Undergraduate Courses

Instructor: Francis Russo

MW 2:30-3:45PM

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

Instructor: Simon Balto

TR 11:00-12:15PM

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

Instructor: Charles Kim

T 1:20-3:15PM

Description: Korea has a rich history that provides a fascinating vantage point into colonialism, the Cold War, memory politics, and other major processes in East Asian and global history. This course is an exploration of major topics in Korea’s culture, society, and politics in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The course consists of four units. Unit 1 examines the origins of Korea and the onset of the modern era, with a focus on colonialism. Unit 2 explores the formation of competing North Korean and South Korean nation-states and the Korean War. The class turns in Unit 3 to a consideration of popular experiences under authoritarian rule, amidst rapid, Cold War 1 industrialization in the two Koreas. The final part of the course explores social realities in the global era.

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.

Instructor: James Sweet

TR 1:00-2:15AM

Description: The purpose of this course is to introduce you to major themes in world history from the dawn of man until the present day, with a particular focus on how we got to where we are today. The course is split into three units. The first unit—Guns, Germs, and Steel—takes its name from the book that will loosely guide of our discussions. The constitution of the world that we live in—the haves and the have-nots, the “rich” and the “poor”—is not random or accidental. Human history was, and continues to be, influenced by forces that are often beyond our control—geography, climate, disease, and so on. In short, the question we will be trying to answer in the first part of the course is: Why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents, and how does this impact us today?

The second unit—Contextualizing “The Rise of the West”—compares and contrasts the economies and societies of Ming China with those of imperial Spain, emphasizing cross-cultural contacts in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, respectively. We will examine the social and cultural influences that shaped each of these societies during their eras of “discovery.” We will also look at long-term trends in the economies of each society. Many scholars argue that China dominated the world economy until at least the middle of the eighteenth century. This argument destabilizes the idea of Western dominance since 1500 and calls into question the very notion of the untrammeled “rise of the West.” By carefully examining the Spanish conquest of the Americas and its impacts in the broader world, we will be able to better contextualize the historical significance of 1492.

The third unit—The Emergence of a “Modern” World?—deals with the influence of the Christian, capitalist West on the world stage over the past 200 or so years. While a narrative history of the world will emerge, our primary concern will be the “—isms” that were by-products of the emerging “modern” world. These include capitalism, industrialism, Marxism, racism, sexism, imperialism, nationalism, fascism, and so on. Our goal will be to understand how these concepts have informed the histories of peoples and nations in a variety of comparative settings. Finally, in the last part of the semester we will examine the resurgence of far-right populism around the world, looking back to interwar Europe to better understand histories of “tradition” and “modernity” that have become so divisive. We will try to determine whether these concepts have any real meaning. Is Fascism resurgent? What does this mean for “liberal democracy”?

Instructor: Devin Kennedy

TR 9:55-10:45AM

Description: This course introduces the history of the computer and its social consequences from the 1940s to the present day. Over the course of the semester, students will become familiar with major developments in computer science and technology in their historical contexts, as well as recent trends in computing and society. We learn about machines, but emphasize the study of people: the institutions, scientists, workers, and social movements that invented, facilitated, and transformed digital technology in the 20th and early 21st century.

Instructor: Allison Powers Useche

MW 9:55-10:45AM

Description: This course provides an introduction to histories of places that have been called the American West, focusing on the period since 1850. We begin where textbooks often end, when the United States surveyed a West that had only recently become American in name and worked to make it American in fact. Moving through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the present day, we will consider how attention to the West as a place both real and imagined allows us to rethink United States history more broadly—and how US history represents just one facet the region’s pasts. Along the way we will encounter histories that defy common myths about the American West, including Native nations and peoples who do not disappear, cowboys as multi-racial waged laborers on strike, Pacific worlds of the United States Empire, the architecture of policies criminalizing migration, nuclear borderlands, and the military origins of the internet, to name only a few examples. We approach all of this from a number of perspectives, using ways of thinking developed by historians of law, political economy, capitalism, race and ethnicity, Indigeneity, gender and sexuality, colonialism, migration, science and technology, and the environment. As we investigate how people, ideas, infrastructures, climate catastrophes, and US interventions across the globe have transformed a region repeatedly redrawn, we will consider the ongoing legacies of the past—and the stories we tell about it—in the American West today.

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: Daniel Williford

TR 9:30-10:45AM

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

Instructor: 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:  James Sweet

TR 9:30-10:45

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

Instructor: Daniel Stolz

TR 1:00-2:15PM

Description: The Ottoman Empire was one of history’s most enduring states. Founded in the thirteenth century, it ruled most of the Middle East and North Africa, along with much of Europe, from the sixteenth century until the dawn of the twentieth. More than just an opportunity to learn about the Middle East, therefore, Ottoman history offers a chance to study the emergence of the modern world. This course takes a thematic approach. Topics will include climate change, slavery and its abolition, gender, disease, migration, globalization, nationalism, genocide, military and educational reform, and constitutionalism. The course also addresses the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of the Turkish Republic, with emphasis on the remembrance of the Ottoman era in modern Turkish politics, literature, and film.

Instructor: Eric Carlsson

TR 8:50-10:45AM

Description: Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries western Europe saw a proliferation of new forms of religious belief and identity as well as the spread of alternatives to existing religious traditions, such as agnosticism and atheism. In this course we will explore these developments and their impact on a range of individuals. Central questions we will ask include:

• How have historians explained major shifts in religious belief and identity among western Europeans between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries?
• How have the meanings of “belief” and “unbelief” changed over time?
• What historical conditions and experiences have led Europeans to transition from one set of religious or philosophical beliefs, allegiances, and identities to another?
• Are there common routes by which individuals have taken on a new religious identity and belief system (conversion), abandoned a set of beliefs and commitments (deconversion), or otherwise changed their relationship to a religious tradition?
• What are some of the main ways in which people have narrated their spiritual and intellectual journeys?

This course will equip you to think historically about these questions as you learn and practice the skills that historians employ to do their work.

Instructor: Kathryn Ciancia

TR 11:00-12:15PM

Description: This class introduces students to the rewarding work of historians through an in-depth investigation into a difficult, controversial, and often painful, topic: the Eastern Front during World War II. We’ll begin by discussing what it means to “think like a historian” and how we should sensitively approach this particular topic. We’ll then dive into three weeks of primary source analysis, looking at the experiences of a range of people under Nazi and Soviet rule. In the third part of the class, we’ll explore three key questions that historians continue to debate: How did the Holocaust happen in eastern Europe? To what extent did local people collaborate? And can we conceive of German victimhood? Finally, we’ll discuss questions of memory and both legal and historical judgment. The last third of the class will focus primarily on your individual research papers. In sum, the topic of the Eastern Front acts as a lens through which we can explore issues of collaboration, resistance, memory, trauma, and historical empathy, as well as wider questions about how studying history can help us to make sense of the world in which we live.

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: Juan Fernandez

TR 11:00-12:15PM

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

MW 2:30-3:45PM

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

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

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

Instructor: Paul Grant

M 8:50-10:45AM

Description: 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: Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

TR 1:00-2:15PM

Description: The War of 1898 reshaped the international geopolitical order. It was a global phenomenon that allowed the nascent United States Empire to stretch its arms around the world and take Spain’s former position as the “empire where the sun never sets.” While this seminar uses a transnational lens, it focuses on the origins, developments, and aftermath of the war from the perspectives of Caribbean peoples. It explores the ways that Cuba and Puerto Rico went from being Spain’s last two colonial possessions in Latin America to attaining independence after three decades of war, in the case of Cuba, while Puerto Rico is still the world’s oldest colony.

As a history seminar, this course will encourage and help you develop critical thinking skills. The historical trade is not based on accessing the past through documents, but on using our imaginations to craft narratives while using a wide range of sources to sustain our arguments. We will discuss and think about strategies to write our ideas in an accessible way for our readers. To do so, students will experiment with different methods from the historians’ intellectual tool kit: scrutinizing primary sources, analyzing content, and crafting narratives.

As a seminar, the course will be interactive, and student-scholars are expected to actively participate in the collective production of knowledge. In every class, there will be time allocated to discuss that day’s topic and the assigned readings, as well as the research process. That is, Prof. Meléndez-Badillo expects that student-scholars will interrogate how the sources were written, their intended audiences, and how they can critically engage with them to formulate their own arguments.

Instructor: Viren Murthy

W 3:30-5:25PM

Description: Postcolonial is often used as an adjective used to describe a historical period after independence from colonialism. In this context, we can speak of postcolonial Africa, India, Pakistan, Korea and a host of other colonized nations. However, “postcolonialism” usually refers to a theory that questions the Eurocentric assumptions of anti-colonial movements. One might say that postcolonial theorists criticize anti-colonial movements for reproducing the conditions of colonialism and creating a condition of “self-colonization.” A major issue in postcolonial theory concerns the problem of nationalism. The Asian nation-state has been both the vehicle for independence and consequently a symbol of struggle against Eurocentrism, but at the same time, postcolonialists have seen the nation as a medium of self-colonialization. Postcolonial theorists have a conflicted relation to the nation, criticizing it on the one hand, and on the other, not always clear about the alternatives.

Instructor: Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

TR 2:30-3:45PM

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Instructor: Francis Russo

M 8:50-10:45AM

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Instructor: Daniel Stolz

TR 9:30-10:45AM

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Instructor: Charlotte Whatley

W 3:30-5:25PM

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Instructor: Marcella Hayes

M 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: April Haynes

W 11:00AM-12:55PM

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Instructor: Yang Li

MW 9:55-10:45AM

 Description: Greetings! And welcome to HSCI/ILS 202: a course that treats the rise and development of the modern sciences from ca. 1600 – 1900. The course surveys some of the major scientific achievements of the modern age including Newton’s elaboration of celestial mechanics, the establishment of the science of thermodynamics, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the germ theory of disease. In covering these topics, we will look at the strategies that different figures used to ask questions and find out answers about nature. We will consider why they believed their approaches were reliable and “scientific,” while also highlighting that these approaches differed – sometimes drastically – according to time and place. The sciences, like any other human activity, are grounded historically in specific social and cultural contexts. With this in mind, we will tackle such messy topics as the relationship between science and religion, the influence of institutions on determining what “counts” as scientific knowledge, the political and economic motives that often drive scientific research, and the importation of culturally laden biases into the practice of science and the theorizing of nature. Such topics remind us that the boundaries we have drawn to define what is science (and what is not) are not stable, and will continue to be contested today just as they were in the past.

Instructor: Daniel Williford

R 1:20-3:15PM

Description: This course introduces students to the history of modern China and its engagement with the wider world by examining significant scientific objects that have shaped historical trajectories and left profound imprints on society, ecosystems, and the conceptualization of non-Eurocentric modernity. By viewing science and technology as more than mere amalgamations of theories, experiments, and mechanics, the course emphasizes historically rooted phenomena such as solar eclipses, herbal medicine, public hygiene, hydroelectricity, atomic bombs and the rise of red engineers. These scientific objects reflect human intellectual exploration of the natural world and are deeply embedded in interpretative frameworks, power dynamics, and everyday lived experiences. Building on critical reading and analysis of scholarly works and primary sources— including scientific reports, government documents, newspaper articles, and oral histories— students will develop a comprehensive understanding of how techno-scientific developments both influence and are shaped by cultural, political, and social contexts in China and within the broader framework of the long twentieth century.

Instructor: Suzanna Schulert

MW 12:05-12:55PM

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

Instructor: Tony Michels

T 3:30-5:25

Description: This course 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. It uses lectures, films, music, and readings to explore the development of American popular culture in the 20th and 21st centuries through the experiences of Jews, as performers, writers, and businesspeople. Using Jews as the primary, though not only, case, the course examines themes in the history of immigration, race, Americanization, youth culture, and business. By examining processes of cultural integration and differentiation of Jews in US society, the course attempts to address broad questions about the nature of American national identity.

Instructor: April Haynes

T 3:30-5:25

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Instructor: Matt Villenueve

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM

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Instructor: Christopher Herde

MWF 12:05-12:55PM

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Instructor: Patrick-William Travens

TR 4:00-5:15

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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: TBD

TR 9:30–10:45

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Instructor: Michael Cullinane

TR 9:30-10:45

Description: From 1975 to the late 1990s, over two million Southeast Asians fled from the three former French colonies frequently referred to collectively as Indochina: Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Over 1.3 million of these migrants came as refugees to the United States and added four new major ethnic groups to American society: Hmong, Khmer, Lao, and Vietnamese, including among them ethnic Chinese and the children of American military personnel (frequently referred to as “Amerasians”). This course is intended to provide a better understanding of the conditions that led these people, and thousands of others, to flee their homelands in Southeast Asia and eventually take refuge and start new lives in the US, as well as in the other countries that offered them asylum (including Canada, Australia, and France).

The course will be divided into four parts and will emphasize the Cold War conflicts and wars that devastated these three countries and resulted in the flight and resettlement of these refugees beginning in 1975. Part 1, Peoples of the Indochina Countries, will introduce the themes of the course and provide basic information on the histories, cultures, and social organizational patterns of the four ethnic groups that are the focus of the course: Hmong, Khmer, Lao, and Vietnamese. Part 2, Colonial Origins of Conflicts in Indochina, will concentrate on the modern history and changing societies of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, with an emphasis on the last decades of French colonial rule, the Japanese occupation during the Pacific War, and the nationalist, revolutionary, and global (Cold War) struggles and upheavals that took place in these three countries, especially from the 1920s through the 1950s. In addition to discussing the larger contexts of the Cold War, this section will emphasize the significant social, economic, political, and geopolitical developments that took place in French Indochina during the first half of the 20th century. Part 3, The “Cold” Wars in Indochina, will survey the violent conflicts of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with emphasis on the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, the political alignments (international and domestic) that these conflicts created, the traumatic aftermath of US withdrawal and Communist victories, and the post-1975 developments and continuing conflicts that further devastated all three countries. Part 4, Disorderly Departures: Refugees and Migrants, will concentrate on the flight of thousands of people from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos from 1975 to the 1990s. It will attempt to describe and analyze the mass exodus of refugees and migrants and the global efforts to facilitate their survival and resettlement. Lectures and readings will concentrate on the reasons for seeking asylum (or continued resistance), the chaos and hardship of the escape, the difficult realities of camp life, and the mechanisms of resettlement in the US. This section will also explore some aspects of the early resettlement experiences of refugees and migrants in US during the end of the 20th century.

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: Kathryn Sanchez

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: Patrick Iber

TR 9:30-10:45 AM

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Instructor: Monica White

MW 12:05–12:55

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Instructor: Marcella Hayes

W 12:05-1:50PM

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

Instructor: Marcella Hayes

NO SET TIME

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

Instructor: Elizabeth Lapina

TR 1:00-2:15PM

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: Max Felker-Kantor

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: This course examines twentieth century African-American history, beginning with its roots in rural society at the turn of the twentieth century. The African American experience encompasses the survival strategies of black people as they moved from country to town and city. It includes the cultural innovations made in response to changing conditions. The critical events studied include world wars, the development of an urban culture, the evolution of music and art, politics and protest, and the impact of African-American life and thought on modernity in the United States. Students will become acquainted with the momentous developments of the last century, including industrial and demographic transition, agricultural change in the South, the impact of world wars and the Cold War, and key events and issues of a long era of civil rights insurgency. Black radicalism is explored, as well as the policies of the federal government, the impact of world affairs, and the role of gender. The activities and life stories of individual participants and broad historical forces are considered. Students will further develop their analytical skills as they familiarize themselves with this history, a powerful tool for understanding the totality of American life.

Instructor: Emily Callaci

TR 9:30-10:45AM

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: Judd Kinzley

TR 11:00-12:15PM

Description: How should we think about China’s “rise” in the years following the death of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1976? There is a general assumption that China’s emergence as a global economic, political, and military power in recent decades is a product of the rejection of Maoism along with the revolutionary ideals propagated by the Chinese Communist Party after their 1949 revolution. While on some level this is certainly true, it is worth considering the ways in which modern China remains rooted in and shaped by Mao’s China. This course seeks to provide students with a deeper understanding of contemporary China by focusing on the country’s history since the Chinese Communist Party’s 1949 revolution. After a very brief history of the pre-1949 period, this course will dive into China’s history in the years following the CCP’s successful revolution, discuss the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolutions, address the changes in China following Mao’s death and the rise of Deng Xiaoping. There are no specific pre-requisites for the class and there are no language requirements for the class. So if you know absolutely nothing about China or Chinese language – DON’T WORRY! This class is not intended to test your abilities to pronounce the names of Chinese historical actors or know unfamiliar Chinese place names. Rather, I hope that this class will give you the tools to understand China’s wider historical context. I will not penalize or make fun of you for mispronunciations and neither will your classmates. I am happy to suggest additional readings if you would like more background on Chinese history – please don’t hesitate to reach out. Some understanding of Chinese history in the years preceding 1949 might be helpful for context. So for those who have not taken the course History 341 (which covers Chinese history from 1800-1949) and are interested in gaining a bit more context, I would recommend that you peruse Jonathan Spence’s Search for Modern China textbook. But again, this is not necessary for the class.

Instructor: John Hall

MW 9:55-10:45 AM

Description: This course surveys the American military experience from the colonial era to the present day. It takes a broad view of military history, examining the influence of warfare on all aspects of American society. We will not omit the traditional mainstays of the field—the study of battles, leaders, and the development of military technology—or domains of military operations, but we will consider them within the broader American experience and in an international context. Ultimately, this course will provide an understanding of how American military organizations and practices have evolved over time, as well as an appreciation of how war has shaped America and, in many regards, defined its interaction with the world.

Instructor: Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

TR 4:00-5:15PM

Description: This course surveys the history of the Caribbean from the 15th century to the present. It 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. It also pays particular attention to the resilient, creative, and resourceful ways in which Caribbean people have responded to these adverse conditions. The course examines the circumstances that have shaped migrations from the region to the United States and Canada 1 2 during the 20th and 21st centuries. Lastly, the course studies 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.

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: 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. This transformative era in international history emerged when the end of World War II coincided with the rapid decolonization of European empires to produce a world divided between two rival superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union. 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, as the Iron Curtain divided Europe during the late 1940s, the rival superpowers competed for dominion over this divided continent through espionage, cultural display, and deployment of nuclear-armed military forces. When the conflict spread around the globe, it was marked by conventional warfare (Korea), communist revolutions (China, Vietnam), counterinsurgency campaigns (Greece, Malaya, and the Philippines), and CIA-sponsored coups (Iran, Guatemala). 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. Rejecting the repressive Cold War politics of their own governments, a younger generation staged mass protests around the globe during the 1960s—including anti-war demonstrations in the U.S., militant protests in Asia and Latin America, and a student uprising that nearly toppled the French government. In the Cold War’s final phase after 1975, superpower surrogate warfare coincided with the 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 grip. To conclude, the course will analyze how this past is shaping a contemporary superpower rivalry called “the New Cold War.” Through the sum of such content, students should finish the course with knowledge about a key facet of U.S. foreign policy, a grasp of “geopolitics” as an analytical tool, and a lasting ability to analyze future international developments. More broadly, the course will impart sharpened analytical abilities, refined research skills, improved oral presentations, and better writing skills.

Instructor: Matt Villenueve

TR 2:30-3:45PM

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

Instructor: 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: Francine Hirsch

TR 11:00-12:15PM

Description:

Instructor: Eric Carlsson

TR 9:30-10:45AM

Description: The Enlightenment is a contested idea not just among scholars but also in wider cultural debates today. What was it? Why did it happen where and when it did? Was there a single Enlightenment or many? Why have some celebrated the Enlightenment as a source of all that’s best in the modern world while others have rejected it as a force for ill? In this course we will ask and answer those questions, among others. We will explore an era (c. 1650-1800) when norms that had shaped European life for many centuries faced unprecedented scrutiny. Long-held ideas about knowledge, nature, religion, politics, ethics, and how society should be ordered were challenged by bold new visions. Through their debates, Enlightenment thinkers and their critics shaped how many people today still think about such things. We will encounter some of the most articulate and influential figures of the time while also considering broader shifts in society, culture, and mentalities. Religion will play a key role in this course. That’s because religion touched most aspects of life in early modern Europe, and the Enlightenment’s central debates turned, directly or indirectly, on ultimate questions to which religious traditions had long given answers. Some thinkers rejected all established religion and sought a secular basis for living in and ordering the world. Others aimed to transform their religious traditions in light of new ideas and circumstances. Critics of various stripes repudiated such attempts and set out alternative paths. This course will equip you to think historically about these developments.

Instructor: Francine Hirsch

TR 11:00-12:15PM

Description: This course surveys the relationship between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world from 1917 to 1991. We will look at the Bolsheviks and their dream of worldwide socialist revolution, the creation of the Soviet socialist state, the postwar transformation of the USSR into a superpower, and the eventual collapse of the Soviet colossus. We will evaluate the diplomatic relations between the USSR and other states, the connections between Soviet domestic and foreign policies, and the movement of culture, ideas, armies, and institutions across borders.

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: Monica Kim

MW 2:30-3:45PM

Description: For the most of the twentieth century, the United States was the globe’s preeminent economic and military power. But how did it use that power? Did it defend democracy around the globe, or undermine it? Did it act altruistically, or in defense of its own interests? This course seeks to give an overview of U.S. foreign policy from the Spanish-American war to the present day. To fully understand the U.S. role on the world stage, we will look at examples of economic, cultural, political, as well as military forms of intervention. We will also examine multiple perspectives on American power: considering it not only from the point of view of U.S. policy elites, but also from soldiers and others tasked with carrying out its policies, as well as by those who managed, resisted, or embraced U.S. rule. The course will feature regular debates on controversial topics designed to provoke careful consideration of the effectiveness of U.S. foreign interventions. It will also give students the opportunity to read original historical documents.

Instructor: Elizabeth Hennessy

MW 2:30-3:45PM

Description: Scientists argue that we have entered 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?

The class is structured around debates about when the Anthropocene began and what it should be called—would Capitalocene or Plantationocene be more appropriate terms? Why have scholars proposed those terms, and what is at stake in using them? Did the human age begin with the evolution of the human species? Is it a modern phenomenon that began with the discovery of the new world, advent of capitalism, or colonial histories of plantation agriculture? Or did this new era begin more recently: during the “Great Acceleration” of urbanization and development during the 20th century, or with the creation of atomic bombs? How can we judge which of these proposed dates is best? Our goal is to understand how and why relationships between people and their environments in each of these moments changed so significantly that they have left permanent marks on the planet. Each of these proposed timelines for dating the beginning of the Anthropocene holds a different explanation for what is causing the global environmental problems we now face, and thus also points to different solutions for how to address the crisis. To create a more sustainable future, we need to understand how and why we got into this global environmental crisis.

Through this class, students will learn about the social, political, and economic processes through which different societies have shaped, and been shaped by, the natural world. Students will gain an understanding of what is at stake in different proposed dates for the beginning of this new geological epoch. They will learn why historical debates about periodization matter for how we understand and live in the world today. Practically, students will gain skills for historical analysis, public communication, and writing for the web.

Instructor: Finn Enke

W 1:20-3:15PM

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

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

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

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

Instructor: Juan Fernandez

W 3:30-5:25 PM

Description: The study of gender and sexuality in Southeast Asia has depended on several major classic assumptions that have defined the field and the region. In almost all these cases, the colonial encounters have shaped the meanings, structures, and practices of gender and sexuality not just of the colonized (or semi-colonized) Southeast Asian societies, but also those of the imperial powers. In this seminar, we focus on these intersections to understand why historical and cultural concepts such as the “high status of women,” “gender pluralism,” and the “man of prowess” have achieved longevity in analyses of the region. In this reading seminar, we return to those classics not only for their explanatory value, but also to see how other scholars have contested, rejected, or expanded upon such assumptions in the history of Southeast Asia. The goal is twofold: to examine how classic concepts remain fertile ground for open questions in the field, and also to introduce students of the region to the various ways historians analyze gender and sexuality in Southeast Asia.

Instructor: Tony Michels

R 3:30-5:25

Description: This seminar is an exploration of the experiences of two migrant groups to northern cities for the purpose of illuminating the history of race and ethnicity in the United States. Both African Americans and Jews were persecuted minorities in their places of origin and continued to suffer discrimination after their respective migrations. Yet their positions in American society differed in key respects. Jews were an immigrant group who came voluntarily to the United States; most African Americans were forcibly brought to the United State as slaves. Jews attained equality before the law with less difficulty than Blacks and suffered less discrimination and violence. With recognition of these and other differences, we will investigate in a comparative fashion how Blacks and Jews adapted to life in the urban north in the twentieth century. As a seminar, this course does not survey comprehensively the histories of African Americans and Jews. Rather, it selectively examines topics important to the histories of both groups and provides a beginning to further examination.

Instructor: Claire Taylor

M 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 1:20-3:15PM

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.

Instructor: Jim Feldman

W 1:20-3:15PM

Description:

Instructor: Dana Landress

TR 11:00–12:15

Description: The pursuit of collective health has long been central to a wide array of social, political, and economic projects across the United States. The social determinants of health impact both individuals and populations and such determinants have complex and nuanced histories. At the center of many contemporary debates are the very parameters of “what counts” as public health. Such questions directly impact the nature, scope, and direction of interventions as they permeate into the realms of education, law, policy, economy, and social justice. This course will cover important transformations in the history of American public health from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. We will examine the ways in which public health practices were multiple, contested, and experienced differently by historical actors at various moments across time and space. Identity will be a central theme in this course as students explore questions of healthcare access, health knowledge dissemination, global and local healing practices, epidemic disease outbreaks, and the historic mobilization of identity politics as a platform to advocate for more equitable access to health resources and services

Instructor: Julia Horn

W 3:30–6:00

Description:

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: Elizabeth Lapina

T 11:00AM-12:55PM

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

Instructor: Patrick Iber

M 8:50-10:45AM

Description: Colloquium for thesis writers & honors thesis writers.

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

Instructor: TBD

MW 9:55–10:45

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

History/Geography/Political Science/Slavic 254: Eastern Europe: An Interdisciplinary Survey

Instructor: David Danaher

TR 2:30–3:45

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

TR 9:30–10:45

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

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

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

Instructor: TBD

TR 1:00–2:15

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: Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué

MW 4:00–5:15

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

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.

History/Jewish Studies 310: The Holocaust

Instructor: TBD

MW 2:30–3:45

Description: Why did the Holocaust happen? What were the experiences of its victims? And what lessons can we draw from it for the 21st century? Explore the history and legacy of the Nazi genocide in this eight-week summer course. By using a variety of sources, including memoirs, testimonies, poems, paintings, videos, and graphic novels, we will try to understand the Holocaust within the broader European history of  racism, war, and colonialism and as an event of global proportions that includes the United States. The weekly thematic modules explore topics such as the history of antisemitism, the Nazi state, Jewish resistance, the prosecution of perpetrators, and contemporary challenges of memorialization. You will engage with the latest debates in the field of Holocaust Studies. Each module consists of short instructional podcasts, a discussion board, a quiz, and an exercise in which you will engage with a primary source or an artistic representation of the Holocaust. At the end of this course, you will be able to share your own learning experience and use your historical expertise to take a stance in current political debates on race, war, nationalism, and human rights.

History/English 360: Early Medieval England

Instructor: Jordan Zweck

TR 9:30–10:45

Description:

History/Educational Policy Studies 412: History of American Education

Instructor: TBD

MW 9:55–10:45

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

Description: Welcome to EPS/History 412, The History of American Education. This class concentrates on the history of mass education, focusing especially on the history of public education below the college and university levels. We will examine educational developments and trends from the 17th-century colonies to the recent past, from the Puritans to contemporary efforts to improve the nation’s public schools. Throughout the course, we’ll explore the tension between educational ideals and practices, and how various groups of citizens tried to shape and reform education in the past. We’ll also study the influence of religion, economics, gender, race, and ethnicity upon education and schooling in different periods of American history.

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

Instructor: Richard Keyser

TR 2:30–3:45

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

Description: This class explores environmental studies through a focus on law and legal history. Although its main concentration is on U.S. environmental law, the course will begin and end with broader historical and global perspectives. Topics include a survey of English, European, and early American legal approaches to land use, natural resources, and pollution through World War II as well as an examination of the development and practice of contemporary U.S. environmental law and consideration of the recent emergence of international environmental law.

History/Legal Studies 477: History of Forensic Science

Instructor: Mitra Sharafi

TR 11:00–12:15

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

History/Legal Studies 510: Legal Pluralism

Instructor: Mitra Sharafi

TR 1:00–2:15

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

Description: This 3-credit course explores the vibrant and diverse world of dispute resolution systems in the past and present. The common law—the dominant type of state legal system in English-speaking jurisdictions—is only one kind of law. Non-state normative orders also exist. Like the law of the state, these other orders have rules, ways of enforcing these rules, and adjudicatory bodies that resolve disputes among their members. These systems appear in the clan, tribe, club, school, ethnic group, religious community, profession, and trade. The course covers a wide array of non-state actors and orders, drawing upon scholarship produced by lawyers, historians, and anthropologists. We will examine everything from medieval Icelandic feuds to “mafia law,” the Tokyo tuna court to dispute resolution among orthodox Jewish diamond traders, and Australian aboriginal customary law to the Kurdish Peace Committee in London. The course compares adversarial and conciliatory models of dispute resolution, along with fault- and no-faultbased systems. We will also explore institutional and justice-based arguments for and against the recognition of non-state law by the state, and strategies to move between legal orders through forum shopping. Interactions between coexisting legal orders is another key theme of the course. We will grapple with relationships of conflict and competition between legal systems, and with the possibility of other relations, including symbiosis, imitation, convergence, adaptation, avoidance, subordination and the destruction of one legal order by another.

History/Jewish 515: Holocaust: History, Memory, and Education

Instructor: Simone Schweber

M 4:00–7:00

Description: