History 7012: Historiography of Modern U.S. II
Instructor: Howard, Clayton
Days/Times: Fridays 09:35 AM - 12:20 PM
Description
This course is designed to introduce students to some of the major themes, methods, and texts written by historians who study the United States since 1945.  The primary goal of the seminar is to help the class prepare for their general exams, to familiarize them with scholarly questions beyond their own narrower fields of interest, and to help them someday teach recent U.S. history.  Obviously, no course can cover every topic in a given time period, and since Ohio State offers only a few graduate seminars in American history every semester, this class will focus on a narrow set of subfields in order to highlight historiographical trends over time.  Concentrating on a few specific topics should help students see how authors build off earlier scholarship. In this class, we will primarily focus on histories of capitalism, labor, and cities.

In addition to introducing students to key topics in post-1945 U.S. history and historiographical skills, the class will also familiarize them with some of the norms of the historical profession.  Although many historians work independently, they are all also enmeshed in larger scholarly communities.  Peer-review, conferences, publishing, and teaching are all collaborative enterprises.  Consequently, this class is designed to help foster an intellectual community among graduate students.  Several of the assignments will require students to discuss and comment on each other’s work.

History 7230: Studies in Medieval History
Instructor: Butler, Sara
Days/Times: Tuesdays 12:45 PM - 03:30 PM
Description
History 7230: Women and the Law in Medieval Europe explores how legal systems shaped—and were shaped by—women’s lives from roughly 1200 to 1500. Drawing on legal codes, court records, canon law, and narrative sources, the course examines women’s legal status across regions and social classes. Key themes include marriage and marital consent, dowry and inheritance, property ownership and transmission, and women’s economic activity. The course also confronts violence head-on, analyzing how medieval law defined, regulated, or excused acts such as domestic abuse, sexual violence, and coercion, and how women sought justice through the courts. Attention is given to the intersections of gender, religion, and power, including the influence of the Church on family law and morality. By the end of the course, students will gain a nuanced understanding of how law both constrained and enabled women, and how women navigated, resisted, and sometimes exploited legal structures in medieval Europe.

History 7255: Studies in 20th Century European History
Instructor: Conklin, Alice
Days/Times: Tuesdays 09:45 AM - 12:30 PM
Description
This graduate readings course will focus principally on 18th, 19th, and 20th -century European expansion overseas, and some of the many different kinds of colonial encounters that this expansion could produce. The readings are designed to introduce students, first, to the latest thinking about modern empires as a global phenomenon, and, second, to a limited selection of different methodological approaches to the history of colonialism. This course will provide excellent background to those of you currently teaching, or intending to teach, Global History or Comparative Empires. Course requirements include completing all assigned readings, and two review essays (or a single longer essay).
Tentative Readings
Frederick Cooper and Jane Burbank, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, 2011)
Lauren Benton, They Called it Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence (Princeton, 2024)
Miranda Spieler, Slaves in Paris (Harvard, 2025)
Melanie Lamotte, By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French
Empire (Harvard, 2025)
Corey Ross, Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire: Europe and the Transformation of the Tropical World (OUP, 2017)
Stephen Press, Blood and Diamonds: Germany’s Imperial Ambitions in Africa (Harvard 2021)
Owen White, Blood of the Empire: Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria (Harvard, 2020)
Isabel Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Cornell 2006)
James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld (OUP 2009)
Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (OUP 2015)
Ann Laura Stoler, Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination (Duke 2013)

History 7255: Studies in 20th Century European History
Instructor: Dragostinova, Theodora
Days/Times: Thursdays 02:15 PM - 05:00 PM
Description
This intensive reading course is designed to give graduate students an introduction to historiographical questions in 20th-century European history.

History 7301: African Historiography and Methodology
Instructor: Kobo, Ousman
Days/Times: Thursdays 05:30 PM - 08:15 PM
Description
The study of sources, research methods, interpretations, and research trends in the field of African history.

History 7350: Studies in Islamic History
Instructor: Akin, Yigit
Days/Times: Wednesdays 12:45 PM - 03:30 PM
Description
Graduate reading seminar on a topic in Islamic history, stressing topical coverage and/or historiography.

History 7411: Studies in Modern and/or Contemporary Chinese History
Instructor: Reed, Christopher
Days/Times: Wednesdays 12:45 PM - 03:30 PM
Description
This graduate colloquium will survey a range of scholarly topics in (late) modern Chinese history (Late Qing and Republican China), defined as the 19th and the early 20th centuries, as seen through comparative, national, and local studies. Readings will include both time-honored classics in the field and more recent historical works. Topics range from political to intellectual/cultural history as well as to print culture, popular movements, women, ethnicity, dynastic change and revolution(s), and state building.
This reading/discussion seminar is open to graduate students of all departments and fields as well as to undergraduates who have secured the instructor's permission in advance. Knowledge of Chinese, although desirable, is not required.
This class will have one or more required texts.

This reading/discussion seminar is open to graduate students of all departments and fields as well as to undergraduates who have secured the instructor's permission in advance. Knowledge of Chinese, although desirable, is not required. Course has no prerequisites.

History 7600: Studies in the History of Women and Gender
Instructor: Soland, Birgitte
Days/Times: Mondays 05:30 PM - 08:15 PM
Description
Readings course for graduate students focusing on the history of women and gender. The course content will be international, emphasizing cross-cultural comparisons.

History 7900: Colloquium in Historiography and Critical Theory
Instructor: Staley, David
Days/Times: Mondays 10:00 AM - 12:45 PM
Description
This required foundation course for advanced graduate study introduces students to philosophical inquiry into the nature of history and to the major trends in modern historiography. It combines an overview of history as a discipline with the currents of social and critical theory that have shaped its most influential modes of analysis, focusing especially on developments of the past fifty years. We will ask questions such as: What is history, and who is it for? What is the use of history? Is history an art (literature) or a science? Is objectivity attainable? What is the nature of historical narrative? 

History 7905: Graduate Pedagogy
Instructor: Brakke, David
Days/Times: Fridays 12:45 PM - 03:30 PM
Description
This course provides graduate students with discipline-specific training in the teaching of History at the college level. It is expected that the course will help you in the performance of all of your teaching duties at Ohio State. The course also aims to provide a solid pedagogical foundation for those who aspire to pursue professional teaching careers after graduate school. It provides you with resources and skills that will be useful to you now and in the future, helping you to manage many aspects of teaching, including course design, syllabus construction, lecture and discussion design and practice, teaching a diverse classroom, approaching a collaborative classroom experience, assignment design, evaluation of one’s own teaching, and approaches to teaching writing, critical thinking, and verbal and listening communication skills. During the course, we will explore these different topics as they manifest themselves in the three most prevalent modes of teaching used today: online, in- person, and hybrid. The course operates as a workshop that features sharing of assignments, exchange of feedback, and collaborative brainstorming.
This class will have one or more required texts.
Assignments
The course is graded S/U (satisfactory/unsatisfactory). To receive an S grade for the course, you must satisfy all of the following requirements:

1. Prepare assigned readings for class meetings, attend meetings, and participate constructively. You may have no more than one unexcused absence from the class.
2. Teaching observation and reflection: students will arrange to visit a 2000- or 3000-level course taught by a tenure-stream faculty member. You will write a reflection on the class session of 3–5 pages.
3. Creation/revision of a two course assignments for peer review and discussion.
4. Complete Goldberg Center Online training course.
5. Complete Goldberg Center Hybrid training course.
6. Submit a personal teaching statement for a teaching dossier
7. Submit a syllabus for a course you might teach.
8. Micro-teaching exercise: Create an online module OR 15-20 minute class presentation, presented to class for feedback.

History 7906: Professionalization and the Discipline of History
Instructor: Fontanilla, Ryan
Days/Times: Tuesdays 04:00 PM - 06:45 PM
Description
This course introduces the professional field of academic history and its culture. This course will provide resources, guidance, and a supportive setting for graduate students to learn about funding opportunities, to write effective grant applications, and to conceptualize historical work for different audiences (peers, funders, and the public).

History 8550: Seminar in Military History
Instructor: Parker, Noel
Days/Times: Tuesdays 05:30 PM - 08:15 PM
Description
This research/writing seminar provides an opportunity to undertake an original research project that could serve as a thesis chapter or, perhaps, be revised for publication as an article in a refereed journal. The project should be related to the field of military history, broadly defined.
Our course will discuss how to

1. conceptualize a viable research topic;
2. identify appropriate sources;
3. develop the practical skills, methodological approaches, and interpretive frameworks required to deploy these materials to optimal effect;
4. write effectively
   The course will allow time for research, writing, and rewriting. Seminarians will also receive regular constructive feedback from both the course instructor and each other.

History 8801: Research Seminar
Instructor: Goldish, Matthew
Days/Times: Mondays 02:15 PM - 05:00 PM
Description
Sometimes it seems that the world runs according to military prowess, fiat, and the desires of the most powerful or wealthy. This may be the case much of the time, but ideas have been a major force throughout world history as well. In some periods—notably, in ancient Greece and early modern Europe—ideas have substantially shaped society, politics, and the economy. In other periods and places, the role of ideas may have been more subtle, but it has never been lacking. This course will open with discussions about the power of ideas in early modern Europe, then it will shift to a participant-driven model in which each member of the class fashions a thesis and arguments about the impact of ideas in her or his area of study. We will open with three or four weeks of readings about philosophers and other thinkers of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries and the relationship between their ideas and Western civilization. After that, meetings will center on each participant’s work as she or he formulates a novel thesis and researches arguments to support that thesis in primary and secondary sources.