Below is a partial list of courses. 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-W200 : Global Heavy Metal
Examine heavy metal as a form of self-expression, social and cultural critique. Earplugs not included.
Fulfills GenEd GCC and COLL (CASE) S&H and WCC
HIST-D312 : Histories of the Cold War
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.
Fulfills COLL (CASE) S&H, CASE GCC
HIST-G101 with Professor Wang
HIST-D103 with Professor Saburova
Let's discover Russia through its history in the long twentieth century! We look at late Imperial Russia, the Russian Revolution and Stalinism; the emergence, evolution and final collapse of the Soviet Union, and the newly emergent Russian Federation. We combine a survey of political events, economic and social processes at the “macro” level with a search to understand the lived experience of those people who made up this vast and diverse country.
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 Ransford
What do freedom and equality mean in a country founded on Native American land and economically sustained by enslaved labor? How did competing struggles for freedom and equality make the United States the country it is today? How did race and gender shape people's perspectives and lives? This introductory lecture course seeks to answer those questions by providing students an overview of the most significant moments, trends, and developments in history in the place that became the United States between colonial encounters in the “New World” and the end of the Civil War in 1865.
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-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
When does a situation become violent? By examining a variety of primary and secondary sources, the class will challenge you to think expansively about what does and does not constitute violence. We will cover the history of 20th century China by focusing on histories of violence, mass campaigns, and policing. Beginning from the end of China’s last dynasty, we will proceed chronologically through to the Cultural Revolution. Topics covered include, public executions, mass campaigns, social reform and public health campaigns, new policing measures, the Sino-Japanese and Chinese Civil Wars. We’ll discuss how political actors and groups used different forms of violence to accomplish different goals, and how ordinary people responded.
HIST-W200 with Professor Bruno
How have human societies interacted with the Earth’s variable climate over the long sweep of history? How have they been shaped by climate and changed it themselves? How have groups acquired scientific and experiential knowledge about climate conditions both where they live and elsewhere on the planet? How do the current precarities of global warming resemble vulnerabilities of populations to other climate calamities and how do they differ? This course explores these questions and more through a look at climate history around the world from ancient times to the present.
HIST-W200 with Professor Dodson
This is not a course on metallurgy, but on the history of rocking out. From its birth in the late 1960s in working-class England, heavy metal music has been characterized as everything from a salve for teenaged existential despair to the handmaiden of the devil. Here we will examine heavy metal as a form of self-expression, social and cultural critique, and political statement, from Birmingham to Beijing, and Los Angeles to Laos. Earplugs not included.
HIST-W200 with Professor Gregg
From the Indigenous adaptation of Mesoamerican crops to the growth of Euro-American farming
communities, to present-day satellite-driven agriculture, adaptations to the nature of the continent track closely to the growth of community and the expansion of economic networks across North America. Food and Farmers emphasizes the culture and politics of agriculture, the social and economic impacts of the myth of independent agrarian producers, and the role of food in shaping American identity. Using a range of primary documents, including film, music, and literary texts that cross regional, ethnic, and cultural boundaries, the course explores the histories of food and farmers that have oriented life in the United States.
HIST-W200 with Professor Saburova
What photographs can tell us about the past, society, politics, culture and everyday life? In class “Photographing History” you will learn how visualize history and incorporate photographs into research, how to “look” at photographs as primary sources and see “invisible” in photos, how to use photographs as documents which tell stories about people and historical events. We will be exploring photo collections to examine the visual history of different countries and regions, global and local conflicts, political movements and daily life in the 19th -20th centuries.
HIST-H210 with Professor Kriegel
Great Britain is the country most visited by Americans today, with the exception of our North American neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Whether for our shared history or our shared language, for the monarchy and its celebrity, or for sports or maybe music, Britain has been a source of fascination for Americans across the centuries. In this course, we will study the culture, politics, and society of a nation that is at once strikingly similar to our own and also markedly different. Class meetings will include lecture, discussion, and interactive components. Readings will largely be primary sources available on Canvas. Assessment will be based on in-class tests or quizzes, writing exercises, online reading checks, attendance, and participation.
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-H213 with Professor Craig
The bubonic plague has forced people all over the world to grapple with death, and the bacteria that caused these outbreaks is still with us today. From the sixth-century medieval Mediterranean world to 20th century Hawaii, we'll see how cultural similarities and differences shape plague response in art, written sources, clothing, and medical theory developed during plague outbreaks. As we work, we'll use a modern historian's tool box that includes ancient primary sources and big-data analysis to explore the limits of what we can understand about the Black Death's past.
HIST-B215 with Professor Schneider
The Devil and the Witch are enduring features of Western culture. This course will primarily explore the great period of witch-hunts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe and New England. As background, it will also provide students with an understanding of the religious, social and cultural contexts that gave rise to these events, as well as investigating more modern and even contemporary phenomena which beg comparison with early witch prosecutions.
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-A235 with Professor Dierks
When did the United States become an empire? Did the country inherit an imperial mindset from the British mother country? We will explore the history of American political discourse about empire, and the country's movement out of the shadow of the mighty British empire to become the lone “superpower.” Throughout the course we will embed the United States in a global context, and examine American foreign relations with an expanding portion of the world.
HIST-H252 with Professor van den Bogerd
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 Mora
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-B300 with Professor Schneider
The European Renaissance, a movement of intellectual, cultural and political transformations and innovations, is understood as marking the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern West. It not only left of legacy of remarkable artistic creativity but also laid the foundations for the emerging social and political order that would reshape Europe. In this course we will not only explore the extraordinary combination of factors that gave rise to the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century but also follow further transformations in Northern Europe, where the culture of the Renaissance continued to produce remarkable transformations which we still can appreciate today.
HIST-J300 with Professor Caddoo
What can the movies reveal about the past? Sometimes more, sometimes less than one might initially expect. In our writing-intensive course, we delve into the history of the US film industry, filmmakers, audiences, and film texts. Instead of attempting to study every person, place, thing, and idea related to this history, we will focus on a selection of key developments that are pivotal to our understanding of 20th-century American history.
HIST-J300 with Professor Cullather
This course is about the practice of history. In your preliminary courses, you were concerned with learning themes and topics in history, but in J300 your goal is to learn how to be a historian. Specifically, we will study the techniques and skills of writing the history of twentieth century U.S. foreign relations. This involves extensive research in primary materials, especially government documents, as well as analyzing the work of other historians, building a research project around a theme, preparing a substantial (20-25 pp.) essay, an editing your own writing and the work of others.
HIST-J300 with Professor Dodson
“No gods, no masters!” Have you ever wondered how people in the last century imagined a world without traditional political leadership? A world without an oppressive and extractive state? In this class we will examine two main strains of political thought that advocated for people’s freedom from oppression and sought a radical rethinking of political life. The first of these is anarchism, which flourished in Euro-America at the turn of the twentieth century. The second is anti-colonialism, a diverse set of ideas that sought to remake the “third world” from the 1920s to about the 1980s. Class time will be spent discussing the writings of people like Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Mohandas Gandhi, and Subcomandante Marcos. You will also write a research project in the genre of intellectual and political history.
HIST-J300 with Professor Elliott
Why do political systems collapse? The Roman Republic lasted for centuries before an onslaught of civil wars brought it crashing down. Historians suspect that political changes in the city of Rome were tied directly to the perils and benefits that came from Rome’s hegemony over its Mediterranean empire. The tensions inherent in the system ultimately led Romans to accept and even demand autocratic rule. What were these tensions and how did they bring down one of the most enduring Republics in human history? Students will read both ancient and modern authors (between 60-100 pages per week). Since this course is certified as writing intensive, students will complete three short position papers, one of which will be expanded and revised as a final paper.
HIST-J300 with Professor Inouye
This course explores the history of imprisonment of U.S. and Canadian citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, with a focus on how imprisonment and the suspension of rights have continued to impact political discourse and public policies in both the United States and Canada long after their supposed political and legal reversal.
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-J300 with Professor Seigel
>How did the US become the greatest jailer in the contemporary world? What is the history of the boondoggle we call mass incarceration? How did racism against African-Americans create a system that imprisons so many people who identify as white? What is the role of policing in provoking the explosion of the US prison system? Has the US become a “carceral state” and what does this mean? Readings in US history, critical prison studies and African American Studies will guide students through these questions and more.
HIST-B323 with Professor Roseman
The Holocaust has been memorialized through diaries, memoirs, film, monuments and museums. Yet our image often bears little resemblance to the reality. As monstrously evil as the Holocaust was, we will not understand it by simply seeing it as the product of “evil men.” By-standing and collaboration were often as important as signing documents and pulling triggers. The Holocaust drew on wider ideas and policies that were not restricted to Hitler or to Germany. Nor we will understand the victims if we simply see them as lambs to the slaughter. See https://bit.ly/377o1iH and https://bit.ly/3lQw5bJ
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-W325 with Professor Foray
All over the world, millions of people participated in World War II, as soldiers, mothers, factory workers, propagandists, political leaders, and survivors. To understand how the war altered people’s lives and the society in which they lived we will look at war-time files, written documents, propaganda posters and postwar writings, images, and monuments.
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
HIST-A352 with Professor Ortega
Latinas/os/xs/es are the fastest growing racial and ethnic group in the United States. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this course introduces students to the history and culture of Latina/o/x/e populations and their communities in the United States. Starting in 1848, the course, will highlight issues of colonialism, race, ethnicity, migration, gender, sexuality, and labor.
HIST-G387 with Professor Chan
The People's Republic of China is one of the most important geopolitical powers of the 21st Century. But in 1949, it was a poor and primarily rural country with no guarantee of survival on the global stage. How did Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party build up the new People's Republic and how did ordinary people experience the turbulent events of the second half of the 20th century? Together, we'll explore the different events and developments in contemporary Chinese history from 1949 onwards, not only from the perspective of mainland China but also from the histories of Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong. We'll examine primary and secondary sources from interrogation records to short stories, novels, films, and propaganda.
HIST-H397 with Professor Pergher
HIST-J400 with Professor Foray
HIST-J400 with Professor McGraw
Explore decolonization as a historical, political, ethical, and cultural project. We will start with the history of decolonization and then proceed to present-day debates over sovereignty and decolonizing knowledge. Doing so will require examining the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and social identities. The bulk of coursework will entail readings and film viewings by historical and current-day actors engaged in decolonizing or decolonial movements. Students must be actively engaged in class participation. Lectures, when they happen, will be very short, and the rest of class time will run on student-led discussion.
HIST-J400 with Professor Wu
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 Lichtenstein
HIST-J425 with Professor Wang
The College of Arts + Sciences
