Undergraduate Courses

Instructor: Francis Russo

MWF 12:05-12:55PM

Description: American political, economic, and social development from the founding of the colonies to the Civil War.

Instructor: Simon Balto

TR: 11:00AM-12:15PM

Description: This is an introductory course focused on the history of the United States since 1865. It likely will not be similar to a history class like the ones you took in high school. (It at least is not similar to the ones I had when I was in high school!) In our time together, we’ll be exploring and analyzing the history of this country’s past 150+ years, focusing especially on the significant social, political, cultural, and economic shifts that changed it, rechanged it repeatedly, and made it into the one we inhabit now. This history is multidimensional, multiracial, multiethnic, multigender, and since the United States has never existed in a vacuum, and because it has shaped and been shaped by the rest of the world, transnational. Among the core animating questions we’ll be grappling with is this: What does it mean to be an American? All of us may come into the semester with different thoughts as to how to answer that question; some of us may come into the semester having not really thought about it at all. This course will, hopefully, cause each of us to consider that question more deeply, particularly since we sit at a moment in history in which answers to that question seem evermore contentious. With that in mind, we will be especially attentive this semester to what it’s meant for people of different backgrounds—including immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, women, queer people, servicemembers, industrial workers and farmers—to grapple with that question.

Instructor: Viren Murthy

TR 4:00-5:15PM

Description: If one asks ten people what “Japan” means to them, one might get ten different answers. Manga, anime, Japanese film, samurai, Zen Buddhism, tea ceremony among other phenomena are all associated with Japan. Can we find something unifying these seemingly diverse practices? In this course, we will discuss the meaning of some of these practices in historical context and how Japanese people combined them in various ways. For example, take aristocratic cultural practices such as, samurai, tea-ceremony and Zen Buddhism. The samurai are usually associated with combat, while the tea ceremony and Zen Buddhism are usually linked to imperial and aristocratic culture. However, we will note how imperial culture, aristocratic practices, and Zen Buddhism in particular, were essential to the identity of the samurai. In this way, Japanese culture brings seemingly separate and contradictory practices together in a unique constellation, which continues to inform many facets of life in Japan. The more specific themes we will study include: whether we can talk about a unique Japanese culture, the influence of China on Japan and how Japan’s relation to China and East Asia changes throughout history, the emergence of a samurai/shogunal system in Japan, Zen Buddhism, Japanese Confucianism and national learning in the Edo period (1604-1868), Japanese imperialism and its legacies for the present, and the cultural, intellectual and artistic changes that took place in various periods of Japanese history. Among the larger questions we will ask include: How do we periodize Japanese history? How should we understand “modern” Japan in relation to its premodern past? The implications of these questions go well beyond Japan.

Instructor: TBD

MWF 8:50-9:40PM

Description: An examination of the evolution of the human community in the Mediterranean Basin, from the beginning of the earliest civilizations in the Near East (3,000 B.C.E.) until the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West (500 C.E.).

Instructor: Elizabeth Lapina

MW 8:00-9:15AM

Description: We will begin this class with a discussion of the rise of Christianity and the role of Christianity in forging the new medieval civilization. We will continue with the relations between Romans and barbarians and with the fall (or “fall”?) of Rome. We will then move on to major heirs of the Roman Empire, both in Western Europe and in the Middle East. After dealing with the Vikings – and, hopefully, dispelling a myth or two about them – we will move on to a major episode in the history of relations between Church and State, the Investiture Controversy. In the last few weeks of class, we will discuss what is known as the age of castles and cathedrals. 2 Some of the features of this period were the founding of first universities, the appearance of the new chivalric culture, the expansion of Latin Europe into the Middle East during the crusades, and the rise – and brutal suppression – of heresy.

Instructor: Emma Kuby

TR 9:30-10:45AM

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: Mou Banerjee

MW 2:30-3:45PM

Description: This course is a historical introduction to the European empires of the modern age – those created by the English, the Dutch and the French in South and South-East Asia between 1600 and 1950. The rationale for the creation of these empires, which have influenced global historical events for the last three hundred years, was the need for commerce and desire for luxury goods available in Asia. We will explore how a variety of commodities, from spices to narcotics, spurred the creation of vast colonies in Asia by European trading companies, often through the use of brutal and coercive violence. We will talk about Cotton, Opium, Tea, Indigo, Sugar and Nutmeg, and how these objects have left their mark on the world as we know it today.

We shall examine the encounters between the western colonizing powers, and Asian cultures, mediated through imperial politics. And we will discover how these interactions influenced the realities of colonial politics in the global South, and defined ecological and economic relations in the modern global age.

Instructor: TBD

MW 4:00-5:15PM

Description: As much as we may try to convince ourselves that sport offers an escape from the “real world,” constant news of players’ strikes, stadium financing controversies, and the lack of diversity in league management remind us that we cannot separate the games we play and watch from the political, social, and cultural contexts in which they are embedded. Explore how sport has shaped and been shaped by major trends in American social, political, and economic history. The focus is not on player stats or the morning edition of SportsCenter, rather with serious historical arguments and debates about sport’s relationship to American capitalism, social movements, and urban development. Readings also provide a diverse set of perspectives on the politics of race, gender, and class in American sport in the twentieth century.

Instructor: John Hall

MW 9:55-10:45AM

Description: Is there such a thing as a genuinely anti-war movie? The acclaimed, late French filmmaker Francois Truffaut thought not, as even the most brutal and honest depictions of war in film cannot help but valorize sacrifice and arouse something primordial in certain members of the audience. Nevertheless, some of the greatest films of all time are regarded as “anti-war classics and not a few might be labeled “pro-war. This course will critically examine a dozen (good) movies from across this spectrum and from around the world, testing the “Truffant Rule and evaluating the movies as both fictionalized secondary sources (conveying knowledge and influencing memory) and as primary sources that shed light on the moment and place in which they were created.

Instructor: Daniel Stolz

MWF 11:00-11:50AM

Description: Traces the formation of the states and societies that compose the contemporary Middle East. How have global phenomena, including two world wars, the Cold War, women’s movements, and modern science, technology, and fossil fuels, affected the politics, culture, and daily lives of Middle Eastern people? What is Islamism, and how should we explain its influence? Why has the United States had such a troubled relationship with this part of the world? Balances a generally thematic approach with several weeks of country-specific studies, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Instructor: Giuliana Chamedes, Monica Kim

MW 2:30-3:45PM

Description: This course engages the question: How can we tell the history of NOW? Looking around the world, we see war, environmental degradation, and wealth inequality. But we also see efforts to build a more just global order. How did we get here? And what might the future hold in store? By the end of the course, you will have a better understanding of how the past 200 years have paved the way for our present day. We focus on the global revolutions of the 19th century, and how imperialism and decolonization shaped our current political and economic order. How can we use history to get behind the headlines when it comes to everything from the United Nations COP Climate Summit to the role of debt in the global economy, from genocidal violence to the history of student activism on college campuses? Join us to find out. An essential complement to studies for history, IS, Political Science, and Legal Studies majors, this is a new kind of world history class: the one you wish you had taken in high school. History isn’t history: it’s now.

Instructor: Allison Powers Useche

TR 4:00-5:15PM

Description: This course provides an introduction to histories of places that have been called the American West, focusing on the period before 1850. Textbooks often treat the early West as a mere hinterland of European empires. But we cannot begin to understand North America’s past or present without attention to histories of the diverse Native nations whose homelands span the continent; Spanish, French, British, Russian, and United States aspirations to become Pacific as well as Atlantic imperial powers; the political communities forged across lines on settler maps; and the saltwater realms of coastal societies sharing ocean currents and exchanges with East Asia. Together we will investigate complex and changing worlds shaped by American revolutions that occurred long before 1776, Indigenous diplomats shocked by the poverty they witnessed in European cities, a lacrosse game that altered the course of a world war, refugees from slavery who found asylum in Mexico, and immigrant women who challenged some of the first deportation policies in the United States, to name only a few examples. Students will learn to think like historians by analyzing primary sources, evaluating competing narratives, and formulating arguments about the past. We will ask how systems of knowledge, governance, and ecological management, modes of diplomacy and political belonging, forms of labor exploitation and unfreedom, ideas about race, gender, and sexuality, epidemics and environmental catastrophes transformed a continent repeatedly redrawn and unsettled. Along the way we will consider the ongoing legacies of the past—and the stories we tell about it—in the American West today.

Instructor: Marla Ramirez

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM

Description: This course examines the historical, social, and legal experiences of Latina/Latino/Latine/Latinxs in the US since the mid-1800s with emphasis on Mexican migrations. Latine/xs became an important part of the US population through western expansion, conquest, and immigration. We will learn about the three main Latine groups in the US: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans, but will also learn about other Latine/x communities. We begin with an examination of conquest by studying the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that annexed roughly half of former Mexican territory and the Spanish-American War that resulted in the possession of Puerto Rico. Then, we will review the history of Latine/x immigration to understand the experiences of Mexicans, Central Americas, South Americans, and people from the Caribbean who have immigrated to the US in search of economic opportunities and political asylum. This course serves as an introduction to the varied experiences of Latine/xs in the US to understand their unique histories.

Instructor: Stephen Kantrowitz

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM

Description: The course is organized around the title question: Who is an American? It explores how answers to that question have changed over time, focusing on people whose actions and ideas shaped those answers. It is not a traditional survey of U.S. history. Instead, it focuses on a variety of topics related to our central theme, moving roughly chronologically from the Revolutionary era to the present. Each week is organized by a question (see “Schedule of Readings, Lectures, and Assignments,” below) that you should consider as you read and take part in class meetings. As an organizing theme, the question “Who is an American?” invites many kinds of historical investigations. This course focuses on a few while touching on others. Among our central themes will be: How have laws, ideas, and social movements shaped how people have answered the question, “Who is an American?” When has “American” meant a legal category (for example, “citizen”), and when has it meant something else?

Instructor: Cindy I-Fen Cheng

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM

Description: Over the course of the semester, we will untangle the many factors driving Asian immigration to the United States and explore how each wave of Asian immigration altered the social, political, cultural, and economic development of the nation from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. As non-white and non-European immigrants, Asian Americans grappled with the color line along with stereotypes that cast them as “forever foreign.” But the lived experiences of Asian Americans, far from revealing just the limits of American democracy, showcased efforts aimed at advancing American democracy to its fullest potential. Additionally, we will consider how Asian immigration connected the United States to the world and created transnational ties for Asian Americans.

Instructor: Sasha Suarez

MW 4:00-5:15PM

Description: American Indian history is expansive, complex, and deeply entwined with United States history. The breadth of any American Indian history course must acknowledge the centuries of history existing in the Americas prior to European colonization. So too, it must, tackle centuries of history since European and American colonization, accounting for myriad methods of colonization employed by different nations and provide substantial American Indian/Indigenous perspective in its analysis. As such, this course is designed as a broad survey course that is organized in chronological units that consider European and American policies and ideologies regarding this land’s Indigenous peoples. This course is divided into 3 units which follow a loose chronological trajectory. While we will always aim to examine history through Indigenous perspectives, we will also spend substantial time examining settler colonial practices and polices in “Indian Affairs,” as these have tremendous impact on history. The units will overlap and should be understood as interrelated. Since this course seeks to cover a wide span of time (roughly from the 1400s through the 1900s), we will focus in on specific localized histories as they relate to overarching international and federal Indian policies. For example, we will examine the creation of European international borders in North America by examining both the Northeast and Texas and the early Southwest. Similarly, we will look at removal in the Northeast and Great Lakes region while also considering how federal Indian removal operated in the case of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw, and Seminole. Our readings and 2 lectures will work in tandem to create a picture of how federal Indian policy was enacted, perceived, and utilized on the ground. Please keep in mind that we cannot cover everything in this course. There will, understandably, be geographical gaps in the content we cover over the course of the semester. The goal of this class is to provide you with a good understanding of how American Indian peoples responded to international, national, and local policies and practices designed to deal with the ubiquitous “Indian problem” that foreign (and later domestic) powers were and are consistently confronted with when dealing with Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Instructor: TBD

TR 12:30-1:45PM

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

Instructor: Brandon Bloch

MW 9:55-10:45PM

Description: Germany’s Weimar Republic (1918-1933) is perhaps the most notorious case of democratic failure in modern history. Its collapse remains a reference point in discussions about challenges to democracy today. But is it fair to evaluate the Weimar Republic only in light of its disastrous end? Why did the Nazis come to power in 1933, and could the Nazi rise have been prevented? This COMM-B course dives deep into the culture, society, and politics of this short-lived but momentous period in modern European history. We will explore not only the seedbeds of fascism and authoritarianism in 1920s Germany, but also reform movements that sought democratic transformations in the arts, gender, sexuality, and the built environment. Our sources will range widely across the Republic’s vibrant cultural landscape, including literature, film, journalism, music, fashion, painting, architecture, and propaganda. One key theme will be the contingency of the Weimar Republic’s rise and fall. We will aim to understand how the Republic’s history was shaped by individuals who could not anticipate consequences that appear evident to us in hindsight. By explore a wide range of perspectives on this complex period, students will sharpen their skills in historical thinking and writing.

Instructor: Emily Callaci

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: African decolonization is often defined as the transfer of political sovereignty from European colonizers to independent African nations. Yet, even as formal decolonization was unfolding, many African activists, intellectuals and artists expressed more ambitious visions of what decolonization meant. For example, some argued that decolonization required the overthrow of global capitalism and the creation of a more just economic order. For others, it meant the dissolving of colonial boundaries to create a pan-African community. For some, decolonization was about liberating the mind, while some argued that the true target of decolonization was land. This course invites students to explore the history of decolonization in Africa as a moment of possibilities. We will consider a range of primary sources, including political manifestoes, philosophical texts, works of art, films and works of literature. Additionally, we will spend a portion of the class conducting original research at the Wisconsin Historical Society, pondering the place of UW Madison in the history of colonialism and decolonization.

Instructor: Paul Grant

MW 2:30-3:45PM

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: Paul Grant

M 8:50-10:45AM

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 so 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:

As a section of History 201 (“the Historians Craft), this course will equip you with the tools for research in this phenomenon. You will 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 won’t have a standard textbook. Rather, we will mainly work through an anthology of primary source readings, along with multiple secondary sources each week. We will zoom in on a few special topics, such as religious conflict in Nigeria, or the indigenization of Christianity by the Nahua in Mexico, but we will superficially touch on many other themes.

Assigned books include:

–Klaus Koschorke, Frieder Ludwig & Mariano Delgado (eds.), A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450-1990: A Documentary Sourcebook (Eerdmans, 2007)

–Ebenezer Obadare, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018)

–A few others, to be determined.

What you’ll produce:

No matter how strong or weak of a writer you are, you will get better in this course through short weekly exercises and peer workshopping.

–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 choose a country or region to “specialize in (such as Southeast Asia, West Africa, Brazil, etc.), and will write a three-page paper summarizing the main geopolitical or cultural flash-points which might potentially lead to a major conflict.

–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.

–You will write a term paper digging into a focused point of cross-cultural encounter

And throughout the process, you will get focused feedback to improve your arguments and ideas. Everyone taking this course will become a stronger writer!

Instructor: April Haynes

MW 4:00-5:15PM

Description: forthcoming.

Instructor: Francine Hirsch

MWF 1:20-2:10PM

Description: This course investigates the relationship between Russia and the United States, focusing on how the two states and their peoples influenced each other and each other’s development. The course will look at traditional diplomatic relations as well as at formal and informal economic and cultural relations. The first two-thirds of the course will focus on the period before World War II, looking at mutual perceptions and at opportunities for economic and cultural cooperation and exchange. It will devote considerable attention to America’s reaction to the revolutions of 1917 and to the rise of Stalin and Stalinism. The last third of the course will focus on the Cold War. Themes will include superpower competition, espionage, and Soviet reactions to the idea of the American dream.

Instructor: Marcella Hayes

W 11:00-12:55PM

Description: This course teaches students how to think, research, speak and write like historians. We will approach the study of history not just as a series of events but as the study of the many ways in which events can be interpreted. We will do this by examining the long-term history of revolution, rebellion, and reform in Latin America, from before the Spanish invasion of the Americas to the end of the twentieth century. We will ask what people expected of their political leadership and how they defined good governance. We will explore what their options were to protest or to demand change if they felt change was necessary. We will ask how these concepts changed over time and how they stayed the same. We will explore secondary sources by other historians to trace major historical events, and will interpret primary sources, such as speeches, legislation, oral histories, poetry, paintings, and photographs, to explore how all sectors of society helped foment change.

Instructor: Matt Villeneuve

MW 4:00-5:15PM

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

Instructor: TBD

W 11:00AM-12:55PM

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

Instructor: Charlotte Whatley

W 3:30-5:25PM

Description: In 1349, the word pestilenciam entered the legal records of the English court of King’s Bench for the first time. The pestilence, as they called it in England, had finally reached their shores causing panic and the closing of the courts. By the time the Black Death finally ebbed in 1350, its catastrophic ravaging of the landscape was plain: towns lay abandoned, churches lost priests, fields fell fallow, and English society had fundamentally changed. Plague and illness, however, were not new in pre-modern Europe; the Byzantines in the sixth century previously experienced cataclysmic pandemics. In this course, we will explore how major instances of plague and ongoing illnesses like leprosy structured and transformed the societies of Europe in the premodern period. By the end of this course, you will have a firm grasp of the history of plague in pre-modern Europe. Both together and individually, we will be reading and analyzing primary documents and secondary texts to improve analytical skills. 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. Students will learn to write about and present their ideas to their peers, review and edit the work of others, and produce research papers that answer key questions about the effects of plague and pandemic on society.

Instructor: Giuliana Chamedes

M 8:50-10:45AM

Description: A History of Global Wealth Inequality is a seminar that provides a deep dive into the makings of our contemporary present. The core question animating the course is: Why are some regions of the world richer than others, and how does the history of global wealth inequality shape our present? Through a series of fun hands-on sources–from movies to paintings, from poems to political speeches–we move from the Haitian Revolution and the history of global debt to the rise of industrial capitalism as a global phenomenon. The course brings us up through the present, investigating both the problem of global wealth inequality and the many solutions to the problem that have been offered by historical protagonists and social movements over time.

Instructor: Tony Michels

MWF 1:20-2:10PM

Description: A century and a half ago, the United States was a backwater of the Jewish world, then centered in Europe with significant Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere in the world.  Yet, by the 1950s, the United States became home to the largest Jewish community in modern history.  Why did millions of Jews come to the United States?  How has life in a liberal political and capitalist economic order shaped the Jewish experience in America?  In turn, how have Jews influenced American culture, politics, and society?  This course surveys the history of American Jews from the 17th century to the 21st century.  Using Jews as the primary, though not only, case, the course examines themes in the history of immigration, race, and assimilation.  By examining processes of cultural integration and differentiation of Jews in United States society, the course attempts to address broad questions about the nature of American national identity. Topics include patterns of politics, social mobility, Jewish culture in Yiddish and English, inter‐ethnic group relations, gender and sexuality, religion, and problems in community building. The course combines lectures, discussions, film, and audio recordings. Readings consist of secondary and primary sources.

Instructor: Marcella Hayes

MW 2:30-3:45PM

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

Instructor: Michael Cullinane

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: Southeast Asia is a region that today consists of eleven nations: Brunei, Cambodia (Kampuchea), East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, each with its own history, cultural and ethnic diversity, and political and socio-economic conditions. Nevertheless, it is a region–between China and India–that possesses many cultural and historical similarities and continuities that make it unique. This course is intended to provide a general introduction to Southeast Asia’s past and present. The course is organized chronologically around three broad periods: 1) traditional states and societies (to ca.1830); 2) colonial transformations and indigenous responses (ca.1830-1945); and 3) the emergence of modern nations (since 1945). Within these broad time frames, the course will explore several topics and themes, among them: the origins of indigenous states; religious conversion and practice; ethnicity, social organization, and gender relations; the impact of colonial domination; modern social and economic transformations; responses to colonial rule; the development of nationalist and socialist-communist movements and revolutions; the nature of post-colonial societies and political systems; ethnic conflict and national integration; the impact of Cold War international relations; and U.S. involvement and intervention in the region. Given the size and diversity of the region, the course will concentrate on three Southeast Asian countries: Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand–those countries that are the primary research areas of UW Madison’s Southeast Asia program and for which significant resources exist on campus.

Instructor: James Sweet

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: Welcome to Africa: An Introductory Survey. This course is designed to be a multi-disciplinary introduction to the history, cultures, and politics of Africa. Because Africa contains a remarkable array of languages, societies, and peoples, we cannot hope for exhaustive coverage. However, we will visit almost every major region of the continent at least once during the semester while we will explore a variety of themes and topics. I hope that you will take away from the course an understanding not just of what to think about the history, cultures, and politics of Africa but also how to think about this part of the world.

Instructor: Judd Kinzley

W 12:05-1:50PM

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

Instructor: Claire Taylor

MW 2:30-3:45

Description: This course examines Greek political, cultural, and social history in the Archaic and Classical periods with a focus on political and social unity and division. We will examine the creation and development of political communities, the different ways in which these were run, how they came into conflict with one another and amongst themselves, and the social and cultural context from which they changed the Mediterranean world.

Instructor: Anne Hansen

MW 4:00-5:15PM

Description: This course introduces Buddhism across Asia, from India at the time of the Buddha to 1960s US and Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Our starting point will be the central Buddhist ritual of taking refuge in the “Triple Gem”: the Buddha, his teachings known as the Dharma, and the Sangha, communities and individuals who call themselves Buddhist. We’ll examine and discuss interpretations of the Triple Gem through a variety of primary sources, from sermons, stories and Beat poetry to Buddhist art in the Chazen Museum. There is no expectation that you have previously studied or encountered Buddhism or other Asian religious traditions.

Instructor: TBD

TR 2:30-3:45 PM

Description: This undergraduate lecture course covers the history of the Vietnam War over the full 20 years of U.S. involvement (1954 to 1975), exploring U.S. foreign policy, guerrilla warfare, anti-war protests, conventional combat, and CIA covert operations. Even today, over a half century after U.S. Marines first landed on the coast of South Vietnam, this conflict remains the single most controversial aspect of U.S. foreign policy. In the five decades since its end, the Vietnam War has proved a transformative, even traumatic event, shaping both American popular culture and political debates.

Starting with the historical background, the course provides students with a brief introduction to the traditional Vietnamese state, French colonial conquest, and the century of French imperial rule. After analyzing the disastrous French defeat in the First Indochina War, culminating in the historic battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the lectures focus on the character of U.S. military operations in South Vietnam from 1964 to 1975 covering combat by American infantry, the massive U.S. bombing which made Vietnam history’s largest air war, and the CIA’s decade-long secret war in Laos.

By shifting perspective from American soldiers, Vietnamese villagers, Hanoi’s communist leaders, and White House deliberations, the course seeks to provide students with multiple approaches to a war that caused five million deaths, including 58,000 American soldiers. Through this course students will gain a deeper understanding of U.S. foreign policy, a grasp of the complexities of contemporary history, and a capacity for critical analysis of government decision-making.

Instructor: Richard Keyser

TR 2:30-3:45PM

Description: This class explores a new approach to a part of the world with a very old history, but one that is now as ‘modern’ as any. The changing relations between Europeans and their environments from antiquity to the twenty-first century offer instructive comparison with American and current global environmental concerns. Approaching European history from an environmental perspective also offers fresh perspective on Europe’s enduring cultures. Questions we will consider include: how have Western ideas about nature changed over time? To what extent have Europeans degraded, or managed to live sustainably with, their environments? How did the development of capitalism, industrialization, and colonialism affect Europe’s environment? How do modern European conservationism and environmentalism compare with their American analogs?

Instructor: Francis Russo

W 3:30-5:25PM

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

Instructor: Daniel Ussishkin

Online, Asynchronous

Description: The Great 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. This course will situate the upheaval of 1914-1918 within the larger framework of twentiethcentury European history. Using a wide variety of sources – memoirs, essays, poems, literary and cinematic representations, among others – we will try to understand how historians have approached the cultural and political history of the war, and the problem of the relation between war and social transformation more broadly.

Instructor: April Haynes

T 3:30-5:25 PM

Description: This course is an advanced and comparative seminar focused on the significance of gender, class, and race in North American/United States history from the seventeenth century to 1870. Themes include women as agents of social change and as builders of community. We will also analyze gender as a dynamic historical process rather than an unchanging set of identities or roles. Course materials include information about gender expansive individuals in the past. We will learn how hierarchies of gender, race, class, nation, and sexuality came to shape and reinforce each other from the colonial period through the Civil War. Finally, we will trace the development of feminisms and women’s movements, which challenged those hierarchies. This seminar will include substantial historiographical reading, writing, and discussion. It counts toward either the Humanities or Social Science breadth requirement, carried advanced-level L&S credit, and is open to graduate students.

Instructor: TBD

M 1:20-3:15PM

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

Instructor: Karl Shoemaker

TR 1:00-2:15PM

Description: At various times in medieval England, it was both legal and illegal to murder another person, depending on the circumstances of the killing. Punishment for assault or theft could mean the loss of a hand, or the loss of one’s life. Medieval and Early Modern legal practices often look quite foreign at first glance; to those societies, however, they made perfect sense – at least most of the time. This class seeks to reorient the study of crime away from the margins, and instead center law and criminality at the core of making and unmaking of society. We will explore the origins and development of punishment. What was accepted? What was condemned? What were the processes by which a convicted criminal experienced punishment? We will explore medieval and early modern understandings of emotion and defense, as well as the complex relationship that people living in a variety of places and times had with ideas like justice, mercy, and legality. As we move through the course, we will build on this knowledge to help us understand the complexities driving of modern conversations regarding punishment and its role in modern society, with particular emphasis on the secular need for retribution and the spiritual desire for reflection and rehabilitation. 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 the development of punishment in western society. As a class group, we will engage in lively discussion to strengthen speaking skills and increase students’ confidence as historians, while encouraging active listening. Both together and individually, 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.

Instructor: Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

TR 9:30-10:45PM

Description: This seminar critically engages with the history of the Puerto Rican nation, composed of the Caribbean archipelago and its global diaspora. Originally inhabited by indigenous peoples for thousands of years, it was conquered by the Spanish Crown in 1493— although the official conquest did not begin until 1508. Almost four centuries of Spanish colonialism ended with an imperial succession after the War of 1898, colloquially known as the “Spanish-American War.” The Spanish flag went down, and the US flag was hoisted. To this day, Puerto Rico remains, in the words of legal scholar José Trías Monge, the oldest colony in the world. While some people contest the accuracy of such statement, this course explores the ways that Puerto Rico has been a colonial possession for more than five hundred years. It also highlights how those that have inhabited the archipelago and its diasporas have not tacitly accepted colonialism. This course will allow students to understand the ways that Puerto Ricans have navigated complex colonial dimensions and created vibrant ideas of belonging and nationhood. Ultimately, the course is an intellectual meditation about how—against colonial violence and erasure—, Puerto Ricans have crafted complex, ever-changing, and diasporic understandings of the nation. That is, they have radically, poetically, and politically affirmed their existence through coraje, solidarity, and love for their land. That is, against the necrocolonial logics of a “Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans,” many are dreaming and forging a Puerto Rico full of Puerto Ricans, whether it’s in Aguadilla, Manatí, Santurce, Kissimmee, the Bronx, or Madison.

Instructor: Sarah Thal

MWF 11:00-11:50AM

Description: Japanese warriors, their ideals, and their images from the tenth century to the present.

Instructor: Juan Fernandez

MW 4:00-5:15PM

Description: Through lectures and readings, this course explores the modern social and political history of Southeast Asia, a region with a tempestuous past that has shaped and been shaped by the modern empires. Instead of narratives of individual nations, the course analyzes major trends and transformations across the whole Southeast Asia region during different historical periods—including, the conquest of traditional kingdoms, colonial rule, the impact of World War II, nationalist revolutions, and the emergence of new nations. To lend substance to these broad topics from the nineteenth century to the present, the lectures will combine thematic discussions with detailed case studies of events in individual countries. As the most intensely colonized region in the world, Southeast Asia offers an ideal arena for exploring the profound impact of European empires upon indigenous societies worldwide. Through such study we can see imperialism as a Promethean fire that shaped the modern world, producing both independent nations and an interdependent global economy. During the nineteenth century, imperial historians celebrated the achievements of their empires and ignored indigenous history. In our own era, Southeast Asian historians have done the reverse, documenting the nationalist struggle and dismissing the influence of global empires. This course seeks a new synthesis by examining the interaction between European empires and emerging national elites to argue that imperialism transformed both colonizer and colonized alike. More broadly, the course will blend political and social history by placing ordinary lives within the context of emerging nation states.

Instructor: TBD

TR 11:00-12:15PM

Description: Environmental history is the study of the interactions between human societies and the natural world over time. In this course, we will study American environmental history from European arrival in North America to the present. We will study the ways that different groups of Americans adapted to and changed the landscape, and also examine their ideas about nature. The course counts for credit in the History major, the Environmental Studies Major, and the Indigenous Studies certificate, and course material engages fully with all three of these fields of study. The course has several explicit themes: Putting nature into history; reading the landscape; ways of knowing nature; the role of region; and the relationship between history and sustainability. A central premise throughout will be that much of the familiar terrain of American history looks very different when seen in its environmental context, and that one learns a great deal about both history and the environment by studying them together. The separate regions of the United States have different environments; the characteristics of these landscapes have shaped patterns of human life. We will look at the everyday lives of everyday people, asking how their labor, their religion, and their cultures influenced their interactions with the natural world. In our focus on region, we will pay particular attention to our own home—the North American Great Lakes. Although we typically think of sustainability as a forward-thinking concept, in this course we use it as a lens of inquiry to help us understand human/environmental interactions in the past. As a lens of inquiry, sustainability requires us to investigate the intersections of environmental change, economic activity, and social organization, and how these intersections have changed over time. An additional goal of this class is to further your liberal arts education. What does this mean? The liberal arts education focuses on general learning, intellectual ability, and critical thinking rather than technical or professional skills. The goal of this class, then, is not just to convey specific information about environmental history (although you will learn much about this) but to teach you how to interpret this information critically, how to understand environmental change in its social, historical, and political context, and how to draw lessons from this history. A liberal arts education provides the tools we need to be active citizens of our communities. As we will learn this semester, active citizenship plays a key role in resolving the complex environmental dilemmas that have faced our society for centuries.

Instructor: Finn Enke

W 8:50-10:45AM

Description:

Mid-20th-century, most historians would have said it’s near impossible to do queer and trans history because there was too little documentation, people were not “out” as such, it would be conjecture and not relevant anyway. By the 1970s, queer and trans historians were developing a flourishing queer and trans history rooted in part in new methods of biography and memoir. This reading seminar focuses on the methods historians have used to research, analyze and write queer and trans lives across centuries and continents. Reading works by and about more and less well-known figures in history, we will consider the significance of queerness and gender for diversely embodied individuals, communities, and large scale social contexts, and thus why queer/trans methods of analysis are relevant for history “writ large.”

We will explore questions such as: How have historians addressed the ways that vocabularies and understandings of gender and sexuality vary widely across time? How do we think outside of as well as within a contemporary lens of understanding? How have historians treated people’s varied needs for discretion in naming identities that may be stigmatized or criminalized? How have gender and sexuality been relevant to major social processes such as war, economies, and social organization? The seminar will also step back to explore biography and memoir as genres of historical writing that interweave the personal and granular with the political, social and global. Along the way, we will of course also get to know some remarkable queer and trans people whose lives shaped the past and provide insight into the present.

Our readings consist of film, article- and book-length biography and memoir, along with author discussions of method and process behind their work. Most but not all of our works will be situated in North America during the last three centuries. In addition to the works we read together, students have the opportunity to read and analyze works within their own particular areas of interest.

Seminar sessions will be devoted to discussion and close analysis of our required texts. Together and through collaborative conversation, we will build insight about how each author/artist approaches and conveys history. Attendance in our once-weekly seminars is critical to our learning process along with the reading and text engagement assignments.

Accessibility:

Everyone is welcome in this seminar. I am happy do what I can do to make accommodations and adjustments, respect your learning needs and support your educational goals.

The McBurney Center provides useful documentation and support but I do not require documentation. Let me know how I can support your learning.

Instructor: Paul Grant

W 8:50-10:45AM

Description: Welcome! As a reading seminar in history, this section is an opportunity to slow down and rediscover the magic of history, through the life stories of amazing men and women.

Biography is a way of evaluating individual human lives. This course explores the genre at a global scale though books of individuals in their contexts, examining the choices biographers have made and the ethical implications of those choices. We analyze the complex relationship between global forces (imperialism, etc.), local dynamics (contemporary politics), and individual particularities (character strengths and weaknesses). By studying life stories in this way, you will grow better at understanding human experience in its global, historical contexts, interpreting contemporary events and assumptions in light of the past, and learning how to understand others, despite differences.

Your main project will be to write a mock proposal for a hypothetical multi-year biographical research project. You will create a research agenda, an inventory of archival sources, and a detailed outline

You will be able to customize large parts of the reading list, but we will start with two people:

• Queen Nzinga of Angola who preserved her kingdom’s sovereignty from Portuguese invasions in the 1600s.

• Fritz Oppenheimer, a Jewish soldier in Germany’s WWI, who fought for the other side (USA) in WWII.

We will read full-length biographies of each, digging into the amazing times in which they lived, and along the way, we will discuss the methods and ethics of biographies in general.

Take this course, even if you’re not a history major, if:

• You want to learn about biography as a field.

• You might want to write books of your own someday.

• You would enjoy immersing yourself in stories without the high speed of the rest of college.

Instructor: Tony Michels

R 1:20-3:15PM

Description: In the late-19th century Jews in a number of countries initiated a movement for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Known as Zionism, this movement eventually led to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. There were multiple forms of Zionism that pursued competing, sometimes antagonistic strategies and goals. Zionism also generated fierce criticism from various quarters within and beyond the Jewish community. There was much at stake in the debates among Zionists and between Zionists and their critics: the fate of Jews in increasingly perilous countries and empires, the prospects of Arab nationalism in Palestine and the larger region, and other critical issues. This seminar explores Zionism’s history in multiple locations from multiple perspectives. Framed most broadly, the seminar explores the interplay between nationalism, socialism, and liberalism through the case of the Jews as they became entangled with nation-states, empires, and revolutions from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

Instructor: Claire Taylor

W 8:50-10:45AM

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 (see Zack Snyder’s 300 for example). 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 their place in the archaic and classical Greek world (8th-4th centuries BCE). Throughout 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.

Instructor: Charlotte Whatley

W 11:00AM-12:55PM

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

Instructor: Pertuz

W 3:30-5:25 PM

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

Instructor: Francis Russo

T 3:30-5:25 PM

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

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: Mou Banerjee

M 8:50-10:45AM

Description: Colloquium for thesis writers & honors thesis writers.

Instructor: Daniel Williford

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: What is the relationship between technology and social inequality today? As climate change, pandemics, and economic transformations threaten to intensify both global and localized disparities, arguments play out in media, the STEM community, and policy circles that single out new technologies as both a cause of and a potential solution to the present crisis. This course offers a critical perspective on the place of technology in history is essential for grasping the stakes of these debates in the contemporary world. History of Science 160 offers an introduction to the history of technology, centered around the relationship between technology and various forms of social inequality. It addresses: 1) how gendered, racial, and class-based disparities have shaped the history of technology; 2) how forms of engineered inequity have intersected with state-building, colonial projects, environmental degradation, and revolutionary programs; 3) how technology has been implicated in attempts to imagine a more just society. This course is designed to introduce students to central themes and concepts in the histories of science, medicine, and especially technology. The course is organized into four sections or modules that build on one another through case studies. These are transnational in scope and move chronologically from the 17th century to the present. The course also gives significant attention to histories of technology that originated outside of the U.S. and Europe.

Instructor: Florence Hsia

TR 12:05-12:55 PM

Description: What does science have to do with religion? What does it mean to have expertise about the natural world? And what difference do politics and funding sources make to scientific investigation? Learn how to think critically and historically about science in this course by exploring such fundamental questions across two millennia. We begin with ancient mythology and philosophy, then follow the movement of natural philosophical traditions into medieval Islam and Christendom, and finally turn to the ‘revolution’ in science of the 16th and 17th centuries with Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. These historical investigations provide vital insights into ideas of the ‘natural’, scientific observation, and experiment, as well as into our expectations of scientific knowledge and the scientific enterprise.

Instructor: TBD

MW 12:05-12:55PM

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: Elizabeth Hennessey

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM

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

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

Instructor: Matthew Farrelly

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