Upper Level History Courses
Looking for interesting and engaging classes? Look no further than the History Department's course selections!
Below is a list of upper-level history courses from our catalog.
- HIST 250-298 Course Numbers are explorations of important and exciting topics; with less reading and writing than a typical 300-level class, these courses are ideal for majors, minors, and non-majors.
- HIST 300-399 Courses are for both majors and non-majors and allow students to go in depth into a specific topic or area of history.
- We also offer a full complement of our Tier 1 Foundational Historical and Tier 2 Historical Knowledge Core Courses, including special sections of HIST 212 focused on Military and Diplomatic History and Medicine, Disease, and Health.
A guide to History Course Numbers:
Pre-Modern History:
- HIST 250-259
- HIST 301-319
Modern European History:
- HIST 260-269
- HIST 320-340
World History:
- HIST 270-279
- HIST 340-359
US History:
- HIST 280-298
- HIST 360-389
Description: This course examines the interaction between Romans and the so-called 'barbarians' such as the Goths, Huns, Slavs, and Arabs from the 2nd to the 7th centuries, with a focus on how new archaeological and skeletal data is changing our understanding of the barbarians.
Outcomes: Students will study the role of neighboring peoples in the collapse of the Roman Empire; interpret archaeological data; compare receptions of immigrants and refugees in the ancient and modern world.
Description: The Vikings are popularly thought of as invaders, marauders, destroyers of civilized peace. However, recent research has focused on their society, culture, accomplishments and contributions in a much more positive sense.
Outcome: Students will gain an understanding of the impact of the Vikings on European development; a knowledge of historiographical issues concerning the Vikings; and awareness of various types of primary sources.
Sample Syllabus:HIST 254A The Vikings Syllabus
Instructor: Stabler
Description: This course will trace the history of medieval and early modern ideas about nature, magic, demonology, and witchcraft, exploring the history of reason and rationality, elite and popular culture, persecution and society, and the intersections between Magic, Science, and Witchcraft.
Outcomes: Students will understand connections between witchcraft and popular religions; the gendering of witches; the political and economic aspects of witch trials; and modern portrayals of witches in popular media.
Instructor: Bucholz
Time: T/Th 11:30-12:45
Description: World War I is arguably the greatest watershed separating us from our pre-modern past. This course proposes to explore the causes, campaigns consequences, and cultural legacies of the war. Students will be required to read eyewitness accounts and memoirs, and view films that assess the war's impact on world civilization. Students will learn about the First World War by engaging with primary accounts by combatants and non-combatants. Students will hone their critical thinking skills through the analysis of historical evidence.
Description: This course will investigate intellectual and cultural responses to major events of nineteenth-century German history, including the Napoleonic Wars, the Restoration, the Revolution of 1848, the unification of Germany, the German Empire under Bismarck and Wilhelm II, and events leading to the First World War.
Outcome: The student will be able to connect German cultural life to political and social developments, and be able to identify intellectual currents such as Romantic Germany, Idealist Germany, and Dionysian Germany.
Description: History 267B covers the central role of Germany in the modern world, including its politics and culture! Not only was Germany at the center of the First World War, the rise of Totalitarianism, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. German writers, artists, composers and filmmakers responded to all of these developments by constructing modernist responses to modernity. Great literature, art, music, and films provide the best way to feel the impact of 20th century history, and this blended course of online lectures and in-class discussions will raise your understanding of all these.
Sample Syllabus: HIST 333 20th Century German Politics and Culture
Description: The aim of this course is to examine the historical factors behind Latin America's contemporary security crisis. With a particular focus on the region's process of modernization, state building and democratization, the course examines the linkages between political and criminal, as well as between past and present forms of violence.
Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the main institutional, cultural, and political reasons behind the prevalence of violence and crime in the Latin American region.
Sample Syllabus: HIST 278 - Crime and Violence in Latin America
Sample Syllabus: HIST 279C History of Computing
Instructor: Donoghue
Time: T/Th 8:30-9:45
Description: Moving beyond seafaring lore and legend, this course places the history of pirates and sailors in the context of ¿Atlantic history.¿ Students will explore how organized conquests and trading ventures led to the formation of the first British empire and the expansion of commercial networks around the Atlantic and beyond.
Outcomes: Course prepares students to confront the way political and economic power is exercised, justified, questioned, and resisted during periods of rapid, global capitalist expansion.
Description: This course provides a historical introduction to sexual behaviors and attitudes in the United States from the early American period to the present. The primary emphasis concerns the impact of social and political change on sexual norms and behavior.
Outcome: The course enables students to comprehend the evolving boundaries of sexual behavior and the historical transformations of the family, sexuality, gender, and personal identity in the United States
Instructor: Gorn
Description: We explore US history through Iconic photographs, movies, artworks and essays. For example, the film "To Kill a Mockingbird" allows us to delineate the image of race, class and family in the South during the Great Depression, even as the film opens up Hollywood's role in shaping popular ideologies.
Outcome: Learn about 20th-century US history, including the Great Depression, Civil Rights Movement, and Cold War; develop writing and discussion skills; learn about the relationship between history and memory.
Prerequisite: 12 hrs in HIST
Description: This course studies the ways historians arrive at their interpretation of events. This is accomplished through a history of historical writing or through a special selected topic that illustrates the use of different methods by past and present historians. Students are expected to take this course after completing their four introductory courses for the major.
Outcome: students will understand that history is not a set of facts but a discipline that depends on competing paradigms and the ongoing interpretation of primary sources.
Sample Syllabus: HIST 299 Historical Methods - Kaufman
Description: Special topics or new approaches of current interest to the instructor. This course may be used to fulfill the history major distribution requirement in 300-Level Pre-1700 European History or may count as a 300-Level history elective. Students may repeat the course for credit when the topic changes.
Outcome: Students will gain familiarity with the topic; the ability to make connections between secondary and primary sources; and the capacity to think critically about the ways that historians have approached major issues.
Description: This course explores the historical processes of anti-colonial resistance and decolonization in the twentieth century. The end of modern colonialism and the emergence of new nation-states in Africa and Asia mark one of the most significant transformations in modern history. In an examination of late (or “New”) imperialism at the end of the nineteenth through the twentieth century, this course will consider the ways in which imperial agents justified their subjugation of colonized peoples and the multi-pronged ways in which colonial objects came to resist and end colonial rule. We will primarily examine European and US imperialism and reactions to it in the modern era (post-1750) However, in order to come to a more comprehensive understanding of imperialism and decolonization (and national movements of liberation), we will begin this class with a broad examination of European empire-building from the 16th through the 20th century. Thus, the first half of the class examines early modern European empires in the Americas and in other parts of the globe in the period ca. 1500-1800. The second half of the course then delves into themes, histories, and theories of resistance to modern empire in more specific regional and comparative contexts in Asia and Africa.
Outcomes: students will learn about theoretical, political, and historical explanations about the processes of resistance and decolonization. Further develop critical analysis skills and historical knowledge.
Sample Syllabus: HIST 300E Colonialism and Decolonization
Note: As of Fall 2021, this course will be numbered HIST 359H.
Instructor: Dr. Kim Searcy
Time: Mon/Wed/Fri 10:25-11:15
Syllabus: HIST 300E Women in Islamic History
Description: This course examines the role of women in Islamic history, from the earliest Islamic period, i.e. 7th century Arabia to the present. The course will focus on Africa and the Middle East, however predominately Muslim regions such as Malaysia and Indonesia will also figure into the course narrative. The course seeks to offer insight into how Muslim and empower themselves and into the constantly changing gender boundaries. The course will use both primary and secondary source material in order to explore these topics.
Description: This course examines some of the worst pandemics ever to strike humanity, starting with the outbreaks of smallpox and bubonic in the final centuries of the Roman Empire, the devastating Black Death of the 14th century, and the diseases that destroyed the native Americans in the wake of Columbus's voyages.
Outcomes: Students will gain an understanding of: the role of poverty, nutrition, and population in epidemics; state, church, or community responses to epidemics; how science has changed the history of disease.
Description: This course traces urban development from late antiquity to the early modern period.
Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the origins and chronology of European town planning and development; and make comparisons with Islamic and Asian cities.
Description: This course explores ancient Greek history, society and culture, from the Bronze Age through the period of Classical Greece ending with Alexander and his empire.
Outcome: Students will be able to evaluate and interpret different types of sources critically and explain how these affect our understanding of the ancient Greeks.
Description: This course surveys ancient Roman history, with a focus on Rome's conquest of the Mediterranean, the civil wars that ended the Roman Republic, the good and bad emperors of the Principate, and the conversion of Constantine to Christianity.
Outcome: Students will understand the interrelationship among political, social, economic, and cultural developments and develop their research and writing skills
Description: This course examines the history of Christian communities and beliefs from their emergence in Jewish Palestine to the legalization of that religion in the Late Antique period. Students will gain familiarity with the diversity of early Christian belief, the interaction with the Roman imperial government, the evangelization and spread of Christianity both within the Roman Empire and outside it, the impact of Christianity on Roman social and family life, and the birth of monasticism.
Outcome: Students will be able to evaluate the impact of discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library on the history of early Christianity; appreciate the extraordinary diversity of early Christianity; understand why Christianity was seen as a threat to Roman family life; improve their research, writing, and oral presentation skills; improve their critical reading skills of both secondary and primary sources.
Description: This course examines European, Islamic and Byzantine society and culture in the Middle Ages.
Outcomes: Students will learn of the Middle Ages, including relations between religious and political institutions; cultural developments; the rise of towns; reactions to the Black Death and the Hundred Years War.
Why should I take this class? This course will explore this politically powerful position as it developed from a spousal partnership in the early Middle Ages into an institution in the later Medieval period. Through the lens of queenship, we will examine the ways in which gender, ideals of rulership, inheritance practices, and kinship networks shaped European politics and culture in the Middle Ages. We will also use the popular television series Game of Thrones to compare modern portrayals of Queens with our medieval sources.
Instructor: Tanya Stabler
Time: Tues/Thurs 1:00-2:15pm
Description: Medieval queens occupied powerful, exceptional, and (ultimately) tenuous positions in medieval society. Their positions, whether acquired via marriage or (rarely) inheritance, required constant negotiation of cultures, political factions, and gender expectations. As foreigners, Queens faced suspicion and distrust. However, as wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters, Queens had undeniable influence within the family, influence that could translate into significant political power. Their positions were exceptional among medieval women, but required constant manufacture and maintenance of networks of loyalty.
Description: This course will explore the lived religious experience of medieval people through their actions, behaviors and artifacts. Folk (or pagan) survivals, pilgrimage, music and arts, devotion to saints, magical beliefs and practices, and attitudes to the natural/supernatural world[s] may be covered, depending on subtitle.
Outcomes: Students will appreciate the complex world view and agency of regular medieval people; they will acquire research skills and be able to critically assess primary and secondary source materials.
Instructor: Stabler Miller
Days/Times: TuTh, 10:00-12:45
Description: Sometimes termed the “Age of Faith,” the Middle Ages (c. 500 to 1500 CE) are also regarded as an age of violence, persecution, and religious intolerance. To what extent was this period truly an “Age of Faith” or a “persecuting society”? How did religious authorities and pious laypeople reconcile violence with the message of love in the gospels? What were the limits of belief? What were the limits of religious tolerance? In what ways did the process of defining “correct belief” (orthodoxy) depend on definitions of “wrong belief” (heresy)? Who decided? Who resisted, why, and with what consequences? To grapple with these complex issues, this course will approach the past by reenacting the past. Students will research and enact specific perspectives (inquisitors, notaries, priests, mystics, nobles, peasants, etc.) as a class.
Description: This course examines the origins and development of the Crusades and the Crusader States in the Islamic East. It will explore crusade ideology, political and military histories of crusades, compare Christian, Jewish, and Muslim perceptions of the crusading movement, and consider invocations of Jihad and Crusade into the modern era.
Outcomes: Students will learn about the histories of the Crusades, the communities impacted by them, and historiographical debates on the topic. They will write papers using primary and secondary sources.
Description: This course examines the history of medieval England, with an emphasis on its cultural history as manifested through written documents, material remains, art and music.
Outcome: Students will understand that English culture is an amalgamation of Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French culture, with influences from the Celtic and the Latin culture of Roman Catholicism; and will gain skill in the analysis of primary sources.
Instructor: McManamon
Time: MWF 9:20-10:10
Description: This course examines the political and cultural life of Italy's five principal city-states (Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan and Naples) from the era of St. Francis and Dante until the sack of Rome in 1527.
Outcome: Students gain appreciation for the debate about a rebirth of ancient culture in the city-states of Italy. They acquire special cognizance of humanism as a historical phenomenon and the influence of humanism on education, politics, the visual arts and religion.
Description: This course examines the birth and progress of the Reformation in Europe from Luther's protest in 1517 to the conclusion of the Thirty Years War in 1648.
Outcome: Students gain familiarity with the social, religious, intellectual, and political background of the Reformation; Luther's personal religious experience and his theological convictions; the Swiss Reformation of Zwingli and Calvin; the nature and spread of Calvinism; the elements of the Radical Reformation; and the efforts for Catholic Reform culminating at the Council of Trent.
Instructor: Suszko
Description: This course examines political, socioeconomic, and cultural developments in Poland since the first Polish state. Its major themes include: the consolidation of the Polish state; economic and political problems in the 17th Century; revolution and independence; World War II; Communist rule in Poland; and Solidarity. Learning ]\
Outcomes: Students will improve their analytical, quantitative synthetic, and critical cognitive skills; develop written and oral communications skills; and gain historical knowledge.
Instructor: Suszko
Time: T/Th 10:00-11:15
Description: The course explores the period that leads directly into the French Revolution.
Outcome: Students gain an appreciation of the social and economic role of Western Europe in the world of the 17th and 18th centuries; the nature of classic absolutism as illustrated by the reign of Louis XIV of France; and the origin and evolution of Prussia and Austria as examples of enlightened absolutism.
Description: This course surveys the major political, social, economic, religious, and cultural developments in England under the Tudors, Stuarts and early Hanoverians (1485-1760).
Outcome: Students examine the complexities of the aftermath of the Wars of the Roses; the English Reformation; Elizabethan and Jacobean culture and society; the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution of 1688; the wars against Louis XIV; and the rise of England as a great power.
Instructor: Dr. Bob Bucholz
Time: Wed 7:00 9:30
Description: History 318B is a course in the social and cultural history of Early-modern England. the course focuses on those enduring beliefs and continuing realities which formed the background to the lives of the great mass of the common people. It will concentrate, in particular, on the tension between how early modern English men and women saw their world (ordered, hierarchical, stable, divinely sanctioned) and what their world was actually and increasingly like (disordered, socially mobile, unstable, secular). This tension will be explored through reading and critical discussion of the best and most recent work in demography, iconography, family history, women’s history, and the histories of material culture, popular culture, cities, religion, education, witchcraft, poverty, crime, and riot. Thus, students enrolled in this course will be exposed not only to current work on an interesting and important subject, but also to a wide variety of historical methodologies as well as the preoccupations and techniques of related fields such as anthropology and art history.
Syllabus: HIST 318B English Social History
Description: This interdisciplinary introduction to the history of London will assess the economic, political, social, and cultural reasons for the city's importance in British and world history.
Outcome: Students will gain an understanding of how a variety of source materials can be are used to develop an urban history of Great Britain's capital and apply this knowledge to enhance their own communication and critical thinking skills.
Instructor: Kaufman
Time: MW 2:45-4:00
Description: This course explores the cultural and political development of modern France as a nation and imperial power. It examines the formation of national identities; the discourse and practice of French nationalism and republicanism; and the forms of resistance and collaboration that shaped relations between citizens, state, colonized peoples, and empire.
Outcomes: Students will understand how the development of French republicanism and Enlightenment thinking shaped nation and empire building in the 19th century but also influenced colonial resistance in the 20th century.
Sample Syllabus: HIST 322 Modern France Syllabus
Instructor: Cardoza
Description: This course studies the major currents in Italy from the defeat of Napoleon to the present.
Outcome: Students explore the political, social, religious, economic and intellectual currents against the background of Italy's unification as a nation-state.
Description: This course examines political changes in Britain, economic and social causes and consequences of industrialization, and the changing position of Great Britain in Europe and the world.
Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the political process of democratization and the global affect of economic change on Britain as evidenced in the extension of voting rights, the growth of Empire, the creation of the Commonwealth and participation in the European Union.
Description: This course examines the rise and decline of Britain's empire.
Outcome: Students will understand the different factors responsible for its growth; relationship of empire and British economic and political change; place of empire in the Victorian ethos; different imperial governing arrangements; growth of nationalism and movements for independence within the empire and commonwealth.
Instructor: Khodarkovsky
Description: This course examines how, by the middle of the 19th century, Russia emerged as the largest empire in the world.
Outcome: Students will be able to explain how Russia survived the ravages of the Mongols under Chingis Khan, the reign of terror under Ivan the Terrible, westernization under Peter the Great; opened itself to new ideas under Catherine the Great, while it continued to preserve an oppressive institution of serfdom and remained a deeply divided society ready to explode in 1917.
Sample Syllabus: HIST 328 Russia before 1917 - Khodarkovsky
Description: This course traces the origins of the two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century and assesses the cultural and political movements that transformed Europe and the west in those years.
Outcome: Students will develop critical thinking and communications skills about how the contemporary world was shaped by the political, military, cultural, and social transformations in the first half of the twentieth century.
Why should I take this class? We will learn about how race, class, and gender have shaped the country's school lunch program -- long before Michelle Obama drew attention to the connection between race and adequate and healthy eating in the US. And think about connections between domestic food policies (like school lunches) and global warfare and transnational economic development.
Description: This course examines the ways in which conflicts over food have shaped the modern world. We will explore changing ways of understanding and fighting famines (focusing on Ireland, India, and Ethiopia), as well as looking at the ways in which food was a “weapon of war” during the First and Second World Wars. Finally, the course will analyze the ways in which race, gender, and class have shaped our country’s food and welfare policies.
Learn more about this course and Dr. Weinreb's recently published book, Modern Hungers: Food and Power in Twentieth Century Germany, here!
Instructor: Weinreb
Time: T/Th 10:00-11:15
Description: The course will deal with the causes, main features and consequences of the Nazi movement in Germany and Europe from 1919 to 1945.
Outcome: The students explore the origins of Nazism and the reasons for Hitler's success. Students appreciate the elements of ¿Nazi culture,¿ the nature of Nazi rule in the 1930s, Nazi foreign policy and aggression in the 1930s, and World War II. They acquire a sense of the Nazi movement as a phenomenon growing out of unique German circumstances as well as one reflecting the larger context of modern western history.
Description: This course explores a defining event of modernity, the genocide of Europe's Jews, by exploring Nazi actions, victims' varied experiences, and international reactions. We will also tackle questions like: Was the Holocaust unique? What does it mean to be a 'bystander'? What are the politics of memory and commemoration?
Outcomes: Students acquire a sense of the causes, processes and implications of recent genocide. They are challenged to develop the outlines of a theory for predicting when genocide is likely to occur and to provide a clear definition of the term. Most importantly, they articulate from the historical data ways to prevent genocide.
Sample Syllabus: HIST 334B Holocaust in Europe: History and Memory
Description: The course examines the history of the war from its origins to the destruction of the Axis powers and the onset of the Cold War.
Outcome: Students will understand the interrelationship among political, social, economic, military, and diplomatic developments as demonstrated in the events of the Holocaust, the spread of nationalism, and the origins of the Cold War.
Instructor: Suszko
Description: This course will cover such issues as the Revolution and Civil War, Stalin's repression, victories in World War II, the years of stagnation, Soviet society, its institutions and culture.
Outcome: Students will be able to explain how the Russian Socialist revolution came into being, what kind of society it sought to create, and how this new society, the Soviet Union, developed and finally dissolved in 1991.
Description: This course surveys the experiences of women in the late Russian empire, the Soviet Union, and the states that now comprise the region. In particular, we will examine the ways in which writers, filmmakers, and activists of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries have addressed the woman question.
Outcomes: Students will gain understanding of key concepts related to women's history in Russia; they will produce written and oral commentaries on the texts and issues studied in class.
Description: In this course students will study the history of European Communism from its inception. The success that this ideology enjoyed among European societies makes it necessary to study this phenomenon in detail. The course will begin by tracing the origins of Communism and end with a discussion of its downfall.
Outcomes: Improved cognitive skills and communications skills; Enhanced historical knowledge
Description: This course takes advantage of Chicago's access to one of the most important collections of modern European art in the world. The Art Institute of Chicago offers masterpieces representing every major aesthetic movement in Western history. Full appreciation of these treasures involves recognizing the historical circumstances that surrounded their creation and considering the ideas their creators intended to communicate.
Outcome: Students will better appreciate the great works themselves and learn from them about major developments in modern European social, political, and cultural history.
Description: This course focuses on the early and medieval history of the states, societies, and cultures of the Middle East from the prophetic mission until the fall of the 'Abbasid empire in 1258.
Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the impact of Islam as a religious and cultural phenomenon and be able to analyze historically the Quran as well as primary sources from jurisprudence, philosophy, ethics, and historiography.
Instructor: Ghazzal
Time: MWF 10:25-11:15
Description: This course surveys the modern Middle East, with a focus on the Arab world.
Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the Ottoman background; the age of imperialism; and the 20th century, and be able to approach the period from an anthropological as well as historical perspective.
Description: This course explores the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict since the beginnings of the immigration of the East Europeans and Russian Jews to Ottoman Palestine in the late 19th century.
Outcome: Students will gain understanding of national Zionism in Europe; Ottoman and British Palestine; the declaration of the state of Israel; the Palestinian refugee problem; the Arab-Israeli wars; the Camp David agreement and recent peace talks and their aftermath.
Description: This course examines the development of Islam in Africa, including issues such as Islamic mysticism, eschatology, and state formation.
Outcome: Students will gain an understanding of how and when Islam entered Africa and how the religion shaped African societies prior to the colonial period.
Sample Syllabus: HIST 342C History of Islam in Africa
Description:The purpose of this course is to explore the African Diaspora as it pertains to the Middle East and South Asia. Issues such as the concept of slavery in Islam, and identity preservation will be treated throughout the course of the semester. Emphasis will be placed on the role Black Africans such as Antara ibn Shadad, Malik Kafur, and Malik Ambar, just to name a few, played in the formation and crystallization of Middle Eastern and South Asian states, kingdoms and empires.
Colonization and Decolonization in South Asia, 1600-1947
Instructor: Dr. John Pincince
Time: Tues 2:30-5:00
Description: This course wil trace Chinese history from the origins of classical Chinese civilization in the Shang and Zhou periods to the evolution of an agrarian society under the imperial state.
Outcome: Students will gain an understanding of how domination by aristocratic lineage gave way to the Confucian state and society based on peasant farming; and how a bureaucratic and autocratic polity existed in symbiosis with a socioeconomic elite that maintained itself through the dominance of the agrarian economy as well as through increasing access to the sources of commerce and trade.
Instructor:Allee
Description:This course explores China's attempt to adjust to the complex transformations in its economy, society, politics and intellectual life initiated during the early modern period and transfigured into crisis proportions by unchecked demographic growth. These challenges were heightened and made more acute by the often hostile encounter with first the West and then Japan through the end of World War II.
Outcome: Students will be able to describe and assess the numerous evolutionary and revolutionary strategies for change during the period in China under discussion.
Description:The course will cover the encounter between China and Christianity, from 7th century Nestorian monks, 12th century Franciscan Missions, 16th century Jesuit missionaries, Christianity in the period of Western imperialism, the expulsion of Western missionaries after the 1949 Communist revolution, and the formation of underground churches. Develop critical, writing, and research skills. Deepen understanding of Christianity as a world religion, the history of China, Christianity in China, and historical ties between China and The West.
Description: This course examines the attempt to create and foster the growth of a socialist state and society in China under the Chinese Communist Party, with attention to the steady transformation of society, the economy, and political life since 1949.
Outcome: Students will be able to assess the major convulsive episodes such as land reform, the Great Leap Forward, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the Four Modernizations, and the impact and legacy of Mao Zedong.
Instructor:Valussi
Description: This course presents Chinese modern History through the lens of feature films and documentaries. Through a chronological approach, it focuses on the period from the Opium Wars to the present. It discusses political struggles, economic shifts, the encounter with Western Imperialism, the birth of Communist China, the shift to a market economy; it focuses on issues of war, gender, society, rural versus urban, and the environment. Acquire a non-Western Historical perspective; understand diversity in the World; be conversant in modern Chinese History; connect those notions to the historical development of the West; understand film theory and practice.
Description: This course studies the lives of Asian women in China, Japan, and Korea from early modern times to the present by examining changing roles of women and how these changes have come about.
Outcome: Students will be able to explain how life reflects law in the political, social, economic and cultural history of Asian women; how imperialism and war have affected women; how women have effected change.
Instructor:Pincince
Description: This course focuses on pedagogical approaches, curricular analysis, and methodological developments in the field of World (or Global) history. Students will become familiar with world history by developing a syllabus for a course they may teach in the future at the high school or college level.
Instructor:Hajdarpasic
Description:The course traces the origins and different forms of nationalism, discussing the establishment of nation-states in Europe and the escalation of nationalist conflicts across the globe, from the Balkans to the Middle East to Latin America. It explores how nationalism affected relations between states and various populations and ethnic communities. Students will acquire factual knowledge (terminology, classification, structures) and theoretical frameworks (methods and debates) about the origins and global spread of nationalism. The course traces the origins and different forms of nationalism, discussing the establishment of nation-states in Europe and the escalation of nationalist conflicts across the globe, from the Balkans to the Middle East to Latin America. It explores how nationalism affected relations between states and various populations and ethnic communities. Students will acquire factual knowledge (terminology, classification, structures) and theoretical frameworks (methods and debates) about the origins and global spread of nationalism.
Instructor: Hajdarpasic
Time: MWF 11:30-12:20
Description: The main themes of the course include: rise and development of the Ottoman Empire; relations between Muslims, Jews, Christians, and other communities; the practices of inclusion and exclusion along class, gender, and ethno-religious lines; the rise of nationalism; experiences of violence and war; and imperial legacies in post-Ottoman states.
Outcome: Gain factual knowledge; Learn to analyze different ideas and texts
Description: The concentration camp is an emblem of the modern world. From the camps of nineteenth-century colonialism to the Soviet Gulag, Nazi death camps, and more contemporary detention centers for refugees and political prisoners in the War on Terror, this course explores the underlying logic of extrajudicial encampment. Why have modern states—across the ideological spectrum—made use of concentration camps against real and perceived enemies? We examine the deep roots of the camp in 19th-century European politics and society, while exploring the global dimensions of the camp today. With a transnational and comparative lens, we examine memoirs, film, and theoretical and historical scholarship to explore the diverse manifestations of concentration camps over the past two centuries. Why did this system of punishment and terror first develop, and why does it continue to exist in the world today?
Syllabus: HIST 300E Global History of Concentration Camps
Learn more about this class and Dr. Forth's recently published book, Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876-1903, here!
Description: This course covers the story of America's colonial past from its origins in the Atlantic world of the 16th century through its contact and conflicts with Native American peoples.
Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the process of colonial settlement, colonial labor and economic patterns, trans-Atlantic immigration, Colonial Wars of Empire and the conquest of native lands.
Description: This course will first examine the history of slavery in the ancient and medieval eras, but is devoted mainly to the rise and maturation of slavery and slave trading in the Atlantic world (ca. 1500-1865). The last third of the class charts the resurgence of post-abolition slavery.
Outcomes: Students will learn about slavery past and present to fashion a moral philosophy of human freedom that can make a world without slavery a reality.
Description: When British colonists in North America declared themselves independent from the British Crown in 1776, they affected the most successful revolution in modern history. This course covers the antecedents and outcomes of their actions from the Seven Years War through the American Revolution to the War of 1812.
Outcomes: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the origins, actions and significance of the American Revolution; the development of the United States Constitution; and the development of the nation up the War of 1812.
Spring 2019 Course Information: The Revolution Will Be Digitized
Why should I take this class? I have created this course as a myth-busting journey that will expose one of the greatest lies in American culture and academia: that capitalism is a form of economic freedom and a force for human liberation.
Instructor: Dr. John Donoghue
Time: Tues/Thurs 11:30-12:45
Description:This course explores how slavery and the slave trade exemplified the brutal dynamism of “free market capitalism” and became indispensable to America’s ascent as a global economic power in the nineteenth century.
Description: This course covers the crisis of the Union from the Compromise of 1850 through the Civil War and the era of Reconstruction.
Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the institution of slavery, the rise of abolitionist sentiment, the failure of democratic political institutions, the military history of the war, its cultural impact on the nation, and the struggle for racial justice in the Reconstruction era.
Sample Syllabus: HIST 363 Civil War & Reconstruction
Description: This course focuses on American history from 1940 to the present, a period of international engagement and domestic reform.
Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate historical knowledge of the politics and government of the United States during a period of Cold War, struggles for equality and diversity, and the Vietnam War, and to develop critical thinking and communication skills.
Description: This course examines the social and cultural patterns of twentieth century life as revealed in popular novels, vaudeville, movies, music, nightlife, and advertising.
Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate historical knowledge of American traditions of success, family, home, consumption and culture, to draw links between gender and social life, and to develop critical thinking and communication skills.
Description: Beginning with colonization and extending to the 2000s global expansion of Starbucks, this course outlines the history of American business, wealth, and the attendant inequality by exploring the interplay between business, labor, politics, and culture.
Outcomes: Students will improve their written communication skills; develop their critical thinking skills; and learn how to execute historical analysis.
Description: This course focuses on the constitutional and legal history of the U. S. from the end of the Civil War to the twenty-first century.
Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate historical knowledge of American legal traditions of federalism, civil rights, criminal justice, and civil liberties, to draw links between social and legal change, to evaluate U. S. Supreme Court decisions, and to develop critical thinking and communication skills.
Description: This course examines how notions of crime and punishment have evolved between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (with the early modern period serving as a backdrop).
Outcome: Students will be able to draw conclusions on what precisely caused the shifts in punishment, with attention to such things as the professionalization of the judiciary, industrialization and urbanization, the American Civil War, and Constitutional changes. Students will also gain an understanding of sociological and anthropological approaches to this topic.
Instructor: Roberts
Description: Digital resources make primary source material available while database, mapping, and text-mining applications allow us to ask new types of research questions. Digital history is more than just gaining familiarity with digital resources, applications, and platforms; it is about understanding how using these tools has changed the way we study history.
Outcomes: Gain an introductory technical knowledge of digital tools or methods. Learn to apply technical knowledge about digital history tools to historical questions. Acquire experience managing and creating a team-based digital humanities.
Description: This course will cover the process of frontier expansion in American history.
Outcome: Students will understand the frontier as a social process that was part of the American experience from its earliest colonial origins to the end of the nineteenth century. Students will also understand the frontier as a place in the western United States where Americans engaged in cooperation, conflict, and conquest with native peoples, Mexicans, and Asians.
Description: This course is a survey of the history of American Indians, including the variety of Pre-Columbian societies, the encounter between Indians and European settlers, the impact of Eurasian diseases, American Indians' fight to avoid removal from their homelands, and the resurgence of Indians as sovereign peoples.
Outcome: The student is to emerge from the course with an enhanced ability to appreciate the unique cultures and experiences of American Indians; appreciate the many and important ways in which Indian peoples have changed and adapted over time; and understand the religious, racial, and cultural values that motivated European-American policies toward American Indians.
Instructor: Manning
Description: This course is a general survey of African-American history from its African origins to the Present.
Outcome: Upon completion of this class students should have a broad understanding of African-American History from 17th to the early 21st century.
Description: This course traces the development of Islam among African Americans from West African societies prior to the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the influence of Islam on popular culture in the 21st century.
Outcome: Students will gain an understanding of how Islamic identity was maintained in the face of slavery, how and if African-American Muslim communities differ from their emigrant counterparts, and how black nationalist groups such as the Moorish Science Temple and Nation of Islam influenced the Islamization of black consciousness in the 20th century.
Instructor: Nickerson
Time: MWF 10:25-11:15
Description: This course explores the success and failure of radical political and social movements in the United States.
Outcome: Students will understand five major movements for social change in the United States: abolition, women's rights, socialism, peace, and the quest for racial equality
Description: This course surveys the history of Chicago from its origins to the present, using the city as a case study of American urbanization.
Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate historical knowledge of Chicago's environmental, economic, social, cultural, and political history, to draw links between race relations and urban change, and to develop critical thinking and communication skills.
Description: This course examines the process and impact of urbanization in North America from the Pre-Columbian era to the twenty-first century.
Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate historical knowledge of the environmental, economic, social, cultural, and political history of North American cities and develop critical thinking and communication skills.
Sample Syllabus: History 386 Creation of the American Metropolis
Description: This course offers a comprehensive examination of origin, execution, and failure of America's war in Vietnam.
Outcome: Students will understand the ancient origins of the Vietnamese nation, the rise and fall of the French colonial regime, the role of Vietnam in the Cold War, the peace movement, the political and cultural impact of the war on America, the success and failures of the United States military, the impact of the war on the Indo-China region, and the memory of the war in American culture.
Description: This course examines the changes in gender roles and the relationship between men and women from the colonial era to the present.
Outcome: Students will demonstrate understanding of the changing expectations about and definitions of men and women of how families were organized, how childrearing was handled, who made up the home, and how work and family production followed a sexual division of labor.
Instructor: Dr. Timothy Gilfoyle
Time: Mon/Wed 2:45-4:00
Syllabus:
Description: This course provides a historical introduction to sexual behaviors and attitudes in the United States from the early American period to the present. The primary emphasis concerns the impact of social and political change on sexual norms and behavior. Particular attention is paid to changing standards of sexual morality and their effect upon the structure and organization of the American family and patterns of physical intimacy over the past four centuries. As the American population and its institutions changed, so did the boundaries of sexual behavior and ideology. This course seeks to discover and define those evolving boundaries and thereby better comprehend the ongoing transformation of the family, sexuality and personal identity in the United States. Since sexual behavior, ideas and identity define much of the current political and social landscape of the United States, those issues will be studied in their historical context. The course is chronologically structured and interwoven with topical themes, beginning with early America and ending with contemporary America. The more important topics include changing gender roles and their impact on sexual relationships, courtship and marriage, the evolution of birth control and abortion, the role of medicine and politics in defining appropriate norms and forms of sexuality, the rise of sexology as a scholarly discipline, social communities and subcultures defined by alternative sexual behaviors, and so-called "deviant" forms of sexuality.
The course also attempts to comprehend the ongoing struggle regarding what it means to be an American as viewed through the prism of sexuality. How has sexuality affected definitions of citizenship and freedom in the United States? Has the meaning of "sexual freedom" and “freedom” changed over time? These questions are not only "political" because they ultimately raise very personal and ethical questions about ourselves: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? How do I lead a good and honest life? How did Americans in the past answer these questions?
Instructor: Johnson
Description: This course surveys the environment and environmentalism in United States history, from the transformation of New England into a farm ecology, the expansion of the cotton South, the settlement of the West, to the rise of industrial cities, suburban sprawl, and the globalization of the economy.
Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate historical knowledge of environmental thought and ecological science, to draw links between environmental concerns and public policies, and to develop critical thinking and communication skills.
Instructor: Gorn
Time: T/Th 2:30-3:45
Description: Autobiography and Memoir in Recent US History uses personal recollections as a way to get at large themes in history. Topics include immigration, nativism, ethnicity, gender, regionalism, war, religion, and class. Students read intensively as a way of understanding how individuals live their lives within large historical forces and events. This is a writing intensive course. It is also a reading intensive course. It is run as a seminar with students learning to discuss and engage with ideas is a key element.
Description: This course aims to show how the president's election, job, power, and mystique has changed since the Founding. Students will delve into the modern primary and party system's origins, the fierce debates about the Electoral College, the controversies over executive power, the media's importance, and the first families' changing role.
Outcomes: Students will gain historical knowledge of the American presidency, federalism, and electoral politics and develop critical thinking and communication skills.
Sample Syllabus: HIST 389W Races to the White House!
Sample Syllabus: HIST 397 Honors Tutorial - Dossey
Description: This course provides three hours credit for students engaged in history related internships in the public and private sectors.
Outcome: Students will be able to obtain an internship position, to learn on-the-job from an experienced practitioner in a wide variety of public and private sector settings, to draw links between their present situation and historical research, and to develop critical thinking and communication skills.
Description: This course provides students with the opportunity to work under the direction of a faculty member on a particular area of interest that is not part of the department's usual curriculum.
Outcome: Students will gain an understanding of a specific area of history through the close reading of selected texts and the preparation of a research paper.
for information, contact the History Department.
