Undergraduate Courses

Instructor: Gloria Whiting

MW 2:30-3:45PM

Description: This course will ask surprising questions. How did enslaved Haitians, gold mined in Mexico, and the humble potato influence the history of the region that would become the United States? Because they did–profoundly.

This may not be the sort of history you learned in high school. Traditionally, historians have understood the history of early America or colonial America as the history of the thirteen colonies that joined to create the United States in the American Revolution. But such an approach severs these colonies from their context and creates an affinity between them that did not exist prior to the Revolutionary era.

Our course will take a much broader view. We will situate these thirteen colonies in the framework of the Atlantic world: the world created by Africans, Europeans, and Indigenous Americans from the sixteenth century–when European expansion into the Atlantic basin began in earnest–through the American Revolution, when the thirteen colonies united in a revolt against Britain. This revolt would usher in an era of state-building in the Atlantic and signal the beginning of the end of Europe’s imperial power in the Americas. Together we will investigate how people, pathogens, plants, animals, labor systems, ideas, technologies, and institutions across a vast geographic expanse shaped the history of the thirteen colonies that created the United States of America, and then we will explore the nation’s early development.

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Instructor: Paige Glotzer

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: American political, economic and social development from the Civil War to the present.

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Instructor: Joseph Dennis

MWF 11:00-11:50AM

Description: Survey of major developments in Chinese history from 1500 B.C. to the founding of the Communist state in 1949. Emphasis on patterns and themes; equal time devoted to the classical and traditional period and the modern era.

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Instructor: Viren Murthy

TR 4:00-5:15PM

Description: Survey of major cultural, social, political and economic developments in Japanese history from ancient to recent times.

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Instructor: Stephen Kantrowitz

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: This course is organized around a central and continuing question in American life: Who is an American? How have laws, social movements, and individuals answered that question from the Revolution to the present? Through a mixture of lectures, discussions, and other activities, we will investigate key moments when these questions have reverberated through issues of citizenship, migration, settlement, conquest, Native resistance and sovereignty, slavery, freedom, war, and politics.

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Instructor: Marc Kleijwegt

MWF 8:50-9:40AM

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.).

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Instructor: Elizabeth Lapina

TR 8:00-9:15AM

Description: From the later Roman Empire to the end of the Middle Ages.

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Instructor: Lee Wandel

TR 8:00-9:15AM

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.

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Instructor: Brandon Bloch

MWF 9:55-10:45AM

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.

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Instructor: Khaled Esseissah

MW 2:30-3:45PM

Description: Explores the interplay between Africa and the World from the 19th century to the present, covering subjects such as the slave- trade, repatriation, Africanizing of culture in the Americas and Europe, the spread and revival of world religions, colonialism, global capitalism, the rise of global popular culture such as pop music and video films, environmental concerns and global epidemics.

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Instructor: James Sweet

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: Introduction to major themes in world history. Such themes might include: empire and imperialism, environmental impacts, global trade and globalization, war, migration, gender, race, religion, nationalism, class, and the like.

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Instructor: Michael Martoccio

MW 4:00-5:15PM

Description: Introductory examination of the role of war and peace in human history from the earliest forms of organized violence to the 21st century “War on Terror. Rather than center on tactics, key battles, or even particular critical conflicts, instead focuses on how different military cultures and technologies emerged over time across the globe. Explores how organized violence shaped not just the lives of soldiers, but all members of society by examining key pieces of popular culture including poetry, propaganda, music, movies, and social media. Takes a deliberately global approach by examining the connections and commonalities of war across different world regions.

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Instructor: April Haynes

MW 8:00-9:15AM

Description: This course surveys the history of women and gender from the ancient world to the modern period. It approaches the study of women and gender through the lens of what historians call “the unpredictable past. It encourages each of us to examine the assumptions we may hold about women, gender, and history. Rather than imagining timeless male dominance, we will consider the changing contours of multiple power systems. We will search for clues about how a given society defined women including whether they were part of a binary gender system or something more complex. And we will ask how diverse women made history, even when oppressive social structures prevented them from making it exactly as they wished.

Learning women’s and gender history is inspirational and full of surprises. It can also be uncomfortable. It means confronting hard realities, including sexual and gender-based violence, colonialism, slavery, and other forms of exploitation. It requires interpreting sources produced by people whose values may conflict with our own. More fundamentally, it involves searching for truth amidst competing historical accounts. Historians don’t just describe the past; we use evidence to debate it and so will you. Sometimes the best available evidence will support the least appealing version of events.

The reward will be a thorough understanding of the gender systems that have shaped today’s world. For those who long to create a better future, grappling with history affirms the certainty of change and suggests useful models. The course concludes by exploring modern visions of gender justice, the challenges activists have faced in pursuing them, and the strategies which have/have not been effective.

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Instructor: Ashley Brown

TR 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.

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Instructor: Daniel Stolz

MWF 11:00-11:50AM (MW-In Person, F-Online)

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.

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Instructor: Allison Powers Useche

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM

Description: Explores the history of places that have been called the American West before 1850. We start with Indigenous occupation; continue with European invasion and the creation of two new nations, Mexico and the U.S.; and end with U.S. conquest. We watch Indian lands becoming the object of Spanish, French, and English empires, and then see European incursions giving way to the hopes of new nation-states and newly empowered Indian peoples like Lakotas and Comanches. After studying the trails and trades that brought newcomers west, we reach key converging events: U.S. seizure of the Mexican North, resolution of the Oregon boundary dispute, discovery of western gold, West Coast arrival of Chinese immigrants, and Mormon exodus to the Great Basin. We use economic, environmental, political, cultural, and social analyses, and we attend to the dreams of many westerners: of North American, Latin American, European, African, and Asian origin or descent, and of all genders and class statuses.

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Instructor: Vaneesa Cook

TR 9:30-10:45AM

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Instructor: Cindy I-Fen Cheng

M 1:20-3:15PM

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Instructor: Khaled Esseissah

M 8:50-10:45AM

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Instructor: Francine Hirsch

F 1:20-3:15PM

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Instructor: Leonora Neville

W 1:20-3:15PM

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Instructor: Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

MW 2:30-3:45PM

Description: What comes to mind when you think of “wisdom”? Perhaps you think of virtues like insight, good judgement, and serenity. Or perhaps you have an image of a saintly religious figure, an inspiring political leader, or even someone close to you like a beloved grandparent, teacher, or coach, who seems to greet even the most difficult situations with an unflappable steadiness, acumen, and deep humanity.

While the images of wisdom may vary, it is widely assumed that — whatever it is and whoever embodies it — wisdom is something timeless and absolute. However, conceptions of wisdom can vary dramatically depending on their historical contexts. Another way of putting this is that wisdom has a history.

This course examines the history of ideas about and quests for wisdom in American history. We will investigate how some of the most pressing ethical, epistemological, and socio-political questions that we grapple with today presented themselves to Americans in the past. Because American observers have consistently looked to other cultures and historical periods for guidance (whether ancient Greece or the Middle East of biblical times, or the worlds of Confucius and Buddha in ancient Asia), students will also see how an “American” history of wisdom is by its very definition a trans-geographic, trans-temporal history.

This course will explore: the distinction between wisdom and knowledge; contested notions of wisdom as achieved through self-reflection vs. social engagement (i.e. personal contemplation vs. public action); varieties of struggles for wisdom against environmental devastation, social injustice, racism, and sexism; and competing conceptions of what makes a life significant. Along the way, students will not only learn what wisdom meant in the past, they will also have ample opportunities to consider what it can mean for them today.

This course will be discussion-based with some lectures, as well as some group work and experiential learning.

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Instructor: Ulrich Rosenhagen

MWF 11:00-11:50AM

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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. In this seminar we will investigate this image: How did this picture of Sparta emerge and is there any truth behind it? What kind of society was Sparta and how did the views of other Greeks shape what we know about this place? To answer these questions we will examine the structures which shaped Spartan society: their unusual political system, their relationship with dependent populations (helots and perioikoi) and the problems this caused and Sparta’s place in the archaic and classical Greek world (7th-4th centuries BCE). Throughout, using a combination of literary and archaeological sources, we will explore how the “Spartan mirage (the mythologizing representation of the Spartans) has shaped the creation of Spartan history in both the ancient and modern periods.

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Instructor: Mou Banerjee

M 8:50-10:45AM

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Instructor: Emily Callaci

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM

Description: Conduct original historical research and convey the results to others. Through engagement with archival materials, become historical detectives; practice defining important historical questions, collecting and analyzing evidence, presenting original conclusions, and contributing to ongoing discussions. Confer individually with and receive feedback from instructors to improve skills of historical analysis and communication in both written and spoken formats.

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Instructor: Marcella Hayes

W 8:50-10:45AM

Description: Conduct original historical research and convey the results to others. Through engagement with archival materials, become historical detectives; practice defining important historical questions, collecting and analyzing evidence, presenting original conclusions, and contributing to ongoing discussions. Confer individually with and receive feedback from instructors to improve skills of historical analysis and communication in both written and spoken formats.

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Instructor: Stephen Kantrowitz

T 1:20-3:15PM

Description: If you grew up in what is today the United States (or in many other places around the world), your home town was once a Native American nation’s homeland. This course teaches you to think historically about that fact, to do historical research related to it, and make historical arguments about it by investigating the history of your particular home place and the ways it has been transformed by its encounter with the United States and other colonial powers.

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Instructor: Mary Lou Roberts

W 1:20-3:15PM

Description: This course will introduce students to historical research by exploring the topic of women warriors in Europe. The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has produced an image some still find unfamiliar: women engaged in combat. In fact, the woman warrior has existed as long as war itself. We will explore these women warriors, mostly in the two world wars in Europe. Some questions we will ask are: What happens when the industrialization of war enables women to fight in combat roles? What special challenges did women face on the battlefield or in resistance movements? How did they negotiate their identities as both women and warriors? We will probe memoirs, diaries, and oral histories as well as historical narratives. Some themes we shall explore: French, German and Hungarian women in the Resistance, Soviet women pilots and machine gunners; and the U.S. Women’s Auxiliary Army (WACs). Students will find a wealth of materials on women warriors to research through a guided trip to the Historical Society.

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Instructor: Gloria Whiting

T 11:00AM-12:55PM

Description: The title of this class on the American Revolution is intentionally plural: American Revolutions. Most people think of the American Revolution as a single event: an orderly, high-minded struggle in which a united American people sought liberation from the British. This, though, does not align with what historians know of the past. The Revolution was a multi-sided conflict: Patriots and Loyalists squared off in civil war; Euro-Americans fought against Native people; folks of low social status stood up to the elite; and African Americans strove for independence. We will consider together the many participants in the American Revolution and the different objectives those participants had, taking into account both the formative actions of those remembered as “founders” and the ways in which ordinary people shaped the course of events. We will also step back and assess the Revolution’s ripples around the globe. Here, too, it makes sense to think of American Revolutions in the plural, as the American Revolution sparked a series of revolutions that transformed the Americas from a region largely ruled by Europe to one filled with nation states imbued to varying degrees with notions of popular sovereignty and universal rights. Through a variety of readings, research projects, and writing assignments, we will together examine the wide-ranging meanings and consequences of the American Revolution.

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Instructor: Brandon Bloch

MW 4:00-5:15PM

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 seminar 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.

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Instructor: TBA

T 3:30-5:25PM

Description: Conduct original historical research and convey the results to others. Through engagement with archival materials, become historical detectives; practice defining important historical questions, collecting and analyzing evidence, presenting original conclusions, and contributing to ongoing discussions. Confer individually with and receive feedback from instructors to improve skills of historical analysis and communication in both written and spoken formats.

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Instructor: TBA

M 1:20-3:15PM

Description: Conduct original historical research and convey the results to others. Through engagement with archival materials, become historical detectives; practice defining important historical questions, collecting and analyzing evidence, presenting original conclusions, and contributing to ongoing discussions. Confer individually with and receive feedback from instructors to improve skills of historical analysis and communication in both written and spoken formats.

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Instructor: Allison Powers Useche

W 1:20-3:15PM

Description: Conduct original historical research and convey the results to others. Through engagement with archival materials, become historical detectives; practice defining important historical questions, collecting and analyzing evidence, presenting original conclusions, and contributing to ongoing discussions. Confer individually with and receive feedback from instructors to improve skills of historical analysis and communication in both written and spoken formats.

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Instructor: TBA

T 8:50-10:45AM

Description: Individual enslaved people are among the most invisible of historical subjects. Millions of people were enslaved in the British Atlantic world, including North America, yet most have left no written records and we do not even know most of their names. This class will use enslaved people in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries as case studies of how to research and write seemingly impossible histories, exploring how historians can research individuals, places, contexts, and a range of sources in order to craft short pieces of historical writing about those who have disappeared from view.

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Instructor: Florence Hsia

TR 12:00-12:50PM

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 Babylonian astrology and ancient Greek mythology and philosophy, then follow the movement of the Greek classical tradition 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 our ideas of the ‘natural’, scientific observation, and experiment, as well as into our expectations of scientific knowledge and the scientific enterprise. Suitable for both science and humanities majors. Earn either Humanities (enroll in Hist Sci 201) or Natural Sciences (enroll in ILS 201) credits.

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Instructor: TBA

M 1:20-3:15PM

Description: Conduct original historical research in the fields of history of science, medicine, or technology and convey the results to others. Become historical detectives through engagement with archival materials and disciplinary methodologies in the histories of science, medicine and technology; practice defining important historical questions, collecting and analyzing evidence, presenting original conclusions, and contributing to ongoing discussions. Confer individually with and receive feedback from instructors to improve skills of historical analysis and communication in written and other formats.

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Instructor: TBA

MW 8:50-9:40AM

Description: A survey of different conceptions of how the body as a site of sickness has been understood from Antiquity to contemporary medicine. 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.

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Instructor: Tony Michels

MWF 1:20-2:10PM

Description: Surveys American Jews from the eighteenth century until after WW II, examining political behavior (radicalism, liberalism, and nationalism), class formation, social mobility, culture, inter-ethnic group relations, religion, and problems in community building.

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Instructor: Marcella Hayes

MW 4:00-5:15PM

Description: An introductory survey of colonial Latin American history, from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth century. Examines developments in Spanish and Portuguese America by reading both secondary and primary sources. Beginning with fifteenth-century Europe, the Americas and West Africa, discusses European expansion and invasion, first contacts between the so-called Old and the so-called New Worlds, as well as the role of religion, sexuality, gender, labor and production, trade and exchange, and politics. Each week, a central question will address the topic for that week. Become familiar with and contextualize key processes and events in colonial Latin American history and learn about the nature of colonization. Identify and evaluate historical arguments. Practice interpreting primary sources and building historical arguments about them.

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Instructor: Michael Cullinane

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: As an introduction to Southeast Asia, covers the ethnic, cultural, religious, and political histories of the region from the classical states period to the present, with an emphasis on colonialism, nationalism, decolonization, and the emergence of modern political and social systems into the 21st century, including an exposure to region’s contemporary literature.

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Instructor: Patrick Iber

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: Latin American culture and society from an interdisciplinary perspective; historical developments from pre-Columbian times to the present; political movements; economic problems; social change; ecology in tropical Latin America; legal systems; literature and the arts; cultural contrasts involving the US and Latin America; land reform; labor movements; capitalism, socialism, imperialism; mass media.

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Instructor: Finn Enke

T 1:20-3:15PM

Description: Topics in the major issues and themes in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, considered across race, class, nationality, and time.

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Instructor: Pablo Gómez

TR 1:00-2:15PM

Description: Surveys the medical and scientific constructions of categories of race, placing the development of racial theories in a broad social and political context. Pays particular attention to the importance of racial science in slavery and colonialism.

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Instructor: Neil Kodesh

MW 9:55-10:45AM (IN PERSON) & F (ONLINE)

Description: This course is designed to be a multidisciplinary introduction to the history, cultures, and politics of Africa. It is available to students as African Cultural Studies 277, Afro-American Studies 277, Anthropology 277, Geography 277, History 277, Political Science 277, or Sociology 277. 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.

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Instructor: Daniel Stolz

M 8:50-10:45AM

Description: Intensive exploration of issues in the history of science. Emphasis on developing critical thinking about science through formal and informal writing.

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Instructor: Sarah Thal

W 12:05-1:50PM

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

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Instructor: Claire Taylor

MW 2:30-3:45PM

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.

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Instructor: Richard Keyser

TR 1:00-2:15PM

Description: 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, complex relations between Europeans and their environments from antiquity to the twenty-first century offer instructive comparison with American and current global environmental concerns. Approaching Mediterranean and Western civilizations from an environmental viewpoint also offers fresh perspective on these enduring cultures.

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Instructor: Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM

Description: Surveys the history of the Caribbean from the 15th century to the present. Emphasizes the importance of colonialism, commodity-based capitalism, globalization, slavery, and forced labor for the modeling of the region’s social, economic, cultural, and political structures. Pay particular attention to the resilient, creative and resourceful ways in which Caribbean people have responded to these adverse conditions. Examine the circumstances that have shaped migrations from the region to the United States and Canada during the 20th and 21st centuries. Study how these diasporic communities have created social spaces in these two countries that have remained closely linked to the Caribbean through economic, political, and filial networks.

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Instructor: Daniel Ussishkin

LECTURES ONLINE, DISCUSSION SECTIONS IN PERSON

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

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Instructor: Mary Lou Roberts

TR 1:00-2:15PM

Description: The Second World War is arguably the most important global event in the twentieth century. It brought nearly the entire world into its vortex of violence, hatred and industrial killing. It was a racial war begun by Germany and Japan in their quests for dominance. It was also a total war which demanded complete loyalty to the state and which consumed the natural, material and human resources of combattant nations. This course will explore these three themes of violence, racism and total war during the years 1939-1945. Lectures, screenings and readings will emphasize the war as a turning point in global politics; the role of leaders such as Hitler, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Charles de Gaulle, the lived experience of war and occupation for soldiers, civilians, and prisoners, and the execution of Nazi genocide and Japanese atrocities. During weekly screenings of popular films, students will come to distinguish “popular from “historical memoriy of the Second World War, and gain critical distance on how the war has been remembered personally, officially, and in American culture.

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Instructor: Laird Boswell

MW 4:00-5:15PM

Description: Political, cultural, and social history of Europe from the Second World War to the present.

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Instructor: Dana Landress

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM

Description: Analyze historical factors impacting healthcare cost, access, and services with focus on social determinants of health in the United States across the long 20th century. Evaluate current state of the field through literature reviews and conversations with guest lecturers. Apply historical analysis in consideration of current disparities in health resources. Produce original research project and policy proposal at intersection of public health, medical history, and health law and policy.

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Instructor: Giuliana Chamedes

TR 9:30-10:45AM

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

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Instructor: Alfred McCoy

TR 2:30-3:45PM

Description: Designed for students with some background in U.S. history or international studies, the course probes the global dynamics of the Cold War, from its origins during World War II through the end of the Soviet empire in 1991. Not only did the Cold War split most of the world into communist and capitalist blocs, but it also penetrated deep inside many societies, shaping art, culture, electoral politics, and mass consciousness.

After exploring the Cold War’s key aspects such as nuclear warfare, espionage, and mind control, the course tracks its international history through three main phases. First, following the fall of the Iron Curtain across Europe in the late 1940s, the rival superpowers competed for dominion over this divided continent through espionage, cultural display, and deployment of nuclear-armed military forces. After the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 brought the superpowers to the brink of nuclear war, the Cold War’s superpower rivalry shifted to the Third World, marked by a massive surrogate war in Vietnam, CIA regime change in Indonesia and Chile, and Soviet intervention to end the Prague Spring. In the Cold War’s final phase after 1975, superpower surrogate warfare coincided with the primal politics of developing societies to produce devastating conflicts on three continents–in southern Africa, Central America, and Central Asia. Bloodied by Islamic resistance during its decade-long occupation of Afghanistan, the Red Army withdrew in defeat and the Soviet Union collapsed just two years later as 22 satellite states and captive republics broke free from Moscow’s steely grip.

Through the sum of such content, students should finish the course with knowledge about a key facet of U.S. foreign policy and a lasting ability to analyze future international developments. Beyond such empiricism, the course will impart sharpened analytical abilities, refined research skills, improved oral presentations, and better writing skills.

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Instructor: TBA

R 3:30-5:25PM

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.

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Instructor: Judith Houck

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: What is disease? Who decides? What are the consequences of labeling a behavior a disease? Can disease be a tool of liberation? Can disease be an instrument of oppression? How do race, class, and gender affect our understandings of and experiences with illness? How have diseases shaped American history? Illustrates the various ways disease operates in America and examines the role of disease on at least four levels–political, social, cultural, and personal–to demonstrate that diseases are not merely bodily afflictions; they are also participants in the body politic. Each disease covered is chosen to illustrate a different point about the social and cultural lives of disease in the history of the United States. Though diseases are covered in a chronological fashion, this coverage is not meant as a narrative history of disease.

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Instructor: Eric Carlsson

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: Between the late Middle Ages and the era of democratic revolutions Western Christianity saw a series of sweeping changes that altered its global profile and helped form the modern world – examines some of these shifts and their impact. Questions explored include: Why did the Reformations of the 16th century occur and with what effects on people’s lives and on early modern societies? What was the relationship between European colonization, the Atlantic slave trade, new theories of race, and the spread of Christianity to the “New World”? How was the Christian religion resisted, received, and reshaped by Native Americans and people of African descent? What sparked movements of reform and renewal – including new Catholic religious orders and the Protestant Evangelical Awakening – and with what consequences for modern Christianity? How did the nature of Christian belief and identity change under the impact of religious conflict, political revolution, and new intellectual movements?

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Instructor: Francine Hirsch

MWF 9:55-10:45AM

Description: Major political, economic and social developments in Russia since 1917.

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Instructor: Karl Shoemaker

TR 1:00-2:15PM

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

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Instructor: Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

R 3:30-5:25PM

Description: A historical introduction to the Puerto Rican experience, from island to mainland. Varieties of colonial rule, social institutions, cultural processes, and ethnic and national identity. Migration to the U.S. and social dynamics of stateside communities.

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Instructor: TBA

MW 4:00-5:15PM

Description: Therevada Buddhism in Southeast Asia; ideas and basic tenets; history and its impact on social and political institutions; the monastic order and relations with the states; roles in the early history up to the present; focus on Thailand, Burma and Cambodia.

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Instructor: Matt Villeneuve

TR 4:00-5:15PM

Description: Survey of interactions among people and natural environments from before European colonization to present. Equal attention to problems of ecological change, human ideas, and uses of nature and history of conservation and environmental public policy.

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Instructor: Ashley Brown

R 1:20-3:15PM

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Instructor: Tony Michels

T 1:20-3:15PM

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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

W 11:00AM-12:55PM

Description: Colloquium for thesis writers & honors thesis writers.

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• 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
  Instructor: Daniel Berman
  Please contact the Department of Educational Policy Studies with questions about this course.
• History/Asian Languages & Cultures/Political Science 255: Introduction to East Asian Civilizations
  Instructor: Anatoly Detwyler
  Please contact the Department of Asian Languages & Cultures with questions about this course.
• History/Political Science/Community & Environmental Sociology/Sociology 259: Wisconsin Idea, Past & Present
  Instructor: Harry Brighouse
  Please contact the Department of Sociology with questions about this course.
• History/Legal Studies 261: American Legal History to 1860
  Instructor: Richard Keyser
  Please contact the Legal Studies Program with questions about this course.
• History of Science/Horticulture 301: (Horti)Cultural Roots: Human Histories of Plants & Science
  Instructor: Reba Luiken
  Please contact the Department of Horticulture with questions about this course.
• History of Science 350: Racism, Colonialism, and the Environmental Sciences
  Instructor: Elizabeth Hennessy
  Please contact the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies with questions about this course.
• History/English/Religious Studies 360: The Anglo-Saxons
  Instructor: Jordan Zweck
  Please contact the Department of English with questions about this course.
• History of Science/Social & Administrative Pharmacy 401: History of Pharmacy
  Instructor: Lucas Richert
  Please contact the School of Pharmacy with questions about this course.
• History/Educational Policy Studies 412: History of American Education
  Instructor: Daniel Berman
  Please contact the Department of Educational Policy Studies with questions about this course.
• History of Science/History/Medical History and Bioethics 508: Health, Disease, & Healing II
  Instructor: Richard Keller
  Please contact the Department of Medical History & Bioethics with questions about this course.
• History/Jewish Studies 518: Anti-Semitism in European Culture
  Instructor: Chad Goldberg
  Please contact the Center for Jewish Studies with questions about this course.
• History of Science/Gender & Women’s Studies 537: Childbirth in the U.S.
  Instructor: Annie Menzel
  Please contact the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies with questions about this course.