach Europe since 2013.
The European Union currently spends billions to combat this migration: both to intercept and turn back boats on the high sea, and to pay African states to stop those boats before they ever leave. Humanitarian activists have rescued capsizing boats and brought migrants to shore—at which point they have been arrested as "smugglers" for aiding unauthorized migration. While far right parties have exploited tensions over migration, migrants have fought what they see as inhumane policies, with undocumented activists in France, Spain, Italy and beyond demanding the decolonization of European migration policy.
This course introduces students to multiple perspectives on migrations across the Mediterranean, with a particular focus on placing current events in historical context. Topics will include the history of colonial, fascist, and post-colonial migrations, the ethics of humanitarian aid, European and African cooperation on regulating migration, and the contemporary activism of undocumented migrants in Europe.
The first-year seminar, each limited to 15 undergraduates, introduces students to modes of historical analysis through the study of various topics in history.
The Nazis veiled the Holocaust in a fog of secrecy and deception in their efforts to disguise their crimes and erase the voices of their victims. In response, Holocaust victims, both at the time and since, have struggled to tell their stories to the outside world. Paradoxically, the iconic genocide of the modern age that silenced millions of the murdered, and destroyed all trace of many of them, has also bequeathed to posterity the largest number of first-person testimonies about any single historical event. In this course we will examine a range of firsthand accounts of the Holocaust from the period itself and the subsequent decades. We will read selections from diaries, letters, memoirs, graphic novels, and courtroom testimony. We will discuss accounts left behind by victims, perpetrators, and so-called bystanders. Finally, we will work with the USC Shoah Visual Archive, the largest single collection of video interviews of genocide victims in existence. Throughout the course we will explore why the authors of these statements chose to testify and what we can (and cannot) learn from their testimony.
The first-year seminar, each limited to 15 undergraduates, introduces students to modes of historical analysis through the study of various topics in history.
101-6 – The History of History
This course charts the development of history as an academic discipline. We will examine the course of "Western" historical thinking in particular, with emphasis on the most influential philosophies of history and historical methodologies. Students will learn the work of the historian, how historians think about history, and how to do scholarly historical work. Throughout the semester, in other words, we will concentrate on the different approaches historians have used to solve the complex problems of interpreting the past and presenting their findings to an audience, and how to apply these approaches to our own work.
This course is a first-year seminar. The first-year seminar, each limited to 15 undergraduates, introduces students to modes of historical analysis through the study of various topics in history.
101-6 – Repairing Historical Injustices
Repairing historical injustices is one of the most debated topics in today's society in many countries on every continent. Restitution (return of confiscated property), reparations (various forms of material compensation for what cannot be returned physically), and apologies (public recognition of wrongdoing and assuming responsibility for it) are perhaps the most widespread transitional justice methods used to amend the massive breaches of human rights perpetrated by colonial empires, dictatorships, authoritarian regimes, and democracies throughout history. Slowly emerging after World War II, the theory and practice of restitution, reparations, and apologies have developed tremendously especially since the 1990s, even though many governments and citizens are still reluctant to accept them. Which were the most well-known and controversial cases of restitution, reparations, and apologies around the globe during the last 75 years and how were they justified, opposed, and implemented? Is the boom of restitution, reparations, and apologies the sign of a new international morality and democratization spreading worldwide? This course investigates these questions by focusing on theories and cases studies of repairing historical injustices perpetrated by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in Europe (against the victims of the Holocaust and the Gulag), by colonial Empires and settler democracies in the Americas, Australia, and Africa (against Native Americans, African Americans, Japanese Americans, Africans, Australian aboriginals, the Maori of New Zeeland, and Indonesians), by the Japanese Imperial Army in World War II Asia (against the victims of sexual slavery, the so-called "comfort women"), and by the apartheid regime in South Africa (against black Africans).
This course is a first-year seminar. The first-year seminar, each limited to 15 undergraduates, introduces students to modes of historical analysis through the study of various topics in history.
102-6 – First-Year Seminar: American History Focused
The first-year seminar, each limited to 15 undergraduates, introduce students to modes of historical analysis through the student of various topics in history.
Various topics by instructor. Specific topics and descriptions can be found in Caesar.
Open to first-year students only.
102-6 – Where Do You Come From?
The past decade has seen an explosion of Ancestry-DNA tests--all over the world, but particularly in the United States. This first-year seminar will explore the reasons for the recent explosion, but will also examine the long history of Ancestry-DNA testing and genealogical research broadly. Now and in the past, the inclination to want to learn more about our personal pasts has been full of cultural and political meaning. Writing assignments will require you to analyze the larger history of Ancestry-DNA testing, as well as your own personal history. Getting an Ancestry-DNA test is certainly not required, but is certainly permissible, if you're interested. We will discuss the other ways you can do genealogical research besides spitting in a tube!
This course is an American History first-year seminar.
The 1970s were a time of high prices, energy crises, violent crime, public corruption, diplomatic defeats, and general "malaise." Yet the decade also featured cultural ferment, political activism, technological innovation, and global circulation that created the world we inhabit. Personal computers, HBO, Nike, and Dillo Day all originated in the 1970s, so too the Democratic and Republican parties as we know them. And the 2020s have offered a weird replay, from a failed war to hyper-inflation to impeachment to debates about identity. COVID-19 had no exact parallel, but it resembles the HIV/AIDS crisis that began in 1981 and launched the career of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Joe Biden and Donald Trump also entered public life in the 1970s, as did Bernie Sanders, the Clintons, and George W. Bush.
In both decades the existing order proved unsustainable, prompting anxiety, experimentation, debate, and change. This seminar will offer an impressionistic introduction to 1970s politics and culture, less as history than as a two-way mirror onto the present. The class will explore how the past shapes the present and help students to use historical reading, research, writing, and reflection to orient oneself in moments of crisis and uncertainty. The goal is to show students that knowing the past can help us to know ourselves and the world around us in deeper ways while teaching practical and intellectual skills for college and professional careers. Students will have opportunities to research their own interests and answer their own questions.
The first-year seminar, each limited to 15 undergraduates, introduces students to modes of historical analysis through the study of various topics in history.
103-6 – First-Year Seminar: Non-Western History Focused
The first-year seminar, each limited to 15 undergraduates, introduce students to modes of historical analysis through the student of various topics in history.
Various topics by instructor. Specific topics and descriptions can be found in Caesar.
Open to first-year students only.
103-6 – Byzantium for Beginners
It is well known that Ancient Rome fell in the 5th century, but few people are aware that the eastern half of the Empire survived for another thousand years. It was inhabited by Greek-speaking people who are these days referred to as “Byzantines” - yet they never called themselves this way and identified themselves as Romans. This empire had its capital in Constantinople, today’s Istanbul. It was the longest-living civilization in the whole history of Western Eurasia. Its religion shaped the spiritual life of Eastern Europe, its culture preserved the ancient Greek literature for us, its flamethrowers forestalled firearms, its art prefigured the 20th century avant-guard, its main cathedral of Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia was for 900 years a building with the tallest inner space on Earth. And yet, Byzantium remains understudied and all but unknown to the general public. This course will introduce students to this mysterious civilization.
Conquest is one of the most pervasive metaphors in global history and especially so in Latin America. This course explores the meanings of conquest in Latin America through analysis of some of the major textual and non-textual sources for the history of Spanish colonization. We will look at letters and chronicles of early encounters (Columbus, Díaz del Castillo, Cabeza de Vaca); annals, pictographs, and maps that shed light on non-European perspectives; and more recent reinterpretations of Spanish colonization in art, literature, and film. How do we account for the remarkable endurance of the conquest framework, in the past and present? The aim is to attend to the range of actors who participated as interpreters, military allies, and chroniclers, with special emphasis on women and people of native American and African descent; to examine how visual art, literature, and film translate historical topics; and to provide a critical introduction to some of the major themes in the historical study of colonialism and Latin America.
103-6 – Laws, Empires, and Global History
How does our understanding of global history change when we foreground law and empire? To what extent have international legal regimes arisen out of imperial dynamics? Why were slavery and settler colonialism so important to so many constitutional histories? This course takes up these and other questions in order to make sense of the interplay between laws and empires around the world over the last four centuries (circa 1600 to 2000). We will examine: 1) the origins and effects of mixed jurisdictions (or legal pluralism) in different regions; 2) the ways empires have shaped key concepts of sovereignty and citizenship; 3) the role of transnational corporations in bolstering imperial rule; 4) the roots of empire in the history of human rights and global governance; 5) tensions between scientific and legal definitions of race, reality, and indigeneity; 6) Catholic canon and Islamic law; and 7) entanglements between cultural and intellectual property.
This is a non-Western first-year seminar.
103-6 – Exploring Southeast Asia
This seminar introduces the history of Southeast Asia from earliest times through the writings of travellers to the region. We will read texts in translation by South Asian sailors, Chinese monks and emissaries, and European merchants, priests, explorers, and early settlers, among others. We will also read the writings of Southeast Asians in response to these visitors. Together we will examine a variety of literary genres and modes of cross-cultural discourse better to understand the history of this complex and fascinating region.
This is a non-Western first-year seminar. The first-year seminar, each limited to 15 undergraduates, introduces students to modes of historical analysis through the study of various topics in history.
103-6 – History and Politics of the Armenian Genocide
During WWI, the leadership cadre of the Ottoman state enacted a number of measures ostensibly in order to prevent the empire's Armenian population from collaborating with the Russian Army in the eastern front. Most significant among these measures was the decision to deport the Armenian population of the "critical zones" to a location where they could not act against the Ottoman military. The result was the almost complete annihilation of Ottoman Armenians, as the result of a series of events culminating in genocide, known as Medz Yeghern in Armenian, before Raphael Lemkin coined the term "genocide."
The year 2015 was the centenary of the Armenian Genocide, and witnessed the organization of commemorative events and scholarly meetings worldwide, including one at Northwestern University. There were also counter-demonstrations, most of them organized by the Turkish state that continues to deny, more than a hundred years after the events, that what happened to the Ottoman Armenians constitutes genocide. The Turkish official version seems more untenable with the appearance of each new scholarly work, and various forms of "denialism" are now defended only by a fringe group of academics. Therefore, the purpose of this seminar is not a discussion of a "question" of genocide, but rather the analysis of it—by different scholars, from different angles, and through the use of different sources.
This is a non-Western first-year seminar.
103-6 – British Colonial Roots of American Racial Thinking
This course will examine the roots of several aspects of modern American racial thought in British colonial India (ca. 18th-19th centuries). The words "thug" and "loot," for instance, are actually Hindi words that entered the English lexicon through their use by British officials in India, whose deployment of such terms in colonial policing and surveillance of the subject population altered their meaning considerably from the original Hindi. Similarly, the term "Aryan" (so commonly associated with modern Euro-American racial identity and racist ideas) comes from the Sanskrit term ārya, although here too its meaning changed radically in its translation from classical Sanskrit texts into the discourse of Aryanism in modern race science, eugenics, and nationalism (including in India itself). British colonial ideas have also played a formative role in American foreign policy, whether in terms of controlling the "tribal" and "nomadic" Native American populations during the westward expansion of the 19th and early 20th centuries, or administering the American colonies in the Philippines (and elsewhere), or, more recently, in the discourse surrounding the so-called "global war on terror." Understanding the British colonial roots of many of these phenomena not only helps us to put American racial thought in a wider global context, but also, one hopes, gives us tools to critique these ideas in the present and try to imagine a better, more tolerant future.
This is a non-Western first-year seminar. The first-year seminar, each limited to 15 undergraduates, introduces students to modes of historical analysis through the study of various topics in history.
200 – New Introductory Courses in History
Introductory lecture courses on topics not covered in regular offerings. Content varies. May be repeated for credit with different topic.
Historical Studies Distro Area. Topic Varies by instructor. See Caesar for specific course descriptions.
200-0– Sickness and Health in Latin America and the Caribbean
In 1492 the New World became a crucible for the exchange of diseases, drugs, and therapies between people of American, European, and African origin. The region has been central in the circulation of medical knowledge and materials ever since. This course traces upheavals in the history of medicine, from contact to the present. A key angle of inquiry will be to consider how global frameworks help make sense of local practice, and how local knowledge informed transnational, hemispheric, and Atlantic developments in public health and medicine. We will also ask what medical practitioners today stand to learn from a chronologically deep, culturally informed understanding of healing and illness. Topics include pre-Columbian medicine and conceptions of the human body; the “Columbian Exchange” of pathogens, animals, and people; the global commodification of American plants and botanical knowledge; Catholic, shamanic, and lay healing frameworks; disease eradication campaigns, including the discovery of the yellow fever vector; and experiments with socialized medicine.
200-0 – The Jews of Southeastern Europe
Starting in the 19th century, in the Western European colonial and postcolonial imagination, Southeastern Europe (known as the Balkans) became the typical locus of Orientalism at the fringe of Europe, depicted as a place of socio-economic backwardness, bloodthirsty tribalism, and ingrained inter-ethnic and inter-religious hatred and violence targeting especially the minorities, such as the Jews. Such myths worsened during the twentieth century when Southeastern Europe - encompassing the modern states of Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Yugoslavia and its successor states - was seen as a source of instability, war, and political chaos and fragmentation. One of the most important minorities of Southeastern Europe during the modern era, the local Jews contributed decisively to the region's economic and socio-cultural modernization, while enduring discrimination, marginalization, long-lasting struggles with integration, and eventually mass destruction and mass emigration. At the same time, during the Ottoman and the Habsburg Empires and the successor nation-states, the region harbored significant traditions of multiculturality, multi-confessionalism, and peaceful coexistence, and some of the local Jews achieved economic prosperity and social and cultural prominence. In spite of the relatively small size of their communities, the local Jews triggered a lot of interest in the Great powers' and local states' political-diplomatic circles who debated their status (often conceptualized as the "Jewish Question") at the major peace conferences marking the end of various conflicts such as the 1877-1878 Russian-Ottoman War, World War I, and World War II.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, the Jews of the region have witnessed a series of transitions that shaped their lives in a major way - from empires to nation states and emancipation, from war and civil war to peace, from fascism to communism and from the latter to liberal democracy. This course will examine the political, economic, and socio-cultural history of the Jews in Southeastern Europe throughout the 19th and 20th centuries from the disintegration of local empires and the emergence of modern nation-states to the recent democratization and the enlargement of the European Union.
200-0 – American Religious History from 1865 to the Great Depression
This course examines major developments, movements, controversies, and figures in American religious history from the end of the Civil War, as the nation struggled to make sense of the carnage of war and to apportion responsibility, to the 1930s, when economic crisis strained social bonds and intimate relations and challenged Americans to rethink the nature of public responsibility. Topics include urban religion; religion and changing technologies; African American religion; religion and politics; and the religious practices of immigrants and migrants.
200-0 – Leisure and Popular Culture in 20th Century Palestine/Israel
More information can be found on Caesar.
200-0 – Ukraine's Long Fight for Independence
More information can be found on Caesar.
Our world is awash in predictions: climate models and pandemic models, political polls and betting pools, economic forecasts and scenarios for war, plus the ever-approaching AI utopia and/or hellscape. This is hardly new. For millennia, people have been debating what the future holds. They haven’t always been right, of course, but even their mistakes tell us a great deal about the times when they were made. Ironically, studying the future is an excellent way to study the past (and reconsider the present). In this course we will learn about 5,000 years of prognosticators, from Mesopotamian astrologers to today’s climate scientists. Along the way we will read sci-fi authors and religious millenarians, socialists and Afro-futurists, eugenicists and risk managers. This course will teach you to better assess predictions of things to come. Come explore the alternative worlds of futures past.
200-0 Global History of Slavery
Slavery has been around for millennia but it has meant very different things in different societies. We will look at different examples in different times and places, such as slavery systems in Greece, Rome, Northeastern Africa and West African kingdoms, to ask: What is slavery, and how did very different societies create the status of the enslaved? And how did enslaved men and women experience, and sometimes resist, their condition? From discussions over the legal status of “slave” to the social condition of the enslaved, we will debate the making of a key category of human experience.
200-0 – The Holocaust and Its Memory in Israel
This course examines the origins, development, course, and consequences of the most comprehensive genocide in history and, the ways it is remembered by Israeli society. The first part of the course will focus on the persecution of Jews during the first half of the 20th century culminating in their genocide between 1939-1945. We will discuss Nazi ideology; the complex interface between the Nazi regime's espousal of racism and the motivation of perpetrators on the ground; the interface between politics and law; the victims' reactions to persecution; conditions of life in the ghettos and camps; the response of the international community; the complex question of the role of 'collaborators,' 'bystanders,' 'beneficiaries'; and the aftermath of the war. In the second part of the course, we will examine the contradicting attitudes of Israeli society towards the Holocaust. We will probe how the establishment of the State of Israel, the 1950's mass immigration, and the evolving Arab-Israeli conflict shaped Israeli's understanding and memory of the Holocaust. Throughout the course, we will analyze various primary documents: manifests, protocols, speeches, letters, and memoirs of men and women, as well as films and documentaries.
200-0 American Religious History from WWII to the Present
This course examines major developments, movements, controversies and figures in American religious history from the 1920s, the era of excess and disillusionment, to the 1980s, which saw the revival of conservative Christianity in a nation becoming increasingly religiously diverse. Topics include the liberalism/fundamentalism controversy of the 1920s; the rise of Christian realism in the wake of the carnage of World War I; the making of the "tri-faith nation" (Protestant/Catholic/Jew); the supernatural Cold War; the Civil Rights Movement; the revolution in American Catholicism following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the rise of Catholic political radicalism in the 1960s; religion and the post-1965 immigration act; the religious politics of abortion; and the realignment of American religion and politics in the 1970s and 1980s.
200-0 – The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
It could well be argued that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is as much about history as about land. Just as possession of the Land of Israel/Palestine is contested between Israelis and Palestinians, so the right to that land is contested between the two peoples, and for both sides, it is history that establishes that right, as if conferring a title deed to the country they both claim as their own. Israeli and Palestinian views of history, however, are so different as to be irreconcilable. This course explores this discrepancy, looking at the two peoples' narratives both on their own terms and in relation to one another. How is it, we will ask and answer throughout the course, that the central events in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are recounted and remembered so differently by the two sides? We will then look at the ways in which Israelis and Palestinians have enlisted history in the service of their cause to vindicate their own right to the land while impeaching that of the other claimant. Accordingly, we will consider the polemical and apologetic dimensions of the two narratives, as we analyze each narrative's omissions, emphases, distortions, trivializations, exaggerations, and appeals to pathos. It will be seen, from our inquiry in this course, that history itself is another battleground in the century-plus-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
200-0 – Making the Modern Middle East: Culture, Politics, History
This team taught course offers an interdisciplinary approach to major issues in the study of histories, cultures, and societies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as well as an introduction to MENA as a field of study. We seek to understand how "MENA" was made as well as how the imaginary of MENA coalesced into a geopolitical entity and conceptual category. Among the topics explored are the history of the idea of MENA and the multiple meanings of "modernity" in that context; the complex relations between MENA and the West, the historical formation of Middle East nation states, polities, ideologies, identities, and economies; the War on Terror and its impact on the region, and the dynamic struggles unfolding in the region since the 2011 Arab uprisings including mass migration. The course will consider the making of these structures, events, and relationships from a range of perspectives, focusing on historical and cultural production. Primary and secondary course materials will include historical, social science, performance, cinematic, literary, and digital texts. Short description: This team taught course offers an interdisciplinary approach to major issues in the study of histories, cultures, and societies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as well as an introduction to MENA as a field of study. We seek to understand how "MENA" was made as well as how the imaginary of MENA coalesced into a geopolitical entity and conceptual category.
201 – European Civilization: High Medieval Through Mid-18th C
Culture and structure of preindustrial society, high medieval through mid-18th century.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
201-2 Europe in the Medieval and Early Modern World
The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 created modern politics and, in so doing, brought forth a new form of war – a total social mobilization on a previously unimaginable scale fought by mass armies of ordinary citizens in the name of the nation, its glory, and its survival. This course will trace the social, political, and cultural implications of total war through the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, World War I and World War II, comparing these to the colonial wars of imperial conquest pursued by European states in the same period as extensions of the political claims of the nation on a global scale – wars whose practices in turn changed and intensified the conduct, scale, and human consequences of war in Europe itself.
201-2 – Europe in the Modern World
Impact of industrial and political change and development of modern society to the present.
Historical Studies Distro Area
See Caesar for current course description.
201-2 – Europe in the Modern World
In this course, we will investigate the era of earth-shaking historical transformations that began with the revolutionary moment of the late 1700s and whose implications continue to play out today. The sequence of events unleashed by these political and industrial revolutions overthrew the old monarchical social order of nobles and peasants to redraw the map of the world and create much of our ongoing social reality: capitalism and socialism; imperialism and national liberation movements; fascism/Nazism and liberal democracy; feminism, conservatism, racism, nationalism, and the very idea of revolution itself. Above all, this course is about power - who has been able to seize it and how they have done so, who has been subordinated by it and how they have responded.
203-1 – Jewish History 750-1492
Political, economic, cultural, and intellectual life of Jewish communities under medieval Islam and Christianity. Judeo-Arabic culture and its critics; Jewish-Christian relations; the place of violence; rise and influence of Jewish law and mysticism.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
203-2 – Jewish History II: Early Modern, 1492 - 1789
1492-1789: Jewish community's economic and cultural reshaping; legalized readmission of Jews to European cities and integration into European society.
Historical Studies Distro Area
203-3 – Jewish History 1789-1948
1789-1948: Plurality of models of integration, acculturation, and assimilation; multiple identities; split of traditional community; sociocultural behavior; political movements.
Historical Studies Distro Area
210-1 – History of the United States, Precolonial to the Civil War
Interpretative survey from the 17th century to the present. Pre-colonial to the Civil War.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
210-1 – History of the United States, Precolonial to the Civil War
Everyone, it seems, from politicians to television shows, references early American history--as an ideal or as a disappointment, as a model or as a cautionary tale. Part of the disagreement stems from the vague term "early American history," which has been understood and mobilized in a variety of different ways. One of our tasks in this course will be to explore what, exactly, "early American history" means. Does it refer to the British colonies that became the United States of America, and the westward advance of an English-speaking population? All of the territory that would eventually become the U.S.? The entirety of North America? When does "early" begin? When is it no longer "early," and is it ever on time or late? Whose history qualifies as American, and what makes it so? Even historians can offer no answers to these questions, only further complications, and they continue to debate these very questions among themselves. While it is unlikely that we will be able to offer the world a definitive definition of "early American history" by the end of this course, we will nonetheless dip our toes into over four centuries of events performed by people who might be called "Americans," in a manner that may seem "American," in a space with disputable borders called "America," and attempt to arrive at some understanding of this thing called early American history.
210-2 – History of the United States, Reconstruction to the Present
History 210-2 surveys the course of American history from the end of Reconstruction to the present. That is to say, it explores the forces, events, ideas, and individuals who have shaped the way we live.
The course will center on the tension between the nation's foundational promise of equality and the profound inequalities that have run through the American experience since the Civil War. It will pay particular attention to racial and class dynamics as they operated within the American economic system and to the United States' relationship to other nations, from the imperialist drives of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the intensified globalization of recent decades.
212-1 – Introduction to African-American History: Key concepts from 1700-1861
African origins, the slave trade, origins of slavery and racism in the United States, life under slavery in the North and the South. AF_AM_ST 212-1 and HISTORY 212-1 are taught together; may not receive credit for both courses.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
212-2 – Introduction to African American History: Emancipation to the Civil Rights Movement
This course offers a general introduction to the history of African Americans in the United States from emancipation through the Reconstruction Era, Age of Jim Crow, Golden Age of Black Nationalism, and Long Civil Rights Movement and Black Power. With an acute eye toward human agency, students will explore the myriad ways in which African Americans mobilized their collective resources to demand the recognition of their rights as citizens, women and men, and, more broadly, human beings. This course, thus, explores the myriad ways in which historical actors at the center of dramas challenged racial segregation, exclusion, and discrimination—structural features endemic to U.S. society. In the process, students will engage a problem central to United States history: How do we figure African Americans relationship to the ideologies and institutions at the center of American political development from marginal and subordinate positions? And in what ways do the histories of African Americans demand a rethinking of those ideals embedded in the nation's highest documents?
214-0 – Introduction to Asian American History
This class introduces students to a broad survey of migratory and displacement patterns of those living in Asia as agitated by militarism, capitalism, imperialism, war, racism, sexism, classism, and nationalism stemming from within the region and abroad. What are the multiple and competing narratives of how these histories and experiences are produced? Once in the United States, how did similar—although not identical—processes of racialization, economic and labor exploitation, legislative and political exclusion, social and cultural othering, and strategies for survival and resistance work together to transform these heterogeneous populations into "Asian Americans"?
216 – Global Asians
Survey of Asian diasporas in the United States and elsewhere in the 19th and 20th centuries, emphasizing causes of migration, process of settlement, relations with other ethnic groups, and construction of diasporic identities. ASIAN_AM 216-0 and HISTORY 216-0 are taught together; may not receive credit for both courses.
Historical Studies Distro Area
218 – Latina and Latino History
History of Latina/os in the United States and in the context of US- Latin American relations from the 18th century to the present. HISTORY 218-0 and LATINO 218-0 are taught together; may not receive credit for both courses.
218-0 Latina and Latino History
The growth of the Latino population has transformed the United States and has led to heightened debates about their political power, cultural influence, citizenship, civil rights, and ethnic and racial categorization. Yet as the 2020 election demonstrated, many Americans still don’t really understand who Latinos are—or who Latinos have been, and will become. While the increased attention to Latinos may feel “new,” Latino communities have played a pivotal role in U.S. history for centuries. In this course, we will explore the 500-year history of Latinos in the United States—and, indeed, across the Americas—from the 16th century through the early 21st century. In its broadest sense, Latino History offers a reinterpretation of United States history that focuses on race, migration, labor, and empire. It is also the history of a community—or several communities, including Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Dominican Americans, Central Americans, and Cuban Americans, and others—that represents a growing percentage of the U.S. population as a whole, and one that will increasingly influence the politics, social life, culture, and economy of the United States. Although we will focus on the United States, we also will examine the movement of Latino peoples within and between the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. We will use a variety of media, including literature, film, and music, as well as more traditional historical interpretations. Ultimately, you will gain a deeper understanding of the issues and histories that bring Latinos together, those that continue to divide them, their multiple and shifting racial classification, and the long struggles for equality and belonging that have animated their histories.
250-1 – Global History: Early Modern to Modern Transition
The early-modern to modern transition.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
250-1 – Global History: Early Modern to Modern Transition
How did corn change African politics? What did indigenous silver miners in Mexico contribute to the fall of a great Chinese dynasty? Did an intense episode of "global cooling" make people all over the world more amenable to rebellion? Why did it become fashionable for women in so many places to wear striped cotton and drink hot tea out of porcelain cups? Why did Britain industrialize before Holland, China, or Japan? How many continents are there, and which one was home to Batavia? This course addresses these questions and many more as it traces the history of the world between 1500 and 1850. During this era, commonly known as the early modern period, trade, migration, ecological change, epidemics, intellectual ferment, and technological innovation connected far-flung areas of the globe. In this course, we will consider the dense web of connections that traversed the Eurasian landmass, reached across the Arctic Circle, and spanned the vast oceans connecting the Old World and the New. Using the paradigms of connection, comparison, and contact, we will "think big," in part to consider the antecedents of our own globalized era and in part to ponder the disconnections and discontinuities between the early modern world and our own.
250-2 – Global History: The Modern World
This course introduces the main episodes and themes of modern history. Unlike other history classes, however, its focus isn't on a particular region or country, but on the whole planet. That broad scope will allow us to better understand large-scale phenomena such as empire, industrial technology, communism, the two world wars, HIV/AIDS, and globalization. We'll particularly look at humanity's adoption of fossil fuels, and the prosperity, inequality, and environmental changes that resulted. No prerequisites, and it's fine to take this course before taking 250-1.
251 – The Politics of Disaster: A Global Environmental History
A global survey of key natural disasters from the eighteenth century to the present. Focus on the political and human-made dimensions of these supposedly "natural" events.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
255-1 – Background to African Civilization and Culture: Origins to 17th Century
From the Sahara southwards, for the past three millennia, Africans combined complex agricultures, high quality metallurgy, and rich cultural-empirical knowledge of ecological process, changing their environments, creating cities, global trade networks, and new political systems along the way. This course introduces you to these stories and helps you distinguish varieties of cause and consequence in untangling the changing and mutually constitutive relationships between technology, environment, and culture. No prior knowledge of Africa or Environmental History needed.
255-2 – Background to African Civilization and Culture: 16th-19th Centuries
Historical approach to society, economy, polity, and culture in Africa. 16th through 19th centuries.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
255-3 – Background to African Civilization and Culture: 1875-1994
Historical approach to society, economy, polity, and culture in Africa. 1875 to 1994.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
260-2 – History of Latin America in the Modern Period
Aspects of the development of Latin America's socioeconomic, political, cultural, and religious institutions and practices. After independence and through the modern period, c. 1821 to the present.
261-0-1 – Sex After Shakespeare
This course investigates the history of sexuality in early modern England by examining the social norms that shaped behavior. Notions of what was normative and what was aberrant were constantly being tested. Public scandals served as moments of stress, revealing the cultural faultlines in the changing world of early modern England. Behavior that was considered appropriate in one venue spilled out into other venues where it was considered unseemly. These cultural energies found their way into plays and poems, which reenacted the wider struggles over social norms.
262 – Pirates, Guns, and Empires
This class investigates the history of piracy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. We will focus on piracy in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the China Seas. The history of piracy encompasses many different genres of history: maritime and imperial history, gender history, the history of race, labor history, and history from below. Although much of pirate history is about conflict, it is also about consensus and the rules that came to prevail on the high seas, both among pirate crews and in the relations between pirates and their antagonists. No previous background in History is required for this class; first-year students are welcome. Sources will include writings by Nanpo Bunshi, Alexander Exquemelin, and Elizabeth Marsh.
270 – Middle Eastern/Islamic Civilization
Influence of Islam on the components of Middle Eastern societies (nomads, agrarian and urban populations) from the inception of the faith (7th century BCE) to the modern period.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
271-3 – History of the Islamic Middle East: 1789 - Present
The course surveys the factors that shaped the political, economic, and social features of the modern Middle East from 1789 to the present. The course begins with a study of traditional (mainly Ottoman) institutions; it then traces the forces which weakened those institutions and examines the efforts of Middle Eastern leaders to resist or encourage change. The second half of the course focuses on the period since World War I. It examines the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the significance of secular ideologies such as Arab nationalism and socialism, the successes and failure of the Nasser regime in Egypt, the rise of Islamism, the Iranian revolution, and the Middle East since the end of the Cold War.
272 – History of Ancient Egypt, 3100 - circa 1000 B.C.E.
The Old Kingdom: centralized government, divine kingship. The Middle Kingdom: new monarchic principles in the aftermath of social disorder. The New Kingdom: imperialism in response to foreign aggression; religious revolution of Akhenaton.
Historical Studies Distro Area
275-1 – History of Western Science and Medicine: Origins in Early Modern Europe
Origins of science and medicine in early modern Europe: science, religion, and cosmology; anatomy and sexual difference; the Enlightenment and social science.
Historical Studies Distro Area
275-1 – History of Early Modern Science and Medicine
This course explores the social spaces of science and medicine in early modern Europe during the so-called 'Scientific Revolution.' We will survey the varied and surprising spaces in which scientific and medical knowledge was produced, from princely courts and grand cathedrals to humble artisanal workshops and Europe's overseas colonies. In so doing, we will see how science and medicine intersected with religion, politics, race, gender, and emerging market economies during the first age of European imperialism and globalization.
275-2 – History of Western Science and Medicine: In Modern Europe and America
Modern science and medicine in Europe and America: quantum physics and the A-bomb; Darwinism, genetics, and eugenics; DNA typing and "racial science."
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
How did China become "Chinese?" This course seeks to answer that question. It is an introduction to traditional Chinese history from the Neolithic to the late imperial period (ca. 1700) and explores the emergence and ever-evolving nature of a land and culture that came to be called "Chinese." It will address important topics in recorded history: the Neolithic and Bronze Age foundations of Chinese civilization; the politically legitimating tendencies of classical Chinese philosophy; the splendor and social tensions of the commercialized urban centers; the challenges of, what was then, a culturally alien religion called Buddhism; the increasing constriction of women's lives; Pax Mongolica (the Mongol "Peace"); the shift in Eurasian trade from caravan to maritime communication; the traditional Chinese world order; and some of the continuities and transformations that mark the early modern world. "The past is not dead," William Faulkner once observed, "it is not even past." We will try to understand how China's traditional history lives on in China's present. This is an introductory course and no previous knowledge of Chinese history will be expected.
282 – Sino-American Relations in the Modern World
This course considers the bilateral Sino-American relationship in its larger global context and in connection to the issues of war, diplomacy, race, gender, religion, and material and popular culture. Focuses on the ways domestic politics shape international relations.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
The Second World War reshaped Asia: Japan, attempting to consolidate the region under its own power, forced the transformation of China, leading to Communist revolution there. Japan then suffered a massive defeat, forcing further transformation of its own society in planned and unanticipated directions, as well as of Korea and Taiwan. The war also destroyed the British, Dutch, and Japanese empires and vastly strengthened colonial resistance to other imperial powers, transforming South and Southeast Asia, and allowing the United States to play a larger role in Asian affairs, leading to U.S. military involvement in Korea and Vietnam. The conflict wrought unprecedented destruction: entire cities were leveled, whole populations decimated. Civilians were often victims, but also participated in other ways. They experienced a "total war" for which governments mobilized societies to a degree never before seen. This course will concentrate on the dilemmas that faced the war leaders and ordinary individuals, occupiers and the occupied alike.
292 – Introduction to Topics in History
Introductory seminar for non-majors and majors interested in a variety of topics related to a historical event, period, or broader historical problem.
Crimes, deeds, and spoils of drug traffickers have saturated pop culture for the last decades becoming valuable raw materials for the entertainment industry. This course is designed for students to identify, trace, and analyze audiovisual productions on the so-called narcos in the Americas in order to understand: (a) the plot devices and aesthetic mechanisms with which cultural producers have commodified history as entertainment; and (b) the effects of these types of narratives and imageries in the creation of historical understandings regarding one of the most challenging problems of our times. We accomplish these objectives by watching films, telenovelas and TV shows; reading selected works of history, sociology, anthropology, and journalism (film criticism in particular); and using the tools and technologies of digital humanities in a series of individual and collaborative projects. The ultimate goal is to produce together an open-access digital repository on drug history as entertainment in the Americas.
The terms "trans" and "transgender" have only been in widespread use since the 1990s, transsexual, transvestite, cross-dressing, and other non-normative genders have a much longer history. This course takes a trans approach to reading gender in the past, with a focus on North America and Europe.
How did people in the past understand genders beyond the binary? How did the modern movement for trans rights develop? Can history serve as a resource in fighting anti-trans backlash today? As we seek to answer these questions, we will read academic as well as at medical and sexological texts, political manifestoes, newsletters, memoirs, and zines.
Students will finish the class by curating their own virtual exhibition of trans history.
292-0 A Beginner's Guide to Forgery
Societies forge the objects they value most. This course examines forgery as a window onto the cultural values, economies and geography of knowledge of assorted countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, exploring frauds such as the evolutionary “missing link” of Piltdown Man, the tomb of the last Aztec emperor and the Hitler diaries. These historical detective stories are juxtaposed with social histories to analyze why people go to the trouble of making fakes; why other people buy them; and what their efforts tell us about societies ranging from Imperial China to revolutionary Mexico.
292-0 – The Black Atlantic: Slavery and Diaspora in the Modern World
The Black Atlantic is both a space of physical movement—i.e., coerced and voluntary migrations—and of cultural exchange, shaped by social inequalities and racial discourses. We will look at the historical experiences of this diaspora's populations and debate how these experiences created an important body of reflections, and critiques, on the idea of "modernity." From theoretical discussions over the concept of "Black Atlantic" to the development of racial thinking during the period, and from conversations about the forms of enslavement in Africa to the making of slave systems in the Americas, we will explore why this history has left an enduring shadow in the political and cultural struggles of the contemporary world.
292-0 Traveling in the Early Islamic World
For many people, the premodern Islamic world is a fabled Arabian Nights-type place, with princesses, domes, genies, and adventure. Popular depictions such as Aladdin (1992) emphasize perfumed women in harems, bearded sultans in turbans, deserts and palaces, sword and horse. But what was it really like? Using primary sources and scholarly literature, this course analyzes medieval Islamic history from the advent of Islam in the seventh century up to the aftermath of the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century to understand the political, cultural, and socio-religious contours of the medieval Islamic world. Through the eyes of scholars, travelers, writers, and merchants, we will explore pluralism, mobility, and cosmopolitanism within the Dar al Islam, which stretched from the Atlantic to the South China Sea. We will study the foundations of Islamic belief and praxis, their transformations during the medieval period, and the theological debates that shaped them. In conjunction with political history, we will consider cultural, social, and literary history to illuminate an innovative, rich, and vibrant civilization. And we will interrogate historical narratives about this past and why, now more than ever, the medieval Islamic world needs to be revisited.
292-0 – Islamism: Conceptualizations, Variations, Interpretations
This seminar provides an accessible yet in-depth look at the brand of Islamic theorization and activism best known in English as Islamism. We are going to examine the historical origins of that movement (which are not as clear-cut as one might assume), how it changed over time (and why), and how the different ways in which analysts conceive of Islamism inform the value judgements they make about it. Our main geographical focus will be the Middle East, with an emphasis on Egypt, and course materials will include a combination of scholarly works on Islamism and primary sources in translation. The seminar proposes that Islamism represents not the politicization of Islam, as is often claimed, but rather the ideologization of Islam. What that means, and why this is an eminently modern phenomenon, are issues that students will be asked to read, think and write about.
292-0 Settler Colonialism on Campus
This seminar explores histories of the “campus” as a central geography of US settler colonialism. We will study the historical construction and histories of anticolonial movements on many forms of the campus – educational institutions (PWIs, HBCUs, Tribal colleges, boarding schools), military bases, religious institutes, museums, and corporate landholdings. By engaging with Indigenous Studies, Black Studies, Asian American Studies, and Queer theoretical scholarship, we will study how structures of power and possibility are embedded in the landscape. Students will be encouraged to create a research project based on a campus of their choice, producing either a traditional paper, a digital project, a performance, or a public event. Class meetings will center on discussions of texts, films, and other documentary material but will also include trips to sites around Evanston and Chicago, collaborative research sessions, and project workshops.
292-0 – Conspiracy Theories: A Global History
Conspiracy narratives have become one of the postwar period's most durable genres, as the popularity of recent no-vax, no 5G no-Covid campaigns attest, not to mention the resurgence of anti-Semitism through the theories of the New World Order controlled by George Soros. They have also become an important expression of social anxieties and desires, and an important way to understand the relationship between the individual and the modern state. In this course, we will approach conspiracy narratives and the theories they embody both as symptoms and as modes of knowledge. This module will provide students with the necessary historical and psychological knowledge to understand why these theories formed throughout history and how they have become widespread. The main purpose of this module is to allow students to engage with the society they live as informed and critical thinker individuals. Students will be required to work in small groups and produce a believable conspiracy theory which has to be based on psychological and historical research.
300 – New Lectures in History
Lecture courses on special topics not covered in regular offerings. Content varies. May be repeated for credit with different topic.
Historical Studies Distro Area. Topic Varies by instructor. See Caesar for current course description.
This course explores the historically shifting characteristics of what makes people think, feel and act like citizens across the world and in spaces stretching from polling booths to bowling leagues. Students will look at texts of global history as disparate as Aristotle’s Politics, the poetry of Claudia Rankine, and dystopian analyses of digital surveillance from Ecuador to South Africa. By placing these in historical context the course centres on the ends of citizenship, understood in two ways: ends as in the goals of people who are or would be citizens, and ends as in the processes through which those peoples’ citizenship can be terminated.
300-0 – Music and Nation in Latin America
This course takes students along a sonorous trip through Latin America and the Caribbean. We will travel some of the region's largest countries studying particular cases in order to comprehend why popular music has been crucial in the formation of these nations and their states.
The history of son in Cuba, samba in Brazil, tango in Argentina, corrido in Mexico, merengue in Dominican Republic, among others, will help students to understand how certain sounds became sonorous emblems of modern nations. These particular histories will allow students to examine how popular music has mediated the tensions that resulted from processes of development and urbanization. They also illustrate how racial, gender, and class hierarchies have been represented in musical styles, shaping the contours of national identities and cultures.
This course aims at introducing students to major themes in the modern history, politics and societies of the Arabian Peninsula, which is an often neglected but increasingly pivotal region of the Middle East. The first half of the course will concentrate on state formation and the political, economic and ideological forces that shaped the Peninsula until the final British withdrawal (1960s-70s). The second half of the course will be more thematic and will address some of the most important challenges that the region has faced since the 1970s. Because of its undeniable regional importance and influence, Saudi Arabia will receive particular attention throughout the quarter, though lectures and readings will cover other emirates of the Gulf as well as Yemen.
300-0 Europe in the Age of Total War, 1789-1945
The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 created modern politics and, in so doing, brought forth a new form of war – a total social mobilization on a previously unimaginable scale fought by mass armies of ordinary citizens in the name of the nation, its glory, and its survival. This course will trace the social, political, and cultural implications of total war through the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, World War I and World War II, comparing these to the colonial wars of imperial conquest pursued by European states in the same period as extensions of the political claims of the nation on a global scale – wars whose practices in turn changed and intensified the conduct, scale, and human consequences of war in Europe itself.
300-0 – History of Socialism
In this course, we will investigate socialism from its origins during the Age of Revolutions in Europe to follow its development globally down to the present day. We will consider the interrelated aspects of socialism as an oppositional movement against the capitalist world economy, as a critical analysis of capitalist society, and as an attempt to establish a new kind of human community on the basis of that critique. Topics will include the dynamics of revolutionary social change; the building of international working-class and national liberation movements; socialism as an economic system; and socialist approaches to gender, race, and identity.
300-0 – Mexico: Five Centuries
It was 1534, or maybe 1535, when the Spaniards found him among the dead, far to the south in Honduras. He was dark-skinned, pierced and tattooed, and he had led the Maya people of Chetumal to war for two decades. But he was also in his own way white, a fellow Spaniard called Gonzalo Guerrero, and his three children, born of marriage with a Maya woman, might be seen as the first Mexicans. The history of Mexico, understood as the country and people that grew from those first contacts, began with that Spaniard in 1511 when his caravel foundered on Scorpion Reef over sixty miles north of the Yucatán peninsula. This course traces that history from the beginning until the present.
The Crossroads of the World. The Pivot of History. The Graveyard of Empires. For all its grand nicknames, Central Eurasia remains a region little studied in the West. This course endeavors to separate fact from fantasy while introducing the social, cultural, and political history of Central Eurasia from medieval times to the modern age. Special topics include the rise and rule of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane; nomadic society in the steppe; cultural encounters and diverse religious traditions; and the rise of the Russian Empire.
300-0 – Global History of Refugees
The twentieth century was often called "the century of the refugee," but with over 84 million people displaced from their homes in 2022, the 21st century is well on its way to claiming this dubious distinction. In light of the continued prevalence of mass displacement, ethnic cleansing, and statelessness throughout the world, we need to move past experiencing each new episode as a sudden, singular and unprecedented "crisis" in order to understand the enduring patterns that continue to produce refugees every single day.
In this course, students will learn about the kinds of events that have produced mass displacement since the late nineteenth century and the way that "the refugee" has consequently been defined in international law, humanitarian action, and public imaginaries. While states have often defined refugees as "problems" in need of a "solution," we will also examine how refugee individuals and communities have generated their own politics to challenge their categorization and marginalization.
Genocide, considered by some scholars "the crime of crimes", has received increased attention from diplomats, academics, and the general public since the end of World War II. It has been a major topic in international law, scholarly studies, and debates. The goal of this course is to give students the opportunity to gain wider theoretical and empirical knowledge about several genocides that took place in different parts of the world (North America, Africa, Europe, and Asia), focusing mostly on the twentieth century cases of the Herero Genocide, the Holocaust, and Cambodia. The course will also examine the precursors of twentieth century genocides, by briefly focusing on the destruction of Native Americans during the centuries of European colonization and the persecution of African Americans during the Jim Craw era, which remains some under-researched and much debated topics, with major implications for today's American society. For decades, the Holocaust and the terror of the Khmer Rouge regime (Cambodia) have represented examples of mass atrocity that affected millions of innocent civilians, with the aim of eliminating groups of people in whole or in part. The first genocide of the twentieth century, the destruction of the Herrero and Nama (in present-day Namibia) by the German Imperial Army is a lesser known case of genocide - it was almost forgotten until the boom in mass violence research in the 1990s - and yet crucially important to understand the ways in which the colonial driven destruction of indigenous people continued into the twentieth century and how it influenced the emergence of the Holocaust.
In order to provide in-depth explanations and increase knowledge about the character of genocide, one therefore needs to place specific events in their proper historical, cultural, social, political, ideological and other contexts. After completing the course students will acquire solid knowledge about several cases of genocide, with a particular focus on the colonization processes, the growth of nationalist, racist, fascist and communist ideologies during the twentieth century, and the contemporary debates on comparing genocides, prosecution, denial, and prevention.
How did Europe re-define itself after the devastation of the Second World War? Could this warring continent achieve peace? This class explores the history of "Europe" understood broadly—from Franco's Spain to the Soviet Union, from French Mayotte to Greenland. How has the idea of "Europe" inspired both admiration and revulsion?
The course offers students both an overview of postwar European history and helps them analyze current events through their roots in European history. To this end class will explore topics such as the impact of decolonization in the Dutch, French, Portuguese, and British empires, the East/West divide in the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ascent of neoliberalism in Europe, the Yugoslav Wars and Bosnian genocide, European unification and secession, and the current rise of the far right in Europe.
303-1 – American Women's History to 1865
Women and gender in American life, with attention to differences among women based on class, race, and ethnicity. To 1865.
303-2 – American Women's History Since 1865
This course explores the history of women in the United States from 1865 to the present. Adopting an intersectional approach, we will examine women's changing roles as wage earners, mothers, and activists. We will also investigate how prevailing ideas about race, gender, work, and the family have shaped women's lives.
305 – American Immigration
Themes in history of immigration, especially from Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Law, racial formation, acculturation, transnational and international contexts, competing notions of citizenship. HISTORY 305-0 and LEGAL_ST 305-0 are taught together; may not receive credit for both courses.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
309 – American Environmental History
American history from precontact to the present, focusing on the role of the natural world in human history and the role of human thought and action in natural history. ENVR_POL 309-0 and HISTORY 309-0 are taught together; may not receive credit for both courses.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
309-0 – American Environmental History
[Combined w/ ENVR_POL 309-0-1]
This course will survey American history from the Colonial Era to the present with two premises in mind: that the natural world is not simply a passive background to human history but rather an active participant in historical change, and that human attitudes toward nature are both shaped by and in turn shape social, political, and economic behavior. The course will cover formal schools of thought about the natural world—from Transcendentalism to the conservation and environmental movements—but also discuss the many informal intersections of human activity and natural systems, from European colonialism to property regimes, migration and transportation, industry, consumer practices, war, technological innovation, political ideology, and food production.
310-1 – Early American History: Conquest and Colonization to 1688
Conquest and colonization.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
311 – New Nation: The United States, 1787-1848
The early years of the new republic from the Constitution to the war with Mexico. Political theory, slavery, social reform, religious revivalism, westward expansion, political parties, the growth of capitalism.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
314 – The Civil War and Reconstruction
"Middle period" of American history, emphasizing origins of the Civil War, its revolutionary nature, and its immediate and long-term consequences for the South and the nation.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
315-2 – The United States Since 1900: Mid-20th Century
America's domestic history and role in world affairs since 1900. Mid-20th century.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
315-3– The United States Since 1900: Late 20th Century to Present
This course examines the years 1968-2022, the recent past that most US history courses never get around to discussing. It surveys the rise and fall of free market values in the United States and the world over the past half-century to explain such things as rising inequality, mass incarceration, mass immigration, party polarization, and political extremism. Along the way it considers the specific risks and rewards of studying the recent past, asking what sources we can rely on, where is the line and what is the relationship between history and the present. The course ends with the crisis of the neoliberal order that began with the 2008-09 global financial crisis and culminated in the political turmoil that has defined the last decade. Prior collegiate or AP coursework in modern US and world history will be helpful to your understanding of course material but is not required so long as you are prepared to work hard and ask questions.
316 – The Sixties
Examination of one of the most tumultuous eras in US history, its roots in the reshaping of American society after World War II, and its legacies for the present. Emphasis on social movements of the period, particularly the civil rights movement, and political and cultural change.
317-1 – American Cultural History: 19th C.
Changing values of the American people, how they have been transmitted, and how they have shaped American society, politics, and the economy. 19th century.
318-1 – Legal and Constitutional History of the United States: Colonial Period to 1850
Colonial period-1850. Development of legal institutions, constitutionalism, law and social change, law and economic development. Taught with LEGAL_ST 318-1; may not receive credit for both courses.
318-1 – Legal and Constitutional History of the U.S: Colonial Period to 1850
[combined w/ LEGAL_ST 318-1-20]
This course explores some of the major questions and problems of American legal history from the colonial era to 1850. First, we will examine how and why the colonies developed their laws and legal institutions, and what assumptions about justice and equality lawmakers relied on in doing so. Next, we will explore the legal, political, and social forces that led to the American Revolution and the framing and ratification of the United States Constitution, where Americans drew on their legal experiences and called for freedom in powerful but partial ways. We will then examine how judicial and legislative action guided and enabled explosive economic growth in the nineteenth century. Not everyone was able to participate in the new economy, however; we will also explore how law created separate categories for white women, American Indians, and African Americans that limited their participation in law, politics, and society.
319 – History of U.S. Foreign Relations
Survey of US relations with the rest of the world from the 18th century to the present, with particular attention to the 20th century.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
320 – The Fourteenth Amendment
he Fourteenth Amendment's role in defining and protecting citizenship, privileges and immunities, due process, and equal protection from its nineteenth-century origins to the present. HISTORY 320-0 and LEGAL_ST 320-0 are taught together; may not receive credit for both courses.
Historical Studies Distro Area
Analysis of Vietnam's wars for national independence, with emphasis on US involvement. Topics include international context, political rationales, military engagements, popular attitudes, cultural exchange, and lasting legacies.
Historical Studies Distro Area
322-1 – Development of the Modern American City to 1880
City characteristics of urban society in America from the period of settlement to the present. To 1880.
Historical Studies Distro Area
322-2 – Development of the Modern American City: 1880-Present
City characteristics of urban society in America from the period of settlement to the present. 1880-present.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
324-0 – U.S. Gay and Lesbian History
This course explores the history of homosexuality as a legible social and cultural category; of lgbtq individuals and communities as self-aware social and political actors; and of lgbtq/anti-lgbtq politics as arenas in which modern Americans have debated fundamental questions about human rights, personal autonomy, and citizenship. We will map the frameworks within which individuals have sought out, enjoyed, and understood sexual activity with others of the same sex; trace the growth of gay and lesbian communities over the course of the twentieth century; and survey the dramatic shifts and turns from the emergence of an organized gay and lesbian political movement to the traumas of the AIDS epidemic and the increasingly bitter fights over lgbtq citizenship and personhood of the last few decades.
Gender, sexuality, and the rise of modern lesbian and gay identities. Lecture and discussion. HISTORY 324-0 and GNDR_ST 324-0 are taught together; may not receive credit for both courses.
325 – History of American Technology
American history through its material culture; industrialization and its discontents; consumer culture and household technology; mass communication and democracy; technological utopia and the computer revolution.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
326 – U.S. Intellectual History
Central questions in America's intellectual past from the colonial era forward; specific dates vary by instructor.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
330 – Medieval Sexuality
Fluidity of sex and gender roles in an age before "sexual orientation"; impact of and resistance to Christian theology's negative assessment of sexuality; the cult of chastity.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
332-2-20 – The Development of Medieval Europe: High & Late Middle Ages, 1000-1450
Perhaps the phrase "the Middle Ages" calls to mind a period where society was in thrall to a repressive, superstitious church and violence ran rampant: a dark age, indeed. But it might also call to mind Gothic architecture like the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, full of light and exquisite stained glass. Spanning the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, the High and Late Middle Ages are a study in contradiction. It is a period of both vibrant life and innovative change as well as violence and disillusionment. Cities grew, universities flourished, and new forms of spiritual life helped people engage directly with Christianity. At the same time, the Crusading movement fostered violence against Muslims, Jews, and people who were perceived as heretics. Famine in the early fourteenth century followed by the Black Death dealt suffering across the continent. Misogyny and other forms of discrimination increased as the medieval millennium drew to a close. How did medieval Europeans respond to these tensions and societal changes? We will examine a variety of ways to answer this question by focusing on the cultural history of the period. The course will be divided into thematic units rather than taking a straight chronological approach. Class time will blend lectures and discussion activities designed to allow you to engage with primary sources and "do history." Assignments will be written opportunities to deepen your thinking on course themes and sources; there will be no in-class exams. This class will help you think about how narratives about the past are arguments, as well as how the kinds of sources we use as historians shape the kinds of narratives we can tell.
333 – The Age of the Renaissance
Decline and revival of European civilization, 1350-1530. Cultural, political, economic, and social developments.
Historical Studies Distro Area
333-0 – The Age of the Renaissance
In 1348 perhaps a third to one half of all Europeans died from a mysterious illness called the Black Death, which was only one of a number of calamities that disrupted normal life. In the wake of these disasters, thinkers, artists, and a surprising number of common people began to search for explanations for what had gone wrong by asking questions about their own personal identities, about the obligations of a moral life, about the virtues of civic service, and about the their personal relationship with God. This course explores that search, which is what we now call the Renaissance. It began among the independent city-states of Italy, particularly Florence and Venice, and spread from them to the rest of Europe.
The course will compare developments in Italy with those in northern Europe, especially on the political and family structures of the city-states, the culture of the princely courts, the ambitions of the Roman popes, the social and intellectual basis for artistic creativity, the origins of modern political thought and the scientific method, and the constraints and opportunities available to women.
337-0 – History of Modern Europe
This course is concerned with the history of Europe between 1890 and c. 1990. Its emphasis will be on material and political developments, not cultural-intellectual ones. It assumes considerable prior knowledge of Europe, including its geography, ethnography, and a good prior knowledge and understanding of the historical background.
340 – Gender, War, and Revolution in the 20th Century
Examination of changes in gender ideals and in the lives of women and men in Europe and America as a result of world wars, Russian revolution, fascism, and the Cold War.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
342-1 – History of Modern France: Ancien Régime and the French Revolution
The Ancien Régime and the French revolution.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
342-2 – History of Modern France: 19th Century to present
19th century to the present.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
343 – Modern Italy
Italy from the Enlightenment to the present, concentrating on the Risorgimento, the world wars, Mussolini and fascism, the postwar economic miracle, and terrorism.
344-2 – Germany Since 1945
Debates about the development of the postwar German states from 1945 to the present. Social, political, economic, and everyday history within the context of East, West, and unified Germany. GERMAN 344-2 and HISTORY 344-2 are taught together; may not receive credit for both courses.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
345-2 – History of Russia, 1700 - 1917
Russia from Peter to the Revolution, 1700-1917.
345-3 – History of Russia, 1917-Present
The Soviet Union and its successor states, 1917-present.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
345-3 – The Soviet Union - History of Russia, 1917 - Present
This course explores the history of the Soviet Union from its beginnings in the revolutions of 1917 to its collapse in 1991. Special topics will include Lenin and the Bolsheviks; the rise and rule of Stalin; the Great Terror; the Second World War; the "Thaw"; the Cold War; and the fall of the Soviet state. In our weekly readings, special emphasis will be given to texts produced by Soviet authors, as we will consider the Soviet experience not only from the vantage point of foreign observers, but also from within. While the lectures offer a chronological history of the Soviet Union, our readings offer an in-depth exploration of the most ambitious social experiment in human history: the creation of the "New Soviet Person."
347 – Christians and Jews
Varieties of historical encounters between Jews and Christians. Origins of the "Jesus movement"; rabbinic attitudes toward Christianity; medieval polemic and engagement; the modern "Judeo-Christian tradition"; Christian Zionism and postwar ecumenicism.
348-1 – Jews in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, 1250-1917
Who are the European Jews, how and when did they arrive to East Europe, and why did they seek to move to the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century? Why do Americans consider them too traditional and conservative while Russians and Poles view them as too leftist and liberal? Using contextualization and unique primary sources, this course explores how East European Jews managed to build a robust civilization that lasted over a millennium, how they perceived historical upheavals such as wars, revolutions and pogroms, how they interacted with Christians and Muslims, and how the imperial politics in Russia, Poland, and Austria shaped Jewish identities that continue to frame Jewish mentality. This course traces the itinerary of East European Jews from the times of the medieval Kievan Rus to the early twentieth-century revolutionary upheavals taking a close look at Jews in Poland and the Russian Empire, which also include Lithuania and Ukraine. It challenges cultural myths, provides substantial European context and integrates Jewish history within a framework of a broader imperial and national histories.
348-2 – Jews in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, 1917-1991
Jewish encounter with Marxism and communism; social, political, cultural, and artistic aspects of Jewish life; Soviet Jews and the Russian empire: patterns of survival, accommodation, and interaction, 1917-91.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
349 – History of the Holocaust
This course examines the Holocaust of European Jews from its origins through its aftermath in the context of Nazi Germany’s murderous campaigns against other groups of victims, including disabled persons, sexual minorities, Roma, and Slavs. We will read first-hand accounts and analyze primary documents written by victims and perpetrators as we seek to understand the causes, course, and consequences of the genocidal policies of Germany and its Axis allies. From Vichy France in the West to the occupied Soviet territories in the East, the persecution, expropriation, and murder of millions necessitated the participation of countless civilians and state officials. With a special focus on Eastern Europe, where the greatest number of Jews lived and nearly all of the murdered died, we will explore questions of local complicity, the motives of perpetrators and of those who sought to impede them, and the responses of the continent’s Jews and other victims to the onslaught. The course will conclude with postwar efforts to punish the Holocaust’s perpetrators, to commemorate its victims, and to deny that genocide was even committed.
Historical Studies Distro Area.
352 – Global History of Death and Dying
How death shapes the modern world via slave trades, imperial conquests, pandemics, wars, medicine, and genocide. Transformations in rituals; personal and social meanings of death; ways and patterns of dying.
Ethics Values Distro Area. Historical Studies Distro Area. Interdisciplinary Distro - See Rules
See Caesar for current course description.
356-1 – History of South Africa, Early Times to 1879
From the African iron age to the establishment of the multinational gold mining industry, emphasizing the rise of African states and the contest for land with white settlers.
Historical Studies Distro Area
356-2 – History of South Africa, 20th Century
Emphasis on the 20th century, the rise of African nationalism, and the clash with the apartheid state.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
357 – East Africa
Selected topics in East African history.
360 – Tudor and Stuart Britain
Formation of the British state during the Tudor and Stuart dynasties, 1485- 1714, with emphasis on changing patterns of religious belief and the transformation of the monarchy.
Historical Studies Distro Area
362-1 – Modern British History, 1688 - 1815
Social, political, and institutional history, 1688-1815.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
362-2 – Modern British History, 1780-1900
The Victorians: liberalism, empire, and morality, 1780-1900.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
362-3 – Modern British History, 1900-Present
Empire to Cool Britannia, 1900-present.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
366 – Race and Nation in the Independence Era
The process of Latin American independence, from the colonial background to 19th century insurgency wars, economic development, and nation formation, with emphasis on race and "the Indian question" in liberal thought.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
373-1 – The Ottomans: Last Empire of Islam, 1300-1622
The Last Empire of Islam, 1300-1622. Emergence and rise to power; relations with other European and Asian powers; principal institutions; governmental and societal frameworks.
Historical Studies Distro Area
373-2 – The Ottomans: From "Second Empire" to the Age of Nationalism, 1622-1918
From the Second Ottoman Empire to the Age of Nationalism, 1622-1918. Political and societal changes that shaped the modern Middle East and southeast Europe.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
376 – Global Environments and World History
Environmental problems are today part and parcel of popular consciousness: resources are being depleted at a record pace, human population levels have crossed the seven billion threshold, extreme poverty defines the majority of people's daily lives, toxic contaminants affect all ecosystems, increasing numbers of species face extinction, consumerism and the commodification of nature show no signs of abating, and weapons and energy systems continue to proliferate that risk the planet's viability. This introductory lecture course is designed to help students understand the relatively recent origins of many of these problems, focusing especially on the last one hundred and fifty years. Students will have an opportunity to learn about the environmental effects of urbanization, industrialization, population growth, market economies, empire-building, intercontinental warfare, energy extraction, and new technologies. They will also explore different environmental philosophies and analytic frameworks that help us make sense of historical change, including political ecology, environmental history, science studies, and global history. Finally, the course will examine a range of transnational organizations, social movements, and state policies that have attempted to address and resolve environmental problems.
ENVR_POL 340-0 and HISTORY 376-0 are taught together; may not receive credit for both courses.
378 – Law and Science: A History
The changing relations between justice and science-including the forensic sciences of identification and intellectual property-in the United States and Europe over the past 300 years.
Historical Studies Distro Area
379 – Biomedicine and World History
Introduction to the social, political, scientific, and economic forces allowing biomedical systems to become synonymous with global health governance. GBL_HLTH 309-0 and HISTORY 379-0 are taught together; may not receive credit for both courses.
379-0 – Biomedicine and World History
This lecture course uses the Covid-19 pandemic as a point of departure to study the history of global health and biomedicine in comparative terms. We will break up the quarter into four segments during which we will consider: 1) how and why infectious diseases "unified" the globe and with what effects; 2) the role of empires, industries, war, and revolutions in spreading biomedical ideas, experts, and tools around the world; 3) the functions played by transnational and global health institutions in setting medical priorities and sustaining health norms across continents; and 4) the growth of clinical trials, the pharmaceutical industry, and narcotics trade. Because the world around us has been radically altered by SARS-coV-2, you will have an opportunity to place in historical context this pandemic's roots and its ongoing cycles. You will also be given a chance to apply insights from the readings - about histories of racial segregation, reproductive politics, militarization, and police powers - to this pandemic. Lectures and readings cover all world regions: Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, Asia, Europe, and the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
381-1 – History of Modern China: Late Imperial China, 1600-1911
Late Imperial China, 1600-1911.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
381-1 – Modern China: The Transition to Modern Times, 1600-1912
This is the first quarter of a two-quarter sequence on late imperial and modern China. (The second quarter covers twentieth-century China. Each course stands on its own; you will not be required to take both.) The themes linking both quarters are tensions regarding ethnic and national identity, shifts in gender ideals and family structure, and the effects of imperialist depredation.
Modern China was forged by the Qing (1644-1911), the last imperial dynasty. Its achievements and travails continue to inform our present moment. Whether its massive territory, multi-ethnic society, complex economic and political relations with the "West" and the rest of Asia—and much more—key facets of contemporary China are rooted in the Qing. Formidable in warfare, the Qing created a multi-ethnic empire bound by Confucian culture, surging domestic and international commerce, and a potent imperial political structure and ideology. At the same time, millenarian and ethnic yearnings, foreign imperialism, and intellectual and political ferment threatened throughout the course of the dynasty to tear the empire apart. Topics to be explored include the Manchu conquest, the imperial state and its problematic relationship with the gentry elite, shifts in gender ideals and family structure, millenarian movements, commercial and industrial growth, intra-Asian connections, the lives of common people, foreign imperialism, US-China relations, early Chinese nationalism and feminism, human and state rights, and revolutionary radicalism.
Both classes explore the definition and development of modernity in China. As part of this process, we will question the applicability of the term "modern" to Chinese history and consider how the Chinese experience with imperialism has fundamentally shaped their contemporary understanding of their own history.
381-2 – History of Modern China: 1911-Present
This class explores modern Chinese history from the Revolution of 1911 to the era of post-Mao reform (circa 2000). It is the story of China's turbulent effort to transform an empire into a modern nation-state that would allow China to accumulate "wealth and power" and "stand up." The course stresses both the Nationalist and Communist eras and will consider the disintegration of the Chinese polity into warlordism, Nationalist efforts to reestablish a viable state authority, the disastrous eight-year long War of Resistance against Japan, cooperation, conflict, and eventual civil war between the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party, and the triumphs and tribulations of communist rule. We will explore such topics as the growth of modern urban mass culture, the development of new forms of artistic expression, attempts to ameliorate the status of Chinese women, revolutionary charisma and the effects of political campaigns, the economic and social effects of the Four Modernizations, and the place of the Patriotic Democratic Movement of 1989 in China's long tradition of intellectual and labor protest.
382 – The Modern Japanese City
Social and cultural history of urban Japan.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
385-1 – History of Modern South Asia, 1500-1800
When people think of early modern India it it usually the fabled courts of the Mughal Empire, or monuments such as the Taj Mahal, or perhaps romantic portrayals of adventure and derring-do under the British Raj that capture their imagination. But beyond all the glitz and romance, the period from about 1500-1800 was also one of significant transformations in the social, cultural, and political life of the Indian subcontinent. This course will survey some of these developments, begininning with the integration of India's multiple religious, literary, and visual cultures under the Mughal Empire's ideology of "universal civility" (sulh-i kull). This policy included the welcoming of European merchants and missionaries who began arriving in the Indian subcontinent during the 16th century; but as Mughal power waned in the 18th century, it faced challenges not only from former client states and regional kingdoms that sought to fill its shoes, but also from the encounter with Europe, particularly the growing military and economic might of the British. And as the British role in India transitioned from one of mere traders to that of empire-builders with a so-called "civilizing mission," they too would transform the culture and society of India in ways that continue to resonate in South Asian history and cultural memory today.
385-2 – History of Modern South Asia, Circa 1750 - Present
Circa 1750-present: The age of British colonial dominance; the politics of nation building and anticolonial resistance; independence, partition, and the postcolonial predicament.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
386-2 – History of Modern Southeast Asia Until 1945
This course is an introduction to the history of modern Southeast Asia, from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of World War II. The region comprises eleven modern nation-states: Burma/Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines, and East Timor. Its history can seem like a bewildering parade of princes, plenipotentiaries, presidents, and prime ministers: Diponegoro, Nguyễn Phúc Ánh, Thibaw, Chulalongkorn, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, Johannes Van Den Bosch, Sir Hugh Clifford, and Paul Doumer, among many others. This course focuses, therefore, on the economic and social changes that have spanned the region and give its disparate parts historical unity. It begins by charting the contours of Southeast Asian social structures on the eve of European colonial rule; it then examines Southeast Asians' responses to the challenges and opportunities of their region's integration with new markets during the era of European high imperialism; and it details the social transformations that followed from depression and war, in the mid-twentieth century, including violent peasant rebellions and the birth of communism.
386-3 – History of Contemporary Southeast Asia Since 1945
A social and political history of Southeast Asia from the end of the Second World War to the Present.
Historical Studies Distro Area. See Caesar for current course description.
393 – Approaches to History
Introductory seminar for history majors and others interested in understanding how history is thought about and written. Intensive exploration of a significant historical event, period, or topic.
Historical Studies Distro Area. Topic Varies by instructor. See Caesar for current course description.
393-0 Gender, Race, and the Holocaust
The aim of this seminar is to introduce students to the history and historiography of race and gender during the Holocaust. As in many historical contexts, race and gender interacted dynamically and created the particular context of Nazi-occupied Europe, which was a place where Jewish men and women suffered in particular ways, German men and women participated in particular ways, and other racial groups - men and women alike - were targeted, collaborated, resisted and rescued. We will read a variety of texts that explore the influences that shaped the behavior and response of an array of people during the Holocaust. Racism sat directly in the center of the Nazi world view. Once the Nazis got into power, they sought to translate ideology into policy. Still, their racial policies evolved over time, spurred by opportunism, innovation, and war. And too, Jewish men and women responded in ways similar and divergent to the Nazi onslaught. Sexism was also seemingly an important aspect of the Nazi perspective. While they indeed embraced an anti-feminist stance, the Nazis nevertheless sought to incorporate "German" women into the national community and women participated actively in the implementation of Nazi racism.
393-0– The World of Japan's Empire
Japan was the only non-western country to build a modern empire in the 20th century--a project that turned out to be a disaster, with huge implications for Asia to this day. This is also the history of China, Taiwan, Mongolia, the Koreas, Southeast Asia, Sakhalin, and several of the Pacific Island nations. What was distinctive about this non-Western empire? What was not? What are the key legacies? How should we think about the real-world impact of empires in general?
This seminar will focus on the 1947 Partition of British India to understand how this traumatic event has become paradigmatic for colonial India and post-colonial South Asia. The Partition created more than just the two rival nation-states of India and Pakistan from what used to be British India. It also generated a long shadow that continues to define ongoing regional conflicts such as those in Kashmir, continual anxieties about majoritarian and minoritarian identity politics viewed alternately with dread and jubilation in both India and Pakistan, and a persistent desire among South Asian creative artists to make sense of the pain of this violent event. How did the Partition come about? How have scholars, commentators, filmmakers, novelists, creative writers, and those who survived the violence of this event understood and narrativized it? Why does an event that occurred seventy-five years ago loom so large in the collective memory of South Asians today?
393-0 – Xi's "New Era": China Today
This seminar explores Chinese contemporary history by examining shifting notions of China, its place in the world, its unlimited future, and its prosperous present. Like the celebration of the "China Dream" and the injunction to tell the "China Story," these ideals both reflect and result from significant shifts in Chinese politics and society, which are subject to influence by a rejuvenated Chinese Communist Party and "Xi Jinping Thought with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era." We will begin by considering China's place in the world by discussing the 2017 box office hit "Wolf Warrior 2" (China's "Rambo: First Blood II") and end by considering popular Chinese science fiction. In between we will consider notions of gender, socialism, and citizenship, among other topics. Students can petition to take the class as a 395.
393-0 – Shanghai: Modernity and Modernism in 20th Century China
Shanghai: Paris of the East, Paradise of Adventurers, Birthplace of the Chinese Communist Party, City of Migrants, City of Capitalist Decadence and Debauchery, Nightmare City, Refugee City, Island Shanghai, China's Industrial City, Open Port. In the first part of the 20th century, Shanghai was known by many names and attributes, positive and negative. Each highlighted different aspects of Shanghai as a key site for the creation of modernity and modernism in China and greater East Asia. This class will examine various facets of Shanghai's complex bequest as the paradigmatic modern Chinese city due to its place as a colonial port city and center of industry, culture, and politics. This course will use fiction, historical studies, and films to explore the city and its place in modern nationalism, industrial capitalism and finance, feminism and gender/sexual politics, intellectual movements, and modern urban lifeways. [Students may take the class as a 395; they will be able to draw on a vast store of English-, Chinese-, Japanese-, and French-language newspapers, archival documents, films, and more (via NU Library databases) to write a research paper.]
393-0 – Beyond Pocahontas: Finding Native Voices in Early America
Touching on topics including environmental change, gender and sexuality, Native power, slavery, and memory, this course will examine the various ways that scholars have written histories of Native Americans in early America, when most of the sources were produced by colonizers. Famous figures like Pocahontas are well known and well documented, but how can historians tell the story of everyone else? And what is their responsibility to modern Native nations?
393-0 Drag Queens in Modern History
In 2023, the art of drag has reached a fateful juncture. While drag now enjoys unprecedented levels of mainstream, commercial success, it once again stands at the heart of polarizing political discourses. With five US states introducing bills to regulate and ban drag, and a growing pattern of armed protests against drag events, one might ask: why do cross-dressing acts elicit such extreme responses, and how did we get here? In this course, we will dive into the tumultuous history of drag as an object of heated public debate in the modern era. We will evaluate the different ways in which states, communities, and people responded to drag in different temporal and national contexts, with a focus on Europe and North America. What do these debates teach us about how norms of citizenship, morality, gender, and sexuality were negotiated on and off the stage? What distinguishes drag as an art form, and when and how did it truly begin? Is drag inherently liberatory, radical, and progressive, or actually conformist, oppressive, and misogynist? What is the relationship between drag and social movements? How did the World Wars transform and revolutionize drag? And what do queens and kings have to do with any of this? Using primary and secondary sources, including memoirs, documentaries, and memorabilia, we will explore the significance of drag as an art form and a political subculture.
In spite of the moral condemnation by numerous religious, political and intellectual leaders and the massive (national and international) efforts aiming to prevent it, mass violence - in its extreme forms, such as mass murder and genocide affecting groups of people - was and still is a widespread phenomenon in human societies. Recently, numerous scholars have argued that, since the advent of modernity, mass violence has become more murderous, especially during the last century. Its persistence and intensification has triggered a lot of scholarly debates about its origins and nature, particularly how it functions and why so many people got implicated in the violence. This course aims to examine various theories and case studies of extreme mass violence, focusing on the dynamics of group behavior and social, political, economic, gender, and psychological factors that shaped cases of collective violence especially during the twentieth century. The main goal is to discuss various cases of extreme mass violence that targeted entire communities based on their group identity, focusing on the perpetrators and on the various explanations of their murderous behavior and the mechanism of mass violence.
393-0 The Quest for Arab Independence after WWI
This seminar introduces students to major themes in the history of Syria and other Arab-majority areas during and after WWI (1916-1920)—arguably one of the most pivotal periods in modern Middle Eastern history. Ultimately, the course is about the ways in which different historians have understood and interpreted the events that unfolded during this time period. Imagine that you and your classmates are a group of conscientious lawyers examining a case ahead of a trial. In this hypothetical scenario, one party has put forward a case based on a certain narrative of events. Out of concern for its accuracy and plausibility, your task is to determine if, or to what extent, it holds water. The case in question has been put forward by historian Elizabeth Thompson in a recent book dealing with Syria and the Arabs' quest for independence following WWI. We are going to familiarize ourselves with the facts of the case and the case itself. Then we are going to scrutinize the argument, weigh the evidence, consider alternatives, and assess the extent to which the case withstands scrutiny.
393-0 – Abortion in the United States
This seminar offers an intensive exploration of the history of abortion in the United States. Using primary and secondary sources, the class will look at how women in the past terminated pregnancies, the drive to restrict or outlaw abortion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the relationship between abortion regulation and other questions of constitutional "privacy," the reproductive rights and reproductive justice movements that emerged in the twentieth century, Roe v. Wade and other major Supreme Court decisions, the legalization of abortion and its consequences, and the anti-abortion movement of the 1970s and later.
To obtain permission, write Professor Kate Masur (kmasur@northwestern.edu).
395 – Research Seminar
Students research and complete a term paper on a topic of choice. Required of majors.
Topic Varies by instructor. See Caesar for current course description.
The history of “imperialism in Asia” is a global history. It involved virtually all of the European colonial powers: Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Germany and, of course, Great Britain. The United States joined the club in the nineteenth century and, unlike the rest of the colonized world, a non-Western nation, Japan, participated in this tradition of territorial conquest and cultural hegemony. Paradoxically, the Japanese simultaneously intensified the colonial experience and, by starting the war in the Pacific, inaugurated the process that led to decolonization and the emergence of independent nation states. This seminar will explore this history in its multifaceted dimensions, and students interested in Asian, European, American, and Global history are all welcome. The initial two-thirds of the seminar will be devoted to reading primary and secondary sources relating to colonialism and imperialism in East, Southeast, and South Asia. Naturally we will not be able to explore the topic in all its dimensions in just a few weeks, but we will learn from each other. The latter third of the course will be devoted to the research and writing of a term paper on any topic of your choice relating to the history of imperialism in these regions, whether from the historical perspective of the perpetrators or the victims. The purpose of this exercise is to enable students to write the sort of polished term paper that is not usually possible within the hectic confines of the quarter system. You will be afforded the time and personal attention necessary to write a good paper.
395-0 – Oral History & the Archives of Terror - Research Seminar
This course helps students understand oral history as a political battlefield. We studied how various historical actors used different forms of oral expression to engage in processes of formation of political consciousness, collective identities, social movements, and states in Latin America during the Cold War.
The course is divided into three sections. In the first part, we will unpack the concepts and practices of oral history by discussing the theoretical and methodological challenges that professional historians and social scientists confront when doing oral history in the region and beyond. In the second and third parts, we will study the "archives of terror" of the Latin American Cold War, and how various forms of orality (i.e. testimonio, life histories, journalistic interviews, and truth commission reports) helped victims of violence to put an end to dictatorships and civil wars, intervene in the peace processes and democratic transitions that followed, and fight for justice, reparation, truth, and reconciliation.
395-0 Gender and Sexual Minorities in History
Queens. Fairies. Inverts. Sapphists. Hijra. Uranians. Abatoni. Friends of Dorothy. The terms used to describe gender and sexual minorities in the past and around the world might be unrecognizable to us today – but they have all shaped our current identities. In this course we will be exploring queer histories in a global context to understand the people and experiences behind the categories. Rather than taking a chronological approach, or looking at countries in isolation, we will be focusing on some of the most hotly-debated topics in gender history, LGBT history and queer history: how have the identity categories we understand today developed over time and in different contexts? How have gender and sexual minorities sought to liberate themselves and others, and how have these efforts informed movements around the world today?
395-0 – Nature and Empire - Research Seminar
The arrival of European colonizing powers in the Americas in the wake of Columbus's voyages marked a new and often disastrous chapter in global environmental history. American nations and environments shaped the course of European colonial settlement at the same time as colonial expansion profoundly changed the flora, fauna, disease ecology, and patterns of labor and land use prevailing across the Americas. This seminar explores the entangled histories of imperial and environmental history in the colonial Atlantic world. Topics will include the so-called Columbian Exchange and the dispossession of indigenous lands; the transatlantic slave trade and the rise of the plantation system; the intersections of African, European, and Indigenous American agricultural practices; European theories of race and climate; colonial bioprospecting; and the role of disease in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions. We will also consider the imperial origins of modern conservationism and of key environmental concepts such as ‘wilderness' and 'native' and 'invasive' species.
From the Pugachev Uprising to the Bolshevik Revolution, this class surveys revolutionary ventures in Russian history-- those that succeeded, those that failed, and those that were simply bizarre. Students will read, present, and discuss a range of texts that includes eyewitness reports, diaries, manifestos, poems, and the latest debates among historians. Meanwhile, independent research throughout the quarter (in consultation with the professor) will culminate in a 15pp-20pp final paper on the history of pre-Soviet or Soviet Russia, Central Asia, and/or the Caucasus.
This seminar guides students as they research and write the social history of an artifact of their choice. How do our histories read if we organize them around changes in the material world? Do artifacts have politics, and if so, of what sort? In this course, students learn multiple approaches to the study of material culture. We will read exemplary accounts of objects which people have designed, made, sold, bought, gifted, and/or trashed. We will study how these objects came to mediate differences among people, like gender, race, age, nation, and of course, rich and poor. The course offers a well-tested template for conducting, organizing, and writing up your own research on a topic that interests you. Try out an idea for a senior thesis. Research an artifact you love or hate, or feel ambivalent about. Develop a case history of innovation (or obsolescence). The last time the course was offered, students wrote papers on such topics as: the wiretapping of ‘70s radicals, the late nineteenth-century obsession with photographing the dead, how knitting patterns went online, the rise of the labradoodle, the gender dynamics of ‘20s fashion, how changes in intellectual property transformed ‘90s biotech, and why Admiral Grace Hopper programmed COBOL the way she did…. The goal is to illuminate our changing world by telling the history of a material being.
395-0 – Refugees/Migration/ Exile: Digital Storytelling
In this course, students will research a case study from among the many refugee and migration crises that have dominated the news cycle in recent years. The final project is a short video about your case study.
To develop your research projects, the class foregrounds different methodological approaches: 1) To move beyond journalism, we will conduct primary and secondary historical research to understand the complex historical roots of each case study. 2) We will analyze and practice forms of ethnographic writing to better situate and describe the lived experiences of migration and exile, both past and present. 3) We will pay attention to various forms of media, whether print culture, sound, or visual media, to interrogate but also experiment with contemporary modes of narrating and conveying human experience in the digital age. Our work in class will be collaborative, thus a key prerequisite is that you are mature and self-motivated. You do not need to have prior research experience, but you need to demonstrate a desire to dig into your topic and hone your ability to write deeply informed, rigorous, and nuanced arguments and to think about creative ways to bring rigorous historical and ethnographic detail to visual story-telling. You will be graded on written reading responses, in-class participation, and the final product (a short video, less than five minutes).
Students are required to petition for permission to enroll in the class (see instructions in the "Registration Requirements" section).
395-0– Participatory Research in Queer Studies
IParticipatory research methods have been key to queer studies since its inception. The use of methodologies like oral history, ethnography and participant observation reflects the lack of written sources on the queer past, but also the political objectives of many researchers - to empower their participants, challenge normativity, and often pursue social change. In this class, we will examine some of the approaches to participatory research, and explore how participatory research might be different in the specific context of queer studies. How is the relationship between researcher and participant altered when both are LGBTQ+ (or assumed to be)? How might queer theory pose a challenge to the activist objectives of participatory research, and vice versa?
The central focus of your writing requirements will be your own research paper, on a topic of your choice, putting the participatory research methods we have learned about into practice. We will work on this step by step throughout the quarter, with consistent feedback and support to enable you to become independent researchers. The ability to conduct independent research is an extremely valuable skill, enabling you to develop as scholars and engage directly with the topics and questions we will be covering.
398-1 – Thesis Seminar
Advanced work through supervised reading, research, and discussion. Admission by written application, to be reviewed by department. Grade of K given in 398-1 and 398-2.
398-1 – Thesis Seminar
This seminar is a three-quarter sequence in which senior thesis students prepare a thesis and meet regularly as colleagues to discuss problems of common interest under the guidance of a faculty member. It meets weekly in the fall quarter but less often in winter and spring. Subjects for discussion include historiography, the use of primary sources, framing and structuring historical arguments, and the art of writing. Practical matters like funding sources and library resources are also discussed.
This is a full-year course for students writing a senior honors thesis in history. In the fall quarter, the class will meet as a seminar to discuss issues relating to the writing of history, how to organize a thesis, how to evaluate evidence, and the use of primary and secondary sources. In the winter quarter, students will finish researching their thesis and write a first draft. Then in the spring quarter, students will complete their thesis. Throughout the year, students will meet with their thesis advisers and the 398 seminar leader to work on proposals, outlines, and drafts, and to discuss their progress toward completion of their thesis. In order to graduate with honors in history, students must successfully complete their thesis and have it approved. However, it is possible for students to complete the three quarters of this course with respectable grades but not be awarded honors.
398-3 – Senior Thesis
This course introduces major debates in the comparative history of revolution. The global analysis starts in France; proceeds with the spread of revolutionary ideologies in the Americas; returns to Europe for 1848 and 1917; tacks back to the Americas for peasant revolutions in Mexico and Cuba; and then migrates to China before ending in a consideration of the revolutions that never happened. En route we will explore the intellectual history of revolution in the works of Tocqueville, Marx, Lenin, James, Guevara and Scott, juxtaposing these texts with more recent scholarship to shed light on their multiple qualities: primary sources, political prescriptions and analytical frameworks.
405-0 – Sexual Knowledge: Science, Archives, Traces
Sexuality studies has flourished in recent decades amidst the multiplicities of desires, identities, and bodies. As loci of meaning-making, hierarchical differentiation, and political struggles, as well as the space of transgressive imagination and alternative subjectivities, sexuality studies has never been neutral. This course focuses on the scholarly debates over the practices and politics of sexual knowledges across historical moments, locations, and projects. We will analyze how this knowledge was (and is) produced, what counts as knowledge, who gets recognized as an Expert (and why), and who collects and curates. Our work will especially highlight the dynamic relations between story-telling, assembling, documentation, and interpretation. In doing so, we critically examine the multiple meanings of archives, their origins, and uses. Equally, we problematize the silences and so-called ephemera. Readings will include works on sexuality and bio-politics, classic works in sexology, and ethnographies. The course will also consider film and other media as well as digital archives. Finally, I hope to arrange Zoom conversations with archivists, collections curators and investigators on how they navigate collections as well as how they have assembled their research.
405-0 – Comparative Racial Thought
405-0 – Gender History as Global History
In the past few decades, scholars in the field of global history have challenged others to move beyond the framework of the region or the nation-state. But as many have argued recently, scholars invested in "thinking big" about history sometimes have difficulty addressing people who did not move across political boundaries, and they have typically neglected small, ordinary stories and domestic spaces. Since these have been the traditional interests of women's historians, the fields of global and women's history often seem irreconcilable, especially in the era before the twentieth century. One possible solution to this impasse is to deploy the analytical category of gender, which should be able to speak to both fields and across long spans of time. How have historians done this? What does gender history look like on a global scale? In this seminar, we will consider these questions, reading recent work that combines global and gender history in the early modern and modern eras.
This course is an introduction to the biography and major works of Karl Marx. The seminar will also make forays into the development of Marxist thought by Gyorgy Lukacs, the Frankfurt School, and Antonio Gramsci.
405-0 – Mapping the Discipline
The purpose of this course is to offer history students a guide to "professional literacy" by introducing them to some of the main approaches and themes of the academic study of history. Historians have a broad variety of strategies of investigation, interpretation, and explanation to choose from. Understanding those strategies requires articulating methods and theoretical perspectives and recognizing the implications when others do so. The course will orient students in some of the big debates in humanities and social-science scholarship—and their implications--with a specific focus on the contributions that historians are best equipped to make. This will involve learning read for deep comprehension. Topics to be considered in the course include: defining fields of history; problems of historical scale, spatiality, empire, and borderlands, the use of certain analytical categories such as social class, race, gender, and other forms of identity, and the implications and impact of organizing principles such as agency and networks. And, I should also say that, because we only have ten weeks, the course in no way claims to cover all major approaches to History.
410-1 – General Field Seminar in American History
This course is designed to introduce the major historical and historiographical issues that have dominated the field of early American history. Focusing on the period up to the Early Republic, we will explore conflicting interpretations of significant historical questions, as well as changing views on the nature of historical knowledge and the purpose of history.
410-2 – General Field Seminar in American History
This course is the second element in the three-quarter sequence designed for first-year doctoral students in United States history. Interested doctoral students from other fields/departments are also welcome. The class focuses on the United States in the nineteenth century and is intended to prepare students for later work as teachers and scholars. It is both historical and historiographical. That is, students are introduced to issues in the period and explore changes in scholarly thinking concerning those issues. The course does not aim to "cover" all of nineteenth-century US history. Rather, we will sample a variety of different topics and hope to end the quarter with a better sense of the diversity and possibility of this field and its many subfields.
410-3 Field Seminar in American History
Combining classics and the best new work in the field, this seminar explores the evolution of historical scholarship on The United States Since 1900, samples its variety, and seeks to identify future research trajectories. Along the way, it teaches graduate students to read quickly but carefully, to identify and evaluate arguments, to recognize and appreciate methodological and interpretive differences, and to locate their own preferences and place in the field. In sum, the course provides the foundation for future research, success on field exams, and a professional career.
420-1 – Field Seminar in Latin American History (Early Modern/Colonial)
More information can be found on Caesar.
420-2- Field Seminar in Latin American History (19th and 20th Century)
Modern Latin America Field Seminar introduces graduate students to some of the principal topics, debates, and literatures about the region’s history since independence to the neoliberal turn. It covers the most important economic, political, social, and cultural questions. It also analyzes the methodological strategies used by historians while writing about different countries. The course does not pretend to be inclusive of all historical approaches. Rather, it aims to introduce students to some of the most relevant historiographical discussions and invite them to go beyond narrow North American points of view about the neighbors to the South. The course helps students in training to become instructors to examine how Latin Americans view themselves and understand the region’s histories under different lenses.
430-2 Field Seminar in Early Modern European History
This seminar is designed to acquaint graduate students with classic and emerging scholarship in Early Modern European history between roughly 1400 and 1800. The course is part of the essential preparation for a graduate field examination in European history but also welcomes the perspectives of students from other fields, programs, and departments. Major topics will include Europe's ties to the Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds, locality and community, colonialism, the Renaissance, the Reformations, environmental transformations, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, slavery, and the origins of the Atlantic revolutions and Industrial Revolution.
450-2 Field Seminar in African History
This course introduces you to a field of knowledge called African history by juxtaposing early and recent periods, old and new books, African authors and not. Whatever your specialized interests, you should be familiar with shifting debates over the key questions occupying “specialists” in that vast field and its equally vast past. Such questions include biography, gender, political cultures of centralization and heterarchy, urbanization, belonging, technology, slavery, long-distance and trade diasporas, religion, intellectual history, labor, colonialisms, and so forth. If you develop a reading fluency in all methodological approaches used to explore some of those questions you can engage more history, African or otherwise. Methods include archaeology, language and historical linguistics, oral textualities, art history, photography, materiality, and entanglements with other-than-human beings. Each method often involves the analysis and interpretation of written documents. You should develop the habit of considering the interplay of politics and ideologies with academic African history.
Contact the department for further information.
492-0 Eighteenth-Century Britain
This seminar covers British and Irish history in the long eighteenth century, from 1688 to 1815, with an emphasis on politics, state formation, and empire.
492-0 – The British Empire
This is a graduate course that explores why the British acquired an empire and what use they saw in it. It is also a course about why the British empire fell apart. Our chronological emphasis is two periods – 1760-1850 and 1920-1960 – with relatively little either on the Victorian high noon of imperial rule (a subject well covered in courses on South Asia, the Middle East, and the African continent) or on how the empire affected Britain itself (a domestic debate that we deal with in the Modern Britain course). It is intended as an introduction to a vast and complex literature, and because of the welter of different systems of rule (both realized and attempted), our focus is contrasts and comparisons.
492-0 The State in U.S. History
This graduate seminar will ask how scholars have defined and studied “the state” in the United States and discuss exemplary historical scholarship in the field.
This graduate seminar explores the relationship of the United States to its larger global context since its founding. This includes not just diplomacy but also culture, economics, ideas, empire, and war. Admission will go to history graduate students first, but those outside the department will be heartily welcomed if there is room.
492-0 – American Labor and Working Class History
More information can be found on Caesar.
492-0 – China and Southeast Asia
More information can be found on Caesar.
570-2 Research Seminar in History
Second half of the first-year research seminar.
585-0 – U.S. Dissertators' Workshop
This is a workshop for dissertators working on U.S. projects.
585-0 – European Dissertators' Workshop
This is a workshop for dissertators working on European projects.
COURSES PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS
405 – Seminar in Historical Analysis
A varying menu of courses in methodology and/or theory. At least two seminars are offered every year.
Topic Varies by instructor. See Caesar for current course description.
410-1, 2, 3 – Field Seminar in American History
Field seminars designed to familiarize students in each division of the graduate curriculum with pivotal issues, interpretations, controversies, research techniques, and works in the field.
420-1,2 – Field Seminar in Latin American History
Graduate student field seminar in Latin American history.
430-1, 2, 3 – Field Seminar in European History
Field seminars designed to familiarize students in each division of the graduate curriculum with pivotal issues, interpretations, controversies, research techniques, and works in the field.
443-2 – Literature of Early Modern English History
The British Empire from its origins to 1800, including trade, exploration, ideology, and governance.
450 – Field Seminar in African History
Field seminars designed to familiarize students in each division of the graduate curriculum with pivotal issues, interpretations, controversies, research techniques, and works in the field.
465 – Sources in African History
Explores the kinds of meanings that historians can recover from non-written sources and the ways in which recent scholarship has grappled with these sources. See Caesar for current course description.
481 – Western Literature of Chinese History
See Caesar for current course description.
483 – Literature of Japanese History
See Caesar for current course description.
484 – Literature of the History of Science
A graduate field seminar covering scholarly approaches to the history of science, technology, and medicine.
492 – Topics in History
Topic Varies by instructor. See Caesar for current course description.
560 – Teaching History (Pedagogy)
This course is an introduction to the main issues that students will confront as history teachers. Students will engage with the most profound and interesting questions that arise in teaching history, develop insight into effective and equitable pedagogical strategies, and build confidence in their teaching abilities.
570-1, 2, 3 – Research Seminar in History
First-year research seminar. Students work jointly with the 570 instructor and their adviser to produce a polished research paper based on primary sources.
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