Fall 2025 Course Descriptions

TR 3-4:15pm | Ardila

AIHS, FSHT

Maps are more than mere visual representations of space. Many of them are accounts of conflicts, power struggles, and negotiations. Others tell stories of political dreams and aspirations. This course studies maps of Latin America with two goals in mind. First, the course explores processes of Indigenous territorial and cultural dispossessions in Latin America. In doing so, the course highlights the different ways in which Indigenous people have resisted and tried to defend their territories and culture. Second, the course studies the diverse political imaginations that have come to life in Latin America. Through maps, historians can grasp the ways in which those political imaginations have shaped and guided the region’s imperial and national projects. Throughout the semester, the course offers students the opportunity to explore Indigenous maps and Native notions of space and territory.

TR 10:30-11:45am | Mack

AIHS, FSHT

This course explores the evolution of American foreign diplomacy and foreign relations from the United States’ founding through armed rebellion and political revolution in the late eighteenth century to its ascent to a global hegemonic power by the First World War. We will explore the global dimensions of the American Revolution and the republic’s development through the diplomacy of the Washingtonian and Jeffersonian administrations, the early U.S.-China trade, the War of 1812, the Monroe Doctrine, the Age of Jackson, the U.S.-Mexico War, westward migration and territorial expansion, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Second Industrial Revolution, the Spanish-American War, and the diplomacy of the Roosevelt administration at the outset of the “American Century.” Students will reflect on the meaning and consequences of the American “experiment” worldwide and consider how historical forces shaped (and continue to shape) our present-day world.

WF 10:30-11:45am & 12-1:15pm | Mack

AIHS, FSHT

This course explores the evolution of the American presidency from the Washington Administration—at the outset of the new republic—to the modern presidency of the twenty-first century. It places a special emphasis on the role of historical precedent in transforming the executive office. We will examine the evolution of the executive branch by exploring pivotal American presidencies, including the administrations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. We will consider the presidency within the context of its times, considering how presidents acted both inside and outside their proscribed constitutional duties, often responding to extraordinary times with unprecedented measures both in domestic affairs and foreign affairs. We will consistently discuss the importance of historical precedents set by earlier presidential administrations and ask how the study of past presidential behavior might help us better understand the American presidency of our modern age.

TR 3-4:15pm | Link

AIHS, FSHT

This seminar examines the Watergate crisis of 1972-74  through general reading and by exposing students to the rich primary sources that document it.  On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested in a bungled burglary at the Watergate, a Washington, D.C., complex housing the Democratic National Committee.  Although the extent of involvement by the Richard Nixon reelection campaign remained unclear for months, eventually the break-in, and the attempt to cover it up, brought down the Nixon presidency. 

TR 12-1:15pm & 1:30-2:45pm | Broomall

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.

MW 9-10:15am | Holloway

This class asks what might seem, at first, to be a simple question: Why did the US Supreme Court rule in Lawrence v. Texas that sodomy laws are unconstitutional? Answering this question requires that we undertake the basic tasks of historical interpretation. We will gather facts by interpreting primary sources, ranging from court opinions to LGBT newspapers, and then analyze these facts to make arguments about the past.  We will consider what’s at stake in the different answers to this question in order to understand how historical arguments and interpretation reflect and shape the present. And, finally, we will consider how others have answered this question by critically analyzing works by historians, and as well as scholarship about the past from other academic disciplines.

MW 10:30-11:45am | Seeley

AIHS, AMER, FSHT, HINA, HIPR

This course will examine the uncertain beginnings of the United States to ask what kind of republic early Americans envisioned and what kind of empire they made. Our conversations will begin in the era of the American Revolution and end in the 1830s. We will range over broad terrain to think about the many ways that the founding of the United States changed life in early North America. We will explore key debates about high and popular politics, slavery and emancipation, Indigenous sovereignty, African American and women’s rights, constitution-making, immigration, and culture, and political economy. We will investigate revolutions in religion, science, technology, and sexuality. Many of these foundational debates still reverberate in politics today. At the center of our inquiries will be the question of how early North Americans conceived of the rapid transformation of the lands east of the Mississippi River from Native ground to U.S. states and territories. 

TR 12-1:15pm & 1:30-2:45pm | Broomall

AIHS, AMER

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,” he contended, “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, fighting, 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 and how the conflict is currently presented at public history sites.

MW 9-10:15am | Holloway

FSHT, HINA

This course explores cases decided by the US Supreme Court in the 20th century, with a focus on free speech; race, gender, and sex discrimination; voting rights; sexual privacy; and national security/habeas corpus. In order to think historically about courts and the law, we will consider the social, political, and cultural context in which cases are brought to the court; how the court’s opinions on certain issues changed over time due to shifting historical circumstances and developments in legal reasoning; and the impact of court opinions on society. While our focus is on the past, we will also keep an eye on the present, monitoring arguments before the Court and opinions it issues during the Spring 2025 term, particularly cases that relate to the thematic areas of this class.

MW 1:30-2:45pm | Sackley

Mass Culture. Counterculture. Culture Wars. From Hollywood film and rock ‘n roll to art and intellectual manifestos, cultural forms influenced the turbulent US political and social debates of the post-World War II era. HIST 216 surveys US artists, entertainers, activists, and intellectuals in their historical context. Topics to include representations of family and gender; consumer culture, youth and rebellion, the women’s movement; the Black freedom struggle, ecology, conservatism, and war and society.

MWF 1:30-2:20pm | Stevenson

This course begins with a look at Alexander the Great’s career, which made possible the political and social institutions of the Hellenistic world. As Greek became the cosmopolitan lingua franca, and the laissez-faire successor kings enabled free trade and travel, the whole known world from Spain to India came together for the first time.   After establishing this context, students will use it to explore the rise of Roman hegemony, the erosion of Roman republican practices and values, and the foundation established for Roman imperial culture.

TR 12-1:15pm & 1:30-2:45pm | Drell

HIST 227 provides an overview of some of the principal themes for the period known as the High Middle Ages (c.1000-1300).  We will examine the rise of new forms of secular and religious authorities; the vitality of urban culture; the changing shape of medieval spirituality; the appearance of ideas such as romantic love and medievalism.  To a degree, this is a “Greatest Hits of the Middle Ages” course as we move from social to economic to political to intellectual topics.  Readings will include numerous primary sources in translation as well as secondary works by prominent medievalists.

MW 10:30-11:45am & 12-1:15pm | Biscof

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. 

TR 10:30-11:45am | Brandenberger

“Europe in Crisis” surveys the political, social and cultural history of Europe over the course of the first half of the twentieth century. Its sweep focuses on major developments, devoting special attention to political and social thought, state building, the development of institutions, the causes of domestic and international instability, and the ramifications of unrest and war. Other concerns range from industrialization to ideology and the great populist movements of the twentieth century: nationalism, socialism, and fascism.

TR 9-10:15am & 10:30-11:45am | Ardila

AIHS, FSHT, GEEL, GSDW, GSEE, GSWE, HIEU, IFWC, ITEL, SLPA

The arrival of Europeans to the Americas in 1492 not only brought violence and displacement. Contact between American Indigenous peoples and Europeans, along with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Africans, produced a new society in the Americas. Different cultures, institutions, and visions of the world clashed and, at times, merged with one another. This course studies the new social, political, and cultural orders that emerged in Latin America during colonial times. The course pays close attention to the ways in which the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies as well as the Catholic Church imposed their authority on the newly conquered territories. Yet, it also explores the different ways in which Indigenous groups, African slaves, mestizos, free people of color, and criollo elites contested and negotiated power and identity with European powers. Throughout the semester, we will reflect on the ways in which some colonial legacies are still present in Latin America.

TR 12-1:15pm | Summers

What did it mean to live through colonial rule, and to demolish it (or try to)? How did people build lives for themselves, and shape families, work, survival and meaning as governments rose and fell, religious and educational ideas shifted, and economic changes transformed the continent? This course explores both what historians know—and the questions we continue to ask, about the political, economic, social and intellectual history of change in 20^thcentury Africa.

MW 12-1:15pm | Loo

Japan in 1900 was a rising power in Asia; by mid-century it had launched – and lost – an aggressive war that inflicted violence and suffering over much of Asia. Following an American occupation that turned it into a stalwart U.S. ally, Japan experienced economic regeneration through the 1980s which made it – for a time – the world’s second-largest economy. The 1990s, however, were dominated by economic stagnation, loss of global standing, and a sense of social fragmentation, and the national ambitions and confidence of 1900 seemed far away. This course studies Japan’s dramatic 20th century, exploring, in particular, how Japan understood its place in the world, its ambitions, and the challenges it faced across this long century.

W 1:30-4:15pm | Broomall

In distinguishing history from memory, the historian Pierre Nora writes, “Memory is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present; history is a representation of the past.” History entails critical analysis, while memory takes root in spaces, images, and objects. Through a discussion-based classroom built around secondary sources, and by field experiences at sites of memory, this course will explore the American Civil War as both historical epoch and remembered event.

The Civil War has cast a long shadow over American culture as northerners and southerners, Black and white, have continued to debate and discuss this watershed moment into the present era. Together we will chart this shifting discourse by examining diverse forms of evidence such as literature, images, and non-fiction. We will explore the challenges of understanding this contentious event and its continued impact on American culture. The class is also attentive to how public history interfaces with memory and interpretation. We will, therefore, conduct a series of field experiences to places such as the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Monument Avenue and Hollywood Cemetery, the American Civil War Museum, and the Richmond National Battlefield Park.

R 3-5:45pm | Traugh

Will machines take our jobs? It is question on just about everyone’s mind today. CEOs have bragged in recent years about how AI has been helping make their businesses more efficient and profitable—and less likely to employ large numbers of people. Doomsayers have called it the end of work. More sober observers have argued back that while automation may eliminate some jobs, it will also create new ones. Much of what these commentators say about the future of work comes from a generally unexamined sense of the history of work and technological change—the theme for this course.

“Fields, Factories, Robots” looks at inventions and schemes that promised—and often failed—to revolutionize work around the world over the last two centuries. The course examines both innovations and the experiences of workers forced to adapt to them. We will also consider how changes in the ways that people worked shaped notions of who was properly working class—the white male breadwinner of the mid-twentieth-century US and European imagination, for example—as well as fears about the so-called “end of class” once that work disappeared. The course approaches this history from unusual angles, looking at, for example: machine-breaking Luddites in early industrial England; racialized biometrics in segregated South Africa; cybernetic socialism in revolutionary Chile; gendered care-work in the US rustbelt; and the take-off of personal computing in communist Bulgaria. The course takes this history up to the present, ending on contemporary debates about a post-work world, and showing why shallow understandings of the past should make us think twice about bold predictions about the future.

M 3-5:40pm | Bischof

In this senior seminar, you will pursue original research into the history of social reformers in the modern British world.  In conducting this research, you will seek to understand and then tell the story of your chosen social reformer(s), including what they thought it meant to do good in the world and how the objects of their reforms experienced their attempts to do good.  But you will also work to connect this specific story to broader historical developments by thinking about the larger social, cultural, economic, and political context.  How was the way they thought about the world and its problems shaped by the larger context — and how were reformers trying to reshape that larger context as they carried out their work?

TBD SPRING 2026 | Seeley

This course will explore the Atlantic World and the migrations that connected Africa, Europe, and the Americas from the fifteenth century to the age of Atlantic revolutions. Touching down in multiple locations over time, we will examine how European colonization, the development of plantation commodities, an increasing demand for consumer goods, the forced migration of enslaved people, and the extraction of natural resources spurred conflicts over land, labor, and trade. How did imperial conflicts and the movements, forced and free, of Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans produce new worlds for all three groups? Taking an Atlantic approach to this question means widening our frame of reference to treat the Atlantic basin itself as a zone of cross-cultural contact between peoples. The first part of the course will introduce students to the major questions and texts that have defined the field of Atlantic History. The majority of this course will be devoted to crafting and executing a substantial research project examining some aspect of the Atlantic World before the Age of Revolutions.