For the semester's complete offerings, see the Registrar's iGPS site. The IUB Course Bulletin also has full list of History Department courses past, present, and future.
HIST-D102 with Professor Griffin
Ever wondered what the President of Russia is talking about when he brings up history in discussions of the current Russo-Ukraine war? This class will introduce you to the history of the Russian Empire so that when Russia and Ukraine’s past comes up in conversation you can confidently say “well, actually…"
HIST-H102 with Professor Machado
The world seemed to stand at the threshold of a new era at the end of World War II in 1945. The Cold War burgeoned between former allies, the US and USSR, and then grew hot in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa. Europe was divested of its empires, and independent nation-states sprung up across Africa and Asia. This course explores decolonization, variants of capitalism and social justice across the world and social justice after 1945.
HIST-H104 with Professor Roos
Europe’s history in the past two hundred years captures the contradictions of the modern age. We can marvel at European achievements in art, literature, and science, and at impressive advances in building democracy. At the same time, twentieth-century Europe was the epicenter of two murderous world wars. In this class, students will learn about key topics in European history since the early 1800s including, for instance: the Napoleonic Wars; the birth of nationalism; industrialization; women and the family; revolutions in 1848, 1917, and 1989; the rise and fall of colonial empires; the world wars; fascism; the Holocaust; young people’s political movements; and the Cold War.
HIST-H105 with Professor Dierks
Has it ever been possible in American history to imagine equality without at the same time excluding some people? We will explore cultural tensions between equality and inequality, freedom and unfreedom, and prosperity and poverty in American history from the era of Columbus’s exploration of the New World, up through the era of the American Civil War.
HIST-H106 with Professor Ortega
Amid the debates on what constitutes U.S. history and what should be taught--students, instructors, and learning institutions--have grappled with the social, cultural, political, and economic events that have shaped U.S. history since the late nineteenth century. As this course engages contemporary events, I invite students to approach history as a dynamic relationship between the past and the present. The central purpose of this course is to encourage informed, thoughtful, and critical perspectives on the U.S. experience as encountered by different groups of people.
HIST-H106 with Professor Drake
America experienced massive social, political, intellectual, and economic changes since the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865, but what did those developments mean for contemporaries? How did they react to those changes? What did they fear, and what brought them hope?
HIST-W130 with Professor Bucur-Deckard
This course offers a narrative of major changes around the world since 1900 centering on the role women have played as historical actors and objects of policy making and other social developments. We will examine the world of politics, demography, economics, knowledge making, culture, and kinship relations. In addition to familiarizing you with many important individuals and processes that unfolded in the recent past or are still unfolding, the course takes these case studies to acquaint you with a number of research methods. We will read and compare different disciplinary approaches, such as sociology, biology, and economics, to understanding gender regimes.
Assignments include: reading annotations; class discussion posts; a biography of one important woman in the twentieth century; and a final exam.
HIST-A200 with Professor Mora
Latinx Social Movements focuses on the history and theory of social movements throughout the 20th century. Topics include immigrant mobilizations, multiethnic and multiracial coalition building, transnational organizing, agrarian and farm worker movements, political representation, feminisms and reproductive rights, environmental justice, labor and educational struggles, and urban social movements. We will engage with stories that offer an engaging way to think about past worlds as well as our current one. Class participation and engagement will be a central component. Along with short written responses to course readings and in-class assignments, students will develop a final research project on a topic of their own choosing.
HIST-G200 with Professor Chan
What is the relationship between bikinis and atom bombs? Or between drug use and modernity? This course will examine questions like these which ask you to consider questions like, what is science and how do we understand its relationship to creating what we now consider the “modern” world? How do we understand the relationships between science, culture, politics, social life, and the personal lives of those who practice science and medicine? This class will challenge you to think about how you personally understand science, medicine, and modernity, and their relationship to one another by tracing histories of science, medicine, and drug use and regulation in 18th, 19th, and 20th century Asia.
HIST-D201 with Professor Hsia
In the last 40 years the world has witnessed a series of democratically-oriented revolutions all over the globe. What accounts for this phenomenon, and what common ideas and practices link them? In this course, we examine closely a range of revolutionary moments from Poland in 1980 to the Arab Spring in the early 2010s to better understand communist and anti-communist dictatorships, state repression and revolutionary outcomes, and the recent challenges to the liberal democratic model from both inside and outside democratic countries.
HIST-W200 with Professor Dodson
Music is a powerful medium to challenge the status quo. In this course we will examine how specific genres, such as punk, metal, rap, and even electronic and noise-music, have transcended the category of "entertainment" to become weapons against oppression. This course is global in scope, and will focus on genres ranging from British punk and post-punk to German electronica, East Coast rap, and Tunisian heavy metal.
HIST-W201 with Professor Machado
A variety of forms of slavery and ‘unfreedom’ have marked the human experience across a range of time periods and places. We will look in detail at the development of the Atlantic world's 'plantation slavery' but also move beyond it to explore the very different forms of slavery and ‘unfreedoms’ that existed in a variety of social, cultural, political and economic arenas of the global Indian Ocean and Pacific worlds, and that predated the Common Era. In doing so, we'll challenge the view of slavery as defined by chattel/free and gain new perspectives on slavery as a multilayered and complex process with a global and connected past.
Meets second eight weeks only.
HIST-H212 with Professor McGraw
Course examines the last 200 years of Latin American history, addressing themes of social movements, dictatorships, revolutions, and changes in race, gender, sex, class, and family life. Class will entail short lectures with longer class discussions based on assigned readings and films from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru.
HIST-C215 with Professor Robinson
Ancient Sparta built a society unique in Greece and a fighting force with a reputation for invincibility. How did the Spartans create their brutal yet remarkable society? What costs did their social system exact from Sparta's women and men? How accurately has the image of warlike Sparta been used in contemporary culture? We will study Spartan history with a view to answering these questions and more. Work for the course will include reading assignments to be completed before every class meeting (most will be moderate in length for a history course), multiple in-class examinations and other work, and 1-2 short (4-6 page) writing assignments.
HIST-W215 with Professor O'Bryan
We seem today increasingly confronted with the question of catastrophes--confronted by our experiences of catastrophes, by our fear of the many new catastrophes that seem to threaten us (from asteroids to killer viruses, from climate change to the end of fossil fuels), and by our simultaneous fascination with doomsday prospects. We will explore the ways catastrophe as idea and reality is not so new, in fact, but has actually long operated in history as an 'agent' of change and as an organizing theme informing the stories we tell about the relations between humans and the natural world.
HIST-W220 with Professor Guardino
'War? What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.' Whether or not we agree with the opening line of Edwin Starr’s 1969 hit song, we have to admit that war has been a common event in human history. Rather than taking a traditional military history approach, this course will explore the social history of war. Wars were the result of social and political institutions, and the social and cultural expectations that brought people from particular groups to the battlefields shaped their behavior there. We will also study how these social and cultural factors affected the more traditional topics of military history, often having more influence on victory or defeat than the cleverest military leaders. We will take a case study approach, looking at many wars from ancient Greece and China to the American Civil War to current wars. The course will foreground human experiences, and we will work hard to get as close as we can to the often colorful and poignant stories of individuals who participated in war. All reading will consist of short excerpts from primary and secondary sources posted on Canvas. Students will complete a number of extremely short reflections based on the reading and also three exams in class.
HIST-B226 with Professor Ipsen
An offer you can’t refuse: 15 weeks of murder, corruption, drug dealing, and occasional successes against organized crime. This course will focus primarily on the Sicilian mafia. While we will look at links to the US mafia, our focus will be Italy. In addition to the mafia, we will look at related areas of Italian 'deep politics' (or Italy’s mysteries) including: Salvatore Giuliano, right and left-wing terror and the strategy of tension, the Vatican banking scandal, and the Tangentopoli scandal and Clean Hands investigation.
HIST-H252 with Professor Lockwood
Jewish history from early modern times to the present. Topics include Jewish daily life in early modern Europe and Ottoman Turkey, Jewish mysticism, Hasidism, Jewish emancipation, modern Judaism, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, Zionism, the State of Israel, and the history of American Jewry.
HIST-H270 with Professor Irvin
In "What Is History?", we will explore vital questions of the process of history-writing: the choices historians make, and the influence their own society and times have on these choices. We'll delve into the ideas, practices, and joys of history common to the study of all places, time periods, and themes. We'll develop the skills historians use in our research and writing, including locating and interpreting sources, using scholarly resources, and arguing persuasively. Finally, we will ask what we mean by the term “facts” and why only some facts, but not others, become part of the historical record. For all students regardless of their major or primary areas of interest, we will engage with stories that offer a fascinating way to think about past worlds, as well as our own.
HIST-H270 with Professor Black
In "What Is History?", we will explore vital questions of the process of history-writing: the choices historians make, and the influence their own society and times have on these choices. We'll delve into the ideas, practices, and joys of history common to the study of all places, time periods, and themes. We'll develop the skills historians use in our research and writing, including locating and interpreting sources, using scholarly resources, and arguing persuasively. Finally, we will ask what we mean by the term “facts” and why only some facts, but not others, become part of the historical record. For all students regardless of their major or primary areas of interest, we will engage with stories that offer a fascinating way to think about past worlds, as well as our own.
HIST-D300 with Professor Kamp
Examines the Soviet experiment and its legacy in Central Asia through topics such as economic planning, nuclear testing, language policies, repression, and revival of Islam.
HIST-G300 with Professor Chan
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But how do we determine what's beautiful and what's not, what's desirable and what's deviant? By looking at the history of 20th century Asia, we'll examine how standards of beauty, desire, health, deviance, and normativity shifted and changed over time according to historical and political context and alongside discourses of modernity, gender, race, empire, and nationalism. The class will examine everything from skin lightening treatments in East and Southeast Asia to the history of plastic surgery. We'll cover primary and secondary sources from short stories to films to newspaper advertisements and examine how normative and non-normative bodies are constructed, contested, and change over time.
HIST-J300 with Professor Deliyannis
In the Middle Ages, some women exercised a surprising amount of authority - surprising to us, and sometimes surprising to their contemporaries. In this Writing-Intensive seminar, we will consider queens and empresses in Europe and the Mediterranean from the late Roman empire to the fourteenth century. We will examine sources for ruling women: how they were described (and by whom), how they were represented in art, and what is said about them in legal and religious texts. We will discuss the way they achieved political power, what kinds of authority they could exercise, who they married, what behaviors were expected of them, and how their personalities impacted their regions. Students will read primary sources and scholarly secondary sources, and will write a short analytical paper and a longer term paper.
HIST-J300 with Professor Saburova
"You will be sent to Siberia!” It sounds frightening indeed, since Siberia has been seen as a frozen land of exile, of Stalin's GULAG. But do you still think that Siberia is only snow and bears walk on the streets there? Or do you know that Siberia is a vast realm of natural resources? Learn about its cultures of indigenous people, history of exploration and colonization, the Trans-Siberian railway and exile, industry and environment, science and art. We will follow the trade and travel routes, seeing where civilizations meet in Siberia.
HIST-J300 with Professor Schott
Develops students' writing skills in history; focuses on the skills of interpretation, historical reasoning, and discussion.
HIST-J300 with Professor Dierks
The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of 1776 and the Declaration of Independence. We will investigate this founding moment from every crucial angle -- rebellion, revolution, war, civil war -- and every crucial social and international perspective. And we will read every word of the Declaration closely. As in every seminar, students will conduct their own original historical research.
HIST-W300 with Professor Dodson
The design and construction of buildings is an integral part of the human experience. In this course we will survey some of the best (and a bit of the worst) architecture produced throughout the world during the last several hundred years. We will ask what purposes architecture has served historically, including: what are the links between architecture and industrial capitalism? How is the design of a building intended to communicate a society’s possession of modernity? How have theories of architecture been used to perpetuate inequalities through colonialism? And how do architectural practices now reflect the globalization of the recent past?
Meets second eight weeks only.
HIST-A302 with Professor Irvin
In recent months a national debate has raged about the causes and consequences of the American Revolution. How might we best understand that momentous conflict? As a Great War for Empire, in which shifting alliances of European and indigenous peoples waged combat for dominion over eastern North America? As a Revolutionary War, in which thirteen colonies confederated in a fight for political autonomy? As a civil war that rent the British nation? Or as a war of liberation, one of several that unfolded across the greater Atlantic, giving the era its name, the Age of Revolutions? In this reading- and discussion-intensive seminar, we will carefully examine the interpretive frameworks by which historians make sense of the Revolution today.
HIST-D312 with Professor Saburova
Is it a New Cold War now? Do you know who started and ended the Cold War, what the Iron Curtain and Red Scare mean and why 'duck-and-cover' drills were important? In this class we will examine the origins and major episodes of the Cold War but go beyond the traditional political history and the international relations to discuss visual culture of the Cold War era and its media, the technological competition and its impact on science and education, the daily life and material culture, sport and music. We will analyze recently declassified documents and watch films of the Cold War.
HIST-B323 with Instructor Quinn
The Holocaust has been memorialized through memoirs, film, monuments and museums. But the public image misleads. The perpetrators were not brainwashed, and no one put a gun to their heads. Most of them were not monsters, though their deeds were monstrous. The victims did not go like “sheep to the slaughter” - they evaded, resisted, collaborated, and sought to maintain a semblance of life to the end. Both perpetrators and victims were diverse. The killers were not all German, and the victims were not all Jews. The reality of the Holocaust is more complex than we think, but no less strange and compelling. Using original documents, images, and footage, this course explores one of the most important and disturbing events of modern times.
HIST-C325 with Professor Elliott
From the ashes of a republic scorched by civil war, autocracy rises. A new ideology, culture, economy and political system will dominate the ancient Mediterranean for centuries.
HIST-D325 with Professor Bucur-Deckard
This offers a two part journey through the path that nationalist movements took in the Balkans in the 19th century. Moving against the imperial domination of the region by the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires, nationalist movements sought independence and participation in the European state system. The first part of the course focuses on the political struggles and outcomes. The second part focuses on social changes that took place during the same period, focusing attention more broadly on how everyday life changed in the areas of economic well being, education, gender relations, religion, and cultural life. Assignments include: class discussion; a book review; and 2 exams.
HIST-F345 with Professor Díaz
Late 19th-century Puerto Rican poet Lola Rodríguez de Tió once wrote that 'Cuba and Puerto Rico are the two wings of the same bird.' Both islands share a similar culture and have comparable historical developments, yet, today, they live very different realities: Cuba is the only socialist republic in the hemisphere while Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States. What explains these differences if their histories are apparently so similar? The course will explore these issues through the study of key historical processes from first inhabitation through the present, giving particular attention to the 19th and 21st centuries.
HIST-F346 with Professor Guardino
Mexico is our most populous neighbor, and Mexico and the United States are drawn together by many strong cultural, economic, political, and even culinary connections. This course will introduce the major themes of Mexican social, economic, and political history from Mexican independence to the present day, but it will concentrate on the 20th century. We will pay particular attention to social history, including that of women. The course ends with a look at the increasing variety of connections between the lives of ordinary Mexicans and ordinary Americans.
HIST-B348 with Professor Caner
For over a thousand years (AD 330-1453), the Byzantine Empire was one of the most powerful and splendid societies in the world, far overshadowing the emerging countries of western Europe. This class surveys the political, cultural, religious, and social life of this medieval empire, and its capital city, Constantinople.
HIST-W350 with Professor Hsia
Is baseball an idyllic escape, a national pastime, a ruthless business, or international politics? This course explores history through the prism of baseball, and baseball from a perspective that is both global and historical. We explore baseball through the lenses of class, race, gender, nation, and empire and try to understand how myth, community, memory, colonialism, and capitalism shape baseball and its various meanings in the U.S., Asia, and Latin America.
HIST-A352 with Professor Mora
The growth of the Latino population has transformed the United States and has led to heightened debates about their political power, cultural influence, citizenship, civil rights, and ethnic and racial categorization. While the increased attention to Latinos may feel “new,” Latino communities have played a pivotal role in U.S. history for centuries. In this course, we will explore the centuries-long history of Latinos in the United States. It is a history several communities, including Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Dominican Americans, Central Americans, and Cuban Americans, and others—that represents a growing percentage of the U.S. population as a whole, and one that will increasingly influence the politics, social life, culture, and economy of the United States. Together, we will gain a deeper understanding of the issues and histories that bring Latinos together, those that continue to divide them, their multiple and shifting identities, and the long struggles for equality and belonging that have animated these histories.
HIST-B352 with Professor Shopkow
An accused poisoner, a merchant, and a missionary walk into the room... What do they have in common? They’re all people struggling with issues we still face today. How do we make money ethically? How do we deal with peopel who are very different from us? What if your in-laws hate you? We’ll read stories like theirs as we consider the High Middle and Later Middle Ages in Europe (c. 1000-c. 1500) and try to understand both how medieval people saw their world and how we can see similarities and differences from our world.
HIST-B356 with Professor Spang
If you want to understand the promise and perils of modern democracy, you have to study the French Revolution. The idea of fundamental human rights, the political division of Right from Left, ideals like national sovereignty and the will of the people (but also the Reign of Terror): all can be traced to France in the 1780s-1790s. In a few short years, a monarchy was overthrown, a republic was declared, divorce was legalized, and slavery was abolished—only for the republic to be replaced by a military dictatorship that reimposed slavery in the colonies.
HIST-B378 with Professor Roos
How was it possible that Germany—previously considered one of Europe’s most civilized societies—descended into the barbarism of National Socialism and the Holocaust? And how did (West) Germany manage to evolve into one of Europe’s most stable democracies after 1945? This course offers a survey of German history from the founding of the Second German Empire in 1871 to the reunification of East and West Germany in 1989-90. In the first half of the course, we will look closely at the origins and fault lines of the German Empire of 1871, the social and political upheavals of World War I, and the explosive mix of revolution and reaction in the Weimar Republic of 1918 to 1933. When discussing National Socialism, a major focus will be on situating the Nazi period in the broader course of modern German history. Was Nazism a historical 'accident,' or was it rather the logical culmination of older authoritarian traditions peculiar to Germany? If neither of these two accounts satisfies, how else can we explain the rise of National Socialism? Germany’s postwar division and the coming of German reunification in 1989-90 offer excellent opportunities for assessing change and continuity in German politics and society since 1945.
HIST-A385 with Professor Wu
What do hula, sugar, atomic bombs, and the NFL have in common? This course tackles the surprising history of US expansion and empire in the Pacific by deep diving into Americans' encounters with Hawai‘i and Japan to the Philippines, American Samoa, Guam, and more.
HIST-J400 with Professor Schlesinger
Staggering growth, unprecedented opportunity, and a sense that people have never been so rich have been compromised by pollution and the loss of natural and national heritage in the last 50 years. We'll survey climate change, resource management, water conservancy, public sanitation, and changing understandings of 'nature' in culture and science to explore how the environment has shaped our history.
HIST-J400 with Professor McGraw
The topic of popular culture offers an intriguing entry point into the study of societies, identities, and behaviors. By examining popular culture from a historical angle, we can also ask big questions about the formation of nations, the creativity of peoples, and even the nature of power. Students in this course will investigate in-depth an aspect of pop culture of their choosing: comics, movies, music, fashion, television, games, cooking, sports—but really, the list of possible case studies is nearly endless. Along with weekly readings, writing assignments, in-class work, class participation, library visits, and required individual meetings, students will also carry out historical research and long-form writing. As an Intensive Writing course, half of the grade is tied to completing a 20-page original essay based on original research, which will be done in stages, with drafts, across the length of the semester.
HIST-A410 with Professor Gregg
What is environmental history? This course explores the impact of natural systems, weather, industrial production, and consumer culture on the history of the United States through its intersections between race, economics, migration, and nation building. Over the semester we will examine contemporary environmental issues though a critical understanding of historical contingency and its impacts on American life.
HIST-J425 with Professor Deliyannis
This History Capstone Seminar is your opportunity to work on an original, primary-source-based research project that you are curious and passionate about and that is relevant and usefully related to your future career plans. This class will provide a comprehensive research experience and help enhance your ability to formulate research questions, analyze information, generate new knowledge based on evidence, and effectively present your work in written, visual, and oral formats. All of these essential skills will be helpful in almost any job you hold in the future.
HIST-J425 with Professor Spang
This History Capstone Seminar is your opportunity to work on an original, primary-source-based research project that you are curious and passionate about and that is relevant and usefully related to your future career plans. This class will provide a comprehensive research experience and help enhance your ability to formulate research questions, analyze information, generate new knowledge based on evidence, and effectively present your work in written, visual, and oral formats. All of these essential skills will be helpful in almost any job you hold in the future.
HIST-X444 with Professor Andrei
Meets first eight weeks only.
The College of Arts + Sciences