Graduate Courses

Teaching Practicum and Professional Development

Introduction to inclusive teaching practices and professional development strategies. Combines hands-on pedagogical training with guidance for navigating key milestones in academic life.

Learning Outcomes:
1. Utilize critical pedagogical principles underlying course design and assessment strategies in undergraduate history instruction.
2. Incorporate insights from peer and faculty discussions to formulate a personalized plan for professional development during graduate study.

R 3:30–4:20PM |   5240 Levy Hall | Instructor: Charles Kim

Designing Courses

This seminar is designed a one-semester workshop on course design for History and HSMT graduate students. Each week, we will discuss one element of course design. In some weeks, we will discuss basic concepts or frameworks in teaching and learning and ask how these can help us design courses that better fit our goals as teachers, and how to apply the principles of course design to different settings. Over the course of the semester, each student will design and develop a course syllabus, learning activities, and an assessment plan. Students will also develop one full module (or equivalent).

W 3:30-5:25PM | 5240 Levy Hall  | Instructor: Daniel Ussishkin

Dissertation Chapter Writing

History 710 functions as a writing workshop for dissertators. Participants can be at any stage in the dissertation-writing process but must commit to presenting one chapter for peer review at some point during the semester. Approaching dissertations as a distinct genre of prose, the course will focus on practical writing issues, including questions of style, structure, narrative, and argument.  We will examine how to structure a chapter effectively; how to compose efficient and powerful introductions and conclusions; and how to fashion narrative that marshals evidence and analysis in an approachable and convincing way.

T 1:20–3:15PM | 5216 Levy Hall  | Instructor: Emma Kuby

Writing Grant Proposals

M 3:30-5:25PM | 5216 Levy Hall | Instructor: Louise Young

Proseminar in Latin American History

This graduate seminar will explore the ways that the region known today as the Caribbean has been imagined and forged in the page. We will interrogate how scholars and writers from the Caribbean have grappled with the complexities of memory and historical production in the region. Students will engage with an interdisciplinary set of readings that interrogate the complex ways that those that inhabit the Caribbean and its diasporas have written themselves into history.

T 11AM-12:55PM | L1207 Levy Hall | Instructor:  Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

Proseminar in Southeast Asian History

The course explores the nature of “empire” in an age of America’s global dominion, starting with the rise of European empires during the “high colonialism” of the late 19th century and ending with U.S. global hegemony in the early 21st century. After reviewing the literature on the rise of modern empires, the course will explore both the expansion of European colonialism into Southeast Asia and the region’s response. With the world’s most diverse array of imperial powers and a history of intense colonization, Southeast Asia is the ideal region for a close, comparative study of imperialism. The course concludes by applying insights gained from exploring the end of European empires to the ongoing decline of U.S. global power.

In this survey of European empires, the seminar will focus closely on U.S. colonial rule in the Philippines from 1898-1946, an important but forgotten chapter in American history. Indeed, in two centuries of American history, the U.S. conquest and colonization of the Philippines is the only experience comparable to our recent occupation of Afghanistan (2001-2021). By exploring this juxtaposition of past and present in the history of America’s foreign adventures, the seminar will, in its opening and closing sessions, explore the way the past bears upon the present.         

More broadly, the course will explore issues central to the character of global empires—including, the causes of imperial expansion, the drive for military security, the psychology of colonial dominion, ecological and economic transformations, construction of race and gender, nationalist resistance, and the dynamics of imperial decline.

Instead of transferring a fund of facts about European empires and anti-colonial revolutions, the seminar seeks to understand the dynamics of global dominion. Hopefully, students will emerge from the course with a better understanding of the nature of empire, the lasting legacy of colonialism, and the dynamics driving the decline of U.S. global power. [Meets with Hist 600]

R 3:30–5:25PM | 5240 Levy Hall | Instructor: Alfred McCoy

Dimensions of Material Culture

This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of material culture studies. It is intended for students interested in any professional endeavor related to material culture, including careers in museums, galleries, historical societies, historic preservation organizations, and academic institutions. During the semester, students have varied opportunities to engage with and contemplate the material world to which people give meaning and which, in turn, influences their lives. Sessions combine in some way the following: presentations from faculty members and professionals who lecture on a phase of material culture related to his/her own scholarship or other professional work; discussion of foundational readings in the field; visits to collections and sites on campus and around Madison; discussion of readings assigned by visiting presenters or the professors; and exams and short papers that engage material culture topics. [Also offered as ANTHRO and ART HIST 764]

TR 1:00-2:15PM, T 11-11:50AM | 2255 Nancy Nicholas Hall| Instructor: TBA

Teaching Literature in Translation

Intended for current and/or future instructors of college-level literature courses, it offers an introduction to methods and didactics of teaching literature. The goal is to help you learn about and understand key concepts of approaching different genres in creative ways that make these texts appeal to undergraduate students. Course participants will design instructional materials, lessons, and assessment tools for teaching literature, and are encouraged to develop their identity as teachers of fictional texts. This seminar combines theory and practice-oriented work and is entirely assignment- and project-based (no exams). [Also offered as German/French/Poli Sci/Soc 804]

M 2:25–5:25PM | 159 Van Hise Hall | Instructor: Sonja Klocke

Computing in the United States

Digital technology is an important artifact of US history in the 20^th and early 21^st century. The joint seminar in History of Science/US History examines developments in computing in their economic, political, intellectual, and social context to give students 1) introduction to the history of computer science and technology; 2) an entree into aspects of US postwar history illuminated by the topic (including labor, privacy, capitalism, national security); 3) tools to examine technology historically; and 4) critical models for addressing contemporary Silicon Valley as a political, social, and economic force. No technical knowledge is necessary. Students should expect to read at a pace of approximately one book per week (or equivalent in articles) and to produce an article-length research paper or comparable work product. [Meets with Hist Sci 907]

F 1:20–3:15PM | 5240 Levy Hall  | Instructor: Devin Kennedy

Youth, Power, and the State

This seminar examines the evolution of American governmental authority from the eighteenth century to the present through the lens of children. Readings on topics such as the legal status of children, compulsory education, child labor, youth activism, and the policing and incarceration of youth will allow students to explore the periodization, causes, and consequences of the American state’s expansion and contraction. Additionally, students will consider historical intersections and tensions between the protective and punitive aspects of American state power, or what scholars refer to as the welfare state and the carceral state. Lastly, students will examine the extent to which young people possessed agency at different places and moments in time and the extent to which their interactions with the state varied based upon categories such as race, class, gender, geography, and age.

This course should appeal to students interested in the history of education, labor, law, politics, activism, policing, and/or incarceration. Through presentations and small- and large-group discussions, students will investigate a range of primary sources and explore how historians use sources and evidence to construct arguments. They will also consider diverse perspectives, participate in robust and respectful dialogue, develop, revise, and support their own evidence-based historical interpretations, and reflect upon the connections between past and present. [Also offered as ED POL 906]

M 2:25–5:25PM | 2180 Grainger Hall | Instructor: Walter Stern

American History, 1900-1945

This is an advanced seminar on American history from 1900 to 1945, a period of momentous social change and corresponding efforts at social amelioration.  Understanding the Progressive Era, the 1920s, and New Deal has challenged historians for decades. We’ll read some of the most important interpretations of various aspects of reform, from sweeping interpretations on broad subjects to more tightly focused monographs on specialized topics. Reform movements appeared in various guises in the first half of the twentieth century, representing conservative, liberal, and radical ideologies. From social gospeler to fundamentalist, trust buster to New Dealer, settlement house volunteer to professional altruist, diverse movements arose in an age of dramatic change. The required readings will provide the Amcore of weekly seminar discussions. Every student will write one paper, limited to 17-18 double-spaced pages exclusive of endnotes, due at the end of the semester. There are no examinations in the course.

W 1:20PM–3:15PM | 5240 Levy Hall | Instructor: William Reese

Evil and the Caribbean Novel

This course explores key twentieth- and twenty-first-century Caribbean novels through the combined lenses of moral philosophy and aesthetics within a comparative literature framework. We will examine various manifestations of evil, including cruelty, natural disasters, and illness, and analyze how evil operates within the unique Caribbean context, particularly its interaction with environmental and political vulnerabilities. Furthermore, we will investigate the emergence of beauty from, and in spite of, these circumstances. Assigned readings include contemporary novels by authors such as Alejo Carpentier, Rita Indiana, René Philoctète, Maryse Condé, Lionel Trouillot, Jamaica Kincaid, Marlon James, Guillermo Rosales, Eduardo Lalo, and Cezanne Cardona.

Classes will be conducted in English. Students will read texts in their original language whenever possible. Students may write their papers in English, Spanish or French.

[This is a cross-listed course with the Department of Spanish and Portuguese]

T 3:30-5:30PM | 1120 Van Hise Hall | Guillermina De Ferrari

Decolonial Theory

In the 2010s “decolonization” became an academic buzzword, sometimes leading to significant change, and sometimes merely indicating that one was following an intellectual trend. At times, one wondered if anyone had actually done the reading. This course will take a chronological approach to decolonial theory, beginning with writers frequently cited by present-day decolonial theorists, and then turning to those theorists writing today. This structure is meant to help students see how ideas build on one another. The readings are Africa-focused — due to the professor’s specialization — but include writers from outside the continent. Students with various geographical foci are welcome in this class, in the hopes that learning across continents can increase solidarities and strengthen students’ own research and writing. In addition, this course can be taken as part of the Graduate Certificate in Visual Cultures. If you are pursuing that certificate, I expect your writing projects to address issues in visual and/or performance studies.

T 4:00–5:55PM | L166 Conrad Elvehjem Building | Instructor: Elaine Sullivan

Medieval, Renaissance, 17th and 18th Century Science

In this graduate seminar, we will explore current approaches to genre analysis by examining some of the ways in which natural knowledge was textually and visually articulated from the Middle Ages through early modernity. Potential examples include almanacs, horoscopes, and medical cases; books of secrets and recipe books; tables, herbals, and maps; disputations and commentaries; lists, inventories, and catalogues; manuals and handbooks; poetry, fables, and aphorisms; problemata, dialogues, and epistolary forms; biographies; essays and histories; and albums, dictionaries, and encyclopedias. 

Readings will represent a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches, disciplinary perspectives, and geographical/cultural areas. The writing requirement for this seminar will be tailored to students’ particular needs in their respective programs of study. Students will gain familiarity with current scholarly debates, expand their analytical and interpretive skills, and strengthen their oral and written communication skills. [Meets with Hist Sci 911]

W 1:20-3:15PM| 5218 Levy Hall | Florence Hsia

Computing in the United States

Digital technology is an important artifact of US history in the 20^th and early 21^st century. The joint seminar in History of Science/US History examines developments in computing in their economic, political, intellectual, and social context to give students 1) introduction to the history of computer science and technology; 2) an entree into aspects of US postwar history illuminated by the topic (including labor, privacy, capitalism, national security); 3) tools to examine technology historically; and 4) critical models for addressing contemporary Silicon Valley as a political, social, and economic force. No technical knowledge is necessary. Students should expect to read at a pace of approximately one book per week (or equivalent in articles) and to produce an article-length research paper or comparable work product. [Meets with Hist 901]

F 1:20-3:15PM | 5240 Levy Hall | Devin Kennedy

Gender, Health and Illness in U.S. History

This course examines how health and illness have been gendered over the course of United States history with special attention to the twentieth century.  We will be guided by several questions: How are gender roles central to the social construction of illness?  How have conceptions of health and illness been used to build community, control behavior, and create health consumption?  How do gendered constructions of health and illness create and reinforce racial and class divisions? How are ideas of health and illness forged by non-medical institutions and social movements?

W 8:50-10:45AM | 5216 Levy Hall | Judith Houck