Undergraduate Courses

Instructor: Simon Balto

MW 9:30-10:45AM

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: Khaled Esseissah

TR 2:30-3:45PM

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

Instructor: Mallory Hope

TR 2:30-3:45PM

Description: Introduces Europe when it entered the global stage economically, politically, socially, and culturally. How Europeans took to the seas and developed new forms of empire. How did this wave of contact, encounter, and conquest affect Europeans, indigenous peoples of the Americas, and Africans? Examine the early global economy and the development of plantation slavery. How did Europeans develop new ways to make sense of their world, its size, its peoples, its flora and fauna? Explore new forms of Christianity, the Jewish diaspora, and the globalization of Christianity. As thinkers debated how rulers should wield political power, monarchs strove to expand their authority and territory, and ordinary people demanded a greater share of political power, provoking revolutions across the Atlantic world. Encounter the lives of women and men from many backgrounds, from peasants to queens, and all kinds of people on the move.

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: Daniel Ussishkin

TR 4:00-5:15PM

Description: The course introduces students to the major themes in the history of modern imperial Britain and to some of the ways historians have tried to make sense of it all. Such themes include (but not limited to) the changing patterns of life during those centuries, the development of modern identities and notions of the self, the emergence of a modern, commercial civil society, the rise of industrial capitalism, liberalism, the modern state, and imperial and total war. We will pay particular attention to gender in terms of both “lived experience” and representations of power (and its critique), and to the transnational nature of modern British history, largely, but not only, through the history of the economic, political, and cultural foundations of the modern British empire.

Instructor: Samm Newton

MW 9:55-10:45AM
W Film Screening 4:00-6:00PM

Description: From Teddy Roosevelt’s 1909 African safari to the Hollywood blockbuster King Kong, from the world of Walt Disney to The March of the Penguins, cinema has been a powerful force in shaping public and scientific understanding of nature throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century. How can film shed light on changing environmental ideas and beliefs in American thought, politics, and culture? And how can we come to see and appreciate contested issues of race, class, and gender in nature on screen? Explore such questions and come to understand the role of film in helping to define the contours of past, present, and future environmental visions in the United States, and their impact on the real world struggles of people and wildlife throughout the world.

Instructor: Paul Grant

MWF 11:00-11:50AM

Description: You are invited!

This course is about all of history around the entire world.

Since that’s too big to digest, we will look at history through small people’s experiences – but also yours: you will get a chance to write yourself – and your family – into the story of the world.

This is a big course, so will join an “affinity group” of students with similar interests – whether professional, social or artistic – in which you will customize some of the in-class work.

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: Mou Banerjee

MW 9:55-10:45AM

Description: Survey of the development of societies within the Indian subcontinent. Equal segments for the ancient, medieval and modern periods.

Instructor: Giuliana Chamedes, Monica Kim

MW 2:30-3:45PM

Description: An introduction to key historical events, movements, and systems that have shaped our present moment. Examines the relationship between empire-building and anti-colonial movements from the late 18th century to the current day. Focuses on the political, economic, and social/cultural dimensions of major global history themes, such as colonialism, capitalism, and revolution.

Instructor: Simon Balto

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM

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 Cheng

MW 2:30-3:45PM

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

Instructor: TBD

W 11:00AM-12:55PM

Description: This course will address the problem of magic in European society ca. 1400-1700. We will read a selection of landmark studies that chart the importance of illicit belief in ordinary people’s struggle to endure and make meaning in a precarious world. We will ask, what role did soothsaying, healing, charms, and curses play in early modern communities? Why did authorities like the State and Church seek to control these popular practices? How did anti-witchcraft initiatives drive new allocations of power? And how did this process birth a society we recognize as modern?

The readings in this course span the breadth of early modern Europe. We will explore texts about men and women, the rural and the urban, the wealthy and the impoverished, the powerful and the disenfranchised. However, we will always return to our central topics: community dynamics; popular resistance to sanctioned doctrine; officials’ march towards discipline; the creative appropriation of religion; gender; sexuality; and survival. By tracking the social, spiritual, and intellectual transformations incubated in early modern localities, students will strive to better understand the lived mentalities and perspectives of historical actors.

Instructor: John Balz

T 11:00AM-12:55PM

Description: The 1800 presidential election is typically considered a pivot point in U.S. political history. Thomas Jefferson called his victory “the revolution of 1800 and many historians have agreed. The campaign was full of mudslinging, amplified through a new partisan press. An electoral college tie threw the decision into the House of Representative and threatened to break apart the country. The flaw in the presidential selection process required a constitutional amendment to fix. Despite a bitter, narrow defeat, Adams peacefully gave up the presidency to his rival. Jefferson’s victory represented the beginning of the end for George Washington and John Adams’s Federalist party. Jefferson’s Republican party (now called Democratic-Republicans) represented the move toward white male political equality — even though barely 75,000 white men voted in a country with more than 5.3 million people. The 1800 election offers many entry points to understand modern American politics. Democracy. Power. Factionalism. New Media. Constitutional Crisis. To name a few.

Students in the course will re-visit the election by researching the issues, people, and key events in the lives of voters and non-voters. Special attention will be paid to partisan media. Students will have the chance to compare and contrast contemporary political rhetoric in the current media environment with what existed in 1800.

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 exploring a wide range of perspectives on this complex period, students will sharpen their skills in historical thinking and writing.

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: Joseph Dennis

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM

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: Khaled Esseissah

TR 9:30-10:45AM

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

Instructor: Juan Fernandez Capiral

W 2:25-5:25PM

Description: We will look at photographs taken in Asia during the 19th and 20th centuries. We will learn how to analyze these photographs, not merely for the “look of the past,” but for what we can read in them about ideals of power, desire, and modernity. We begin with the premise that photographs themselves have histories. We will ask, through these photographs, what it means to perform modernity for audiences both domestic and foreign, what it means to exercise power and be subject to it; and who is desiring what, and why. We will approach the material thematically across East, South, and Southeast Asia. These photographs provide a useful and unique source of historical understanding that we will critically examined not just for what the image shows—its surface and content—but also for why the photograph was taken in the first place, who made it, where it was taken, and for what ends was it used. That is, how do we read photographs to see them not just as images but as arguments? In this course, we shall develop skills in historical analysis, writing, and research through a critical engagement with colonial-era photographs from Asia.

Instructor: Paul Grant

W 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: Paul Grant

W 1:20-3:15PM

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: Marcella Hayes

W 1:20-3:15PM

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: Mallory Hope

W 11:00AM-12:55PM

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

Instructor: Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

W 8:50-10:45AM

Description: The current trend of book bannings in the U.S. casts in bold relief the long history of bitter contestation over ideas in America. What has always been fundamentally at stake in these intellectual and cultural battles is the fear that certain ideas are “dangerous” or “un-American” or both. Examining which books have been banned, when, why, and by whom allows us to eavesdrop on the past and encounter how Americans have conceptualized and grappled with ideas about race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, politics, technology, the economy, and morality in their particular historical contexts.

The course will examine episodes in the history of book bannings from colonial times up until today, comparing them with similar phenomena in other national contexts, and focusing of a number of exemplary cases. And all along the way, students will be exposed to various aspects of the historians’ craft.

Instructor: Louise Young

TR 9:30-10:45AM

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: Charlotte Whatley

M 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: TBD

M 1:20-3:15PM

Description: This course will address the problem of magic in European society ca. 1400-1700. We will read a selection of landmark studies that chart the importance of illicit belief in ordinary people’s struggle to endure and make meaning in a precarious world. We will ask, what role did soothsaying, healing, charms, and curses play in early modern communities? Why did authorities like the State and Church seek to control these popular practices? How did anti-witchcraft initiatives drive new allocations of power? And how did this process birth a society we recognize as modern?

The readings in this course span the breadth of early modern Europe. We will explore texts about men and women, the rural and the urban, the wealthy and the impoverished, the powerful and the disenfranchised. However, we will always return to our central topics: community dynamics; popular resistance to sanctioned doctrine; officials’ march towards discipline; the creative appropriation of religion; gender; sexuality; and survival. By tracking the social, spiritual, and intellectual transformations incubated in early modern localities, students will strive to better understand the lived mentalities and perspectives of historical actors.

Instructor: Nicholas Jacobsen

TR 9:55-10:45 AM

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: Eric Carlsson

TR 9:30-10:45 AM

Description: In Europe in the year 1500, it has been argued, it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, while in today’s pluralistic society many people find this option easy, even inescapable. How did a varied but widely shared religious worldview of the late Middle Ages give way to the diversity of beliefs and ethical norms that mark the West today? And how did the seismic social and intellectual changes of the modern era affect how Europeans held and expressed their religious, philosophical, and ethical commitments? Those big questions set the agenda for this course.

Throughout the course we will consider rival ways in which scholars have tried to explain and evaluate shifts in religious belief and behavior in the modern period; here the concept of secularization looms large. Most of our time will be spent exploring some big trends in modern European thinking about religion, often using specific writers and texts as windows into broader movements. We will study changes within Christianity and Judaism as well as critiques of religion and the rise of modern secular thought. Throughout, we will ask how people’s ultimate commitments have shaped their visions of the good life and their approaches to social justice and concrete action in the world.

Instructor: Nicholas Jacobsen

T 1:20-3:15 PM

Description: This course examines the history of pre-modern science as it developed from the time of the fall of Rome (ca. 476 CE) until an era of intense material and intellectual change in Western Europe known as the Scientific Revolution (ca. 1540 – 1640). Although elements of the course curriculum (including readings and lectures) serve to ground this history of science in linear narratives for the sake of contextualizing the material, the overall structure of the class is not chronological. Rather it engages in a series of subject-based case studies that interrogate the history of science through the lens of different visual technologies. We will see how the differentiation of scientific disciplines and their maturation was largely dependent upon various forms of visual representation of the natural world through maps, charts, diagrams, and models. In other words, this class presumes that knowledge of the natural world has always been mediated through specific ways of seeing and interpreting that world through images. This kind of abstraction did not come to its practitioners casually, instinctively, or easily. Thus specialized modes of instruction had to develop to pass this knowledge on from one generation to another. Specific kinds of institution had to be established to house this instruction, codify it, and standardize it. Finally, a particular kind of culture had to be fostered that would encourage individuals to pursue this way of seeing the world, and allow them to translate it into the broader social consciousness. This class does not take for granted these visual technologies that today are often uncritically associated with the scientific frame of mind. Instead it encourages students to ask where these technologies came from, why they were created, and how they have changed the way humans have seen, understood, and interpreted the environment around them.

Instructor: Dana Landress

TR 11:00-12:15 PM

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

Instructor: Richard Keller

MW 2:30-3:45 PM

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: TBD

MWF 1:00-2:15 PM

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: Susan Lederer

TR 2:30-3:45 PM

Description: Introduction to the development of the modern American medical care system.

Instructor: Ashley Brown

TR 4:00-5:15PM

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: Tiffany VanWinkoop

MWF 12:05-12:55 PM

Description: This class looks at women in Classical Antiquity and the Medieval Era to explore the numerous ways that women shaped history. Together we will explore the multifaceted women who shaped history as martyrs and queens, as well as the women who clothed societies, fed armies, and took up arms to defend their homes against invaders. Starting with the streets and homes of Ancient Athens, we will breeze through centuries to explore the hardened “gynecocracy of Ancient Sparta, the court intrigues of the Macedonian and Hellenistic World, the treacherous empresses of Imperial Rome, the pious saints of Medieval Rome (“Byzantium ), the leaders of nomadic Islamic tribes, and finally we will conclude in the Great Palace of Constantinople where the first female historian, Anna Komnene, will tell us about the oncoming Normans who took part in the First Crusade. Using a wide variety of evidence — histories, statues, letters, and religious accounts — we will analyze how society shaped these women and most importantly how these women shaped the societies they lived in, worked in, played in, danced in, loved in, and ruled over. Finally, we will consider how the multi-faceted experiences of Ancient and Medieval Women can shape our own understanding of women’s rights and contributions to society today.

Instructor: Sasha Maria Suarez

TR 9:30-10:45 AM

Description: In the early 1890s, the Western frontier closed, the Indian Wars ended, and hundreds of American Indians traveled to Chicago to take part in the World’s Fair Columbian Exposition heralding 400 years of colonial encounters in the Americas. Indians in the city were anomalous, a peculiarity. Or so it was supposed by mainstream American society. But what if American Indians already lived in Chicago and other cities across the country? What if “the Indian” and the city were not, in fact, mutually exclusive? This course takes on the histories of American Indian peoples in urban centers with particular focus on the years between the 1890s and the 1970s. Through an examination of federal policy and American Indian organizing and activism, we will explore the multiple ways American Indian peoples have been compelled to move to urban settler cities and how they have retained Indigenous identities despite forceful attempts at their assimilation into the American melting pot. Together we will seek to answer: what is the American city? What roles have American Indian peoples played in the creation of American cities? How have American Indian peoples navigated urban space and utilized urban institutions and governance to promote Indigenous agendas?

Instructor: Karl Shoemaker

TR 1:00-2:15 PM

Description: Examines the development of prisons from the ancient Mediterranean world to the present in the US and Europe. Pays particular attention to the way in which imprisonment has been used against marginalized populations. Examines the development of carceral tactics across a number of registers, including the prison as an ancient political tactic, the economic logic of early modern debtors’ prisons, the relationship of prisons and workhouses to forms of capitalism, prisons and colonial expansion, the relationship between mass incarceration and democratic forms of government, as well as the connections between the abolition of slavery and modern carceral practices. Also looks at the legal and constitutional limitations that have been put on imprisonment by the American legal system. Relies on interdisciplinary approaches to the study of prisons, including History, law, literature, and political theory.

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 UWMadison’s Southeast Asia program and for which significant resources exist on campus.

Instructor: Viren Murthy

TR 4:00-5:15 PM

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: Marcella Hayes

MWF 11:00-11:50 AM

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: Geoffrey Durham

MW 4:00-5:15 PM

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: Sarah Thal

W 12:05-1:50PM

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

Instructor: Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

MW 2:30-3:45

Description: This course is designed for undergraduates interested in the role of ideas and culture in modern American history. We will examine developments in philosophy, science, political theory, social criticism, and the arts in American life from 1859 to the present. We will read the works of a number of influential thinkers and writers, as well as explore a variety of intellectual movements, which shaped the cultural worlds of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Americans. Some of the themes we will examine include: the influence of Darwinism on religion; the impact of industrialization on ideas about American society; the turn-of-the-century revolt against formalism in philosophy, literature, and the social sciences; early twentieth-century conceptions of race, ethnicity, and gender; the responsibility of the intellectual in times of national and global crisis; post-WWII liberalism and existentialism; the rise of postmodernism in the academy and American popular culture, and the persistent contestations over the meaning and scope of American national identity.

Instructor: Marc Kleijwegt

TR 11:00-12:15 PM

Description: This course in Roman History focuses on social relationships and social groups in Roman society.  Dates matter in history, but in social history there are fewer dates than there are in political and military history. The history of the Roman family is not determined by specific dates and events, but by long-term developments and trends. Also, there will be lots of names – most of them foreign and unfamiliar – but they are not as important as they are in political and military history. The names of the people that are mentioned in this course are less important than the social status that they have or the activities that they undertake.

The course is divided into three periods of study.  The material taught in the first period is a long introduction to the study of Roman society in the imperial period (27 BCE-284 CE).  The second period – running from week 6 to week 8 – focuses on the structure of the Roman family and the members of the family who are without a voice: women, children, and slaves.  The final period – running from week 11 to week 14 – focuses on marginal groups in Roman society (the only group that is not a marginal group is that of the soldier).

Instructor: Napakadol Kittesensee

TR 4:00-5:15PM

Description: This course introduces and surveys the historical development of Buddhism across Asia and beyond, beginning in what is now India at the time of the Buddha, all the way to the 1960s in the U.S. and Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, and into the present day. 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 will examine and discuss interpretations of the Triple Gem through a variety of sources and experiential learning activities such as the Buddha’s teachings, stories about influential nuns and monks, Zen poetry, Buddhist art in the Chazen Museum, together with guest speakers and meditation teachers. There is no expectation that you have previously studied or encountered Buddhism or other Asian religious traditions.

Instructor: Elizabeth Lapina

TR 9:30-10:45 AM

Description: The crusades were a new type of war believed by participants and contemporaries to be not only just, but also holy. The rallying cry of the First Crusade was “God wills it!” In this class we will study political and military history of crusades, analyze the ideas that made crusades possible and discuss experiences of those involved in or affected by them, including men and women, Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Instructor: Alfred McCoy

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: Emily Callaci

TR 1:00-2:15 PM

Description: What motivates us to try to alleviate the suffering of people in distant parts of the world? Examines the origins of humanitarian ideas and institutions, and how various humanitarian campaigns have been shaped by geopolitical processes, including the abolition of the slave trade, the spread of missionary Christianity, European imperialism, the Cold War, neoliberalism and the emergence of new media forms. Questions include: who has benefited from various humanitarian aid campaigns throughout history? How have various humanitarian campaigns shaped, and been shaped by, patterns of global inequality? Why have some populations, and not others, been deemed worthy of the world’s compassion? Explores the worlds, perspectives and visions of humanitarians through a range of primary sources, including diary entries, political propaganda, memoirs, journalistic reportage, photography and documentary film.

Instructor: David Fields

MWF 12:05-12:55 PM

Description: From the Boxer Rebellion, to the dropping of the atomic bombs, to the nuclear stand-off with North Korea, American foreign relations with East Asia during the 20th century were as consequential as they were controversial. Survey the issues and questions that alternately made allies and enemies of these nations: How did the quest for markets influence American policy towards China? How did European imperialism shape Japan’s rise? Why did communism seem to offer a more compelling economic and political arrangement to China and North Korea? While squarely rooted in East Asia this course will also explore the questions that united and divided Americans over their nation’s foreign policy. Through examining these questions, develop answers and construct their own narrative of the relationship between the United States and East Asia.

Instructor: Laird Boswell

TR 2:30-3:45PM

Description: Social, political, and cultural history of twentieth century France, especially the Great War, the Popular Front, the Vichy Regime, DeGaulle and the Fifth Republic, Mitterrand’s socialist experiment, France’s changing role in the world and the European Community.

Instructor: Claire Taylor

MWF 9:55-10:45 AM

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: Stephen Kantrowitz

MW 4:00-5:15 PM

Description: African-American slavery and its impact on mid-19th century social, political, and economic life; the causes, course, and consequences of the Civil War; the rise and fall of postwar Reconstruction and non-racial citizenship; the impact of these histories on contemporary American society.

Instructor: Leslie Bellais

M 1:20-3:15PM

Description: This is a hands-on seminar focused on exploring — and presenting — the history of Wisconsin through the histories of objects. Working with a former curator at the Wisconsin Historical Society, students will learn about the practices of public history at museums and historic sites, explore concepts of material culture, and hear from guest speakers, while exploring for themselves, histories of migrant and immigrant communities in Wisconsin. Students will focus on one historical Wisconsin object of their choosing throughout the semester, write a research paper on it, and then present their findings to the public by writing object histories for publication in the online public history project, Wisconsin 101 (wi101.wisc.edu) and the AMUZ app, which encourages, in part, tourists to visit Wisconsin’s historic sites, as well as designing a case exhibit around their object.

Instructor: Kacie Butcher Lucchini

W 3:30-5:25 PM

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: Brandon Bloch

MW 2:30-3:45 PM

Description: This course surveys the turbulent history of modern Germany, Europe’s dominant political power and the third-largest economy in the world today. Beginning with the formation of the German nation-state in 1871, we will examine Germany in its many guises: the empire whose global ambitions helped spark the First World War; the fledgling democracy of the 1920s; the Nazi dictatorship that laid ruin to Europe; the divided nation of the Cold War; and the bedrock of today’s European Union. Three core themes will guide our discussions. First, we will emphasize Germany’s connections to the wider world. How did Germans shape and participate in global patterns of trade, warfare, cultural transfer, and immigration? Second, we will pay special attention to the experiences of women, Catholics, Jews, workers, immigrants, and Black Germans. What do histories of diverse and marginalized groups reveal about the transformations of democracy and dictatorship in modern Germany and beyond? Finally, we will ask what German history can tell us about the sources of solidarity, reconciliation, and political responsibility. How did a country that orchestrated the murder of six million Jews and millions of other victims during the Second World War attempt to come to terms with its past and make restitution for its crimes? This course is designed to provide an introduction to the tools of historical thinking and analysis, and does not presume prior coursework in German or European history.

Instructor: Charlotte Whatley

MWF 11:00-11:50 AM

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: Jim Feldman

TR 11:00-12:15 PM

Description: Environmental history is the study of changing relationships between humans and nature over time. In this course, we will explore the way that the natural environment intersects with major themes in world history, including industrialization, colonialism, frontiers, and globalization. A central theme of the course will be to explore what it means to live in “The Anthropocene” a human age in which people have fundamentally reshaped the planet in ways that put the future of life in jeopardy. Climate change, ocean acidification, and species extinctions on a scale not experienced since the demise of the dinosaurs are just three of the problems scientists identify as central to this new geological epoch.

This class approaches this social and environmental crisis using the framework of global environmental history. This means that we will seek to understand the Anthropocene by investigating how people living in different societies in different times and places have shaped, and been shaped by, their natural environments over the course of world history. How and when did the Anthropocene begin? And what do we do about it? How do we live in the Anthropocene today?

Instructor: Ashley Brown

R 1:20-3:15PM

Description: In this course, we will examine American presidents’ extensive and often complicated relationships with sports and health. Reading works written by historians, sociologists, political scientists, journalists, and the presidents themselves, we will focus on presidents as: Athletes, Sports fans, Enmeshed in health and political crises, and Users of sports for political, personal, national, and international gain. We will learn how presidents have turned to sports in attempts to combat chronic health challenges, promote domestic and foreign policy programs, and encourage Americans to prioritize their own well-being for the presumed well-being of themselves and the nation. Readings will address a range of topics, including propaganda, gender, power, symbolism, civil rights, national security, privacy, integrity, and war. Together, we will analyze the ways in which sports have frequently been both personal and political for occupants of the Oval Office.

This course will appeal to a variety of students who have a variety of interests. Students don’t need to be athletes or sports fans to benefit intellectually from our readings, discussions, and assignments. Students of American history, political science, medicine, culture, and journalism will be fascinated by all that we will cover.

Instructor: Joe Dennis

MW 2:30-3:45PM

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

Instructor: Juan Fernandez

M 3:30-5:25 PM

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

Instructor: Leonora Neville

M 1:20-3:15 PM

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

Instructor: Karl Shoemaker

W 1:20-3:15 PM

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

Instructor: Claire Taylor

W 1:20-3:15PM

Description: The course explores the city of Athens over a period of approximately 100 years (c. 550-450 BCE) when it underwent great change. We will look at a number of themes: political developments, religion, the built environment, Athenian society, war and the effects of war and examine a range of different source materials (literary texts, archaeological, epigraphic) in order to understand this dynamic city during the turn of the archaic period into the classical period.

Instructor: Jim Feldman

T 3:30-5:25 PM

Description: After the first successful nuclear test in 1945, Robert J. Oppenheimer the father of the atomic bomb reportedly quoted Indian scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. Thus began America’s long and strange interaction with nuclear energy. In this research and reading seminar, we will explore this interaction by examining topics such as foreign policy and the arms race, civil defense planning, nuclear energy, the peace movement, the environmental movement, climate change, and many more. But in confronting nuclear energy, Americans thought and reflected on much more than just the power of the atom. They have wrestled with elemental questions such as the human relationship to nature, the nature of progress, the obligations of citizenship, and the balance between national security and democracy. Exploring nuclear energy will allow us to investigate these larger themes in American history.

The course will be run as a reading seminar. There will be very little lecture. Class time will be spent discussing and analyzing the readings. A majority of the readings will be primary sources that is, the documents written or created as Americans encountered nuclear energy. These include, for example, press releases from the White House, letters and speeches written by government officials and nuclear industry representatives, promotional materials for anti-nuclear rallies, and much more. We will pay particular attention to how movies reveal American encounters with nuclear energy. A central goal of the course is to learn how to critically analyze these documents, and then to use them in creating your own original arguments about American encounters with nuclear energy.

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: Kathryn Ciancia

T 11:00AM-12:55PM

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

Instructor: Mou Banerjee

M 8:50-10:45AM

Description: Colloquium for thesis writers & honors thesis writers.

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.

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

Instructor: Walter Stern

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/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/Anthropology/Geography/Political Science/Sociology 277: Africa: An Introductory Survey

Instructor: Matthew Brown

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

History/AfroAmer 321: Afro-American History since 1900

Instructor: Brenda Gayle Plummer

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/Environmental Studies/Legal Studies 430: Law and Environment: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Instructor: Richard Keyser

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

History/Scandinavian Studies 432: History of Scandinavia Since 1815

Instructor: Dean Krouk

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 of Science/Medical History and Bioethics 509: The Development of Public Health in America

Instructor: Dana Landress

Please contact the Department of Medical History & Bioethics 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 of Science/AfroAmer/Medical History and Bioethics 523: Race, American Medicine and Public Health

Instructor: Susan Lederer

Please contact the Department of Medical History & Bioethics with questions about this course.

History/Educational Policy Studies 612: History of Student Activism from the Popular Front to Black Lives Matter

Instructor: Walter Stern

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

Instructor: Jonathan Senchyne

Please contact the Information School with questions about this course.