Upcoming Courses
Below is a list of upcoming courses for the Fall 2024 semester.
HIST 20191:
Global Africa
Welcome to Global Africa. This course is an introduction to the history of the peoples of Africa from the late nineteenth century to the present day. We investigate the ways in which Africans shaped and were shaped by the transformative events of the period. At the turn of the twentieth century, European powers conquered and colonized much of the continent. Over the next sixty years, Africans lived and died under the yoke of European rule. They resisted and collaborated, rendering uncertain the power of colonialism and certain its ultimate collapse. By the 1960s, most Africans were free of foreign rule. Since then they have endeavored to achieve political stability, navigate Cold War politics, harness development aid, and adapt to an emerging neoliberal economic order. In recent years, while some have ignited brutal wars and endured devastating famines, they have also inspired the world with their triumph over apartheid, emergent, vibrant democracies, and rich cultures. Together, we will explore these dramatic moments as well as the complex and painful forms of inequality that lay beneath - whether racial, gendered, sexual, or economic. We will approach these unsettling issues with respect for another and the past. To do so, we analyze a variety of texts from primary documents, fiction written by Africans, film, and graphic novels. We will also train ourselves to be historians of Africa, researching the lives and labors of everyday African peoples and using historical writing to understand their influence over the past and present.
Prof. Ocobock
MW 12:50-1:40 p.m.
HIST 20200:
Western Civilization to 1500
This course offers a survey of the central themes in Western Civilization from ancient Mesopotamia to the Renaissance. Emphasis will fall upon problems of social organization, especially the mutual obligations and responsibilities of individuals and states; evolving concepts of justice; aesthetic standards; religious ideas and institutions; basic philosophical concepts; different kinds of states and the ideologies that defined and sustained them.
Prof. Hobbins
MW 11:30-12:20 p.m.
HIST 20356:
The First World War
The First World War is often referred to as the "seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century." It certainly brought the golden age of Europe's prosperity to an end. And its lingering effects would help bring about the rise of Bolshevik Communism in Russia, Fascism in Italy and other parts of Europe, and, of course, the rise of National Socialism in Germany. But what actually happened in the war? The course will include lectures with moments for discussion. Together, we will cover the usual suspects of diplomatic and military history of the war. We will learn about new technologies of war, new strategies and tactics on the battlefield, and the futility of attacking entrenched positions. But this war was "The Great War" because it entailed so much more than the front lines. We'll take a deep dive into memoirs and primary sources, emerging new interpretations of home and war fronts, and revisions to our understanding of both when the war ended and began. We will go beyond the western front and trench warfare to look at the important battles in the East and South. And, importantly, we will also take time to look closely at the larger social and cultural aspects that this era of total war introduced, including the emancipation of women, the growth of the state and the use and misuse of emergency powers, and the ways in which everyday people (at home and on the front) coped and endured with the hardships of war, hunger, and death. Time will also be devoted to the peace treaties after the war nominally ended and the continuum of violence that lingered into the interwar period. Music will be played and students may be encouraged to sign along.
Prof. Deak
MW 2:00-2:50 p.m.
HIST 20390:
Christianity, Commerce, and Consumerism: The Last 100 Years
The capitalism and consumerism that now influences the entire world arose within a religious culture-that of Western Christianity-whose central figure extolled poverty and self-denial, and whose most important early missionary wrote that "the love of money is the root of all evils." How did this happen? This course takes a long-term view of the emergence of modern economic life in relationship to Christianity beginning with the upturn in commerce and the monetization of the European economy in the eleventh century and continuing through the relationship between markets and Christian morality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It pays particular attention to the ways in which the religio-political disruptions of the Reformation era laid the foundations for the disembedding of economics from Christian ethics and thus made possible modern Western capitalism and consumerism.
Prof. Gregory
MW 10:30-11:20 a.m.
HIST 20451:
Global Asia
Scholars have long speculated about the rise of Asia, but Asia has already risen. Asian economies are driving global growth; Asian governments are some of the largest purveyors of foreign aid and investment; and Asian superpowers like China are shaping and shifting geopolitics. This course, taught by a political scientist and a historian, offers students the opportunity to unpack the complexity and diversity of Asia across time and space. We will explore Asia through political and historical concepts against the background of China’s evolving role within the region. At the same time, we will focus on elevating diverse Asian voices to understand how historical concepts and political and economic trajectories have shifted over time and what it means for domestic and global audiences in the 21st century. As an integration course, our focus is analytical and interdisciplinary: we examine the political, economic, and social trajectory of Asia to shed light on the most dynamic region of the world. We also devote considerable time to understanding how historical legacies and patterns such as colonialism or economic imperialism impact Asia today. Lectures, assigned readings covering a wide range of primary and secondary sources in political science and history, and a discussion-oriented format introduces students to issues ranging from populism, party-state capitalism, and poverty alleviation to soft and sharp power, demographic crises, surveillance, and social unrest. All majors and backgrounds are welcome. No prior knowledge of Asian languages or topics is required.
Prof. Koll & Prof. Koesel
TTh 11:00-12:15 p.m.
HIST 20625:
Business in America from the East India Company to Google
This course traces the history of business in the United States, from the merchant-smugglers of the American Revolution through the rise of big business and the tech boom. We will consider the operation of individual firms as well as situate the history of American business within its wider social, political, and economic context. In particular, we will move between thinking about the specific challenges businesses faced - such as the emergence of new technologies or price-cutting competitors - and a broader conversation about the evolution of American business, such as the "managerial revolution." The course will proceed chronologically, but each week will stress a particular theme, often seen through the story of a particular firm. Topics addressed include the rise of a national market, debates over regulatory capture, outsourcing and globalization, and finally the relationship between management, investment capital, and organized labor.
Prof. Specht
MW 2:00-2:50 p.m.
HIST 20901:
Colonial Latin America
When Columbus stepped ashore in the Caribbean in 1492, he set in motion a process that led to the creation of wealthy Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas, the genocide of countless numbers of indigenous men and women, the enslavement of millions of African men and women, and the eventual formation of a variety of independent states competing in the world economy. In this semester-long survey, we will examine topics in this history that will allow us to consider how history is produced as well as what happened in the past, from various perspectives, from elite colonial administrators and merchants to indigenous peasants and formerly enslaved men and women.
Prof. Graubart
MW 10:30-11:20 a.m.
HIST 30014:
Humans and Other Apes: a Modern Historical Survey from Scalinger to Peter Singer
One way to improve our understanding of ourselves is to compare ourselves with the animals who most resemble us, in informative, challenging and disturbing ways. In this course, we'll look at the relationship that has done most to change human self-perceptions. With a focus on Western texts and experiences, but with reference to many other cultures, we'll concentrate on the problems of how and why human attitudes to other apes have changed since the Middle Ages, and how they have influenced thinking in science, religion, politics, sociology, literature, and ethics.
Prof. Fernandez-Armesto
MW 3:30-4:45 p.m.
HIST 30027:
Appalachia: Land and People
This course tells the history of Appalachia through humans' relationships with the natural environment. The class starts in geologic time with the formation of the mountains and spools forward through ebb and flow of Native American homelands, the colonial wars and the fur trade, the American invasion, the growth of an agrarian economy centered on corn, pigs, and whiskey, the arrival of the railroads and the extractive industries of coal and timber, and finally the difficulties wrought by de-industrialization, climate change, and the opioid epidemic. The central characters throughout are the men and women who wrested their living from the mountains and the hollows, and their struggles as a series of political, economic, and ecological transformations dispossessed them. Over time, Appalachia was impoverished and made marginal; in the eyes of many, the place and the people were deemed exploitable and expendable. This class seeks to understand how Appalachia became synonymous with grinding poverty and environmental degradation. The class argues that ecosystems and people advanced and declined in tandem and that history shows neither were destined for impoverishment. This course is intended to give current Notre Dame students who have or who might visit and volunteer in Appalachia the historical perspective they may need to fully appreciate the region's problems and potential.
Prof. Coleman
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
HIST 30080:
Introduction to Islamic History from Muhammad to the Mongols
This course offers a survey of Middle Eastern history from the rise of Islam in the seventh century CE until the rise of Mongol successor polities in the 15th century. The course is structured to cover political, religious, and cultural developments and their relationship with broader changes in society during the formative centuries of Islamic civilization. Specific topics include the career of the Prophet Muhammad and the origins of the earliest Muslim polity; the creation and breakup of the Islamic unitary state (the Caliphate); ethnic, racial, and religious tensions and movements in the medieval Islamic world; the impact of Turkic migrations on the Middle East; the diversity of approaches to Muslim piety and their social and political expression; popular culture; non-Muslims in Islamic society; and the creation of the medieval Islamic "international" cultural order. Among the more important themes will be long-term cultural and social continuities with the Islamic and ancient Near East, and concepts of religious and political authority.
Prof. Tor
MW 11:00-12:15 p.m.
HIST 30110:
Ancient Japan
History is not a single "true story," but many competing narratives, each defined by values, interests, and political commitments. This course on ancient Japanese history provides an overview of three sets of competing narratives: first, the politically charged question of Japan's origins, when we explore archeological evidence and chronicles of the Sun Goddess; second, the question of whether culture (through continental imports of writing, religious forms, and statecraft) or nature (as disease and environmental degradation) defined the Yamato state from the sixth to the ninth century; and, third, whether Heian court power rested on economic, political, military, judicial, or aesthetic grounds and if its foundations were undermined internally or by the invasion of the Mongols. In examining these competing narratives, we aim to develop the disciplined imagination necessary to enter another culture and another time.
Prof. Thomas
MW 3:30-4:45 p.m.
HIST 30147:
Early Chinese Empires
Our understanding of early Chinese Empires is primarily determined by the available sources and our methodologies. This seminar will provide advanced undergraduates with a critical introduction to the most important sources and major themes, both textual and archaeological, for the study of early imperial China. We will consider materials from the earliest historical period, circa 1300 B.C., down to the consolidation of the empire in the first century B.C. We will focus on outstanding problems and controversies pertaining to this period, such as the relationship between archaeology and classical historiography, the nature of the Chinese writing system, myth and history, the textual history of the transmitted texts, Chinese empires and its rivals, and gender issues in ancient China. Finally, we will consider the basic methodological tools presently used by historians, textual critics, paleographers, and archaeologists.
Prof. Cai
TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m.
HIST 30171:
Introduction to India and South Asia
It is tempting to think that South Asia - home to nearly two billion people - is only now beginning to occupy global attention. But India has played a prominent part in global history for centuries. This course will span three millennia - from the Indus Valley civilization, to the time of Buddha, to the powerful Mughal Empire, two centuries of the British rule, the Gandhi-led freedom struggle, and ending with the recent histories of independent India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This introduction to India and South Asia will answer questions such as: Has there been an unbroken Indian civilization? How did a British company come to rule a vast Indian empire? How did India win its independence? What accounts for the region's poverty? Why are India and Pakistan separate countries today, with such divergent trajectories of democracy and dictatorship? And, finally, could India rival China and the United States in this century? South Asia is a place of extreme diversity and paradox: it can be confusing. However, its history offers us explanations. This course will offer an introduction and guide to the history of India's rich history, stormy politics, vibrant cultures, and globalized economies.
Prof. Menon
MW 11:00-12:15 p.m.
HIST 30277:
Queer Histories of the Middle Ages
Over the last several decades, one of the most exciting areas of research in history has been in historians’ efforts to uncover the history of sex, gender, and sexuality in different societies. Throughout this course, students will learn about how queer medieval people and communities have been studied by historians while also learning about the medieval people and communities themselves. We will discuss topics such as family structure, marital norms, the gendered division of labor, sexuality, and changing understandings of masculinity, femininity, and nonbinary gender. Students will learn how normative and non-normative medieval genders and sexualities were structured in different places and times within the medieval world according to social, legal, theological, and scientific belief and practice. Students will also learn how to weigh original source material, modern theoretical approaches, and the multiple agendas involved in producing scholarship.
Prof. Morgan
MW 3:30-4:45 p.m.
HIST 30267:
The Middle Ages on Film
This course will explore modern popular imaginings of the Middle Ages through film. We will view several feature-length films and numerous clips, interspersed with readings from and about the Middle Ages. Together we will discuss and analyze both the texts and films. The films will range from early silent films to Monty Python spoofs to recent blockbusters. I have divided the course into six segments: (1) the Crusades; (2) Eleanor of Aquitaine: wife and mother of kings; (3) Robin Hood; (4) King Arthur; (5) the Black Death; and (6) Joan of Arc Students will write short daily assignments, two short essays, and a final paper or take-home exam. There are two required textbooks and a course packet. The textbooks are Robert Brent Toplin, Reel History: In Defense of Hollywood (2002); and Daniel Hobbins (trans.), The Trial of Joan of Arc.
Prof. Hobbins
MW 11:00-12:15 p.m.
HIST 30340:
Transformation of the Roman World
This course is designed as a general introduction into the early and middle Byzantine period, focusing on the various aspects of transformation from the late Roman Empire to Byzantium at the end of the so-called ?Dark Ages'. The main topics are the Christianization of the Empire and the separation between East and West; reactions to the barbarian migrations, the Slavic expansion, and the Islamic conquests; patterns of social and economic change; iconoclasm; Byzantine relations with the Carolingian and Ottonian Empires.
Prof. Beihammer
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
HIST 30341:
From the Crusades to the Ottoman Empire: The Eastern Mediterranean 1000-1500
This course explores the major developments in Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean from the time of the crusades and the eastward expansion of the Italian naval powers until the rise of the Ottoman Empire to a new universal power unifying the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor under the rule of a Muslim sultanate. The encounter between Latin and Greek Orthodox Christians in the wake of the crusade led to political rivalries and religious discord, culminating in the Latin conquest of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade of 1204. While the eastward expansion of Italian naval powers had already begun in the late eleventh century, it was mainly as a result of 1204 that Venice and, later on, Genoa became predominant political and economic factors in the Eastern Mediterranean, controlling much of the long-distance seaborne trade between Italy and the Syrian coast. The Anatolian Seljuk Turks initiated the gradual Turkification and Islamization of Asia Minor. In the thirteenth century, the Eastern Mediterranean endured increasing pressure from the Mongols and the Mamluk sultanate. One of the results of this development was the rise of the Ottoman principality to a leading political power incorporating large parts of the Balkan Peninsula and, in 1453, the city of Constantinople. We will discuss both socio-economic and political aspects of these developments.
Prof. Beihammer
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
HIST 30410:
Tudor England: Politics and Honor
The period from 1485 to 1603, often feted as something of a 'Golden Age' for England, saw that country undergo serious changes that challenged the traditional ways in which the nation conceived of itself. These included the break from Rome, the loss of England's foothold in France, and the unprecedented experience of monarchical rule by women. Each of these challenges demanded creative political responses and apologetic strategies harnessing intellectual resources from classical, Biblical, legal, chivalric and ecclesiastical sources. This course will examine these developments. It will also look at how the English, emerging from under the shadow of the internecine dynastic warfare of the fifteenth century, sought to preserve political stability and ensure a balance between continuity and change, and, furthermore, how individuals could use these unique circumstances to their own advantage.
Prof. Rapple
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
HIST 30450:
Old Regime France
Between 1643 and 1789, France underwent one of the most pivotal national transitions in modern European history. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Louis XIV reigned as the most powerful divine right monarch on the continent. He marshaled religious ideology, set cultural standards, pursued economic projects, and waged wars to consolidate his authority over the French and foreign powers alike. Yet, by the late eighteenth century, Louis XVI's crumbling crown gave way to the Revolution. The French ultimately dethroned the king and established a republic. Our class will explore how the French negotiated this tumultuous trajectory from subjects to citizens. We will analyze three main themes over the course of the Old Regime. First, we will wrestle with issues of modern state building including administrative reform, military campaigns, financial ventures, and expansion in the New World. Second, we will study the relationship among politics, culture, and religion as the French vacillated between critique and reform. Finally, we will probe the origins of the French Revolution. These sparks ranged from Enlightenment debates over contract theory and social privilege to the stresses of everyday life including taxes and food shortages. We will close as the revolutionaries imagined nascent citizenship on the eve of the republic. In sum, this course will ask: how did European democracy find its roots in an absolute monarchy? And how did generations of French work out this transition through their everyday lives?
Prof. Jarvis
TTh 11:00-12:15 p.m.
HIST 30464:
German History, 1740-1870
This course begins with Prussia's initial challenge to Austria's dominance in central Europe; it ends with the unification of Germany under Bismarck's Prussia--and Austria's exclusion from it. In addition to covering the ongoing Austro-Prussian rivalry in Germany, we will cover political, cultural, social, and religious transformations of the period. Specific topics may include Enlightened Absolutism, the influence of the French Revolution in German-speaking lands, as well as the revolutions of 1848 and the struggle for German unification. We will also consider larger long-term processes such as the emergence of civil society, political ideologies such as liberalism, nationalism, and socialism, and German contributions to cultural and intellectual movements such as the Enlightenment and Romanticism. This course is the first half of a two-semester sequence in modern German history, although students may take either course independently of the other. The format of the course will include lectures and class discussions of primary documents and texts. Assessment will be based on class participation, short written assignments, and mid-term and final exams.
Prof. Deak
MW 3:30-4:45 p.m.
HIST 30537:
Age of Atlantic Revolutions
Our world today traces its origins back to the radical cultural, political, and economic upheaval of the imperial crises and revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Representative democracy, political rights, the nation-state, feminism, egalitarianism, and antislavery emerged from this era. This course explores the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, considering their origins in the English Civil Wars of the 1640s, through to the eruption of the revolutionary movement that swept the Atlantic World from 1776 in North America on to France and Haiti, up to the fracturing of Latin America in the 1820s. Working with the latest scholarship and an array of primary sources, this course will explore these revolutions in their Atlantic and global contexts, emphasizing their interconnectivity. Students will come to understand these movements from diverse perspectives and their significant distinctions and overlaps while working throughout the semester to complete an original research project. The course will challenge students to engage with the commemoration and memory of these Revolutions and grapple with the Age’s contested significance and legacies.
Prof. Carlson
MW 9:30-10:45 a.m.
HIST 30634:
Crime, Heredity, and Insanity in American History
This course gives students the opportunity to learn more about how Americans have thought about criminal responsibility and how their ideas have changed over time. Historians contend that the 19th century witnessed a transformation in the understanding of the origins of criminal behavior in the United States. The earlier religious emphasis on the sinfulness of all mankind, which made the murderer into merely another sinner, gave way to a belief in the inherent goodness of humankind. But if humans were naturally good, how are we to explain their evil actions? And crime rates varied widely by sex and race; European women were said to have been domesticated out of crime doing. What do those variations tell us about a common human nature? The criminal might be a flawed specimen of humankind born lacking a healthy and sane mind. Relying in part upon studies done in Europe, American doctors, preachers, and lawyers debated whether insanity explained criminality over the century and how it expressed itself in different races and sexes. Alternative theories were offered. Environment, heredity, and free will were all said to have determined the actions of the criminal. By the early 20th century, lawyers and doctors had largely succeeded in medicalizing criminality. Psychiatrists now treated criminals as patients; judges invoked hereditary eugenics in sentencing criminals. Science, not sin, had apparently become the preferred mode of explanation for the origins of crime. But was this a better explanation than what had come before? Can it explain the turbulent debates in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries over variations in crime rates by race? Can it explain why men, not women, are still more likely to commit murder?
Prof. Przybyszewski
TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m.
HIST 30636:
Gender @ Work in US History
Gender has been fundamental to the organization of nearly all human societies, but what gender has meant in terms of identity, opportunity, and economic activity has varied widely across time and space. This course will explore gender at work in US history, taking a chronological approach to show gender's evolution and ongoing intersections with class, race, age, religion, region, and sexuality from 1776 to the near present. The term "gender at work" expresses a double meaning here -- first, it connotes that this is a labor history course, with an emphasis on the ways gender has operated at the workplace; second, it suggests the ubiquity of gender in shaping Americans' lives, experiences, and imaginations not only at the workplace, but also in formal politics, informal communities, and every space in between. By exploring the ways gender has been both omnipresent and contingent throughout US history, students should better understand -- and perhaps act upon -- seemingly intractable contemporary conundrums involving questions of equal opportunity and pay, household division of labor, work-life balance, and the proper relationships among employers, workers, households, and government.
Prof. Graff
TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m.
HIST 30638:
The Priest and Nun in American Culture
This course explores some of the critical questions and themes in U.S. Catholic history by examining how priests and nuns have been depicted, from the nation’s founding until today, in American art (including Thomas Nast’s cartoons and Paul Henry Wood’s painting, “Absolution Under Fire”), literature (including the lurid tale of Maria Monk and the short stories of J.F. Powers), television (including The Flying Nun’s Sister Bertrille and M*A*S*H’s Father Mulcahy), and film (including On the Waterfront, The Bells of St. Mary’s, Dead Man Walking, and Doubt). Tracing the evolution of cultural portrayals of priests and nuns, alongside changes in the Church’s theological understanding of priesthood and religious life, and the self-understanding and ministries of priests and nuns, illuminates how Catholicism has shaped and been shaped by the American context. It highlights how Catholics in the U.S. have been both feared outsiders and exemplary citizens, and it sheds light on how the Church in America has navigated encounters with nativism and anti-Catholicism; evangelization and ecumenism; immigration, industrialization, and urbanization; race, ethnicity, and civil rights; politics, diplomacy, and war; gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse; assimilation, secularization, and religious reform among many other topics.
Prof. Koeth
TTh 2:00-3:15
HIST 30645:
Interwar U.S.A.: Society and Culture, 1919-1939
This course considers U.S. history from the "Jazz Age" through the depression decade. Drawing on secondary literature and primary sources including novels, films, and non-fiction writing, we will focus especially on the social and cultural dimensions of consumerism, the rise of industrial unionism, religious fundamentalism, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, prohibition, immigration restriction, and the Great Depression and New Deal. We will consider the U.S. role in the world through a period often characterized as one of American isolationism; understandings of capitalism between the roaring ‘20s and the descent into economic depression; and intellectual thought and the participation of artists and intellectuals in public life.
Prof. McKenna
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
HIST 30649:
The History of American Feminist Thought
This course traces American feminism from the margins of democratic thought in the eighteenth century to the center of modern political discourse and culture. Drawing on primary sources and recent scholarly work, we will investigate how the goals and meaning of feminism have changed over time, as well as how the boundaries drawn around who could and could not claim the title of "feminist" have shifted. We will approach feminism as an argument--not a received truth--responsive to contemporary historical developments and marked by divisions of race, class, sexual orientation, age, and religion. Course readings are organized around major turning points in the American feminist movement and chart significant continuities and contradictions that have animated each new wave, including questions of gender difference, economic dependence, reproductive rights, marriage, subjectivity, and citizenship.
Prof. Remus
TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m.
HIST 30655:
Frames of History: Latinx History through Graphic Novels
The legacy of comics is ever present in society today. Many graphic novels are present in culture today, from various streaming services to box office sensations and flops to superheroes. For decades, graphic novels have provided critiques of environmental pollution, racism, the urban crisis, xenophobia, and authoritarianism. From rewriting the history of Texas to advocating for labor rights for Latina domestic workers, Latina/o creators have turned to graphic novels as a medium for documenting and disseminating their history. This course offers a broad overview of and introduction to the production of Latina/o History through Graphic Novels. The course will balance a thematic approach of central themes throughout Latina/o History, such as migration, labor, and social movements, and the methodology and terminology of reading comics. Once the center point of culture wars, graphic narratives are increasingly accepted today as forms that cultivate sophisticated types of verbal-visual literacy that actively critique forms of knowledge and contemporary policies and offer alternative forms of history. This class will explore how Latina/o graphic narratives have long been an essential source of cultural expression and central to the Latina/o communities documenting their history on their terms. From revisionist accounts to biographies of leaders to instilling superpowers to child migrants and domestic workers, graphic novels offer a compelling perspective into complementary historical narratives.
Prof. Aguilar
TTh 12:30-1:45 p.m.
HIST 30699:
History of the American Family
How have Americans structured intimacy and care throughout U.S. history? This course asks students to analyze the concept of “family” and examine the ways ideas and practices regarding familial formation have changed in the past few centuries. When and why have certain relationships been legally incentivized? Regulated? Criminalized? Ignored? How have various historical processes impacted the ways people have cared for themselves and each other? How have people politicized family matters to enact their own social agendas? This course covers the broad sweep of U.S. History, 1783-present. We will analyze how the structure and function of households changed over time. What were the legal, economic, social, and political dimensions of households across the nation and how did these affect, reflect, and reinforce broader cultural trends? We will explore the variable ways households were private and public spaces and show how not everybody had equal access to domestic privacy. In this course, we will examine a variety of topics, such as fights over polygamy, emancipation, institutionalization, the transition to a wage economy, fights over marriage and divorce, declining birthrates, eugenics, the development of public education, the proliferation of birth certificates and marriage licenses, the postwar baby boom, the advent of birth control, sexual liberation, 20th-century social rights movements, and fights over abortion.
Prof. Mullican
TTh 3:30-4:45 p.m.
HIST 30749:
LGBT in the 20th-Century USA
This course covers the varied experience of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (and other gender-fluid) Americans over the course of the twentieth century. As much as possible, it will focus on the voices of LGBT people themselves, in the context of the changing meanings of what it was to claim those identities. To do this we will draw on primary sources—art, music, film, literature, interviews and oral histories, memoirs and autobiographies, plays, films. The focus will be on the ways people understood who they were--and what homosexual/gay/lesbian/queer/transsexual/transgender/et al identities meant to them--and how these identities changed over the course of the twentieth century, using a wide variety of primary sources and relevant disciplinary frameworks.
Prof. Bederman
TTh 5:05-6:20 p.m.
HIST 30863:
The United States in the Reagan Years
From his national television appearance in support of the doomed Goldwater presidential campaign in 1964 through his failed presidential runs in 1968 and 1976 and his presidency (1981-89) on to the official dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ronald Reagan played a significant role in, and in reaction to, major developments in American politics, foreign policy, and society. This class will consider the turbulence and protest movements of the 1960s; the conservative backlash; the individualism of the Me Decade and beyond; foreign policy issues including Vietnam, détente, the "second Cold War," and the end of the Cold War; and national political disputes over issues like taxes, abortion, foreign policy and nuclear weapons.
Prof. Soares
MW 3:30-4:45 p.m.
HIST 30905:
US Operations in Central America and the Carribean
The most influential voices in the United States today—including those working in media outlets (i.e., CNN, FOX, MSNBC), the entertainment industry (i.e., Hollywood and Netflix), and the government (i.e., senators and governors)—overwhelmingly describe the countries of Central America and the Caribbean as “unruly”, “violent”, and unilaterally “impoverished.” Not too different from those given by their counterparts during the 19th century, these descriptions have been primarily framed in relation to the “tropics,” an “imagined region” of the world composed of “banana republics”, as we will discuss in this class, that always seemed to be far from the benefits of “modernity” and the advances of “Western civilization.” But in complicating these vague, misleading, and treacherous descriptions of the broader Latin American region, students will also be presented with the opportunity to explore a variety of challenges that ordinary Latin Americans face today, from a historical perspective. For example, in discussing the roots and long-term effects of modernization theory and military interventions, students will explore why Haitians and Hondurans, but not necessarily Costa Ricans, have left their respective countries in massive numbers. In comparative cases, they will also learn why ordinary people in El Salvador have welcomed a ruthless government of “law and order”; why their neighbors in Guatemala have instead looked for a populist leftist leader to demand justice and greater democracy; why Nicaragua has betrayed a once egalitarian revolution with a totalitarian regime; and why Puerto Rico has failed to protect its “citizens” from environmental and health disasters, and in comparison, why socialist Cuba has fared better in these regards, but has otherwise silenced those who criticize the ruling elite and has often been accused in international courts of violating human rights. Finally, as further points of contrast, students will learn why liberal and conservative politicians at times welcomed the presence of US foreign agents in their respective countries and why American politicians at times joined cautionary forces with their counterparts in Israel, France, and Argentina in combating the long Cold War in Central America and the Caribbean. In providing historical context to these and other questions (that I further detailed below), this course will introduce students to the ambivalent and often complicated relationship(s) between the United States and its neighbors in Central America and the Caribbean, from the early 19th century to the present.
Prof. Pensado
TTh 12:30-1:45
HIST 30910:
Experience of Conquest: Native Perceptions of Relations with Spaniards in 16th-C. Mesoamerica
The aim of this class is to try to understand what conquest, as we have traditionally called it, meant to the people who experienced it in some parts of the Americas that joined the Spanish monarchy in the sixteenth century. We'll concentrate on indigenous sources - documentary, pictorial, and material - and try to adopt the indigenous point of view, without neglecting sources mediated by Europeans. Although the class will concentrate on selected cases from Mesoamerica, the lecturer will try to set the materials in the context of other encounters, both within the Americas and further afield; and students will be free, if they wish, to explore case-studies from anywhere they choose in the Americas (in consultation with the lecturer and subject to his approval) in their individual projects.
Prof. Fernandez-Armesto
MW 11:00-12:15 p.m.
HIST 30922:
Frida Kahlo and Che Guevara: Icons, Myths, and Legacies
This is a course on twentieth century Latin American history. It examines the region through the life, writings, global impact, mythical significance, and legacy of revolutionary icon Ernesto Che Guevara (1928-1967). While the discussions will mostly concentrate on the events that shaped Guevara's life, the class will also delve into Guevara's involvement in Africa, his death in Bolivia, and his legacy in the Americas. We will also pay particular attention to the social and political environment that surrounded his birth in Argentina in the late 1920s, his political awakening as a bohemian medical student traveling in his motorcycle throughout South America during the 1950s, and his rise as a key leader of the Cuban Revolution following the 1954 CIA-sponsored coup in Guatemala. We will conclude the class with a discussion on the emergence of Che Guevara as a pop icon commodity in more recent decades. Following a close look at the life and writings of Guevara and his legacy, students will be asked to write a research paper that examines Che as a symbol of rebelliousness, as differently re-appropriated by a variety of movements, ranging from student activists, religious figures, film directors and conservative critics, to leaders of labor, gay, environmental, feminist, and indigenous movements. Please note: the class does not exclusively put the emphasis on Che Guevara-the man-but rather on the global events and influential figures that shaped and responded to his radicalization, on the one hand, and the different ways in which a variety of people made sense of Guevara's legacy and his iconography, on the other.
Prof. Pensado
TTh 11:00-12:15 p.m.
HIST 30949:
History of Exploration
We'll study what one might call the infrastructure of global history: the work of route-finders who led the dispersal of humankind into every habitable biome, then re-forged links between sundered cultures to make possible the world we inhabit today. Along the way we'll work on critical reading, unremitting perfectionism in writing, improved attentiveness in listening, and growing effectiveness in communicating. We’ll focus on skills typically under-represented in students’ education so far: how to identify and explore interesting problems in history and anthropology, and how to read texts from unfamiliar cultures by analyzing language and imagery.
Prof. Fernandez-Armesto
MW 12:30-1:45 p.m.
HIST 30950:
World Economic History since 1600
The difference between rich and poor nations is not, as Ernest Hemingway once said, that the rich have more money than the poor, but is in part because the rich produce more goods and services. Industrialization, in other words, has often brought wealth (as well as social dislocation and protest) to those who have succeeded. This course examines the process of industrialization from a comparative perspective and integrates the history of industrialization and its social consequences for Western Europe (Britain and Germany), the United States, Latin America (Mexico), and East Asia (Japan and South Korea). We will concentrate on these countries' transition from agriculture-based societies to industrial societies. We will analyze the process of industrialization on two levels from above the role of political authority and from below a view of factory life, industrial relations, and protest from the perspective of workers and the working classes. No specific prerequisites in history or economics are necessary.
Prof. Beatty
TTh 11:00-12:15 p.m.
HIST 30980:
Race and Racism in Science and Medicine
This course explores how ideas about race and racism have been intertwined with scientific, medical, and technological developments, shaping society since the 18th century. While recognizing that race is fundamentally a social construct, the course delves into scientific efforts to quantify, measure, and categorize individuals by race from early anthropometry to contemporary developments like the Human Genome Project and artificial intelligence. By critically analyzing scientific theories that produced and built upon ideas of racial hierarchy, students will develop a deep understanding of how race, racism, and racial inequality have been embedded into scientific knowledge, and thus, societal understanding. Students will also examine the historical context of racial disparities in healthcare, including the development of racialized medical theories, and will explore the role of technology in reinforcing or challenging racial biases, from the early days of photography to modern AI and surveillance technologies. This course is tailored for students with interests in the history of science and the production of scientific knowledge, as well as those curious about the origins of scientific racism and racial inequality.
Prof. Kola
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
HIST 30998:
Our Global Environment: History and the Anthropocene
"No one under 30 has ever lived through a month of global temperatures below the 20th-century average." Why bother with history if the future, because of climate change, will be nothing like the past? That's the central question of this course. Scientists now tell us that the relatively benign epoch of human flourishing designed the "Holocene" is over. The change is so great and so rapid that some scientists have even proposed a new epoch called the "Anthropocene" to designate this irreversible rupture with the previous 11,700 year when human beings first discovered agriculture, created cities, and developed writing systems?when most of what historians have called "history" occurred. To confront this dilemma, this course asks three questions: (1) What is the "Anthropocene" and what are scientists telling us about this epoch which began by most accounts in the mid-twentieth century with the Great Acceleration in economic activities and population growth? (2) What does history show us about how we arrived at this crisis? Historians have long been interested in political and economic questions about power, state structures, democracy, and development, but have they sufficiently considered the relationship between their own stories of modernity and the dilemmas we now face? (3) Were there political and economic formations in the past more conducive to environmentally sustainable communities and can historians now help by uncovering them? The readings combine scientific debates over the "Anthropocene" with historians' work on sustainable communities from Victorian England and early modern Japan. We end by reading the famous novelist and anthropologist Amitav Ghosh's The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable.
Prof. Thomas
MW 12:30-1:45 p.m.
HIST 35003:
Legal Empires: Legal Thought, Legal Statutes, and Bureaucracy in Early China (4. c BCE-1 c. CE)
This course attempts to explore the power of law and the concept of justice via examination the legal thought and legal practices in early Chinese empires. Whereas the rule of law serves as the basic principle of modern political thought and the spirit of democracy, the mature legal empires in early China fostered a prominent and enduring intellectual tradition that viewed the law with disdain, a tradition that still has its legacy in Chinese society of modern day. By examining philosophical texts and recently discovered legal statutes and administrative documents from Qin-Han empires, this course will investigate the fundamental differences between Eastern and Western perspectives on law and governance. By digesting scholarly articles and analyzing primary sources, we will explore questions such as what justice meant in the Chinese context; how the relationship between sovereignty and the people defined the legal rights and responsibilities of commoners and nobilities; how the legal practices of early China can aid our understanding of the Confucian persistent criticism of law and its enforcers, namely, the technical bureaucrats; and how the history of early Chinese empires provides perspectives for observing its legacy in the modern politics of East Asia.
Prof. Cai
TTh 11:00-12:15 p.m.
HIST 35636:
Wild Kingdom: Animals in North American History
Animals are everywhere in North American history. From the living room to the back alley, animals created history on their own and with humans help. Steeds bore generals into battle while rats bore fleas with diseases that flattened armies. This course will introduce students to animal studies and offer them a sampling of the manifold ways non-human creatures drove economies, shouldered burdens, entered families, and entertained audiences. The topics covered in the class will include co-evolution, the fur trade, people eating animals and animals eating people, pet keeping, animal symbolism, and endangered species. The course invites students to see North American history anew through the eyes of a race horse, a sled dog, a passenger pigeon, a grizzly bear, or a field mouse.
Prof. Coleman
TTh 3:30-4:45 p.m.
HIST 35637:
Moby-Dick and 19th-Century America
"I but put that brow before you," Herman Melville wrote in his 1851 novel, Moby-Dick, "read it if you can." Melville was describing the brow of the mighty sperm whale, but his words apply equally to his mighty book. In this seminar, we can and will read Moby-Dick, Melville's maddening masterpiece. We will read Moby-Dick as an invitation into its multiple historical contexts at the middle of the 19th-century American and wider worlds. We will explore the world of whaling and the age of sail, the ecological and imaginary expanses of the 19th-century ocean, the intellectual and literary culture of the "American Renaissance," and a nation on a collision course with itself.
Prof. Lundberg
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.
HIST 35889:
Chicago As an Urban History Laboratory
This course introduces students to core questions, problems, and concepts in United States urban history by studying one particular city, Chicago. The goal is not to learn the history of Chicago per se, but to use Chicago as a vehicle for exploring different approaches to understanding urban development and the urban experience. In that sense, Chicago will serve as our laboratory of discovery. Drawing on the rich trove of existing historical studies of Chicago, we will consider the city's past from numerous angles, such as the economy, law, political culture, space and architecture, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality. Our readings will incorporate historical studies as well as a diverse range of primary sources, including fiction, art, photography, maps, travel journals, and poetry. Students will have the opportunity to produce their own original research employing the urban history approaches encountered in the course.
Prof. Remus
TTh 2:00-3:15 p.m.