Undergraduate Courses

Instructor: Francis Russo

Description: Nothing is inevitable, not even the United States. In this spirit we will explore North American history from c. 1500 to the 1860s, with the continent’s many peoples and cultures in view. The course begins in the deep pasts of the early modern European, African, and Indigenous North American continents, slowly brought together into an “Atlantic World” in the sixteenth century. The course continues through the American Revolution, when thirteen British colonies united in a revolt against Britain and created a new U.S. state that struggled to emerge out of Old Worlds that came before. We then explore some of the most consequential developments in the nation’s early history, including revolutionary transformations in systems of slavery, democracy, and capitalism. Finally, we examine the causes and consequences of the “Second Founding” of the United States, the Civil War. The unpredictable emergence and development of the United States as a nation is a focus in this course, but always in the context of wider developments: global struggles among European empires; conflicts between indigenous peoples and settler-colonists; exploitation of enslaved African labor; evolution of distinctive colonial societies; independence movements inspired by a transatlantic revolutionary age; expansion, urbanization, and early industrialization; sectional conflict and warfare. Throughout, we will pay attention to the dramatic stories of individuals as well as the structural forces and historical circumstances that collectively shaped the lives and fates of peoples and societies. History is a story, and no story can contain everything. While this is a survey course designed to cover many topics, themes, and questions, we will focus in on one important area by the course’s end: what is the meaning of freedom? Freedom was—and is—in no way self-evident or inevitable. This is especially true when claimed alongside the existence of systems of slavery and varieties of social, political, and economic inequality. By focusing on the meanings of freedom—both a historical and a philosophical question—this course will help you to think more critically about the challenges facing the contemporary United States and your own place in its unfolding history.

Instructor: Khaled Esseissah

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description at this time.

Instructor: Emma Kuby

Description: This course surveys a vast subject: the transformation of Europe, from the aftermaths of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars to today’s European Union. We will explore Europe’s evolution across the dramatic nineteenth and twentieth centuries along a range of axes: political and economic as well as social, cultural, and intellectual. Major themes include the expansion of capitalism; centralization of nation-states; rise of mass politics; recasting of gender and the family; proliferation of industrial warfare; and emergence of ideologies such as liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, socialism, communism, and fascism. We will also explore how Europe was intertwined with the wider world through colonialism and decolonization. 

This course is designed as an introduction to college-level history. No prior background is expected. Lectures and assignments are structured to introduce you to the skills of historical analysis: reading critically; interpreting primary sources; evaluating competing arguments; and presenting your own ideas in lucid and compelling prose. Writing assignments build in complexity over the course of the semester. Lectures and sections will devote time to practicing the skills you will need to succeed in these assignments. The purpose of the course is as much to introduce you to central themes of modern European history as to help you become a better reader, writer, listener, communicator, and thinker. 

Instructor: James Sweet

Description: There is no course description at this time.

Instructor: Simon Balto 

Description: Explores the generations-long effort by African Americans and allied forces to achieve full citizenship in the U.S. and equitable footholds in American society. Forged in a history of enslavement and in many ways ongoing, this freedom struggle encompasses the history of abolitionism to the struggle for civil rights to the fight for Black Power to the effort to make Black Lives Matter. Introduces the history of African American people in the U.S. from the end of the era of slavery to the present day; explores how that history has been shaped directly by the actions and activism of Black people and their allies; considers how that history intersects with, shapes, and is shaped by other historical moments and movements; provides opportunities to think more actively about issues of belonging, citizenship, difference, and interpersonal and structural power; develops skills in historical analysis and argumentation. 

Instructor: Cindy I-Fen Cheng

Description: Examines the social, cultural, and political citizenship of Asians in the U.S. with particular emphasis on diaspora, transnationality, and place. 

Instructor: April Haynes

Description: Who is a worker? Who decides the value of work? Why have some Americans been forced to labor, while others were deemed free to follow their work ethic? Why have employers and lawmakers sometimes invited workers to migrate to the US and at other times excluded them? How has economic polarization contributed to political polarization? What is working-class culture, and what does it have to do with the history of culture wars? This survey explores the lives and impact of diverse working peoples from the seventeenth century to the present. Lectures and readings center on interactions between three key historical processes: class formation, racialization, and movement-building.

Instructor: Khaled Esseissah 

Description: This is a new course, there is no description at this time. 

Instructor: Charles Kim 

Description: This is a new course, there is no description at this time. 

Instructor: Daniel Stolz 

Description: This is a new course, there is no description at this time. 

Instructor: Louise Young 

Description: World War Two represents a transformational event for the twentieth century world. The dramatic stories of the war and its aftermath include the momentary triumph of fascism as a global movement and its military defeat; the redrawing of geopolitical maps as hot wars resolved themselves into cold wars; the rise and fall of empires; decolonization and the emergence of a “third world of new nations. In what ways did World War Two and its aftermath reshape Asia? This course explores this question by looking at the case of Japan. How do the stories of Japan’s defeat, the US occupation, and the creation of the regional cold war order complicate our understanding of the twentieth century world? History 201 is a course in the “historian’s craft, which means we learn basic skills in the practice of history through our study of post-imperial Japan. I have divided the course into four thematic sections, each exploring the World War Two transformation and its impact on postwar Japan. Part One opens with the experience of total war and total defeat. Part 2 focuses on the atomic bombing of Japan and compares “a-bomb cultures in the US and Japan. Part 3 looks at the transition of the US-Japan relationship from war to peace and the impact of Japan’s integration into the American cold war imperium. Part 4 examines the question of war crimes, war crimes trials, and the long afterlife of World War Two in public memory in Asia. 

Instructor: Simon Balto 

Description: The Civil Rights Movement in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s fundamentally changed not only this country, but the entire world. In organizing and mobilizing for the eradication of legalized segregation and race-based political subordination, Black activists and their allies reconfigured the meaning and boundaries of full legal citizenship in the U.S., and inspired a wave of other social movements both domestically and abroad. While most activists recognized even in the moment that the victories won were partial, not total, the struggles they waged and the accomplishments they made nonetheless constituted a transformative moment in American history. At the center of all of this were young people — teenagers and, in particular, people of college age. While popular memory centers people of an older generation at the heart of the movement’s story, it was young people who were often the front-line agents of social change during this time period. College students in Greensboro, North Carolina organized anti-segregation sit-ins at a local Woolworths store in 1960, and those sit-ins would subsequently spread to other cities and towns across the segregated South, reigniting the movement as it sought new campaigns that might help recapture lost momentum. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), mostly comprised of college students and people of similar age (even if they didn’t go to college), was arguably the most important organizing group of the early 1960s, working to challenge segregation while also doing community organizing, voter registration, and voter education programs in the belly of the lethally dangerous Deep South. Still other people of a young age took part in the famous Freedom Rides, and sustained those rides when unspeakable racist violence threatened to derail them. And a network of college students descended upon Mississippi in 1964 in an effort to help show the world the racist brutality of white Mississippi in resisting racial progress, and the dogged interest of Black Mississippians in pursuing their civil and political rights. This course explores student activism within and on behalf of the Civil Rights Movement during the first half of the 1960s, with a central interest in the activation of SNCC and the planning for and launch of Freedom Summer. As an introduction to “the historian’s craft, we will work on skills assorted with said craft: conducting primary research, reading and evaluating scholarly writings about the subject matter, making and honing arguments, and doing historical writing. We have the unique privilege of holding classes across the mall from the Wisconsin Historical Society, which has some of the largest archival holdings in the world on this particular subject. Students should expect to not just be engaged in work within the confines of the classroom, but also in the archives across the way. 

Instructor: Joseph Dennis 

Description: Shanghai has long been a global city. After the first Opium War concluded in 1842, Shanghai became a focal point of encounters between China and the outside world. International settlements and the Chinese city grew rapidly and Shanghai became famous for its cosmopolitan culture. This course will explore daily life and crime as windows on the history of Chinese cities. After several introductory readings and lectures, we will use English-language archival materials on Shanghai held in the library and in online databases, to learn how to ask historical questions, find and evaluate sources, and develop and present historical arguments. There will be write-ups of research assignments, and two oral presentations. There are quizzes on readings, but no examinations 

Instructor: Francine Hirsch 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Charles Kim 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time.

Instructor: Geoffrey Durham 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time.

Instructor: John Hall 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Mallory Hope 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Oliver Lazarus 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Daniel Stolz 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Louise Young 

Description: World War Two represents a transformational event for the twentieth century world. The dramatic stories of the war and its aftermath include the momentary triumph of fascism as a global movement and its military defeat; the redrawing of geopolitical maps as hot wars resolved themselves into cold wars; the rise and fall of empires; decolonization and the emergence of a “third world of new nations. In what ways did World War Two and its aftermath reshape Asia? This course explores this question by looking at the case of Japan. How do the stories of Japan’s defeat, the US occupation, and the creation of regional cold war order complicate our understanding of the twentieth century world? 

History 201 is a course in the “historian’s craft, which means we learn basic skills in the practice of history through our study of post-imperial Japan. After a short introductory section, I have divided the course into three thematic sections, each exploring one aspect of the World War Two transformation and its impact on postwar Japan. Part 2 focuses on the atomic bombing of Japan and its impact on “a-bomb cultures in the US and Japan. Part 3 looks at the transition of the US-Japan relationship from war to peace and the impact of Japan’s integration into the American cold war imperium. Part 4 examines the question of war crimes, war crimes trials, and the long afterlife of World War Two in public memory in Asia. 

Instructor: Paul Grant 

Description: I heartily invite you to bring you full self, and all of your questions and stories, to the table. 

Learn about mass migration at its broadest level, and dig into a focused research project on your own. The first half of this semester will consist of common readings on migration throughout the millennia from hunters and gatherers down to climate refugees of today. In the second half of the course, you will embark on a guided individual research paper on a topic of your own interest anything from ancient Persia to contemporary Africa. 

The topic can be nearly anything involving migration, but you will need to do a good deal of library sleuthing — and I want to help you get there! 

Instructor: Ofer Ashkenazi 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Ofer Ashkenazi 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Yang Li 

Description: Major trends and developments in the sciences from the 17th century to the early 20th century. Emphasis on those with broad cultural and social implications.  

Instructor: Dana Landress 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Suzanna Schulert 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Suzanna Schulert 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Instructor TBA

Description: This course is a survey of different conceptions of how the body as a site of sickness and health has been understood from Antiquity to contemporary medicine. It includes consideration of the origins and evolution of public health, the changing social role of healers, and the emergence of the modern “standardized” body in health and illness. We aim to give you an overview of the development of the modern medical system while encouraging you to think about medicine in a historical context. Given this framing, some forms of healing that fall outside professional Western medicine are left out or underrepresented in our course content. This is a reflection of the particular story 212 is telling and not an indication of what ways of thinking about health are valid, true, and relevant to the history of medicine. Beginning with the ancient Mediterranean world, we will examine how technologies, diagnoses, and ways of thinking about the body have changed over time through four broad trends in healing: humoralism, pathological anatomy, infection, and risk. We will address questions such as who has done healing over time? How have patients chosen healers? What constitutes health and disease? What are the causes and treatments of disease? Examining these questions requires us to engage with humanities methods. In this course we will be reading and analyzing secondary historical sources in light of materials presented in lecture, as well as crafting our own historical arguments using primary and secondary sources. We will be thinking about how to use historical evidence and structure arguments to make compelling claims about medicine in historical context. In so doing we will see that while medicine has undoubtedly helped relieve suffering and extend lives, the evolution of medical systems is not a story of linear progress or a benign accrual of facts. Rather medical systems are embedded in the socio-cultural context of their given historical moment.

Instructor: Richard Keller 

Description: Provides an introduction to the intersections of health and environment on a global scale. Exposes students to a range of problems in global environmental health, including climate change, disease ecology, and the globalization of disease. 

Instructor: Tony Michels 

Description: Explores the interplay between Jews and U. S. popular culture, covering such subjects as early 20th century vaudeville, the “golden age” of Hollywood, rhythm and blues music, television, and stand-up comedy. 

Instructor: Ashley Brown 

Description: This course explores the struggles and political symbolism of African American athletes in times of social upheaval and examines African Americans’ access to and participation in sports, recreation, and leisure activities from the 1890s through the present. We will interrogate how Black sports figures have used their skills, barrier-breaking presences, and celebrity to engage in campaigns for racial uplift, defy class conventions, promote the expansion of citizenship and civil rights, and challenge expectations of normative gender performance and sexuality within and beyond the playing arena. We will study the experiences and perspectives of those who have resisted political engagement, too. We will see how activists, journalists, and government officials have coopted the images and abilities of Black sportswomen and sportsmen to facilitate their own gains. Overall, we will trace how African American athletes have carried the aspirations and anxieties of the nation on their shoulders. 

This course is ideal for students who are genuinely interested in U.S. history with its many complexities and ironies. This course is not about sports as a source of diversion and fanciful entertainment. We are, to borrow from and amend the title of a recent book, learning African American history through sports. Sports and recreation are fun. They are also serious business. We will take this three-pronged approach to our lecture course and our discussion sections. 

Instructor: Matt Villeneuve 

Description: There is no course description at this time. 

Instructor: Patrick Eickman 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Mallory Hope 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time.

Instructor: Instructor TBA 

Description: There is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Paul Grant 

Description: YOU ARE INVITED! This course is about how Christianity became a religion of the Global South (by midcentury half of all Christians will live in Africa), including an overview of how a cross-cultural process has also fundamentally remade the religion. Global Christianity is a geopolitical reality, but much more — it is also a colorful mosaic of cultural creativity, a foundation for encountering the world, and more. It is both good and bad: some have used it to justify violence, while others have used it for resistance. WHO YOU WILL MEET First of all, you will meet one another. In our polarized society, when life-and-death conflicts seem to break out over small differences, we rarely get the chance to meet one another across our many divides. It is my (Dr. Grant’s) hope that in this course, you will have ample opportunity to meet students of many different backgrounds. Students are encouraged to bring their full selves to the course — so that we can hear from one another, but also so that we can learn together. Your guide this semester, Dr. Paul Grant, is a specialist in West African Christianity, but who has lived in several countries; his most recent book is Healing and Power in Ghana: Early Indigenous Expressions of Christianity (Baylor University Press, 2020). WHAT YOU’LL LEARN–How to think cross-culturally, by observing how people have done so in the past (sometimes successfully, sometimes not).–How to identify unspoken assumptions inside art (especially fiction and song)–How to plan complex research projects at a top-tier research university.–How to organize your thoughts for different constituents — including summarizing your findings, answering questions from non-specialists, revising your thoughts to incorporate new feedback. WHAT YOU’LL READ Successful cross-cultural education requires a lot of listening to people who see things in different ways. Thus: be prepared to listen to a great diversity of voices — that is, to read. We will have a set of common readings, but you will also choose most of your readings on your own, as you develop your own research project. (See below!)WHAT YOU’LL PRODUCE No matter how strong or weak of a writer you are, you will get better in this course.–You will write several short (1-2 page) essays on various topics as we move through the centuries, and you will regularly present your findings to the class. –You will inventory resources at UW–Madison for deeper research in that topic — hopefully setting you up for ongoing papers in future (upper level) classes in your chosen major. Everyone taking this course will become a stronger writer! 

Instructor: Patrick Iber 

Description: How do you gain a democracy? Or lose one? Or get one back? The history of modern Latin America provides plenty of evidence, and this semester we’re going to focus on that set of questions. We’ll be covering what we can from Latin America from 1810-present, while really using class time to zoom in on key questions about democracy, its meanings, its challenges, in the past and today. 

Instructor: Viren Murthy 

Description: Multidisciplinary and historical perspectives on the East Asian civilizations of China, Japan, Korea, Tibet and Mongolia from prehistory to the present, including developments in philosophy, economy, governance, social structure, kinship, geography, etc. 

Instructor: Instructor TBA 

Description: This course will give a broad overview of Latin American history from the pre-colonial era to the present day. Particular emphasis will be placed on the socioeconomic, cultural, and political structures and processes that shaped and continue to influence life in Latin America. Key issues such as colonialism, nationalism, democracy, and revolution will be examined critically in light of broad comparative themes in Latin American and world history. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach: using materials from multiple disciplines as well as primary documents, fiction, and film in order to provide insight into the complex and diverse history of the region. Among the topics to be explored in detail will be the Spanish invasion of the Americas, labor and slavery, the Mexican and Cuban revolutions, and the transition from dictatorship to democracy. We will examine present-day issues in Latin America, including violence and inequality, and how they fit into a changing global environment. 

Instructor: Charlotte Whatley 

Description: Surveys the development of American law from the Civil War to the early Twenty-First Century. After a review of the U.S. Constitution and its modification by the Civil War amendments, examine the legal dimensions of such topics as race relations and the Civil Rights movement, the growth of modern business, the New Deal, labor rights, the women’s movement, the individual rights revolution of the postwar period, and the contemporary conservative reaction. Emphasis on how law interacts with political, social, and cultural change. 

Instructor: Instructor TBA 

Description: 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. 

Instructor: Geoffrey Durham 

Description: Central Asia has been a borderland region amidst the world’s largest empires led by some of history’s most infamous figures, including Chinggis Khan in the thirteenth century and Stalin in the twentieth. The immense size of these polities and the staggering ethno-linguistic, racial, religious, political, and ecological diversity that they encompassed provokes a number of questions: What held them together? How did their power structures integrate territories, resources, and peoples into imperial systems? And, lastly, how can we understand the place of Central Asia within global processes? In this course, we will examine the consolidation of the Mongol, Tsarist, and Soviet empires and their relations with imperial China and the many khanates and regional powers between them. We will focus on themes of enclosure, settler colonialism, enslavement, science, revolution, capitalism, socialism, development, and geopolitics. This course will cover the thirteenth century through the twentieth, although much of the emphasis will be on the later period, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. 

Instructor: Gloria Whiting

Description: https://history.wisc.edu/courses/undergraduate-courses/history-300-301/

Instructor: Judd Kinzley 

Description: The disintegration of traditional Chinese society under the impact of Western imperialism, the rise of modern Chinese nationalism, and the emergence of modern revolutionary movements and ideologies. 

Instructor: Francis Russo 

Description: Structure of American society, Britain and the Colonies; the revolutionary movement for independence; the war for independence; social, political, and constitutional change.  

Instructor: John Hall 

Description: The founding and growth of the military establishment, the exercise of the military art, and military policies treated in connection with relevant political, social, and economic factors.  

Instructor: Daniel Ussishkin 

Description: The experience and legacy of the First World War has been linked to nearly every social, cultural, and political transformation that marked the short century that followed: mobilization and the experience of total war transformed the relations between governments and citizens, between men and women, and between social classes. Europeans experienced death on an unprecedented scale and came to terms with new forms of industrialized warfare, from the use of poison gas to modern practices of genocide. Europeans now learned to live with violence, both during as well as after the war, and found new ways to mourn or remember the dead. Using a wide variety of contemporary sources — memoirs, essays, poems, or cinematic representations — situates the upheaval of 1914-1918 within the larger framework of twentieth-century European history. 

Instructor: Kathryn Ciancia 

Description: Background and history of World War II. Problems of peacemaking and international organizations; rise of Fascism, National Socialism, and Japanese imperialism; breaking the peace; World War II. 

Instructor: Claire Taylor 

Description: This course explores some key issues in the ideology and practice of Athenian democracy. It will examine democratic values, institutions, rhetoric, and sociology in order to provide students with the basic tools to understand democracy in its ancient context. It will engage with a variety of source material (literary, archaeological, epigraphic) in order to develop multiple skills of interpretation. 

Some questions we will examine here: What are the key features of Athenian democracy, how did it change over time, and how did it differ from modern democracy? How did the Athenians justify and critique this political system? How did they reconcile citizen egalitarianism with social inequalities of wealth, gender, and status? To what extent were women, foreigners, slaves, or the poor included or excluded from politics? Was Athenian democracy a robust political system or a system in crisis? 

Instructor: Giuliana Chamedes 

Description: Investigates how everyday people shaped European history and politics, from World War I through today. Takes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to analyze a range of major social movements in Europe, thinking in detail about what constitutes a social movement in the first place, and what determines its effectiveness. Key topics include the rise and fall of Fascism; the fate of the Communist and Socialist Left in Europe; the role of youth movements as drivers of change; and the constraints imposed on political organizing by both democratic and authoritarian societies. Drawing on a range of texts, songs, and films, investigates how people power has shaped the European state, and vice-versa, from 1922 through today. 

Instructor: Alfred McCoy 

Description: The Cold War was the first event to impact virtually all of humanity and left a lasting legacy that still shapes the current world order. Exploration of its conduct on five continents entails both a diversity of sources (film, fiction, documents, and memoir) and a range of topics (geopolitics, ideology, internationalism, empire, revolution, counterinsurgency, and covert operations). Its half-century history was marked by nuclear-armed stalemate and ideological competition in Europe, cultural politics of repression and generational revolt in America, interplay of anti-colonial nationalism and counterinsurgency in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and a succession of major wars worldwide in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, and Afghanistan. By adopting an international perspective that carries us beyond the narrow ambit of the Moscow-Washington rivalry, integrate diverse global forces and particular national histories for a fuller understanding of an ever-changing world system. 

Instructor: Matt Villeneuve 

Description: Introduction to the history of American Indian education. Evaluate the relationship between education and sovereignty through a survey of schools including missions, boarding schools, survival schools, tribal colleges, language nests, charter schools, and more. 

Instructor: Kacie Butcher Lucchini 

Description: Introduction to the practice of public history. Public historians ground their work in rigorous, academic research with the goal of presenting history in a collaborative and publicly focused manner. These projects come in many forms including exhibits, walking tours, podcasts, documentaries, web projects, and place-based interpretation, to name a few. Learn how academic history gets presented to the public, not only by reading about public history, but by doing it. 

Instructor: Karl Shoemaker 

Description: Examines punishment across a vast range of historical traditions, examining how wrongdoing and punishment have been figured in law, literature, art and philosophy. Examines ancient, medieval and modern traditions. 

Instructor: Ashley Brown

Description: There is no course description at this time.

Instructor: Finn Enke 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Tony Michels 

Description: There is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Viren Murthy 

Description: This course will operate at two levels. We will begin by familiarizing ourselves with certain basic concepts of Marxism beginning with Marx’s early works and then proceeding to study his magnum opus, namely Capital, Volume one. Through such reading, we will analyze categories, such as commodity fetishism, surplus-value, alienation and the changing composition of capital. The second part of the course will examine attempts to use such concepts to understand elements of Asian history [China, Japan and India this is subject to change and we might also look at other non-Western regions]. We will read texts that attempt to bring the abstract categories of Marxist theory into dialectical relation with Asian realities. Marxism has always been about changing the world and consequently, the analysis that we cover in this course are not merely of theoretical interest. The issues covered in the second part of the course concerns questions such as how to understand Chinese, Japanese and Indian patterns of development in relation to the global capitalist world. We will specifically note how different Marxists have tried to make sense of Asian nations using various interpretations of Marxist categories. Through all of these reading, the course poses a larger question about the relevance of Marxism for our present. 

Instructor: Leonora Neville 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen 

Description: This reading seminar will introduce students to a range of important studies of US-American history. Some classics, some cutting-edge, these books (and articles) collectively will cover the broad sweep of American history, from pre-contact until the present day. Readings will be selected for their narrative flair, imaginative framing, novel source selection, and methodological and theoretical rigor. However, what constitutes a “great read” is open for debate. And so this HIST 500 will focus discussion on students’ own evolving assessments of why we should read history, and the variety of forms that historical writing can and should take. This is an ideal course for students who enjoy reading history (or narrative nonfiction), and for students who don’t (yet!) but yearn to cultivate an intensive reading practice to better understand the United States, and indeed, themselves.

Instructor: Sasha Suarez 

Description: This is a new course, and there is no course description available at this time. 

Instructor: Claire Taylor 

Description: The ancient Greek city-state of Sparta is well known for its austere (“laconic”) lifestyle devoted to military training. Its citizen-warriors were famous across the Greek world (and beyond) for their bravery, devotion to war, and military success. In this seminar we will investigate this image: How did this picture of Sparta emerge and is there any truth behind it? What kind of society was Sparta and how did the views of other Greeks shape what we know about this place? To answer these questions we will examine the structures which shaped Spartan society: their unusual political system, their relationship with dependent populations (helots and perioikoi) and the problems this caused and Sparta’s place in the archaic and classical Greek world (7th-4th centuries BCE). Throughout, using a combination of literary and archaeological sources, we will explore how the “Spartan mirage” (the mythologizing representation of the Spartans) has shaped the creation of Spartan history in both the ancient and modern periods. 

All sections of History 600 require permission of the instructor for enrollment.  Please see the History 600 Seminars page for more information and course descriptions.

Instructor: Gloria Whiting 

Description: Hands-on instruction and experience in historical publishing. 

Instructor: Giuliana Chamedes 

Description: Colloquium for thesis writers & honors thesis writers.  

History/Educational Policy Studies 107: The History of the University in the West 

Instructor: Batuhan Aydagul 

Please contact the Department of Educational Policy Studies with questions about this course.  

History/Educational Policy Studies 143: History of Race and Inequality in Urban America 

Instructor:  Maxwell Greenberg 

Please contact the Department of Educational Policy Studies with questions about this course. 

History/Geography/Political Science/Slavic 253: Russia: An Interdisciplinary Survey 

Instructor: Irina Shevelenko 

Please contact the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+ with questions about this course. 

History/African/Afro-American/Anthropology/Geography/ Political Science/ Sociology 277: Africa, An Introductory Survey 

Instructor: Marissa Moorman 

Please contact the African Studies Program with questions about this course. 

History/Legal Studies 262: American Legal History, 1860 to the Present 

Instructor: Richard Keyser 

Please contact the Center for Law, Society & Justice with questions about this course. 

History/Art Hist/DS/Land Arc/Anthro 264: Dimensions of Material Culture 

Instructor: Sarah Carter 

Please contact the Department of Design Studies with questions about this course. 

History/African Studies/Afro-American Studies/Political Science 279: African and African-American Linkages: An Introduction 

Instructor: Reginold Royston 

Please contact the Department of African Cultural Studies with questions about this course. 

History/Afro-American Studies 321: Afro-American History since 1900 

Instructor: Sabrina Thomas 

Please contact the Department of African American Studies with questions about this course. 

History/Educational Policy Studies 412: History of American Education 

Instructor: William Reese 

Please contact the Department of Educational Policy Studies with questions about this course. 

History/Chicla/Political Science 422: Latino History and Politics 

Instructor: Ana Oaxaca Carrasco 

Please contact the Department of Political Science with questions about this course. 

History/Scandinavian Studies 432: History of Scandinavia Since 1815 

Instructor: Liina-ly Roos 

Please contact the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+ with questions about this course. 

History/Legal Studies 477: History of Forensic Science  

Instructor: Mitra Sharafi 

Please contact the Center for Law, Society & Justice with questions about this course. 

History/Legal Studies 510: Legal Pluralism 

Instructor: Mitra Sharafi 

Please contact the Center for Law, Society & Justice with questions about this course. 

History/Curriculum/ Educational Policy/ Jewish Studies 515: Holocaust: History, Memory, and Education 

Instructor: Simone Schweber 

Please contact the Department of Educational Policy Studies with questions about this course. 

History/LIS/Journ/Art Hist 650: History of Books and Print Culture in Europe and North America 

Instructor: Jonathan Senchyne 

Please contact the Information School with questions about this course.