Spring 2027

AIHS, FSHT, HILA, HIAL

This course will delve into the history of 20th century Latin America through the lens of conflict. We will use case studies from across the region in the 20th century to dissect how historians think, read, do research, and write. Students will learn how to develop research questions and thesis statements, analyze a wide variety of primary sources, and dispute popular historical narratives by learning about authoritarian leaders like Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, the legacies of international conspiracy in Guatemala, and compare Cold War-era counterinsurgencies in Argentina and Peru. The course will end with discussions on collective memory, justice, and post-conflict truth-telling that impact Latin American societies to this day.

AIHS, FSHT, HIAL, HIAF

“How to End an Empire" explores the history of decolonization in Africa as told by the anti-colonial activists who made African independence possible. The course examines the crucial decades around World War II, when European empires moved to reinvent colonialism in Africa for a postwar world. It looks at how different African activists—from women writers to guerilla fighters—tried to seize the political opening to imagine a new Africa altogether, free from European rule. We will learn about how to end an empire from the activists themselves. We will read the material they produced in the historical moment, including an autobiography of a Pan-African trade union activist and a theory of peasant revolution from Guinea Bissau. The course shows how African activists remade their world and the international order in the twentieth century.

AIHS, FSHT, HINA, HIUS

This course will explore the history of slavery and freedom in Early America, from the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade to eve of the Civil War. Throughout the course, we will pair primary and secondary sources to ask how historians locate, interpret, and write about slavery’s archive. We will examine the varied kinds of evidence that historians have used to tell this history—from logbooks and personal papers to narratives, oral histories, and material culture. Questions about evidence and primary sources are particularly important in our class because the archive of slavery and freedom is fraught. Libraries, universities, and archives are places of power and privilege that long neglected the stories of enslaved people. For decades, scholars have asked important questions about the ethics of studying and writing about this history. How should scholars recover enslaved subjects from the archive without repeating the violence of the past?

AIHS, FSHT, HINA, HIUS

The poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren said that the American Civil War is “our felt history, history lived in the national imagination. … It draws us as an oracle, darkly unriddled and portentous, of personal as well as national fate.” The war proved to be a watershed moment that resulted in the freedom of nearly four million enslaved people and transformed the scope and scale of the federal government. The conflict also brought unparalleled destruction and resulted in the deaths of 750,000 Americans.

This class is an overview of the causes, conflicts, and outcomes of the Civil War and the period after the war known as Reconstruction. We will explore the political and military goals of both sides (the Union and the Confederacy) in the war, the methods they used to achieve those objectives, and how the contingencies of war required changes in both means and ends. Last, we will examine the political and social ramifications of Reconstruction, connecting the themes of this period back to the war years and ahead to the last decades of the nineteenth century.

In our consideration of the conflict itself, we will balance military, political, and social developments. We will discuss battle tactics and strategy as they relate to the larger goals of each side. The course will explore the experiences of both the home front and battlefront in distinct parts of the Confederacy and the North. We will, furthermore, be attentive to shifting historical interpretations.

AIHS, FSHT, IFPE, HINA

This course will introduce you to major questions, themes, and events in African American history. It will center the perspectives and actions of African Americans during the era of slavery, the Civil War, Emancipation, the Jim Crow Era, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Era, the 1980s and 90s, and into the 21st century. We will consider how major historical events were interpreted and influenced by African Americans as they navigated social, political, and economic change. Using primary and secondary sources, our main objective is to deepen our understanding of how African Americans actively shaped the past. Doing so enables us to understand the diversity and complexity of the African American experience, and to examine the historical and sustained impact of African Americans on contemporary society.

AIHS, FSHT, IFPE

This course examines American political and social development at the end of the twentieth century. It will focus on the development of the modern American state and contested efforts to reform American life in an age of conservatism. Students will learn to analyze both primary sources and historiographical debates in order to tell the story of the United States from 1964 to 2000. Note: This course is not a biographical survey of Ronald Reagan’s life.

AIHS, IFPE

The classical period in Greece will always be remembered for its awe-inspiring innovations in political systems, art, literature and philosophy. Democratic Athens cannot help but be at the center of the course, but we will also try to understand the context of Greek-speakers’ classical achievements within their global context: how the independent city-state (polis) evolved, what role Persia and the Near East played in this development, and the conditions that led to the imperialistic decline of the independent city-state. Particular attention will be paid to the first written histories, Herodotus’ and Thucydides’, that not only chronicle the period lucidly, but also create a new type of political discourse. Archaeological evidence will also be explored in conjunction with the historical narratives. 

AIHS, FSHT, PEIC

What was the “industrial revolution” and why did it start in the British world? How was industrialization bound up with imperialism? In what ways did businesses draw on, but also reshape ideas about race, class, religion, and gender through everyday practices of production and consumption? How did the growing power of the British state, both at home and abroad, influence the development of British and imperial businesses? This course attempts to answer these and other questions through a social, cultural, and economic history of businesses ranging from gun and cotton factories to department stores in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain and its empire.

AIHS, IFPC (retroactive)

This course addresses the historical problem of religious authority and its sway over the populace during the early modern era. While heresy or “false teaching” has been a part of the history of Christianity since its beginnings, this semester we will focus on the splintering and the subsequent clash of religious identities and beliefs that led to social unrest during the 16th-century Reformation in Germany and continued through the 17th-century religious wars in England, France, and Germany. We will read transcripts of witch trials from Germany, England and France, analyzing their various legal frameworks and cultural meanings across Europe. The final unit explores the introduction of new scientific beliefs that competed with church orthodoxy, popular magic, and the healing arts of cunning folk. We examine how, under the 18th-century Enlightenment, popular writers like Voltaire used their wit to attack medieval superstition and religious fanaticism. The course addresses not only the debates between Church traditionalists and an enlightened public, but also how church reform, scientific skepticism, and the "age of reason" brought about greater religious toleration.

HIEU, HIPR

Was the French Revolution a political revolution with social consequences? Or a social revolution with political consequences? Historians have debated these interpretations for more than a century, as the Revolution’s political factions were built upon social identities. The economic and constitutional crises of the decade polarized opinions about where authority resided: Was it in the body of the King? In a written constitution based on The Rights of Man and of the Citizen? Or in public demonstrations of the General Will? Beyond the debates taking place in the Legislative Assembly (debates in which you will play a part), people across France claimed new identities as sans-culottes and enlightened aristocrats, and forged political ideologies as radical republicans or counter-revolutionary royalists. These ideologies shaped France and Europe’s political landscape well into the nineteenth century. This introductory course is open to all students with little or no knowledge of French history. A C-LAC section will be offered for those with intermediate to advanced French language skills. Students interested in political culture, parliamentary oratory, legislative statecraft, and social movements are encouraged to join the class.

AIHS (retroactive)

This interdisciplinary course introduces students to historical issues and methodologies through a close investigation of a twenty-five year period in Soviet history stretching between the October 1917 Revolution and the start of World War II. Culminating with the 1937-1938 Great Terror, the course seeks to explain a truly savage period of political violence. It also examines the meaning of revolution, illiberalism and Marxism-Leninism and assesses the impact of mass mobilizational propaganda on everyday life in an authoritarian society.

AIHS, IFWC (retroactive)

This course explores the history of China’s Republican period, from the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1912 through the 1930s. Surveys of modern China often approach Republican China through the framework of the rise of the modern Chinese nation-state, frequently treating it as a transition between the Qing dynasty and the People’s Republic of China. In contrast, this course examines Republican China as a historical period in its own right - a distinctive moment in which various Chinese actors grappled with questions about sovereignty, citizenship, and China’s place in the modern world amidst profound instability and uncertainty, deeply impacting the shape China would take. The course examines the competing political, social, and cultural projects that emerged as older assumptions about political authority and social order changed, and pays special attention to how different historical actors understood their world and imagined possibilities for change.

AIHS, FSHT, HILA, AMER, GSHC, GSLA

Modern Latin American History will follow the post-Independence histories of Brazil, Cuba, Chile, and Nicaragua. Using multimedia primary and secondary sources, we will use these four case studies to study how Latin American communities have navigated changes related to identity, statehood, and economy between ~1815 and 2000. Students will leave this course having practiced key historical methodologies like primary source analysis, critical reading and listening, literature review and historiography, and community-engagement.

AIHS, FSHT, IFPE, HIAL, HIME, HICT, GSME, GSCP

This course explores the First World War in the Middle East as a prolonged, transformative crisis that reshaped Ottoman and post-Ottoman societies far beyond the conventional European timeline (1914-1918). Focusing on social and cultural history rather than military matters, the course examines famine, disease, rebellion, demographic engineering, mass violence, and economic intervention, as well as the experiences of common soldiers and civilians. We consider shifting gender roles, cultural expression, public health, and the war’s contested memories.

AIHS, FSHT, HIEU, IFCW

This course explores the history of Britain and its relationship to the wider world, especially its empire, from 1815 to 1918. We will focus on London, but also on parts of Britain and the wider British world where the state struggled to exert meaningful control, or even to know what transpired. Of particular interest to us are the connections between developments in Britain and developments abroad. We will explore how the empire made Britain as much as Britain made its empire.

HIAS, FSHT, IFQD, HICT

In 1968, the Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve in the 1970s. Since 1968, the year that Ehrlich wrote the Population Bomb, the world’s population has more than doubled, from 3.5 to roughly 8 billion today. Ehrlich’s name now features on the list of experts who wrongly predicted a reckoning with so-called overpopulation. “How People Became the Problem” looks at how people became a problem for experts like Ehrlich, and why after so many failed predictions, some commentators continue to insist that “overpopulation” is a threat to our planet. We begin with the original prophet of overpopulation, Thomas Robert Malthus, and explore the influence of his ideas through generations of population control advocates from around the world, stopping to look closely at birth control in Puerto Rico, sterilization in India, and the one-child policy in China. The course also examines how ideas of population “quality” fed the rise of the modern insurance industry in the United States and inspired anti-poverty campaigners in the Third World.

AIHS, FSHT, HIEU, GSSE

How did nationalism come to be such a potent force in political and social life? What is the relationship between the nation and the state, and why did the "nation-state" become the predominant form of political organization? How do we define a nation? This course aims to explore these questions and more by tracing historical developments in nationalism and national identities in Europe from the revolutionary uprisings of 1848 to the immediate aftermath of World War II. Using nationalism as a framing device to explore the history of this tumultuous century, the course how nationalism and national identities varied across political ideologies, how nationalist projects envisioned roles for women and children, and how nationalism interacted with imperialism and anti-imperialism. In doing so, the course aims to offer students a fuller understanding of nationalism as a historical phenomenon beyond its contemporary socio-political valence. Through close readings of primary and secondary sources, in-class discussions, and written assignments, students will also gain a deeper understanding of how historians actually study the past.

AIHS, FSHT, HIEU, GSSE

From South America to the Indian subcontinent, Europe to East Asia, movements on the right have upended global politics in recent years. This course places current right-wing political developments in historical context. Rather than studying conservative movements, this course focuses on political movements on the more radical end of the political right. Beginning with the 1890s Dreyfus Affair in France and covering such topics as the global rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, military governments in Cold War Latin America, and Apartheid South Africa, among others, course materials explore such groups as both movements and as governing powers, right-wing racial and gender politics, and transnational entanglements of activists on the right. During the course, students will be encouraged to consider the following questions: What do we mean when we talk about the “far right” and how do we differentiate that from conservatism? What drew people to right-wing politics in particular places at particular moments? Why did such movements fail to become significant forces in other contexts? Where did right-wing movements find grounds to collaborate across national borders, and where did conflict arise in transnational exchanges? To what extent were these movements “reactionary” and to what extent did they envision a radical transformation of society?

AIHS, FSHT, HIAS, GSSE, HIAL

Soon after its emergence as a modern nation-state in 1868, Japan embarked on its career as a colonial power; by WWII, the Japanese colonial empire covered most of Asia. For Japan, becoming a colonial power was tied up with the consolidation of its modern geographical borders, dreams of expansion, and its desires to demonstrate its equality with the Euro-American West. Japanese colonialism, in other words, was about national prestige but also intimately linked to Japan’s anxieties about its national sovereignty and its place in the world. This course examines Japan’s career as a colonial power, with attention to the particularities of Japanese colonial rule as it took shape across its empire, beginning with the "internal colonies" of Hokkaido and Okinawa, the "formal colonies" of Taiwan and Korea, and its settler colonies of Manchuria and the Americas, and the ways colonized peoples experienced, negotiated, and resisted it.

This course is a weekly seminar focused around historical issues of identity development and construction in the twentieth-century United States. The course is intended for advanced history students and discussions will focus on historiographical debates and issues. For example, what do historians mean when they talk about “identity”? How do historians use categories like race, class, and gender to understand the American experience? How have historians approached issues of status, power, and individuality? The goal is for students to think hard about why and how historians write about American identity formations.

HIME, HICT

This course explores competing representations and understandings of the Middle East, examining both external portrayals and perspectives emerging from within the region. Using a multidisciplinary approach that draws on history, politics, and cultural studies, it investigates debates over identity, nationalism, gender, religion, and political change, while asking how knowledge about the Middle East is produced, mobilized, and contested.

300-level requirement, AFST2, HICT

History 398 explore key approaches, philosophies, and methodologies that have shaped the craft of writing history. We begin with “the history of history,” examining evolving conceptions of “history” and how history developed as a professional, academic practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The rest of the course will focus on historiography—the study of historical scholarship—in more recent decades. We will explore foundational questions about sources, archives, and power and read illustrative examples of different approaches to writing history, including gender and sexuality, material studies, subaltern, social, cultural, legal, and public history, and transnational history.

AIHS, HINA

Eric Hobsbawm introduced the idea of the “long nineteenth century” in his sweeping multi-volume economic history. Examining the period between 1789 and 1914, he stressed how industrial and political revolutions transformed human society. Moreover, Hobsbawm argued, the spread of capitalist industry had long-reaching global consequences. Many scholars have subsequently employed this conceptual framework to look at historical problems across time and place as we will do in this senior seminar. Students will pursue original research in a segment of the “long nineteenth century” with attention to experiences within the United States. We will consider how historical methods tell specific types of stories and explore the social, cultural, and political histories of this epoch. Ultimately, the primary work of this seminar is a 25-page research paper.