Make history this summer! With 20 online, asynchronous courses to choose from, you can study history anywhere. View the History Department’s course offerings through the tabs below, and keep these important dates in mind as you’re searching for classes.
Learn more about Summer term at UW-Madison.
Important Dates
- Week of March 18, 2024: Enrollment appointments assigned for Summer term
- Week of April 1, 2024: Summer term enrollment begins for current UW-Madison students
- April 7, 2024: Application deadline for the Undergraduate Scholarship for Summer Study, Summer Finish Scholarship, and Summer Housing Boost
All Courses - Online
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History 130: Introduction to World History
Instructor: Paul Grant
Dates: June 17, 2024 – July 14, 2024 (4 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: You are invited! This course is about the entire world throughout all of history. If that isn’t ambitious enough, we will do the whole thing in four weeks. Each week, then, will cover vast stretches of human experience. To make this intelligible, we focus on how global encounters will shape your career.
Your instructor: Dr. Paul Grant. I am a specialist in cross-cultural and cross-religious encounters, especially in West Africa. But in this course, I love listening to you as you figure out how you fit in the story of world history.
Your textbook: J. R. McNeill, The Webs of Humankind: A World History (Volume 2, Seagull edition) (W. W. Norton, 2021), including access to quizzes.
Typical Topics/Schedule:
Week 1: Global Commerce (from roughly the years 1000 to 1700)
Week 2: An Atomized World (from 1700 to 1900)
Week 3: The Amorality of Technology (from 1900 to 1990)
Week 4: A Shrinking World (from 1945 to the present)
Class Format: Asynchronous. Each week will include four pre-produced video lectures, and a number of readings (primarily in the textbook, with reading quizzes), along with response assignments some by video, most written.
History of Science 132: Bees, Trees, Germs, and Genes: A History of Biology
Instructor: Bennett McIntosh
Dates: June 17, 2024 – July 14, 2024 (4 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: What links the dodo’s extinction to modern genetic engineering? Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theories with his grandfather’s erotic poetry? The monsters in the margins of musty maps with Frankenstein and Godzilla? Examines exemplary and cautionary episodes across several centuries of the histories of the life sciences. Investigates the institutions, ideas, power, and politics that have given shape to the science we now call biology. Probes how we’ve used biology to understand our social structures (bees), our environment (trees), our health (germs), and whether we have the freedom to shape our own life and destiny (genes).
History 136: Sport, Recreation, and Society in the U.S.
Instructor: Michael Kaelin
Dates: June 17, 2024 – August 11, 2024 (8 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: This course explores how sport has shaped and been shaped by major trends in American cultural, political, and economic history. Students will engage with serious historical debates about sport’s relationship to American capitalism, social movements, and urban development. Readings also provide exposure to often-overlooked perspectives on the politics of race, gender, and class in American sport. Non- sports fans are welcome! Please note: this class will not focus on recounting statistics, records, or other team and individual achievements except as they relate to broader trends and events in society.
History 201-001: Religion & American Culture Wars
Instructor: Maggie Flamingo
Dates: June 17, 2024 – July 28, 2024 (6 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: Can culture be won? Spend a few minutes on the internet or listening to the discussions of politicians and religious leaders and it is clear that they certainly believe it can (and must!) be. The field of history gives us the opportunity to look at the arguments and debates that have comprised the culture wars of the past, as well as the roots of the culture wars that rage today. These debates were (and remain) high-stakes and the issues, at their core, deal with the very livelihood and self-concept of those engaged in them. This material is often personal, complicated, politically charged, and religiously sensitive; choppy waters to navigate, particularly in our current climate. However, the lack of historical knowledge and tone-deaf, dismissive nature of many current, popular conversations surrounding these issues begs for a generation of students (that’s you!) better equipped to talk about them in an informed, historically grounded, articulate, balanced, and respectful way. This is not an easy task, but it is a necessary one.
This course serves the dual purpose of introducing a fascinating historical subject and doing it in a way that also explores the practices of a good historian. In other words, we will be poking and prodding history itself and the way it is produced. We will pursue this together in a variety of ways. Our readings sample the many ways historians contribute to both the scholarly and public worlds they inhabit, as well as examine different types of sources historians use to craft their work.
Topics studied will include: Politics and Prohibition: The War over Liquor; Modernism and Religion; Sex as a Battlefield: Gender and Family in the 1920s and 1930s; Science in the Schools; (Mis)Remembering the Nuclear Family; Popular and Political Culture in the New Era of Television; Prayer in the Schools; The Rise of Feminism and Anti-Feminism; The Abortion Wars; Christian Nationalism
Class Format: This is an asynchronous online course with as much flexibility built in as possible (there are several optional synchronous activities, but asynchronous alternatives are always available). The first half of the course focuses on historical content (lecture material, readings, etc.) while the second half eases back on that material a bit to give you more and more time to work on your own independent research project.
History 201-002: Sex & Love in Asian Religions
Instructor: Tyler Lehrer
Dates: June 17, 2024 – August 11, 2024 (8 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: This mostly asynchronous and completely online course examines the religious history of everyday life in South and Southeast Asia from the perspectives of desire, love, intimacy, gender, and queerness. While almost all the world’s religious and spiritual traditions seek to address the myriad issues of human embodiment—longing, suffering, intimate desire, and above all these, love—sometimes, in their institutional and politicized forms, they have tended to ignore the voices and experiences of not only women, but also queer and gender nonconforming people. What happens when we examine these ordinary and not-so-ordinary lives in the histories of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and other religious traditions beyond their sacred texts and hierarchies? What local and non-institutional histories of everyday life remain? In what ways might the historical studies of “gender,” “sexuality” and “religion” be intertwined? And in doing so, what implications might this have for our methods and work as historians? As both a COMM–B and Historian’s Craft course, we will practice and sharpen important research skills like asking savvy questions, using digital library and archival resources, and critically and creatively analyzing primary and secondary resources to produce intellectually stimulating and thoughtful historical research.
This course is “mostly asynchronous” in that students will meet for one hour in a small weekly discussion/peer review group. Your group is free to determine when to meet, and meetings will occur over Zoom (or a similar videoconferencing platform). These meetings will provide an opportunity for collaborative learning, engagement, and feedback that is different from the common practice of writing/responding to discussion posts typically found in many online courses.
History 201-003: Shanghai Life and Crime
Instructor: Joe Dennis
Dates: July 15, 2024 – August 11, 2024 (4 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: After the first Opium War concluded in 1842, Shanghai was a focal point of encounters between China and the outside world and became famous for its cosmopolitan culture. Using extensive English-language, online archival materials on Shanghai, especially the Shanghai Municipal Police Files and expatriate newspapers, we will explore this cosmopolitan city and develop your research, analysis, and writing skills. If you can read Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian, or French, there are also many historical sources in those languages that you can use in your research, but doing so is not required.
Class Format: This course is taught online and is asynchronous. Professor Dennis will hold live office hours online at different times of the day to answer questions and help with research projects. You will also be assigned to a small group so that you have other students to turn to for support or questions you would prefer to ask of another student, however no group work will be required. No textbooks are required; everything will be available online.
History of Science 212: Bodies, Diseases, and Healers: An Introduction to the History of Medicine
Instructor: Emma Wathen
Dates: May 28, 2024 – June 23, 2024 (4 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: This course provides an introductory overview of the events, theories, people, and more that have shaped the modern American medical system within a global context. Some questions students will be able to answer by the end of this course include: What different theories have historical actors formulated to explain how human bodies function, and what beliefs underlie these theories? How have diseases and disabilities been interpreted differently across time and place? How have patients selected healers? Whose expertise has been privileged, and why? Ultimately, this course will demonstrate that the non-linear evolution of medicine is grounded in society and culture, and that understanding its history will illuminate contemporary debates about bodies and health.
History 223-001: Roman Gladiators
Instructor: Marc Kleijwegt
Dates: June 17, 2024 – July 14, 2024 (4 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: Nothing associated with the ancient Romans has attracted more attention from a modern audience than the figure of the gladiator. Gladiators have entertained us in movies such as Spartacus (1960), Gladiator (2000), and (not so much) in Pompeii (2014; labelled as a romantic historical disaster film on Wikipedia), and in TV-series (Spartacus on Starz; 2010-2013).
Apart from a media presence, gladiators are also the subject of scholarly and non-scholarly (fiction and non-fiction) books, websites (ranging from visual evidence on Pinterest to blogs), documentaries, and video clips on YouTube of performances by re-enactment companies. Although well-intentioned, not everything is historically accurate (to put it mildly) or supported with hard evidence (another sizeable portion).
In this online summer course you will learn how to establish the most convincing interpretation based on the primary sources. In addition, you will discover some interesting facts that do not receive much attention in the popular coverage of gladiators: some gladiators were married and had children, two gladiators in a training-school owned by the emperor Caligula were thought to be invincible because they never blinked, and the sweat of gladiators was used in beauty products for women, and much more.
History 223-002: 20th Century Europe on Film
Instructor: Daniel Ussishkin
Dates: July 15, 2024 – August 11, 2024 (4 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: Arguably no cultural medium in the twentieth century did more to shape historical cultural memory and representation more than the moving image. Popularized as a cultural form at the turn of the century, film played a crucial role in shaping cultural and historical memory, at times from the moment of the inception of the events themselves. In this class, we will keep asking two interrelated questions: how was 20th-century European history represented on the screen? And, how does looking at contemporary representations of historical events help us understand European politics and culture in the twentieth century and beyond? In the broadest sense, we will try to figure out how to approach film as a historical source and ask broader questions about the social and political role of film. The course is organized thematically (these include total war, revolution, empire, and integration and globalization), and each week we will look at both contemporary as well as more recent productions. Movies that we will watch include (but not limited to) Paths of Glory, Lawrence of Arabia, Battleship Potemkin, Love on the Dole, Triumph of the Will, Come and See, Guns at Batasi, Battle of Algiers, Dr. Strangelove, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Good Bye, Lenin!, and Dirty Pretty Things
Class Format: The class is taught online and is asynchronous. Each module consists of background readings, film, and short assignments.
History 227: The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition
Instructor: Jesse Gant
Dates: July 1, 2024 – August 11, 2024 (6 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: This course offers an introduction to the histories, legacies, and ongoing works of the abolitionist movement(s) in the United States. It prioritizes what might be called the movement’s founding struggle, that of the fight to topple slavery and to build notions and legalized protections of rights and citizenship in the century between the 1760s and 1860s. While our focus will be on the long process of abolition in the U.S. before the Civil War, students will have an opportunity to think of the movement under a broadened lens, as by contextualizing the abolitionist movement’s place in world history, and/or by situating the U.S. movement within a transnational context. Four units—designed to investigate the movement’s origins, character, tactics, and legacy—will further frame our approach.
Each of these focus points for the course units helps preview a set of common problems we will explore together. On the question of the movement’s origins, for example, key discussions will focus on the question of what role free and enslaved Africans and African Americans, men and women, played in founding, building, and propelling the movement forward. We will also look at the many controversies that have surrounded understandings of the abolitionist movement’s character, ranging from those who have sought to elevate and celebrate their ideas and efforts, to the many who have also downplayed, dismissed, and even denigrated them. We will study the many organizing tactics and strategies the abolitionists have used and continue to use. And, we will explore not only what abolitionists have critiqued and aimed to tear down, but what they have tried to re-imagine and re-build. Finally, we will investigate today’s abolitionist and neo-abolitionist activist networks. Why are so many in the United States and around the world again turning to the abolitionist movement? And how do we also understand the many forces mobilizing once more to oppose them?
Class Format: History 227 is organized around four central units. Two units will be a week in length, while two others will be just two weeks in length. In general, our weekly operations will run from 9 a.m. (Madison time) Monday mornings to 11:59 p.m. (Madison time) on Sunday nights. This means students will know what is expected of them each week at 9 a.m. and enjoy (in most cases) almost a week to complete the weekly graded requirements, all at their own pace and on their own schedules. As History 227 is a history course, a modest amount of weekly and bi-weekly reading and writing requirements will be required. Most readings will be hosted online and available for free or very low cost.
The major student requirements will include a brief 3–5-page, double-spaced essay for both the midterm exam (due on Sunday night, Week 3) and the final exam (due on Sunday night, Week 6). In addition, students will be asked to complete one weekly written contribution to a course discussion board prompt. They can do so each week on Canvas as their schedules allow (1x weekly; 6 posts total). As History 227 is an online and asynchronous class, there are no regularly scheduled lectures or course meetings required for attendance. These and other course materials will instead be recorded/made available to students online as they proceed through the course units. Participation and attendance points will be measured and assessed as part of the final course grade and will be based largely on student timeliness in conducting course communications and in completing all the assigned coursework.
History 229: Empire in the Second World War
Instructor: Collin Bernard
Dates: May 28, 2024 – July 7, 2024 (6 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: Discover a new lens to view the Second World War. Examine underrepresented perspectives on the conflict and themes like racism, gender, nationalism, and religion. In History 229, we explore questions like what was the significance of imperialism thinking to both the Axis and Allied powers? What were the experiences of colonized peoples in WWII? How did the fallout of the war shape postwar dynamics like decolonization and the Cold War? Immerse yourself in 6 weeks of captivating reading, film, podcast, and lecture materials on one of history’s defining moments. Elevate your knowledge with a final research project where you can become an expert in a specific aspect of this global event.
Class Format: Online and Asynchronous with new modules posted every Tuesday to Canvas.
Assignments: Weekly activities based on course material and discussion posts due Monday evenings. Plus a research project that you will work on throughout the 6 weeks.
History 245: Chicana and Latina History
Instructor: Jillian Jacklin
Dates: June 17, 2024 – July 14, 2024 (4 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: This interdisciplinary course offers a comparative and cross-border approach to understanding the history of Chicana/x and Latina/x working-class communities. We will investigate the ways in which race, gender, sexuality, class, and region have shaped the everyday lives of individuals as well as the experiences of Chicana/xs and Latina/xs as community members. Some of the questions we will address are: How do power relations inform the construction of historical memory? Why do particular stories become part of a national narrative? What strategies have Chicana/xs and Latina/xs drawn upon to tell their stories? How do these perspectives challenge or disrupt dominant narratives about Chicana/xs and Latinas/xs worldwide? In what ways does an interrogation of the politics of space (place, location, landscape, architecture, environment, neighborhood, home, city, region, and territory) help us to understand Chicana/x and Latina/x lives? Finally, how can we draw on Chicana/x and Latina/x histories to build cultures of solidarity across differences of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class? Our explorations will introduce us to the world of work and sites of working-class leisure and recreation. We will look not only at paid and unpaid labor but also at the work and play of fashion, music, art, film, movement, and literature. Our overall goals are to make an original contribution to the historiography of Chicana/x and Latina/x working-class life and gain a better understanding of how systemic inequalities influence the everyday experiences of those who reside permanently in the U.S., as well as others who live transnational lives.
Class Format:
Writing Exercises: This course seeks to cultivate not only critical reading skills but also an opportunity to reflect on what you are learning. For example, I will ask for reactions to course readings, films, and discussions. These will contribute to conversations and your own knowledge of course materials. They are not private; your instructor will read and assess them. So take them seriously, and I hope that you find ways to enjoy the process.
Discussion Posts: You will write periodic discussion posts for certain class periods that your instructor determines. Each post should focus on engaging with historical context and reflect something that you would like to explore further with your classmates. Be respectful and sensitive to cultural, religious, and political diversity in your commentary.
Critical Analysis: Write a 2-page paper discussing a central theme from Vicki L. Ruiz’s study, From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in 20th Century America. Explain the scholar’s argument regarding this theme and how it relates to our understanding of Chicana and Latina history. Does she persuade you? How and why? Be sure to have a clear thesis and use examples from the text as evidence to support your claims. You may decide to use your findings in your final paper as well.
Re/Constructing Latina Historical Memory Project: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall writes that “only certain people, and usually the victors and people who have access to publicity, have power over historical memory.” Personal narratives, she tells us, capture voices that we would otherwise lose. You will write a 1,500-2,100 word paper (approximately 5-7 pages) that focuses on one or more Latinx personal narratives, provides a historical context for the narrative/s, and examines how the narrative/s expands our understanding of U.S. history. You must include a discussion of primary as well as secondary course materials. Your critical analysis paper may come in handy here for choosing a theme to focus on; but I also want you to explore at least one primary document that you find at the Wisconsin Historical Society or online and incorporate your findings into your paper. This way, you will get a sense of how historians conduct research for their scholarship and craft historical arguments.
History of Science 250: Madness in History of Medicine
Instructor: Suzanna Schulert
Dates: June 17, 2024 – August 11, 2024 (8 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: Have you ever wondered how doctors decide who’s sane and who isn’t? Or if Freud was full of it? Well, this course won’t give you answers but it will give you the opportunity to examine questions like these in historical context with the support of an asynchronous learning community. This course explores the history of how professional medicine has thought about madness, caring for the mentally ill, and mental wellness. We’ll center our journey around the history of American mental health care, and in so doing consider how global influences shaped the field. We’ll also think about the role of allied professions such as psychology and social work in the understanding and treatment of mental illness, and how psychiatry fits into broader themes in the history of medicine. This will be a fast-paced, online course that will ask you to do a fair bit of reading and writing, and to share your ideas with peers in an asynchronous format. We’ll develop skills analyzing primary and secondary sources, crafting historical questions, and work up to writing an essay that uses evidence to make a historical claim. You don’t need any experience with history or mental health to succeed in this course, though curiosity about both will make for a more enriching experience.
History 255: Introduction to East Asian Civilizations
Instructor: John Tobin
Dates: May 28, 2024 – June 23, 2024 (4 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: This course is an introduction to the political, intellectual, economic, and cultural transformations in East Asia from Ancient times to the present. As a summer online course, we will not meet in person, but the instructor will upload lectures either in the form of videos or power-point with voice-over. The content of the course is not different from the in-person version.
We will draw on resources from the disciplines of history, political science, anthropology and international relations to examine the changes taking place in this region, often referred to as East Asia. Throughout this course, we will examine why and to what extent it makes sense to think of East Asia as having a unity. During different times, the area has been seen to be unified based on different characteristics, such as Confucianism and Chinese writing system, tribute system, trading, Buddhism and numerous other factors. We will study each of these aspects and understand how in this region people themselves grasped their identity and also interrogate the benefits and drawbacks of thinking about East Asia as a geographical entity today.
History of Science 275: Science, Medicine, and Race: A History
Instructor: Suzanne Rubinstein
Dates: June 17, 2024 – August 11, 2024 (8 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: This online, asynchronous course explores the relationship between the development of science and medicine, and the construction of ideas about race. Beginning in the sixteenth century, this course will examine concepts such as slavery, colonialism, and public health until the early twenty-first century. Throughout the term, we will study the ways in which race and ethnicity shaped societies, cultures, and economies, while also paying attention to the development of ideas on gender and sexuality as they relate to race. Students will engage with primary and secondary historical sources, which will be provided by the instructor. Although this will be a reading-intensive course, it is open to students from all academic fields and learning styles.
History 310: The Holocaust
Instructor: Ludwig Decke
Dates: June 17, 2024 – August 11, 2024 (8 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: Why did the Holocaust happen? What were the experiences of its victims? And which lessons can we draw from it for the 21st century? Explore the history and legacy of the Nazi genocide in this eight-week summer course. By using a variety of sources, including testimonies, memoirs, paintings, and movies, we will try to understand the Holocaust within the broader histories of war, racism, and imperialism. At the same time, we will better comprehend the global proportions of the event and discuss which role the United States played in it. Based on cutting-edge research in the field of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the weekly thematic modules investigate topics such as the history of antisemitism, the Nazi state, gender and queerness, Jewish resistance, the legal prosecution of perpetrators, and contemporary memory culture(s). Each module consists of short instructional podcasts, a quiz, a primary source analysis, and a discussion board where you will share your thoughts and learn from your peers. At the end of this course, you will be better equipped to understand and participate in current debates on racism, democracy, mass violence, and human rights.
History 357: The Second World War
Instructor: Alex Scheepens
Dates: June 17, 2024 – August 11, 2024 (8 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: World War II was not only the most important global event of the twentieth century, but it also marked a crucial turning point in history. Never before had humankind experienced such a profound level of destruction, fueled by radical violence, industrial killing, and atomic weaponry. Between 1939 and 1945, the destruction caused by total war and genocide spread far beyond the well-known battlefields of Stalingrad and Normandy. It claimed the lives of non-combatants at their homes, on their streets, and in their fields, resulting in the death of tens of millions of men, women, and children. Brutal Nazi ideology drove the murder of six million European Jews and the persecution of millions of other so-called “racial outsiders” and “political enemies” of the Third Reich. People who were fortunate enough to survive either found themselves stateless or homeless, or both, and endured the lasting impacts of war and genocide in every corner of their personal lives for decades. This course offers a window into the battlefield, the home front, and the histories and memories of Europeans and Americans to this day. It will focus on important leaders like Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, while also emphasizing the myriad experiences of individuals, soldiers, civilians, and victims of wartime violence. Through lectures, secondary readings, and engagement with primary source documents, you will emerge from this course with a better understanding of the political, social, and ideological aspects of the Second World War.
History 403: Immigration and Assimilation in American History
Instructor: Thomas Archdeacon
Dates: May 28, 2024 – June 23, 2024 (4 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: History 403 examines population formation in North America, especially in the territory now known as the United States, from the Age of European Exploration and Encounter until the present. Topics include immigration, immigration policy, the reception the immigrants encountered and their adaptation the society they entered, the extent to which ethnic identities persist over time, and relationships among ethnic, religious, and racial groups. History 403 carries ethnic studies credit.
Class Format: All classes are online and asynchronous. That means you may view, hear, and read the material at any time during the course. Each day typically has three lectures, but a few days have two or four. You may “attend” the lectures for a day in one session or at separate times if that is more convenient. The scripts for all lectures as well as the slides will be available online in text as well as video format. All assigned readings will be available online. There are no materials to buy or borrow.
History 403 includes a mid-term exam and an end-term. They will respectively be available from the Friday evening of the second and fourth week through the morning of the following Monday. Students may take the exams at any time during those periods.
Each test has three components: an objective section, a question on the readings, and a set of questions on the lectures. All possible questions for all sections of both exams will be available to students from the beginning of the course. Students may take the individual components of the tests one after the other or at separate times over those weekends. They may take the components of each exam in any order they prefer.
History 426: The History of Punishment
Instructor: Karl Shoemaker
Dates: May 28, 2024 – June 23, 2024 (4 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: Among the most evocative aspects of human history is the way we have fined, shamed, exiled, imprisoned, pained, maimed, dismembered or killed those deemed to be in violation of the laws of gods and humans. This course examines punishment across a vast range of historical traditions, examining how wrongdoing and punishment have been figured in law, literature, art and philosophy.
For legal studies students, this course will help to historicize and contextualize legal procedures and their development. For students of history, this course will build your knowledge of why it matters to appreciate how law works in history: meanings that can be derived from close readings of legal texts, uses of and methods for legal sources, and ways of thinking about law and legal traditions and their role in making history.
By the end of this course, students will have gained a foundational knowledge of medieval English society and the effects of major historical events on the English legal tradition. In this class, we will be reading and analyzing primary documents and secondary texts to improve analytical skills. Most of all, however, we will be working to expand students’ capacity for critical thinking, encourage students to question what they read, and teach them the skills to begin to discover their own answers.
History 460: American Environmental History
Instructor: Zada Ballew
Dates: July 1, 2024 – August 11, 2024 (6 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | More info
Description: This course surveys American Environmental History from colonization to the present. It considers how humans, and more than human actors (i.e., plants, animals, insects, viruses, etc.), have shaped, and have been shaped by, their environment(s). Because we only have 6 weeks to learn American Environmental History (a history that spans millennia) together asynchronously, we will analyze this topic through a series of short stories. Each week, students will be introduced to new primary and secondary sources from scholars, activists, policymakers, dreamers, and more, whose arguments and narratives are grounded in evidence-based reasoning and deduction. Then, at the end of the course, students will have the opportunity tell each other and their instructor one singular story about American Environmental History. In other words, the final project asks students: If you only had 5-10 minutes to tell someone a story about American Environmental History, which story would you tell them and why? How would you tell a story to convince others to care about something they otherwise wouldn’t? More details for the final project will be made available on the first day of the course, but students in this class are invited to think critically, creatively, collaboratively, and independently about how they want to tell their story of American Environmental History. In other words, this course will help students learn to read, write, and think like an American Environmental historian in 6 weeks or less.