Request to become a History of Capitalism Minor:

Capitalism has delivered unrivaled prosperity, but with many social costs. Understanding capitalism’s past is essential to understanding our world today—as well as tomorrow. How has it been defined? How has it developed at different times and in different parts of the world? Students undertaking the minor will be exposed to many different perspectives on capitalism, enabling them to critically reflect on economic institutions and ideas, as well as understand how our global economy has come to be.

The minor is designed to provide students with the basic vocabulary of economics and business, but to deepen it with a longer, critical perspective on the development of capitalism. “Capitalism” has had many different meanings over time and students in the minor will also learn how its meanings have changed across time and how they continue to differ across place.

This minor is offered collaboratively with courses from across the university, but is coordinated by the Department of History staff, and Edward Baptist (A&S), and Lawrence Glickman (A&S).

History of Capitalism Minor Requirements

• Five (5) approved courses in History, ILR, Econ and other units. Students may request the inclusion of non-approved courses.
  • All five courses must be taken for letter grades, with a grade of C or better, and either 3 or 4 credits each.
• One (1) course must be HIST 1540 - American Capitalism (also AMST 1540/ILRLR 1845) or HIST 3081 Stability and Crisis
• One (1) course in Economics or Business (see approved list)
• Three (3) historical courses (see approved list below)

Note: AP, Transfer, and Study Abroad courses are not eligible.

History of Capitalism Approved Courses

This list will change over time as new courses are approved. Click here for a more up-to-date list. Students may petition to have a course not listed approved. And the core faculty welcome suggestions by faculty for relevant courses not yet listed.

I. Regional/National/Global Survey of Capitalism

• HIST 1540/AMST 1540/ILRLR 1845 American Capitalism
• HIST 3081 Stability and Crisis: Capitalism and Democracy, 1870 to the Present

II. Economics and Business

• ECON 1110 Introductory Microeconomics
• ECON 1120 Introductory Macroeconomics
• ECON 3010 Accelerated Microeconomics
• ECON 3030 Intermediate Microeconomic Theory
• ECON 3300 Development of Economic Thought and Institutions
• ECON 3310 American Economics History I
• ECON 3320 American Economic History II
• GOVT 3547 American Primacy Challenged: International Political Economy
• GOVT 3557 American Exceptionalism Questioned: Comparative Political Economy
• PAM 2000 Intermediate Microeconomics
• AEM 2241 Finance (formerly AEM 2240)
• HADM 2250 Finance

III. Historical Areas
Students will need to take at least three courses from the following list (or request approval of any history course)

• ASRC 3010 Sweetness
• ANTHR 2440 Anthropology of Money
• ECON 3480 Race and American Labor Market
• GERST 4431 Melancholy Left: Marx to Benjamin (HIST 4234)
• GERST 1170 Marx, Nietzsche, Freud
• GERST 3610 Homo Oeconomicus
• GOVT 2225 Controversies Abut Inequality
• GOVT 3303 Politics of the Global North
• GOVT 3667 Exceptionalism Questioned
• GOVT 4021 American Conservative Thought
• HIST 1640 US History Since Depression
• HIST 1690 Latin America and the World
• HIST 1950 The Invention of Latin America
• HIST 1955 No gods, No masters: Histories of Anarchism
• HIST 2062 Migrant Workers in the Americas
• Disasters! A History of Colonial Failures in the Atlantic World
• HIST 2062 Migrant Workers in the Americas
• HIST 2063 Anarchism: History, Theory, Practice
• HIST 2210 Popular Culture in China
• HIST 2212The US Empire
• From the New Deal to the Age of Reagan
• HIST 2452 Dress Cloth and Identity
• HIST 2423 Dazed and Confused: The Politics of Drug and Alcohol in US History
• HIST 2500 Technology in Society
• HIST 2541 Modern Caribbean History
• HIST 2581 Environmental History
• HIST 2641 Race and Modern US History
• HIST 2680 Sex, Drugs, and Experimenting with Democracy in 1960s and 1970s America
• HIST 3022 Capitalism and American Democracy
• HIST 3050 Eighteenth-Century Britain
• HIST 3181 Living in an Uncertain World: Science, Technology, and Risk (BSOC 3181, STS 3181)
• HIST 3411 Engineering in History
• HIST 3652 African Economic Development Histories
• HIST 3740 America Becomes Modern: The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
• HIST 3825 World War II: A Global History
• HIST 4041 Atlantic Commodities
• HIST 4261 Commodification and Consumerism in Historical Perspective
• HIST 4490 Peddlers, Pirates and Prostitutes: Subaltern Histories of Southeast Asia, 1800-1900
• HIST 4820 History of Slavery
• ILRLR 1100 Introduction to U.S. Labor History
• ILRLR Writing Seminar in History of Mexican Labor
• ILRIC Sociology of Work
• ILRIC 2350 Work, Labor, and Capital in the Global Economy
• ILRLR 2810 Migration: Histories, Controversies, and Perspectives
• ILRLR 3035 Special Topics: Labor, Race, Gender
• ILRLR 3040 Special Topics in Labor History
• ILRLR 3060 Recent History of American Workers
• ILRLR 3065 Immigrant America: Race and Citizenship in Modern Working Class History
• ILRLR 3071 Governing Economic Development
• ILRLR 3880 Unfree Labor: Servants, Slaves, and Wives
• ILRLR 3870 The History of Consumption: From Wedgwood to WalMart
• IRLR 4845 Labor, Race and Gender