Current and Recent Course Descriptions and Schedules
Fall 2022 Course List
HIST 400: 20th Century Approaches to History
HIST 403: Professional Lives of Historians
HIST 461: 20th Century US History
HIST 479: Public History Media
HIST 480: Public History: Method and Theory
HIST 483: Oral History: Method and Practice
HIST 561: Seminar: Women and Gender
Spring 2022 Course Descriptions
HIST 400: 20th Century Approaches to History
Dr. D. Bradford Hunt
Wednesdays 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Crown Center, Room 530
This course examines the history of twentieth- and twenty first-century historical writing, emphasizing the changing interpretive paradigms, the innovative methodologies, and the social values of historians that have shaped the discipline.
HIST 403: Professional Lives of Historians
Dr. Elizabeth Shermer
Mondays 2:45 pm – 5:15 pm
Dumbach Hall, Room 124
This course explores pedagogical, professional, and ethical issues of importance to historians. We will examine the many identities of historians and the relationship between training in history and career pathways. Students will explore the history of the historical profession, approaches to teaching history, ethical issues in history as well as the diverse pathways available to those with training in history. Each student will complete a pedagogical activity, a career exploration report, and a professionalizing project. Required of all first year PhD students. Open to all other students as an elective.
HIST 461: 20th Century US History
Dr. Michelle Nickerson
Tuesdays 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Crown Center, Room 142
Reading and discussion seminar, students will read monographs and articles in 20th century U.S. history, including social, cultural, intellectual, and other approaches. Final assignment will be a long historiographic paper.
HIST 479: Public History Media
Dr. Christopher Cantwell
Thursdays 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Information Commons, Room 215
An introduction to the field of digital humanities and public media. Through a series of assignments and in-class labs centered around common Digital Humanities tools and platforms, the class will explore current and historical conversations in digital humanities and new media and address theoretical and practical problems involved in digital humanities-based methods and methodology. The final product of each assignment will be a collaborative digital public humanities project.
HIST 480: Public History: Method and Theory
Dr. Patricia Mooney-Melvin
Mondays 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Cuneo Hall, Room 318
This course explores the field of public history with special emphasis on the theoretical and methodological challenges faced when preserving or presenting history outside of a formal classroom environment. Also under consideration will be the professional and ethical responsibilities of the historian both inside and outside of the university setting. Students will be able to understand the theoretical and methodological issues of importance to the field of public history, reflect upon ethical issues involved in the collection, curation, and presentation of history, and participate in applied projects drawing upon public history methodologies and presentation modes.
HIST 483: Oral History: Method and Practice
Dr. Meagan Mc Chesney
Tuesdays 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Crown Center, Room 210
This course will give students a basic understanding of oral history by asking several questions of the discipline, including: What exactly is oral history and what sets it apart from other historical research methodologies? What are the ethical issues involved in undertaking oral history? How does one conduct, record, and archive an interview? What steps are necessary in constructing an oral history project? What are the merits of the various products that can be derived from oral history in both texts and multimedia? In addition to reading oral historical texts and theory, students will conduct at least two interviews and participate in an ongoing oral history project.
HIST 561: Seminar: Women and Gender
Dr. Elizabeth Fraterrigo
Thursdays 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Dumbach Hall, Room 124
This seminar focuses on the use of gender as a category of analysis in history and is particularly appropriate for those who have taken courses in Women's and Gender History or Women's Studies. Students will produce a research paper; they may choose any topic relevant to issues of gender or women for any time period or society, as long as adequate primary sources are available.
Spring 2022 Course List
- HIST 441: Women and Gender in European History
- HIST 482: Archives and Records Management
- HIST 487: Management of History Museums
- HIST 558: American Cultural History
- HIST 558: American Cultural Hisotry
Spring 2022 Course Descriptions
HIST 441: Women and Gender in European History
Dr. Alice Weinreb
Thursdays 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Crown Center, Room 530
This course provides an introduction to the major themes and scholarship in women’s and gender history. We will examine a variety of debates about and methodological approaches to the historical construction of gender, ranging from histories of the body and sexuality to analyses of culture, politics, and the economy. We will explore how gender identities were produced and contested at specific historical moments and in different locations, with a focus on nineteenth and twentieth century Europe.
HIST 482: Archives and Records Management
Emily Reiher
Wednesdays 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Mundelein Center, Room 303
This course introduces basic archival theory and methodology. Particular emphasis will be placed on ethics, best practices, and the relationship of archives to allied fields.
HIST 487: Management of History Museums
Dr. Elizabeth Fraterrigo
Tuesdays 2:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Crown Center, Room 142
This course introduces graduate students to issues involved in the management of history museums while considering many questions about the role and function of museums in American society. What does it mean to say that museums serve the public? How can museums become more diverse, equitable, accessible, and inclusive institutions? How do museums tell stories and who gets to decide what stories to tell? How and why do museums collect, care for, and display some objects and not others? Why do people visit museums, what do they experience there, and what do those visits mean to them? What does “success” look like and how does one measure it? What financial, administrative, and ethical issues do museums face? How can museums critically address today’s complex political, cultural, and social realities?
HIST 558: American Cultural History
Dr. Elizabeth Tandy Shermer
Mondays 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Mundelein Center, Room 617
Research seminar using primary sources in American cultural, social, technological, intellectual and institutional history. Students will learn how to locate and analyze archival materials to develop an original article-length research paper.
HIST 558: American Cultural History
Dr. Michelle Nickerson
Tuesdays, 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Dumbach Hall, Room 124
Research seminar using primary sources in American cultural, social, technological, intellectual and institutional history. Students will learn how to locate and analyze archival materials to develop an original article-length research paper.
Fall 2021 Course List
- HIST 400: 20th Century Approaches to History
- HIST 403: Professional Lives of Historians
- HIST 410: Race, Violence, and Memory in US History
- HIST 450: 19th Century America
- HIST 479: Public History Media
- HIST 480: Public History: Method and Theory
- HIST 483: Oral History: Method and Practice
Fall 2021 Course Descriptions
HIST 400: 20th Century Approaches to History
Dr. Suzanne Kaufmann
Tuesdays 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Crown Center, Room 528
This course examines the history of twentieth-century historical writing, emphasizing the changing interpretive paradigms, the innovative methodologies, and the social values of historians that have shaped the discipline.
HIST 403: Professional Lives of Historians
Dr. D. Bradford Hunt
Wednesdays 2:50 pm - 5:00 pm
Crown Center, Room 528
This course explores pedagogical, professional, and ethical issues of importance to historians. We will examine the many identities of historians and the relationship between training in history and career pathways. Students will explore the history of the historical profession, approaches to teaching history, ethical issues in history as well as the diverse pathways available to those with training in history. Each student will complete a pedagogical activity, a career exploration report, and a professionalizing project. Required of all first year PhD students. Open to all other students as an elective.
HIST 410: Race, Violence, and Memory in US History
Dr. Benjamin Johnson
Tuesdays 3:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Crown Center, Room 528
A reconsideration of the way ways in which fraught chapters of the U.S. past are remembered is underway, with recent waves of protests resulting in the removal of scores of Confederate statues and memorials. This class considers the ways in which Americans have remembered and forgotten the violence that has played such important roles in our history. The readings will thus focus not only on important scholarly works on racial violence, but also on the connections between historical inquiry and contemporary social justice movements.
HIST 450: 19th Century America
Dr. Theodore Karamanski
Thursdays 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Location: Information Commons, Room 230
Through weekly readings and discussion this course will review the historiography of the most important topics in nineteenth century American history, including market expansion cultural history and social development, settler colonialism and Indigenous resistance, the myths and realities of national expansion, slavery, the Civil War and reconstruction, and the rise of the American gun culture. Student's performance will be evaluated based on class participation and the completion of a historiographic or research-based essay. This course is essential for graduate comprehensive examination preparation in American history.
HIST 479 – Public History Media
Dr. Elizabeth Hopwood
Wednesdays 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Location: Information Commons, Room 215
An introduction to the field of digital humanities and public media. Through a series of assignments and in-class labs centered around common Digital Humanities tools and platforms, the class will explore current and historical conversations in digital humanities and new media and address theoretical and practical problems involved in digital humanities-based methods and methodology. The final product of each assignment will be a collaborative digital public humanities project.
HIST 480 – Public History: Method and Theory
Dr. Patricia Mooney-Melvin
Mondays 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Location: Cuneo Hall, Room 318
This course explores the field of public history with special emphasis on the theoretical and methodological challenges faced when preserving or presenting history outside of a formal classroom environment. Also under consideration will be the professional and ethical responsibilities of the historian both inside and outside of the university setting. Students will be able to understand the theoretical and methodological issues of importance to the field of public history, reflect upon ethical issues involved in the collection, curation, and presentation of history, and participate in applied projects drawing upon public history methodologies and presentation modes.
HIST 483 – Oral History: Method and Practice
Dr. Meagan McChesney
Thursdays 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Location: Dumbach Hall, Room 124
This course will give students a basic understanding of oral history by asking several questions of the discipline, including: What exactly is oral history and what sets it apart from other historical research methodologies? What are the ethical issues involved in undertaking oral history? How does one conduct, record, and archive an interview? What steps are necessary in constructing an oral history project? What are the merits of the various products that can be derived from oral history in both texts and multimedia? In addition to reading oral historical texts and theory, students will conduct at least two interviews and participate in an ongoing oral history project.
Spring 2021 Course List
- HIST 442: Women's and Gender History: USA
- HIST 460: Urban America
- HIST 481: Management of Historical Resources
- HIST 487: Management of History Museums
- HIST 510: Research Seminar
Spring 2021 Course Descriptions
HIST 442: Women's and Gender History: USA
Dr. Michelle Nickerson
Saturdays 10:00 am - 12:30 pm
This course explores the literature on women and gender in United States history with attention to theoretical issues, historiography, and cultural diversity. Organized chronologically and topically, the course will introduce graduate students to current methods and major themes in the field. Starting from the colonial period and ending with the present day, class discussions will focus on the tools of analysis and source materials used by historians. We will trace the emergence of gender history out of women’s history and talk about how both fields have shaped U.S. historiography overall. Themes will include: the racialized system of sexual relations and violence that undergirded the Jim Crow system of segregation, the gendered dimensions of the carceral state, and the development of feminist consciousness in the United States.
HIST 460: Urban America
Dr. Timothy Gilfoyle
Wednesdays 4:15 pm - 6:45 pm
The "United States was born in the country and has moved to the city." Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (1955), 23. This course examines the evolution of the United States from a rural and small-town society to an urban and suburban nation. Cities, and especially Chicago, have long offered some of the best laboratories for the study of American history, social structure, economic development and cultural change. Certain problems and themes recur throughout the course of American urban and cultural history which will be focal points of this seminar: the interaction of private commerce with cultural change; the rise of distinctive working and middle classes; the segregation of public and private space; the formation of new and distinctive urban subcultures organized by gender, work, race, religion, ethnicity, and sexuality; problems of health and housing resulting from congestion; and blatant social divisions between the rich and poor, the native-born and immigrant, and blacks and whites. This colloquium will thus provide a historiographical introduction to the major questions and issues in the culture and social life of American cities.
HIST 481: Management of Historical Resources
Dr. Theodore Karamanski
Thursdays 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
This class is an introduction to historic preservation. The class will review the way public historians work to protect the material culture of the built environment on a local, state, and national level. The class will consist of lectures on aspects of historic preservation, the discussion of weekly readings, and the execution of a preservation project. The project will be to prepare a National Register of Historic Places nomination on a single property or historic district.
HIST 487: Management of History Museums
Dr. Elizabeth Fraterrigo
Tuesdays 4:30 pm - 7:00 pm
This course introduces graduate students to issues involved in the management of history museums while considering many questions about the role and function of museums in American society. What does it mean to say that museums serve the public? How can museums become more diverse, equitable, accessible, and inclusive institutions? How do museums tell stories and who gets to decide what stories to tell? How and why do museums collect, care for, and display some objects and not others? Why do people visit museums, what do they experience there, and what do those visits mean to them? What does “success” look like and how does one measure it? What financial, administrative, and ethical issues do museums face? How can museums critically address today’s complex political, cultural, and social realities?
HIST 510: Research Seminar
Dr. Alice Weinreb
Mondays 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Research seminar using primary sources in cultural, social, technological, intellectual and institutional history. Students will learn how to locate and analyze archival materials to develop an original article-length research paper.
Fall 2020 Course List
- HIST 400: 20th Century Approaches to History
- HIST 400: 20th Century Approaches to History
- HIST 410: Professional Lives
- HIST 461: 20th Century U.S. History
- HIST 479: Public History Media
- HIST 480: Public History: Method and Theory
- HIST 483: Oral History: Method and Practice
- HIST 558: Studies in American Cultural History
Fall 2020 Course Descriptions
HIST 400: 20th Century Approaches to History
Dr. Edin Hajdarpasic
Wednesday 4:15 pm - 6:45 pm
This course examines the history of twentieth-century historical writing, emphasizing the changing interpretive paradigms, the innovative methodologies, and the social values of historians that have shaped the discipline.
HIST 400: 20th Century Approaches to History
Dr. D. Bradford Hunt
Wednesday 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
This course examines the history of twentieth-century historical writing, emphasizing the changing interpretive paradigms, the innovative methodologies, and the social values of historians that have shaped the discipline.
HIST 410: Professional Lives
Dr. Patricia Mooney-Melvin
Tuesday 3:00 pm - 5:30 pm
This course explores pedagogical, professional, and ethical issues of importance to historians. We will examine the many identities of historians and the relationship between training in history and career pathways. Required of all second year and first year PhD students. Open to all other students as an elective. Each student will complete a professionalizing project.
HIST 461: 20th Century U.S. History
Dr. Elliott Gorn
Thursday 4:15 pm - 6:45 pm
Reading and discussion seminar, students will read monographs and articles in 20th century U.S. history, including social, cultural, intellectual, and other approaches. Final assignment will be a long historiographic paper.
HIST 479: Public History Media
Dr. Elizabeth Hopwood
Thursday 7:00 pm - 9:20 pm
An introduction to the field of digital humanities and public media. Through a series of assignments and in-class labs centered around common Digital Humanities tools and platforms, the class will explore current and historical conversations in digital humanities and new media and address theoretical and practical problems involved in digital humanities-based methods and methodology. The final product of each assignment will be a collaborative digital public humanities project.
HIST 480: Public History: Method and Theory
Dr. Particia Mooney-Melvin
Monday 6:00 pm - 8:20 pm
This course explores the field of public history with special emphasis on the theoretical and methodological challenges faced when preserving or presenting history outside of a formal classroom environment. Also under consideration will be the professional and ethical responsibilities of the historian both inside and outside of the university setting. Students will be able to understand the theoretical and methodological issues of importance to the field of public history, reflect upon ethical issues involved in the collection, curation, and presentation of history, and participate in applied projects drawing upon public history methodologies and presentation modes.
HIST 483: Oral History: Method and Practice
Dr. Meagan McChesney
Tuesday, 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
This course will give students a basic understanding of oral history by asking several questions of the discipline, including: What exactly is oral history and what sets it apart from other historical research methodologies? What are the ethical issues involved in undertaking oral history? How does one conduct, record, and archive an interview? What steps are necessary in constructing an oral history project? What are the merits of the various products that can be derived from oral history in both texts and multimedia? In addition to reading oral historical texts and theory, students will conduct at least two interviews and participate in an ongoing oral history project.
HIST 558: Studies in American Cultural History
Dr. Elizabeth Fraterrigo
Tuesday, 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Research seminar using primary sources in American cultural, social, technological, intellectual and institutional history. Students will learn how to locate and analyze archival materials to develop an original article-length research paper.
Spring 2020 Course List
- HIST 410: Writing Public History
- HIST 450: 19th Century America
- HIST 464: Transnational Urban History
- HIST 482: Archives and Record Management
- HIST 558: Studies in American Cultural History
Spring 2020 Course Descriptions
HIST 410: Writing Public History
Tuesdays 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Mundelein Center, Room 515
Dr. Elliott Gorn
HIST 450: 19th Century America
Wednesdays 2:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Crown Center, Room 528
Dr. Timothy Gilfoyle
HIST 464: Transnational Urban History
Mondays 4:15 pm – 6:45 pm
Cuneo Hall, Room 212
Dr. Edin Hajdarpasic
HIST 482: Archives and Record Management
Wednesdays 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Information Commons, Room 215
(registration requires instructor consent)
Kathy Young
HIST 558: Studies in American Cultural History
Thursdays 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Dumbach Hall, Room 124
Dr. Michelle Nickerson
Fall 2019 Course List
-
HIST 400: 20th Century Approaches to History
- HIST 410: Professional Lives of Historians
- HIST 459: Environmental History
- HIST 461: 20th Century America
- HIST 479: Public History Media
- HIST 480: Public History: Method and Theory
- HIST 483: Oral History: Method and Practice
Fall 2019 Course Descriptions
HIST 400: 20th Century Approaches to History
Wednesday 4:15 pm -6:45 pm
(registration requires instructor consent)
Dr. Edin Hajdarpasic
HIST 410: Professional Lives of Historians
Tuesday 3:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Dr. Patricia Mooney-Melvin
HIST 459: Environmental History
Thursday 4:15 pm - 6:45 pm
Dr. Theodore Karamanski
HIST 461: 20th Century America
Tuesday 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Dr. Michelle Nickerson
HIST 479: Public History Media
Thursday 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
(registration requires instructor consent)
Dr. Elizabeth Hopwood
HIST 480: Public History: Method and Theory
Monday 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
(registration requires instructor consent)
Dr. Patricia Mooney-Melvin
HIST 483: Oral History: Method and Practice
Tuesday 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
(registration requires instructor consent)
Dr. Meagan McChesney
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