Courses

How can we learn about the past? How do we tell stories about the past? How do we judge the truth of falsity of evidence? Writing History seminars introduce students to many different ways of interpreting and writing about the past, and to the wide range of sources that historians use: from diaries to tax rolls, from scraps of textile to films and advertisements. Topics and readings vary by section.

Full details for HIST 1200 - FWS: Writing History

Why are the years following World War II considered so remarkable in the landscape of American history? Several critical events and debates that rocked the nation from the 1940s onward reverberate today, such as involvement in wars, civil rights, women's rights, concerns about teenagers, and crises in American cities. Enriched by a variety of primary sources, including films and TV shows, this course analyzes the central events, people, and forces that transformed American society and culture from the years after World War II to the present. The course aims to help students learn how to write persuasively about scholarship and primary sources, while gaining a deeper appreciation for the lasting influence of the major events, crises, and interpretations of post-World War II American history.

Full details for HIST 1321 - FWS: Post-World War II America: Crisis and Continuity

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), most famous today as the author of children's stories, including The Jungle Book, was one of the most popular and acclaimed writers of his day. He was also a noted chronicler of the world of the British empire. In this class, we will read the short stories, poems and novels that Kipling wrote about India – including his most famous novel, Kim. Students will explore the intersections between Kipling's stories and the history of British rule in India, and also consider the broader question of how fictional works can be used to explore the history of past cultures.

Full details for HIST 1400 - FWS: Rudyard Kipling's India: Literature, History, and Empire

This course looks at Islam as a global phenomenon, both historically and in the contemporary world.  We spend time on the genesis of Islam in the Middle East, but then move across the Muslim would in various weeks (to Africa;Turkey; Iran; Eurasia; Southeast Asia; East Asia) and to the West to see how Islam looks across global boundaries.  The course tries to flesh out the diversity of Islam within the central message of this world religion.

Full details for HIST 1402 - FWS: Global Islam

This course will introduce students to the study of the Ottoman Empire from its inception in the late 13th century until the early part of 19th century. The classes will follow the main timeline of the geographical expansion of the empire with a special emphasis on the historical significance of the conquest of Istanbul, the consolidation of the borders of the empire, the establishment of the state apparatus in the classical period, a period of turbulence leading to a substantial transformation of the state in the early 19th century. Special focus will be placed on the Ottoman Empire's diverse religious communities—using the history of the Jewish community as the main case study—the evolution of the imperial and provincial governments' relationships with the various socio-cultural groups, legal and economic practices in the urban centers, the culture of the court in the early modern period, and the evolution of the inter-communal relations in the empire's urban centers.  This course is intended to provide the student with a solid foundation from which they can pursue further specialized study in the history of the Ottoman Empire, the Modern Middle East, and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Full details for HIST 1561 - Introduction to the Ottoman Empire

Focusing on political and social history, this course surveys African-American history from Emancipation to the present. The class examines the post-Reconstruction "Nadir" of black life; the mass black insurgency against structural racism before and after World War II; and the Post-Reform Age that arose in the wake of the dismantling of legal segregation. The course will familiarize students with the basic themes of African-American life and experience and equip them to grasp concepts of political economy; class formation; and the intersection of race, class and gender.

Full details for HIST 1595 - African American History From 1865

In 1868, samurai revolutionaries and their allies seized the reins of power and established a new capital they called Tokyo. Against all odds, this fragile regime survived and made Tokyo a center of power that would transform both Japan and the world. This survey of Japanese history explores the rise and fall of Japan as a modern imperial power; its foreign relations; its economic and scientific development from "feudalism" to futuristic technologies; and Japan's many modern revolutions, from the rule of the samurai to Westernization and democracy, from democratic collapse to fascism and World War II, and from Japan's postwar rebirth to the present. We will examine not only big events but also everyday life, including gender and sexuality, family and schools, and art and popular culture.

Full details for HIST 1622 - The World of Modern Japan

An introductory survey to United States history since the Great Depression, this course explores the dramatic social, economic, and political transformations of the last century. It emphasizes domestic political developments, particularly the evolving notions of government responsibility for various social problems. Therefore, the course is especially concerned with the interactions between the state, popular movements, and people's daily lives.

Full details for HIST 1640 - U.S. History since the Great Depression

Despite the presence of women and lunatics on the throne, monarchy was for centuries considered the best form of government. Even today we are fascinated by Diana, Will and Kate. Why? Using drama, visual arts, political treaties and court ritual we will examine how monarchy was legitimated, where power really lay, how gender and sexuality affected politics and how monarchy in modern times has intersected with popular culture and with modern ideologies like nationalism.

Full details for HIST 1650 - Myths of Monarchy in Europe, Medieval Times to the Present

Globalization may seem like a recent hot topic, but it was already very much in vogue 1000 years ago when Norse explorers burst out of Scandinavia to journey as far as North America, Azerbaijan, the Mediterranean and the White Sea. This course will introduce students to the Norsemen and women of the Viking Age and the centuries following it, weaving together literary, chronicle, archaeological and other sources to tell the remarkable stories of these medieval entrepreneurs and of the many people and places they encountered. Along the way, students will also pick up crucial historical thinking skills: assessing change and continuity over time, learning the basics of source criticism, and gaining an appreciation for interdisciplinary research. This course qualifies for credit towards the undergraduate minor in Viking Studies. 

Full details for HIST 1660 - The Vikings and their World

This course surveys modern Chinese history from 1600 to present. Time will be devoted to each of the three major periods into which modern Chinese history is conventionally divided: the Imperial Era (1600-1911), the Republican Era (1911-1949), and the People's Republic of China (1949-present). It guides students through pivotal events in modern Chinese history, and uncovers the origins of China's painful transition from a powerful early modern empire to a country torn by civil unrest and imperialist invasion, and then from a vanguard of world revolution to a post-communist party-state whose global power is on the rise.

Full details for HIST 1920 - Modern China

This course provides an overview of disastrous attempts at colonization in the Americas from ca. 1500 through ca. 1760. Over thirteen weeks, we will engage with the question of why some attempts at colonization failed and why some succeeded. We will also explore other early modern failures, from bankrupt monopoly trade companies to ill-fated buccaneer communities and entire cities destroyed by earthquakes and hurricanes. Exploring failures, rather than successes, will help students understand the contingent process of colonial expansion as well as the roles of Indigenous dispossession, African slavery, and inter-imperial trade networks to the success or failure of early modern colonies. Over the course of the semester, my lectures will cover broad themes in failed enterprises, while students will read several monographs and primary-source collections on specific disasters. Some central questions include: Why did some colonies fail and other thrived? What role did social factors like gender, race, and class play in colonial failures? What can we learn about colonialism and imperialism through a focus on when those processes ended in disasters?

Full details for HIST 1986 - Disasters!: A History of Colonial Failures in the Atlantic World, 1450-1750

Independent Study based supervised reading with history faculty.  Student must complete Independent Study Form with faculty supervisor for determining requirements and for permission to enroll through the online system (https://data.arts/cornell.edu/as-stus/indep_study_intro.cfm).  Student then work with their faculty supervisor throughout the semester for successful completion and grading of the agreed upon requirements.

Full details for HIST 2001 - Supervised Reading - Undergraduate

China was and still is regarded in the Western world as a country without the rule of law. In this course, students examine recent scholarship that challenges this simplified understanding of the role of law in Chinese politics and society. It approaches law in early modern and modern China both as a state institution of governance and control, and as a platform that facilitates interactions and negotiations between state and society, between different social forces, and between different cultures. At the same time, this course guides students to develop projects of their own choice, either addressing legal issues or using legal sources, from tentative proposals to research papers based on their examination of original or translated primary sources.

Full details for HIST 2132 - Law and Society in Early Modern and Modern China

In European history, the Greeks tend to get credit for inventing almost everything – philosophy, art, literature, science, democracy. Naturally, they also get credit for inventing history. The names Thucydides and Herodotus are invariably invoked when historians talk about the origins of their discipline. Actually, Thucydides and Herodotus came late to the party; the first historians were Jewish scribes, living in Persian exile in the seventh century BCE, some two hundred years before their Greek successors. Collectively known as "the Deuteronomists," these scribes, on the basis of extensive data from royal archives, wrote a history of the domestic disintegration and eventual destruction of their city-state (Jerusalem) by an imperial army of northern barbarians (the Babylonians) who burned their most important cultural institution (the Temple) to the ground. Preceded by a methodological prologue that set out their principles of inquiry (also known as the biblical book of Deuteronomy) the bulk of their multi-volume account (Joshua-Kings II) consists of a richly documented and well-crafted narrative detailing the causes, long-term and short-term, of this political catastrophe. If you take this seminar, you will find out what the Deuteronomists wrote and why their work is important even for non-historians.

Full details for HIST 2159 - The First Historians

This seminar will explore some of the major political and cultural trends in the United States,  from the era of the Democratic New Dealer, Franklin D. Roosevelt, through the era of the conservative Republican, Ronald Reagan? This seminar will explore through primary source research and secondary readings  the key economic, political, and cultural characteristics and transformations of the period from 1930 though the turn of the century.  The course will examine the rise, persistence, and breakdown of the so-called "New Deal Order" and the crucial political shifts that we call the "Reagan Revolution." A key theme in this course will be the transformations and critiques of American liberalism and conservatism.

Full details for HIST 2220 - From the New Deal to the Age of Reagan

London grew fast in the 18th century. Along with more coffee-houses, newspapers, operas, abandoned children, fashion choices, immigrants, slaves, diseases, debtors' prisons and crime came a sense of utopian possibility and a fear of social dissolution. What was the experience of rapid social change like, what solutions were proposed to meet a perceived crisis, and what do our present-day ideas about the threats and possibilities of large, diverse cities owe to the 18th century? We will use fiction, diaries, criminal trials, and proposals for the betterment of society to explore how urban change was represented and experienced.

Full details for HIST 2259 - Plague, Prisons and Print in 18th-century London

This course uses history and political theory to understand the fascist experience in the twentieth century. In the first part of the course, we will examine fascist ideology; its relation to democracy and dictatorship; whether fascism is best understood as another form of authoritarianism or as totalitarianism; the role of nationalism, race, religion, culture, gender, the family, and intellectuals in fascist regimes; and the institutional and economic foundations of fascist politics. The second half of the course covers the origins, development and defeat of fascist states in the mid-twentieth century. We will devote the most time to understanding what happened in Mussolini's Italy (1922-1945) and in Hitler's Germany (1933-1945), but will also examine fascist movements and regimes in Austria, Hungary, Romania, Spain and Portugal. We will finish the course by looking at the persistence of fascist movements and ideas beyond WWII and into the present, and ask how these are similar to historical fascism and in what ways they differ from that experience.

Full details for HIST 2285 - Fascism in the Twentieth Century: History and Theory

An introduction to basic themes of military history, e.g., battle, strategy, tactics, war and society, as well as classic works, e.g. Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Clausewitz, Jomini.  Recent theories in scholarship will also be emphasized.

Full details for HIST 2321 - Introduction to Military History

In this course we will examine LGBTQ+ history in the United States with a focus on its recovery and public representation—what are the stakes of researching, preserving, and commemorating the LGBTQ+ past? We will investigate how archival, scholarly, curatorial, and creative practices shape popular conceptions of LGBTQ+ life, politics, and culture, and how those practices and conceptions have changed with evolving understandings of race, gender, sexuality, and oppression. Students will build skills in archival research and historical interpretation and explore possibilities and challenges in building archives and presenting LGBTQ+ history in a variety of public contexts—museums, libraries, monuments, movies and television, and community-based oral history projects. For their final project, students will locate and research a selection of archival materials (periodicals, letters, pamphlets, songs, advertisements, etc.) either online or at Cornell Library's Rare and Manuscript Collections, producing a final research paper and a proposal for a public history project.

Full details for HIST 2335 - Making Public Queer History

Corruption in politics and economics has become a significant issue in the modern world. This course introduces students to the study of corruption and collusion from the perspective of early America and the Caribbean from 1500 through 1800. By examining the historical evolution of corruption, the course addresses questions such as: What is corruption and, by contrast, what is good governance? Who creates law and when is it enforced? Can societies be corrupt or only institutions? And, does economic corruption help or hurt financial development? Our readings and discussion will examine the intersection of politics, culture, gender, and economics. We will reflect on how early Americans understood corruption and collusion and what that can tell us about similar modern issues. In the end, the course focuses on the concept of corruption as a complex social function through the lens of bribery, piracy, sex crimes, and other forms of social deviancy.

Full details for HIST 2381 - Corruption, Collusion, and Commerce in Early America and the Caribbean

At the beginning of the 7th century, a new religion, Islam, appeared in Arabia and by the end of the century, Muslims had defeated the Byzantines and Persians and created an empire that stretched from Spain to India. For the next millennium, Islam glittered. Its caliphs, courts, and capitals were grander, more powerful, and more sophisticated than those of any medieval king, duke or prince. In this course, we will trace the emergence and development of Islamic civilization from the birth of Muhammad ca. 570 to the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. We will read the Qur'an and listen to its recitation; examine the career of the Prophet Muhammad; follow the course of the Arab conquests; explore the nature of the conflict between Sunnis and Shi'is; learn about the five pillars of Islam, sharia law, theology, and Sufism; and assess the achievements of Muslim intellectuals in literature, art, architecture, science, and philosophy.

Full details for HIST 2530 - Introduction to Islamic Civilization

World War II was one of the most transformative periods in the history of the 20th century. As a result, scholars, writers and filmmakers continue to re-examine the war from multiple angles. Nonetheless, most accounts of the war marginalize Africa's role and the consequences of the war for African communities.   This course considers the new historiography on World War II that aims to put the 'world' back into our analysis of WW II and considers the ways in which imperialism, race and gender shaped the prosecution and the consequences of the war.  It focuses specifically on Africa's social, economic and political engagement with the powers at the center of the conflict and introduces students to emerging debates in African historiography and the historiography of World War II. 

Full details for HIST 2543 - In the Crossfire of Empires: Africa and World War II

For millennia, Buddhist monks, merchants, pilgrims, diplomats, and adventurers have moved around the Indian Ocean arena circulating Buddhist teachings and powerful objects.  In doing so they helped create Buddhist communities in the places we now refer to as southern China, India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia.  The course explores these circulatory histories by focusing on case studies in each of four historical periods: premodern (esp. early second millennium A.D.); the era of 19th-century colonial projects; mid-20th-century nation-state formation in South and Southeast Asia; and contemporary (early 21st century) times.  Drawing together materials from Indian Ocean studies, Buddhist studies, and critical studies of colonialism, modernity, and nation-state formation, this course attends to the ways in which changing trans-regional conditions shape local Buddhisms, how Buddhist collectives around the Indian Ocean arena shape one another, and how trade, religion, and politics interact.

Full details for HIST 2548 - Buddhists in the Indian Ocean Arena: Past and Present

An introduction to ancient Greek history from the era of the Trojan War to the conquests of Alexander the Great. Topics include the rise and fall of the Greek city-state, the invention of politics, democracy, warfare, women and the family. Course readings are in classical texts and modern scholarship.

Full details for HIST 2650 - Ancient Greece from Helen to Alexander

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, this course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the origins, character, and results of the American Revolution, as well as engaging the enduring significance of its memory in contemporary American life - why do we choose to remember the American Revolution in ways that occlude its divisive and bloody events? This course explores many of the key themes of this critical period of American history: the rise of colonial opposition to Great Britain, the nature of the Revolutionary Wars, and the domestic "republican experiment" that followed the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The course emphasizes student interpretations with an eye toward analyzing the comparative experiences of women and men, "everyday people" and famous leaders, Native Americans, African-Americans, and those who opposed the Revolution.

Full details for HIST 2665 - The American Revolutionary Era

This course examines the history of the United States' involvement with Middle East beginning with evangelical efforts in the 19th century and President Wilson's engagement with the colonial powers in the early 20th century during and after WWI. The discovery of vast Middle Eastern oil reserves and the retreat of the colonial powers from the region following WWII drew successive US administrations ever deeper into Middle Eastern politics. In due course, the US became entrenched in the post-colonial political imagination as heir to the British and the French especially as it challenged the Soviet Union for influence in the region during the Cold War. And that only takes the story to the mid-1950s and the Eisenhower administration. Our discussions will be based on secondary readings and primary sources as we interrogate the tension between realist and idealist policies toward the Middle East and trace how these tensions play out in subsequent developments including the origins and trajectory of the US strategic alliances with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey and conflict with Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the two Gulf Wars.

Full details for HIST 2686 - The U.S. and the Middle East

These seminars offer an introduction to the humanities by exploring historical, cultural, social, and political themes. Students will explore themes in critical dialogue with a range of texts and media drawn from the arts, humanities, and/or humanistic social sciences. Guest speakers, including Cornell faculty and Society for the Humanities Fellows, will present from different disciplines and points of view. Students will make field trips to relevant local sites and visit Cornell special collections and archives. Students enrolled in these seminars will have the opportunity to participate in additional programming related to the annual focus theme of Cornell's Society for the Humanities and the Humanities Scholars Program for undergraduate humanities research.

Full details for HIST 2751 - Introduction to Humanities

In the turbulent and violent years from 1789 to 1815, France experienced virtually every form of government known to the modern world. This course explores the rapidly changing political landscape of this extraordinary period as well as the evolution of Revolutionary culture (the arts, theater, songs, fashion, the cult of the guillotine, attitudes towards gender and race). Whenever possible, we will use texts and images produced by the Revolutionaries themselves.

Full details for HIST 2860 - The French Revolution

In 1919, journalist John Reed published Ten Days That Shook the World about the 1917 Russian Revolution. Some events are so transformative, Reed argued, they change the course of history. This class examines ten technologies that "shook" the world over the past half millennium. Or did they? Can technology drive history? How should we think about the relationship between technology and culture, society, politics, and the environment? This course challenges many popular understandings of technology and technological change, introducing students to major concepts in the history and social studies of technology, including technological determinism, systems, infrastructure, skill, technopolitics, envirotech, users, and maintenance and repair. Technologies addressed will vary, but may include the slave ship, factory, climate control, atomic bomb, and plastic.  

Full details for HIST 2881 - Ten Technologies That Shook the World?

In the past two centuries, Jewish men and women have adapted remarkably well to the modern condition, embracing the opportunities associated with higher education, city life, industrial capitalism and democratic politics.  Jewish artists, writers, scientists and philosophers can be found on every list of luminaries associated with the modern age; it is enough to mention Marx, Freud and Einstein to conjure up the celebrated image of Jewish participation in the modern project.  No less remarkable than these names is the resurgence of Jewish tradition, despite the inroads of secularization and the dissolution of communal self-government. This course explores the tensions implicit in the Jewish experience of modernity, marked by intense longing for personal and collective emancipation from religious obligation and social discipline, on the one hand, and by a powerful countervailing impulse to strengthen ethnic loyalties, to invigorate Jewish practice and to keep Jewish values intact. Drawing on various forms of Jewish expression, from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, we will address the contradictions implicit in the strange hybrid of "Jewish modernity."

Full details for HIST 2910 - Jewish Modernity

Provides an introduction to the role computing and information technologies played in political public life, from tabulating machines used to calculate the census to Big Tech's impact on democratic procedures, the future of labor, and the environment. Though organized around four thematic units (Recognizing and Representing, Knowing, Working, and Belonging), the course pays attention to the chronological trajectory of technologies and political practices and students will develop the skills necessary for historical analysis. While focusing on the US experience the course also highlights the international flow of labor, materials, and ideas. By studying the development of computing historically, we will grapple with the effects of computing and data sciences on society today, paying special attention to critiques of economic, racial, and gender injustice. The course will meet twice a week, and each meeting will include a lecture followed by a discussion.

Full details for HIST 2920 - Inventing an Information Society

Independent Study based supervised research with a history faculty member.  Student must complete an on-line Independent Study form with a faculty supervisor to determine requirements and for permission.  Students then work with their faculty supervisor throughout the semester for successful completion and grading of the agreed upon requirements.

Full details for HIST 3002 - Supervised Research - Undergraduate

This course provides a general, critical introduction to the history of Mexico since its independence from Spanish rule in the early nineteenth century.  Rather than a chronological summation of events and great leaders, emphasis will be placed upon certain themes and trends with respect to economic, social and cultural development and change.  We will be particularly interested in the patterns of conflict and negotiation that shaped Mexico's history and emphasis will be given throughout the course to the ways in which "everyday people" participated in and influenced the political events of their times and to the important regional, class, ethnic, and gender differences that have figured prominently in Mexico's history. The course also pays attention to the history of what one could call "greater Mexico" and relations with the United States. Finally, we will be concerned with the historiography, not just the history, of Mexico:  that is, the ways in which the history of Mexico has been written and the political dimensions of writing those histories.

Full details for HIST 3060 - Modern Mexico: A Global History

This course examines the intertwined histories of capitalism and democracy from the 1870s to the present day. We will explore how modern capitalism became a global force at the same time as democratic ideas and practices struggled to establish themselves. In doing so we will grapple with key questions of history, political economy, and ethics. Do economic crises tend to weaken democracy? Is stability or crisis the norm? Can mass politics ever control the international monetary and financial system? Are our political systems and societies fatally dependent on ever-increasing growth? Is there any reason to think they can handle challenges such as increasing inequality and drastic climate change? We will look for answers to these questions by studying key moments in the history of global capitalism and democracy.

Full details for HIST 3081 - Stability and Crisis: Capitalism and Democracy, 1870 to the present

If you have ever wondered what the Vietnam War was all about, how did it begin, how was it fought, why was it so controversial, why did the American people turn against it, why was it important, why were generations of American students taught the North Vietnamese version of the war, why the South Vietnamese allies of the United States were abandoned, and what happened to the Vietnamese and the Americans as a result of the war—then this class is for you! With fresh eyes and surprising insights, it will take you beyond the fashionable fictions and clichés to look at the twenty-five years during which the United States, through six presidential administrations, was involved in Vietnamese affairs (1950-1975). For decades, Americans have been meditating on "the lessons of the Vietnam War", but it turns out that neither was any lesson ever learned nor were the so-called "lessons" even plausibly related to actual events. Today, Americans continue to be taught myths about the Vietnam War. This course shows why these myths obstruct a realistic understanding of American history during the past half-century.

Full details for HIST 3312 - What was the Vietnam War?

This course understands "myth" in the sense of "ideological construction."  So we'll be examining the intellectual and cultural life of Americans, over the last two centuries. The emphasis will be on identity, at both the personal and national level. We'll explore the ways in which different versions of "American Culture" have been constructed and contested. Central themes and subjects include individualism, militarism, belonging, technology, philosophy, and art, in addition to race, class, and gender. What cultural baggage are you carrying when you refer to "America" or "Americans"?  Over the years, has the idea of "America" been more unifying or more divisive?

Full details for HIST 3452 - The Myth of America

This class investigates race and class in the American labor market from Colonial America to the present day. We investigate the circumstances and labor institutions that brought labor to the U.S. and how laborers of various classes were received. A primary goal of the class is to understand the degree to which social mobility was historically possible in different time periods in American history. Social mobility is intimately tied to labor market institutions and the ability for workers to get ahead within those institutions. Some of the institutions we study are Indentured Servitude, Slavery, tenant farming, the Great Migration and labor organization in the industrial north. Ultimately we hope to build an understanding of the historical roots of the role of race and class today.

Full details for HIST 3480 - Race and the American Labor Market in Historical Perspective

As the founder of Islam Muhammad is one of the most influential figures in world history. An important source for his life is the Sira of Ibn Ishaq (d. ca. 761), a biography that opens with Muhammad's birth ca. 570 and ends with his death in 632. If we take the narrative reports in this text at face-value, then Muhammad appears to have been born in the full light of history. But is the Sira a reliable source for the historical Muhammad? In this seminar, we will read this text in its entirely and analyze selected episodes from a critical historical perspective, with special attention to biblical and post-biblical models for the writing of sacred history.

Full details for HIST 3677 - The Search for the Historical Muhammad

This seminar is an introduction to the theory, practice, and art of historical research and writing. One key purpose of this course is to prepare students to work on longer research projects—especially an Honors Thesis. We will analyze the relationship between evidence and argument in historical writing; assess the methods and possible biases in various examples of historical writing; identify debates and sources relevant to research problems; think about how to use sources creatively; and discuss the various methodological issues associated with historical inquiry, analysis, and presentation.  This course is required for all students wishing to write an Honors Thesis in their senior year.  It should be taken in either semester of the junior year, or in spring of the sophomore year if you are planning to be abroad in your junior year.  NOTE: you do NOT need to be enrolled in the Honors Program in order to sign up for this course.

Full details for HIST 4000 - Introduction to Historical Research

This course provides structure for the student's research and introduces them to research techniques. Enrollment limited to students admitted to the History Department's Honors Program.

Full details for HIST 4001 - Honors Guidance

Visions of bodily corruption preoccupy ruler and ruled alike and prompt campaigns for moral, medical, and legal reform in periods of both stability and revolution. This seminar explores the links between political, sexual, and scientific revolutions in early modern and modern Asia. The focus is on China and Japan, with secondary attention to South Asia and Korea. Interaction with the West is a major theme. Topics include disease control, birth control and population control, body modification, the history of masculinity, honorific violence and sexual violence, the science of sex, normative and stigmatized sexualities, fashion, disability, and eugenics. The course begins with an exploration of regimes of the body in "traditional" Asian cultures. The course then turns to the medicalization and modernization of the body under the major rival political movements in Asia: feminism, imperialism, nationalism, and communism.

Full details for HIST 4127 - The Body Politic in Asia

This research seminar explores how Americans and their elected leaders struggled to respond to economic and social inequality throughout the twentieth century. It traces the expansions and retractions of the U.S. welfare state with special attention to the influence of average people's organizing and activism. Among other things, students will study the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the Great Society, the "Reagan Revolution," and Clinton's welfare reforms. Assessment will be on the basis of class discussion, weekly reading responses, and a substantial research paper based in primary sources.

Full details for HIST 4202 - The Politics of Inequality: The History of the U.S. Welfare State

This seminar offers a hands-on approach to US immigration history from the colonial era to the present. In addition to learning the contours of the surprising history of immigration to the United States from all corners of the world, including the impact of questions of legal status, gender, and race, students will strive to develop a sophisticated sense of the historical context of today's immigration debates and issues, with the opportunity to learn about these issues in Washington DC. In the late 19th century, for example, the native born often saw Southern Italian, Eastern European Jewish, and Chinese immigrants as threats to their jobs, their health, and their cultural values. Restrictionists in Congress sought to close the door through legislation or administrative regulation. Others, such as settlement house workers, sought to "Americanize" newcomers and assimilate them into the American population. Immigrants were often aware of the double message and sought to negotiate a place in American society that allowed them to succeed economically while retaining their identities. The debate continues today as millions of migrants from Latin America and Asia, documented and undocumented, arrive. After a discussion of indentured servitude and slavery (involuntary migration) this course seeks to examine the perennial debate over voluntary immigration through the eyes of both native-born Americans and through immigrants eyes to the present. 

Full details for HIST 4252 - Migration and the Peopling of America: A Perennial Debate

"Environmental Justice" is a relatively recent term, coined in the United States in the 1980s.  It usually refers to a social movement fighting against the unfair concentration of toxic sites within impoverished communities of color.  As a broader set of ideas, though, "environmental justice" has a much longer history, going back at least to the 17th century in England, when poor farmers banded together to prevent common land from being enclosed for the exclusive use of the aristocracy.  This course explores that deep history, examining various overlaps between environmental thought and theories of social justice over the past 400 years in the western world.  It concludes with an examination of the current climate justice movement and a consideration of how environmental justice concerns are being played out in recent works of speculative fiction.  What do we owe to the climate refugees of our present day?  What do we owe to future generations?

Full details for HIST 4262 - Environmental Justice: Past, Present, Future

This course examines the journalistic record and political discourse around U.S. immigration policy, in the post 9/11 Bush, Obama, Trump and now Biden administrations, with a particular focus on the contemporary, but in the larger context of the construct of an "American" identity from the 20th century to today. Drawing from the fields of political and social science, history, law, and journalism, the course will engage students in rigorous ethical and academic debate on the social, economic, and geopolitical factors that spur migration; the roles of governance, authority, democracy — including the press — in responding to it and shaping public opinion and policy around it; and the inextricability of those institutions from nativism, xenophobia, and of course, politics. It will require students to conduct research and reporting of their own with primary sources and the very officials, writers and communities who have both shaped and been shaped by the increasingly urgent debate over the "American Dream," in the U.S. and around the world. Immigration isn't stopping. How the U.S. responds will, as it has always done, define what it means to be "American."

Full details for HIST 4318 - American Dream?: Journalism, Politics, and Identity in U.S. Immigration Policy

From Jerusalem to Rome, from Shanghai to Marrakesh, Jews and cities have been shaping each other for thousands of years. This course ranges through time and space to examine how Jewish and other "minority" experiences offer a window onto questions of modernity and post-colonialism in intersections of the built environment with migration, urban space, and memory. Readings and film/video encompass historical, ethnographic, visual, architectural and literary materials to offer a broad look at materials on ghettos, empires, cosmopolitanism, tolerance, immigrant enclaves, race and ethnicity.

Full details for HIST 4520 - Jewish Cities

This senior/graduate seminar will tackle some of the main debates in the historiography of the Middle Eastern, by focusing on the history of Middle East during the period of Ottoman rule. The Middle East is a loosely defined geographic area, which for the purpose of this course will include parts of North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Fertile Crescent, and the Arabian Peninsula. Concentrating on the Middle East in the 19th century will provide the context in which to discuss ideas such as imperialism, colonialism, orientalism, center-periphery relations, centralization vs. decentralization and ethnic nationalism against the background of fast-moving developments of the Late Ottoman Empire.  Students will be expected to have basic background knowledge in Middle Eastern/Islamic History.

Full details for HIST 4542 - The Modern Middle East During the Long Nineteenth Century

The discovery of the Americas, wrote Francisco Lopez de Gomara in 1552, was "the greatest event since the creation of the world, excepting the Incarnation and Death of Him who created." Five centuries have not diminished either the overwhelming importance or the strangeness of the early encounter between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Taking a comparative approach, this course will conceptualize early American history as the product of reciprocal cultural encounters by assessing the various experiences of Spanish, French, and English newcomers in different regions of the Americas. Critical interpretation of primary source material will be emphasized in the course, as will the development of students' ability to reflect critically on these documents, taking into account the perspective of both the colonizers and the colonized. 

Full details for HIST 4900 - New World Encounters, 1500 - 1800

Full details for HIST 6006 - History Colloquium Series

Visions of bodily corruption preoccupy ruler and ruled alike and prompt campaigns for moral, medical, and legal reform in periods of both stability and revolution. This seminar explores the links between political, sexual, and scientific revolutions in early modern and modern Asia. The focus is on China and Japan, with secondary attention to South Asia and Korea. Interaction with the West is a major theme. Topics include disease control, birth control and population control, body modification, the history of masculinity, honorific violence and sexual violence, the science of sex, normative and stigmatized sexualities, fashion, disability, and eugenics. The course begins with an exploration of regimes of the body in "traditional" Asian cultures. The course then turns to the medicalization and modernization of the body under the major rival political movements in Asia: feminism, imperialism, nationalism, and communism.

Full details for HIST 6127 - The Body Politic in Asia

This graduate seminar seeks to familiarize students with some of the most recent takes on transnational history that have emphasized the experiences of individuals and groups whose lives were affected by mobility across political boundaries. An explicit aim of the seminar is to use these border-crossing lives as a way to develop a critique of conventional areas studies frameworks and to explore the possibilities of imagining (geographically and otherwise) a different world (or multiple different ways of organizing global space). Since most of the readings will concentrate on the pre-nineteenth century world, the seminar will also offer students tools to rethink conventional narratives of the rise of a globalized world that tend to emphasize the second half of the nineteenth century as the birth of the global world. Globalization, this course will demonstrate, was happening long before most accepted narratives assert.

Full details for HIST 6132 - Mobility, Circulation, Migration, Diaspora: Global Connections

This course uses water to examine the confluence of two fields: environmental history and the social and historical studies of science and technology. Although preliminary scholarship has begun to demonstrate the fruitful integration of these fields, a number of methodological and theoretical tensions remain. Some of these tensions include the social construction of "nature," nature as a historical actor, accounts of the emergence of "environmental" "problems," constructivist models of science and technology, and scholars' use of technoscientific sources to assess environmental change. This class, therefore, examines a number of scholarly debates about key terms, definitions, and categories (both historical actors' and analysts'), knowledge-making about "nature" and human interactions with nonhuman nature, and the concept of agency. Weekly seminars are organized around readings in environmental history, science studies, and/or their intersection that explore these issues in diverse ways while usually addressing various aquatic environments in comparative historical and cultural perspective.

Full details for HIST 6181 - Confluence: Environmental History and Science and Technology Studies

This seminar explores the international and transnational dimensions of the Black Power Movement, broadly defined. Beginning with an examination of transnationalism in the early 20th century, it examines the thought and political activities of African-American intellectuals and activists who crossed national boundaries, figuratively and literally, in the quest for black freedom. We will focus on the postwar era, particularly the 1950s through the 1980s, exploring transnationalism in the context of black feminism, Marxism, black nationalism, Pan Africanism, and other political traditions. We will examine the meeting and mingling of transnational discourses, ideologies, and activists in North America, the Caribbean, and Africa. 

Full details for HIST 6321 - Black Power Movement and Transnationalism

This senior/graduate seminar will tackle some of the main debates in the historiography of the Middle Eastern, by focusing on the history of Middle East during the period of Ottoman rule. The Middle East is a loosely defined geographic area, which for the purpose of this course will include parts of North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Fertile Crescent, and the Arabian Peninsula. Concentrating on the Middle East in the 19th century will provide the context in which to discuss ideas such as imperialism, colonialism, orientalism, center-periphery relations, centralization vs. decentralization and ethnic nationalism against the background of fast-moving developments of the Late Ottoman Empire.  Students will be expected to have basic background knowledge in Middle Eastern/Islamic History.

Full details for HIST 6442 - The Modern Middle East During the Long Nineteenth Century

From Jerusalem to Rome, from Shanghai to Marrakesh, Jews and cities have been shaping each other for thousands of years. This course ranges through time and space to examine how Jewish and other "minority" experiences offer a window onto questions of modernity and post-colonialism in intersections of the built environment with migration, urban space, and memory. Readings and film/video encompass historical, ethnographic, visual, architectural and literary materials to offer a broad look at materials on ghettos, empires, cosmopolitanism, tolerance, immigrant enclaves, race and ethnicity.  

Full details for HIST 6520 - Jewish Cities

This course will explore all the major works of philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, from his earliest works on mental illness and epistemology to his later works on sexuality, punishment, and power. In addition to exploring his written work, we will also read and watch transcripts and recordings of interviews and lectures. While this course is focused on Foucault's contributions to the field of history, we will be considering his contributions to the humanities and the social sciences more generally.

Full details for HIST 6627 - Foucault

As the founder of Islam Muhammad is one of the most influential figures in world history. An important source for his life is the Sira of Ibn Ishaq (d. ca. 761), a biography that opens with Muhammad's birth ca. 570 and ends with his death in 632. If we take the narrative reports in this text at face-value, then Muhammad appears to have been born in the full light of history. But is the Sira a reliable source for the historical Muhammad? In this seminar, we will read this text in its entirely and analyze selected episodes from a critical historical perspective, with special attention to biblical and post-biblical models for the writing of sacred history.

Full details for HIST 6677 - The Search for the Historical Muhammad

Provides students with a foundation in the field of science and technology studies. Using classic works as well as contemporary exemplars, seminar participants chart the terrain of this new field. Topics for discussion include, but are not limited to, historiography of science and technology and their relation to social studies of science and technology, laboratory studies, intellectual property, science and the state, the role of instruments, fieldwork, politics and technical knowledge, philosophy of science, sociological studies of science and technology, and popularization.

Full details for HIST 7110 - Introduction to Science and Technology Studies

In this course we will explore the historical processes by which Chinese documents have been compiled, curated, and re-curated. We will examine the theoretical and methodological implications of those curatorial processes for historical research and analysis. Focus will be on documents and archives of the middle to late imperial and modern periods.

Full details for HIST 7220 - Exploring China's Archives

Offers both an introduction to the different disciplines studying the non-literary sources for Roman history (epigraphy, archaeology, among others) and a discussion of important topics relevant to Roman social history (travel, voluntary associations, death and burial, etc.).

Full details for HIST 7689 - Roman History: Approaches and Methods

Independent Study based supervised reading with a history faculty/field member.

Full details for HIST 8004 - Supervised Reading

Full details for HIST 8010 - Independent Study-PIRIP