Autumn 2026 Undergraduate Course Descriptions

African History Environment, Health, Technology, and Science

African American History European History

American History Jewish History

Ancient Mediterranean History Military History

Diplomatic/International History World, Global, Transnational History

Seminars

African History

History 2303: History of Contemporary Africa, 1960 - present
Instructor: Sikainga, Ahmad
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:10 AM - 12:30 PM
Session: Second Session
Description
Africa from independence to the present. Contemporary African societies, cultures, economics, and politics from independence to the present.
General Education
GE Foundation Historical and Cultural Studies Course.

History 3307: History of African Health and Healing
Instructor: McDow, Thomas
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 12:45 PM - 02:05 PM
Description
African approaches to health and healing; interaction between religion, culture and healing; intersections and contradictions between African and Western concepts of health and healing.
General Education
GE Theme Health and Well-Being Course.

History 3313: Conflict in the Horn of Africa
Instructor: Sikainga, Ahmad
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 02:20 PM - 03:40 PM
Session: Second Session
Description
This course will explore conflict in the Horn of Africa, a region that has been embroiled in interlocking civil wars, ethnic and religious conflicts, territorial disputes, and the disintegration of the nation states for many years. It will examine the root causes, the nature, and the impact of these conflicts on local communities as well as their regional and international implications.

History 3314: From Rubber to Coltan: A Long History of Violence and Exploitation in Central Africa
Instructor: Van Beurden, Sarah
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 11:10 AM - 12:30 PM
Description
This course will explore how the histories of economic exploitation, political authoritarianism, and the supposedly ethnic conflict in the central Africa region are intertwined, and how seemingly local conflicts have global roots.

African American History

History 3083: Civil Rights and Black Power Movements
Instructor: Jeffries, Hasan
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:45 PM - 02:05 PM
Description
Examines the origins, evolution, and outcomes of the African American freedom struggle, focusing on the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

History 3084: Citizens Behind Bars: Black Leadership and the Politics of Liberation in African American History
Instructor: Cook, DeAnza
Days/Times: Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays 12:40 PM - 01:35 PM
Description
Every day more human beings are locked inside of jails, prisons, or secured facilities across the United States than in any other country on the planet. This course explores the history of citizenship in captivity and the legacy of liberatory movements led by incarcerated citizens in the US from the era of settler colonization and slavery to the present age of mass incarceration.
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

American History

History 2025: American Revolution(s)
Instructor: Hammack, Maria; Nichols, Christopher
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:45 PM - 02:05 PM
Description
What is the legacy of the American Revolution? and how did many movements ultimately fashion the revolution that broke out in 1775? Using a broad geographic and chronological lens, students will examine the repercussions as well as reconsider the legacy (and relevance) of the revolution and its many revolutionaries in the construction of the nation, American citizenship and their lived experience.
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

History 2610H: A Survey of U.S. Women's and Gender History: Diversity and Intersections
Instructor: Rivers, Daniel
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 12:45 PM - 02:05 PM
Description
Survey of women and gender from pre-European settlement to present, with particular attention to differences among women.
General Education
GE Foundation Historical and Cultural Studies and Race, Ethnicity and Gender Div Course.

History 3005: The United States Constitution and American Society to 1877
Instructor: Stebenne, David
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:10 AM - 12:30 PM
Description
Examination of the major developments in American constitutional history from the origins of European settlement of what became the USA through the era of Reconstruction. Emphasis on the origins of the English Common Law, its transmission to the Thirteen Colonies, constitutionalism and the American Revolution, the rise and decline of the Articles of Confederation and the antebellum constitutional system, law and American economic development, the pressures placed on the legal system by the expansion of slavery, the constitutional crisis of the late 1850’s, the emergence of a new constitutional system in the wake of the American Civil War, and the changing legal status of African-Americans in the 1860’s and ‘70’s.
Texts
Kermit L. Hall and Timothy S. Huebner, Major Problems in American Constitutional History, 2nd ed., (2009).
Assignments
Active participation in class discussions, and take-home midterm and final examinations.
General Education
GE Foundation Historical and Cultural Studies Course.

History 3016: The Contemporary U.S. since 1963
Instructor: Howard, Clayton
Days/Times: Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays 01:50 PM - 02:45 PM
Description
Advanced study U.S. political, economic, social, and cultural changes since 1963: political polarization; post-industrial economy/consumer economy; civil rights, feminism, environmentalism, Vietnam, detente, and globalization.

History 3017: The Sixties
Instructor: Steigerwald, David
Days/Times: Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays 11:30 AM - 12:25 PM
Description
Examination of postwar America's pivot point, focusing on civil rights; liberal, radical, and conservative politics; sweeping social, cultural, and economic change; and the Vietnam War.
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

History 3620: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in the United States, 1940-Present
Instructor: Rivers, Daniel
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
An overview of LGBT culture and history in the U.S. from 1940 to the present. Students will examine changes in LGBT lives and experiences during the last half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, as well as the intersections of race, sexuality, and class, and how these categories have affected sexual minority communities and broader US law and culture.
General Education
GE Foundation Race, Ethnicity and Gender Div Course.

History 3700: American Environmental History
Instructor: Elmore, Bart
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:45 PM – 2:05 AM

Description
This course shows what history can teach us about the future survival of humanity on planet Earth. From January to April, we dive deep into the past, examining how Americans have affected the natural environment over time and how nature has shaped the course of human events. You will learn to think like an environmental historian, mastering a historical sub-discipline first developed in the 1970s that places nature at the heart of our national narrative. This course tackles some of the biggest issues hitting headlines today. How bad is climate change? What can we do about it? Are we running out of water? How will we quench our thirst in the years ahead? Looking to the past, we journey across the country (and the globe) to find solutions to these questions and more. You’ll never look at American history the same way again.
General Education
GE Theme Sustainability Course.

History 3706: Coca-Cola Globalization: The History of American Business and Global Environmental Change 1800-Today
Instructor: Elmore, Bart
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
Coca-Cola is everywhere. Today, the company sells over 1.8 billion servings of its products daily to customers in over 190 countries worldwide. The company has bottling plants in every corner of the globe from Australia to Zimbabwe. This is remarkable considering the company started out as a “brain tonic” first sold for just five cents in a small Gilded Age Atlanta pharmacy in 1886 by a sick and cash-strapped businessman named John Pemberton. So how did the company do it? That’s one of the big questions we
will ask in this global environmental history course.
History 3706 offers an introduction to the fields of environmental history and business history. It is organized chronologically, beginning with the railroad revolution of the nineteenth century and ending in the twenty-first century. It chronicles the rise of some of America’s biggest multinational corporations and examines how these firms, working with governments and other institutions, shaped global ecological change between 1800 and 2017. It also considers the social and political responses to these environmental changes.
The questions we will ask in this course are not simple, and they will require us to re-imagine well-told stories from a new, ecological perspective. How did Coca-Cola acquire the natural resources it needed to end up all over the world? Can history tell us whether global climate change is real? Are Californians going to run out of water? We will deal with these and other intriguing questions as we explore the history of America in the world through the lens of environmental history.
This class will have one or more required texts.
General Education
GE Theme Sustainability Course.

Ancient Mediterranean History

History 2201: Ancient Greece and Rome
Instructor: Goggin, Caspian
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 12:45 PM - 02:05 PM
Description
Comparative historical analysis of ancient Mediterranean societies in the Near East, Greece and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Fall of Rome, with a focus on citizenship. Students will compare notions of citizenship in empires and authoritarian regimes with smaller, more egalitarian city-states and republics, and analyze the ideological similarities and differences between antiquity and today.
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

History 2221: Introduction to the New Testament: History and Literature
Instructor: Brakke, David
Days/Times: Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays 10:20 AM - 11:15 AM
Description
This course examines the New Testament historically, from outside the framework of any particular belief system. It presupposes no previous study in religion, theology, or ancient history. Topics include the circulation of letters by an apostle named Paul, the production of the first “gospels” about the life of the Messiah Jesus, and the formation of ancient churches in the ancient city––all in the historical context of the Roman Empire. What we call the “New Testament” is a not a single book, but an anthology of diverse writings by different authors in the past. These authors disagreed on crucial matters of faith, community, and discipleship, which continue to divide Christians today.
We will read the entire New Testament as well as important apocryphal works such as the Gospel According to Thomas (wisdom sayings purportedly recorded by Jesus’ twin brother), the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (covering the “lost” years of Jesus as a child), and the Acts of Thecla (the adventures of a woman apostle, who baptizes herself). Our main goal is to understand the great diversity of early Christian literature and of early Christianity itself.
Texts
The SBL Study Bible. HarperOne, 2023. (SBL = Society of Biblical Literature)
Colleen M. Conway, The New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell, 2022.
Burton H. Throckmorton, Jr. Gospel Parallels: A Comparison of the Synoptic Gospels. Fifth Edition. Thomas Nelson, 1992.
Notes
Monday meetings either will consist of in-class tests or will be replaced by a recorded lecture.
Assignments

Attendance and engagement
Four in-class tests
Quizzes one recorded lectures
Final examination
General Education
GE Foundation Lit, Vis and Performing Arts and Historical and Cultural Studies Course.

History 2272: Reacting to the Past: Citizenship in Historical Context
Instructor: Bond, Elizabeth
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:10 AM - 12:30 PM
Description
History 2272 invites students into an active learning environment. We will follow the Reacting to the Past curriculum, an award-winning approach for engaged learning based on role-playing games. We are not re-enacting the past. Students will read documents from the past, consider historical contexts, and then decide for themselves how to respond. Students take on an assigned persona and work in teams to react to primary source documents from the periods we are studying. Students can anticipate a fast-paced and immersive learning experience set in two key periods: Ancient Athens and Revolutionary Paris.
Texts
Thanks to the generous support of a Ratner Award for Excellence in Teaching Award, books are provided on loan to all students.
Josiah Ober, Naomi J. Jorman, Mark C. Carnes, The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 BCE, fourth edition (The University of North Carolina Press, 2022). Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-7075-1
Jennifer J. Popiel, Mark C. Carnes, Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791, second edition (The University of North Carolina Press, 2022). Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-7074-4
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

History 3210: Archaic Greece
Instructor: Anderson, Gregor
Days/Times: Online, Asynchronous
Description
Survey of Greek history from Neolithic Age (7000-3000 BC) to end of the Archaic Era (700-480 BC).
General Education
GE Foundation Historical and Cultural Studies Course.

History 3215: Sex and Gender in the Ancient World
Instructor: Sessa, Kristina
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:45 PM - 02:05 PM
Description
Introductory survey of women, gender, and sexual relations in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially Greece and Rome.
General Education
GE Foundation Historical and Cultural Studies and Race, Ethnicity and Gender Div Course.

History 3223: The Later Roman Empire
Instructor: Goggin, Caspian
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
An advanced survey of Rome's history in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries with focus on themes of decline, fall, and transformation.
General Education
GE Theme Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations Course.

History 3229: History of Early Christianity
Instructor: Goggin, Caspian
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 02:20 PM - 03:40 PM
Description
A survey of the history of Christianity from its Jewish and Greco-Roman roots to the late sixth century.
General Education
GE Theme Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations Course.

Diplomatic/International History

History 3580: The Vietnam War
Instructor: Parrott, Raymond
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:10 AM - 12:30 PM
Description
Study of the background, causes, conduct, and consequences of the Vietnam War, 1945-1975.
General Education
GE Theme Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations Course.

History 3595: Strategic Thought in History
Instructor: Walker, Lydia
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
This course is an applied or mobilized history course intended for students interested in political history, public service, as well as in the conceptual tools and responsibilities of citizenship. It will equip students to think rigorously and historically about the principles and pitfalls of setting strategies as well as the role of citizens in strategic decision-making.
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

Environment, Health, Technology, and Science

History 2701: History of Technology
Instructor: Staley, David
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
Survey of the history of technology in global context from ancient times.
General Education
GE Theme Lived Environments Course.

History 2702: Food in World History
Instructor: Cahn, Dylan
Days/Times: Online, Asynchronous
Description
Survey of the history of food, drink, diet and nutrition in a global context.
General Education
GE Theme Sustainability Course.

History 2703: History of Public Health, Medicine and Disease
Instructor: Jones, Marian
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
Survey of the history of public health, disease and medicine in a global context.
General Education
GE Theme Health and Well-Being Course.

History 2710: History of the Car
Instructor: Eaglin, Jennifer
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:10 AM - 12:30 PM
Description
The car has shaped the world we live in today. Ideas of capitalism, technology, and consumerism are inherently linked to its creation and expansion in modern society. This course will examine the development of the car in the 20th century, first in the United States and then how its global expansion has come to define global society today.
General Education
GE Theme Lived Environments Course.

History 2911: The Climate Crisis: Mechanisms, Impacts, and Mitigation
Instructor: Harris, James
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 02:20 PM - 03:40 PM
Recitations: Mondays 09:10 AM - 10:05 AM, 10:20 AM - 11:15 AM, 12:40 PM - 01:35 PM, 01:50 PM - 02:45 PM; Wednesdays 10:20 AM - 11:15 AM, 12:40 PM - 01:35 PM, 01:50 PM - 02:45 PM
Description
Examination of the basic science of climate change, of the ability to make accurate predictions of future climate, and of the implications for global sustainability by combining perspectives from the physical sciences, the biological sciences, and historical study. Team-taught with faculty members in EarthSc and EEOB. 4-credit HIP course.
General Education
GE Theme Sustainability and Lived Environments Course

History 3700: American Environmental History
Instructor: Elmore, Bart
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:45 PM – 2:05 AM

History 3708: Vaccines: A Global History
Instructor: Harris, James
Days/Times: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays & Thursdays 11:30 AM - 12:25 PM
Description
This course examines the history and biology of vaccines. We explore the discovery and development of vaccines, along with the political and cultural controversies that have surrounded them for centuries. Team-taught course with faculty member in Pharmacy.
General Education
GE Theme Health and Well-Being Course.

History 3712: Science and Society in Europe, from Newton to Hawking
Instructor: Otter, Christopher
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
What are scientific facts and why are they important? How did science become the primary technique through which truths about the natural world and the human body and mind are established? Is scientific authority under threat in a post-truth age? This course explores these questions, and more, by following the history of science from the scientific revolution to current debates surrounding human-made climate change. Students will study major developments in the physical, geological, biological, chemical, and human sciences, such as thermodynamics, evolutionary biology, germ theory, the creation of the periodic table of the elements, quantum theory and free-market economics. The course does not only study “successful” scientific ideas, but also discarded and ridiculed ones, including catastrophism, phrenology and Lamarckianism. Students will learn to comprehend the socially-embedded nature of science, the complex relations between science and politics, the vast efforts that are made to divide science from pseudoscience, and the historical origins of skepticism, denialism and “alternative facts.”
Texts
Bowler and Morus, Making Modern Science, 2nd Edition
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

European History

History 1211: European History I
Instructor: Parker, Noel
Days/Times: Online, Asynchronous Lecture with Synchronous Recitation
Recitations: Mondays, 10:10AM – 11:15AM, 11:30AM – 12:25PM, or 11:30AM -12:25PM
Description
What is distinctive about the West? For better or worse Western Civilization and Western values are a dominant force in the world today – and not just in the West but, thanks to Karl Marx and the Internet, also in the rest of the world. Why? That is one of the questions this course seeks to answer. In addition, it tries to show How Things Happened. Examples include
• When did the West first develop the right to free speech for all citizens later guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution? (Answer: Athens 2,500 years ago.) What is the origin of the right to “trial by jury” enshrined in its Fifth Amendment? (Answer: Magna Carta, England, 1215.)
• Why were half of all Western populations in this period under the age of 20? Why did one quarter of all children die before their first birthday? (Partial answer: no pre-natal or pediatric care, no vaccines)
• How could 2,000 Spaniards overthrow the Aztec Empire, with perhaps 25 million subjects, and go on to colonize much of Central America? How could 167 Spaniards overthrow the Inca Empire, with perhaps 8 million subjects, and go on to colonize much of South America? (Partial answer: unit cohesion among the Spaniards and lack of resistance to diseases among the Native Americans.)
Goals: To develop knowledge of how past events influence today’s society and to improve understanding of how humans view themselves.
Expected Learning Outcomes:

A better understanding of the patterns of European history, how they inform present-day Western societies, and how they relate to the history of the rest of the world.
How to understand, describe and analyze the origins of contemporary issues.
How to use primary and secondary historical sources.
How to improve critical and analytical thinking, writing and reading, listening and note-taking, working in groups and speaking in public.
How to distinguish, among any given mass of facts, the aberration from the trend, the cause from the contingent, the important from the incidental, and the continuities from the changes.
Assignments
• Watch all materials for the course posted online
• Read and discuss all assigned readings; attend and participate in all group discussions
• Complete all assigned recitation exercises
• one 5-page term paper
• one final take-home exam
General Education
GE Foundation Historical and Cultural Studies Course.

History 3215: Sex and Gender in the Ancient World
Instructor: Sessa, Kristina
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:45 PM - 02:05 PM
Description
Introductory survey of women, gender, and sexual relations in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially Greece and Rome.
General Education
GE Foundation Historical and Cultural Studies and Race, Ethnicity and Gender Div Course.

History 3247: Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (1450-1750)
Instructor: Goldish, Matthew
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
Magic has been with us since the dawn of human consciousness, and it is with us still. Understanding magical mentalities is therefore an important historical and cultural project. It is also a difficult one. The early modern period, 1450-1750—the period of the European witch hunts—offers an ideal setting in which to study magical thinking and related matters. We will consider why the tumultuous events of this period created a highly fertile and dynamic atmosphere for magic and witchcraft beliefs. We will learn quite a bit about this period in European history generally. We will examine the distinctions between learned and lay magic; natural and demonic magic; and various types of magical practice. We will pay particular attention to witches, witch hunts, and shifting ideas about witchcraft on the eve of the Enlightenment. A second and more practical focus of the course will be on identifying the thesis of a chapter, article, or book and on recognizing the main arguments or proofs marshaled to support that thesis. A third focus will be on the close analysis of primary documents.

General Education
GE Theme Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations Course.

History 3250: Subjects to Citizens: A History of Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe
Instructor: Bond, Elizabeth
Days/Times: Online, Asynchronous
Description
The French Revolutionaries invented human rights and the metric system. They abolished feudalism and opened up all professions to merit, including the military. They formed one of the first modern republics. Yet when we remember the French Revolution, we often think first of the guillotine and the violence of the Reign of Terror. In History 3250, we explore the complexity and contradictions of this critical period of the age of revolutions in the history of the modern world. Its legacies are still with us today.
This course will equip students to study the origins, processes, and legacies of revolution. The French Revolution could be frightening and destabilizing. It was also a creative moment when the possibilities for what society and citizenship ought to look like opened up, and new voices came to the fore. We will explore how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century men and women thought about the promise and limits of revolution.
Texts
All are available as e-books with OSU Libraries
Laura Mason and Tracey Rizzo’s The French Revolution: A Document Collection, Second Edition (Hackett, 2023).
Mette Harder and Jennifer Ngaire Heuer’s Life in Revolutionary France (Bloomsbury, 2020).
Jeremy Popkin’s A Short History of the French Revolution, 8th edition. (Routledge, 2024).
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

History 3254: Europe Since 1950: From the Iron Curtain to Fortress Europe
Instructor: Dragostinova, Theodora
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 11:10 AM - 12:30 PM
Description
History of Europe since the end of World War II: rebuilding, Cold War, decolonization, immigration, economic and political integration.
General Education
GE Theme Migration, Mobility, and Immobility Course.

History 3260: The Victorians: Power, Money and Empire
Instructor: Otter, Christopher
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:45 PM - 02:05 PM
Description
This lecture course provides a survey of British history, including imperial history, from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. It covers many dimensions of British history: political, economic, social, religious, medical, technological, scientific, and environmental. The central themes of the course are the rise of liberalism as a political and economic theory, the development of industrial and urban society, the dramatic growth of the British Empire, the Irish famine, individualism and self-help, and the rise of social problems. The course will explore how Britain and its governments attempted to generate economic strength while simultaneously ameliorating the ‘social question’. The tensions between economic freedom and social protection remain central to British politics, just as they do in America.
Texts
No required texts / all materials provided online.
General Education
GE Theme Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations Course.

History 3282: History of the Soviet Union
Instructor: Hoffmann, David
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 12:45 PM - 02:05 PM
Description
This course is a survey of the entire Soviet period, from the 1917 Revolution to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. It will also cover the post-Soviet period, from 1991 to the present. A central theme of this course is the unfulfilled promise of the Revolution and the genesis of the Stalinist dictatorship. Topics include the Civil War, the New Economic Policy and problems of underdevelopment, collectivization and industrialization, Soviet culture, the delineation of gender roles, the Second World War and its legacy, the Cold War, de-Stalinization, nationality issues, the collapse of Communism, and Russia under Putin’s government.
This class will have one or more required texts.
Assignments
There will be a midterm exam, paper, and final exam. In addition, students will have short weekly writing assignments on assigned readings.
General Education
GE Theme Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations Course.

History 3552: War in World History, 1900 - Present
Instructor: Cabanes, Bruno
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
This course is an introduction to new approaches in the history of war. A class about the impact of war on individuals and societies, about war as a human experience. You will get to think about all the wars that you have read about before, but in a different way – looking for themes, patterns, and ideas rather than just learning about when the battles happened and who wrote the peace treaties. We begin in August 1914 with the invasion of Belgium and Northern France. The course ends with the collapse of Yugoslavia and the atrocities of “ethnic cleansing”. We will examine the actors, forms of violence, ideological stakes, and memories of modern war. Special attention will be given to identifying the various problematics common to modern conflicts.
Texts
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin
Henri Alleg, The Question
Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season. The Killers in Rwanda Speak
General Education
GE Theme Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations Course.

History 3640: Women: Navigating the Patriarchy in Medieval Europe
Instructor: Butler, Sara
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 02:20 PM - 03:40 PM
Description
History 3640: Navigating the Patriarchy in Medieval Europe examines the evolving rights, roles, and lived experiences of women in medieval society during the high and late Middle Ages (c. 1050–1500). Taking a comparative approach, the course centers on female agency and the strategies women used to navigate—and at times challenge—a deeply entrenched patriarchal system that actively constrained their social, legal, and political opportunities. Topics include medieval ideas about women (from theology to anatomy), women and property law, marriage and sexuality, women’s relationships with the Church, education and literacy, gendered spaces, rebellious women, queens and royal dowagers, and female mystics. Throughout the course, we will engage closely with the lives of both well-known and lesser-known medieval women, emphasizing that history is not merely a record of “great men,” but a complex past shaped in significant ways by women’s actions, voices, and contributions.
General Education
GE Theme Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations Course.

History 3641: Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (14501750): Diversity in Context
Instructor: Flannigan, Laura
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:10 AM - 12:30 PM
Description
Investigation of the lives and experiences of early modern European women, with special focus on family life, gender, work, education, religious life, and political power.
General Education
GE Foundation Historical and Cultural Studies and Race, Ethnicity and Gender Div Course.

History 3642: Women and Gender in Modern Europe (1750-1950): Diversity in Context
Instructor: Soland, Birgitte
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 03:55 PM - 05:15 PM
Description
An introduction to the history of women and gender in Europe, from approximately 1750 to the 1950s, with a focus on the intersecting categories of race, ethnicity and class. We will explore the ways women have been perceived, defined, and categorized as a gender, and how they have both lived within and rebelled against these societal and cultural norms and restrictions.
General Education
GE Foundation Historical and Cultural Studies and Race, Ethnicity and Gender Div Course.

History 3712: Science and Society in Europe, from Newton to Hawking
Instructor: Otter, Christopher
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
What are scientific facts and why are they important? How did science become the primary technique through which truths about the natural world and the human body and mind are established? Is scientific authority under threat in a post-truth age? This course explores these questions, and more, by following the history of science from the scientific revolution to current debates surrounding human-made climate change. Students will study major developments in the physical, geological, biological, chemical, and human sciences, such as thermodynamics, evolutionary biology, germ theory, the creation of the periodic table of the elements, quantum theory and free-market economics. The course does not only study “successful” scientific ideas, but also discarded and ridiculed ones, including catastrophism, phrenology and Lamarckianism. Students will learn to comprehend the socially-embedded nature of science, the complex relations between science and politics, the vast efforts that are made to divide science from pseudoscience, and the historical origins of skepticism, denialism and “alternative facts.”
Texts
Bowler and Morus, Making Modern Science, 2nd Edition
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

Jewish History

History 2453: History of Zionism and Modern Israel
Instructor: Yehudai, Ori
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
A history of the Jewish state from the rise of Zionism to the present, with a focus on migration and displacement. Topics include: Jewish-Arab relations, the encounter between European and Middle Eastern Jews, the creation of a new Hebrew identity, the impact of the Holocaust, ethnic conflict and social protest, war and diplomacy, religion and the state and struggles over the nature of the regime.
General Education
GE Theme Migration, Mobility, and Immobility Course.

History 3480: Israel/Palestine: History of the Present
Instructor: Yehudai, Ori
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:45 PM - 02:05 PM
Description
The course will enable students to reflect on the ways in which the past informs interpretations of the present and the ways in which the present informs interpretations of the past. The course will adopt a broad definition of the "present", investigating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict primarily against the background of the collapse of the Oslo peace process in the early 2000s.
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

Military History

History 3552: War in World History, 1900 - Present
Instructor: Cabanes, Bruno
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
This course is an introduction to new approaches in the history of war. A class about the impact of war on individuals and societies, about war as a human experience. You will get to think about all the wars that you have read about before, but in a different way – looking for themes, patterns, and ideas rather than just learning about when the battles happened and who wrote the peace treaties. We begin in August 1914 with the invasion of Belgium and Northern France. The course ends with the collapse of Yugoslavia and the atrocities of “ethnic cleansing”. We will examine the actors, forms of violence, ideological stakes, and memories of modern war. Special attention will be given to identifying the various problematics common to modern conflicts.
Texts
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin
Henri Alleg, The Question
Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season. The Killers in Rwanda Speak
General Education
GE Theme Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations Course.

History 3580: The Vietnam War
Instructor: Parrott, Raymond
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:10 AM - 12:30 PM
Description
Study of the background, causes, conduct, and consequences of the Vietnam War, 1945-1975.
General Education
GE Theme Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations Course.

History 3590: Wars of Empire and Decolonization
Instructor: Walker, Lydia
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 02:20 PM - 03:40 PM
Description
This course examines how wars of empire and decolonization shaped the modern world. HIST 3590 begins with the Age of Revolution in the Americas and then moves to colonial conquest and resistance in South Asia and Africa, showing how these events challenged and reshaped older ideas of political membership and pre‑national belonging. The course explores World War I and World War II as conflicts between empires, focusing on colonial soldiers, imperial competition, and the distinctions between imperial subjects and state citizens. It also traces the connections between the Second World War and decolonization, noting how warfare changed as formal declarations of war have become increasingly rare. Throughout the semester, students study shifting definitions of soldier, civilian, and citizen through primary sources, scholarship, and multimedia materials. Overall, the course shows how war built empires and states and transformed who could claim citizenship as the world became more connected through empire and then its collapse.
Texts
CA Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 (Blackwell Publishing, 2003).
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

World, Global, Transnational History

History 2675: The Indian Ocean: Communities and Commodities in Motion
Instructor: McDow, Thomas
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
This course examines the history of the Indian Ocean world, a dynamic inter-regional arena that touches three continents. The course will explore historical processes as they cross traditional boundaries between geographic regions. With its focus on communities and commodities, this course will expose students to the continuities and change that have created the modern Indian Ocean world.
General Education
GE Theme: Migration, Mobility, and Immobility Course.

History 3552: War in World History, 1900 - Present
Instructor: Cabanes, Bruno
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 09:35 AM - 10:55 AM
Description
This course is an introduction to new approaches in the history of war. A class about the impact of war on individuals and societies, about war as a human experience. You will get to think about all the wars that you have read about before, but in a different way – looking for themes, patterns, and ideas rather than just learning about when the battles happened and who wrote the peace treaties. We begin in August 1914 with the invasion of Belgium and Northern France. The course ends with the collapse of Yugoslavia and the atrocities of “ethnic cleansing”. We will examine the actors, forms of violence, ideological stakes, and memories of modern war. Special attention will be given to identifying the various problematics common to modern conflicts.
Texts
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin
Henri Alleg, The Question
Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season. The Killers in Rwanda Speak
General Education
GE Theme Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations Course.

History 3590: Wars of Empire and Decolonization
Instructor: Walker, Lydia
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 02:20 PM - 03:40 PM
Description
This course examines how wars of empire and decolonization shaped the modern world. HIST 3590 begins with the Age of Revolution in the Americas and then moves to colonial conquest and resistance in South Asia and Africa, showing how these events challenged and reshaped older ideas of political membership and pre‑national belonging. The course explores World War I and World War II as conflicts between empires, focusing on colonial soldiers, imperial competition, and the distinctions between imperial subjects and state citizens. It also traces the connections between the Second World War and decolonization, noting how warfare changed as formal declarations of war have become increasingly rare. Throughout the semester, students study shifting definitions of soldier, civilian, and citizen through primary sources, scholarship, and multimedia materials. Overall, the course shows how war built empires and states and transformed who could claim citizenship as the world became more connected through empire and then its collapse.
Texts
CA Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 (Blackwell Publishing, 2003).
General Education
GE Theme Citizenship for Diverse and Just World Course.

Seminars

History 2800: Introduction to the Discipline of History
Instructor: Fontanilla, Ryan
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 02:20 PM - 03:40 PM
Description
Investigation of the methods and analytical approaches historians use to understand the past.

History 2800: Introduction to the Discipline of History
Instructor: Soland, Birgitte
Days/Times: TBD

Description
Investigation of the methods and analytical approaches historians use to understand the past.

History 2800: Introduction to the Discipline of History
Instructor: Hoffmann, David
Days/Times: Online, Asynchronous
Description
This course will introduce students to historiography and historical methodology – that is, to different interpretations of history and to different methods of studying it. Among the themes to be covered in the course are gender and history, historical commemorations, and cultural representations of historical events. Topics will include student unrest in the 1960s, including the feminist movement, the civil rights movement, and the anti-war movement.
Assignments
Students will have weekly written assignments based on the course readings. These assignments will amount to roughly 7 short papers. In addition, students will be required to participate regularly in online discussions. They will also conduct historical research which will culminate in 3 longer papers or projects.

History 2800H: Introduction to the Discipline of History
Instructor: Kern, Stephen
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 02:20 PM - 03:40 PM

Description
This course introduces students to the discipline of history by analyzing in detail three approaches to history based on three highly influential theories about human experience—Marxism, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology. The power of these theories derives from the fact that they are grounded in universal aspects of human experience--bodily needs and labor (Marx), sexuality and unconscious mental processes (Freud), and time and space (phenomenology). To understand the interaction between theory and practice students will read and analyze these theories at their source and then critically evaluate one application of them in contemporary historical works, one of which is my own. In addition, students will also read critical appraisals of these approaches to round out the three reading assignments that are the subject of the three assigned papers (1200-1500 words or 4-5 pages each). I also run a week-long writing workshop that clarifies mechanics of writing to be used and refined in these papers.
Texts
George Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution
Rudolph Binion, Hitler Among the Germans
Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space: 1880-1918

History 4015: Seminar in Modern U.S. History
Instructor: Steigerwald, David
Days/Times: Mondays & Wednesdays 02:20 PM - 03:40 PM
Description
Advanced research and writing on selected topics in Modern U.S. History.

History 4015H: Seminar in Modern U.S. History
Instructor: Stebenne, David
Days/Times: Mondays 09:35 AM - 12:20 PM

Topic: The “Fifties”: Life in the United States, 1948-1963

Description
An examination of American life during the immediate post-World-War-II period. Emphasis on the creation of a large military establishment and collective security agreements such as NATO, Cold War conflicts (most notably in Korea) and the U.S. Soviet arms race, moderate (Eisenhower-era) conservatism, mass suburbanization, the baby boom, the re-emphasis on domesticity for women, the advent of television, the revival of mainstream religion, the Beats and other dissenters against the Fifties’ system, and the other forces (economic, political, social and cultural) that eventually undermined the stability of the Fifties’ system, such as superpower confrontations in the Third World, environmental pollution, the increasing challenge to segregation in law and everyday life, and increasing dissatisfaction among women.
Texts
This class will have one or more required texts.
Assignments
Weekly reading assignments delve into the above topics in depth; approximately 125-150 pages per week.
Attendance at, and lively participation in, all class meetings; a 3-5-page research paper prospectus; and a first draft and a final draft of a 15-page research paper.
Notes
History 3015 recommended. One need not be working toward a history major or minor to take the course.

History 4125: Seminar in Latin American History
Instructor: Delgado, Jessica
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:45 PM - 02:05 PM
Description
Advanced research and readings on selected topics in Latin American History.

History 4245: Seminar in Early Modern European History
Instructor: Flannigan, Laura
Days/Times: Mondays, 2:15 PM – 5:00 PM

Topic Reading, Writing and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England

Description

In the early modern period England experienced a ‘reading revolution’, it has been said. The trade in personalized manuscript books of poetry and prose was at its height. The invention of the printing press made knowledge and ideas about politics, religion and the wider world more widely accessible. Literacy rates rose, and long-existing oral means of communication intersected with new, written forms. Was this, as some historians and sociologists have argued, the beginning of a true ‘public sphere’ in English (and Western) history?

In this advanced-level seminar, students will explore changing cultures of reading and writing in early modern England, between 1450 and 1650. They will be introduced to the study of manuscripts, books, and reading in the premodern past. The course will be divided into forms or contexts of reading and writing: in the home, where knowledge was ‘domesticated’ and created through the purchasing of guidebooks and the creation of personal notes; in the public, discursive world of pamphlet culture, where everything from theological doctrine to the qualities of the king were debated; and in the wider world, with scientific and geographical discoveries from Europe and beyond making their way into English bookshops. Using a range of online resources and the Thompson Library’s Special Collections and Rare Books and Manuscript Library, students will develop an independent research project on these themes.

Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in Early Modern England 1500-1700 (Oxford, 2002)

David Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton, 2000)

History 4255: Seminar in Modern European History
Instructor: Kern, Stephen
Days/Times: Wednesdays & Fridays 02:20 PM - 03:40 PM
Description
This course explores the most creative period of Western cultural history, roughly 1890-1930, which ironically straddles one of the most destructive wars in history, World War I (1914-1918). That dynamic is evident in the work of cubist and abstract artists (Picasso and Kandinsky), philosophers (Nietzsche and Bergson), and writers (Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and T. S. Eliot). We will study causes of the war, its course, and its effects. The first section will analyze a variety of cultural developments and ideas about time and space and consider how they may have shaped the failure of diplomacy in July of 1914 that led to the outbreak of the war and the structure of combat during the fighting of this “cubist war”. The second section will contrast two studies of the war as ironic skepticism versus a reaffirmation of traditional values. The final section will view the effects of the war dramatized in Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway that includes the hunger for wholeness and repair in English society, shell shock, psychiatry, new gender roles and feminism, colonization and empire, the influenza pandemic of 1918.
Texts
Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918, ISBN: 978 0674 021 693
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (any edition)
Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, ISBN: 978 110 766 1653
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, ISBN: 978 015 662 8709.

History 4525: Seminar in International History
Instructor: Parrott, Raymond
Days/Times: Mondays 02:15 PM - 05:00 PM
Description
Advanced research and readings on selected topics in International History.

History 4575: Seminar in Military History
Instructor: Cabanes, Bruno
Days/Times: Wednesdays 05:30 PM - 08:15 PM

Topic: The First World War
Description
This research seminar explores the history of World War I through critical engagement with key scholarly works and primary documents. The central requirement of the course is a substantial research paper based on significant primary sources.

History 4705: Seminar in the History of Environment, Technology, and Science
Instructor: Moore, Erin
Days/Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:45 PM - 02:05 PM
Description
Advanced research and readings on selected topics in Environmental History, Technology and Science.

History 4795: Seminar in History
Instructor: Anderson, Gregor
Days/Times: Tuesdays 02:15 PM - 05:00 PM
Description
Experts in a growing number of fields, from anthropology to international relations, now believe that humans across time and space have in fact lived in a “pluriverse” of many different worlds, not in a universe of just one. The seminar will introduce this exciting new idea, exploring its potentially momentous implications for the practice of History.

The main body of the course will be a kind of journey across history’s pluriverse, considering a series of case studies that immerse us in realities profoundly unlike our own. They include the worlds of the ancient Greeks, the Chinese of the Ming era (1368-1644), the Aztecs, the Dogon and Mbuti of Africa, and Indigenous peoples of Amazonia, North America, and Scandinavia. Along the way, we will note some basic commonalities that seem to be shared by all of these non-modern worlds, perhaps helping us to explain their relative sustainability over time. How then might this journey change the way we view the very different world of our own modern experience, which has come to prevail across the globe over the past several centuries? And how might it also affect the way we imagine other possible futures?

The course requires no prior specialist knowledge, just an open mind, a curiosity about other ways of being human, and a willingness to consider alternatives.

No book purchase required.