History (2022 - 2024)
Some courses originate in other departments and are cross-listed with the Department of History, as indicated below. For the most up-to-date information on courses, please check the schedules on the department’s website.
Introductory Courses
Voices of Empire
HIST-UA 5 Seminar. Baltacıoğlu-Brammer, Romney, Wang. 2 points.
Close analysis of primary sources (reports by officials, petitions by subjects, histories by local scholars, short stories, and court cases) as well as careful reading of scholarly work. The goal is to work outward from the perspectives of imperial subjects toward an understanding of imperial polities and their effects.
The United States to 1865
HIST-UA 9 Lecture. Offered every fall and every other summer. Eustace, Goetz. 4 points.
From the precolonial epoch to the Civil War. Analysis of the country’s economic and political growth, intellectual traditions, and patterns of social development. Topics: Puritanism, mercantilism, the colonial family, the War for Independence, political party systems, the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian eras, free labor and slavery, Native American cultures, race and gender, westward expansion, the industrial revolution, sectionalism, and the Civil War.
The United States since 1865
HIST-UA 10 Lecture. Offered every spring. Goetz, Ibarguen, Mitchell, Montoya. 4 points.
Developments in U.S. society within a global historical context. Topics: urbanization; industrialization; immigration; American reform movements (populism, progressivism, the New Deal, and the War on Poverty); and foreign policy. Beginning with the post-Civil War expansion of the U.S. into the American West, traces U.S expansion and increasing global influence through the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Cold War, Gulf Wars, and the War on Terror.
Modern Europe
HIST-UA 12 Lecture. Offered every other year. Ben-Ghiat, Berenson, Ortolano. 4 points.
A survey from 1789 to the present. Investigates the political, social, economic, and cultural developments that shaped and continue to shape the modern age. Emphasis is on the evolution of the nation-state, on industrialization and its impact on society and politics, and on the intellectual responses to the rapid changes these developments inspired. Topics include Europe and the French Revolution; the rise of the nation-state, 1848–1914; and the impact of totalitarian ideologies on 20th-century Europe.
Espionage and the Making of the Modern World
HIST-UA 23 Lecture. Offered at least once a year. Nafatli. 4 points.
The great sweep of world history from 1939 to 2016 through the lens of the role played by spies, code-breakers, saboteurs, intelligence analysts, and the organizations for which they worked. Why did countries set up organizations to undertake spying and covert action? Have these activities made them, especially the U.S., more or less secure? And what has been the cost to private individuals of these activities?
The City in Western History: From Antiquity to Early Modernity
HIST-UA 25 Lecture. Juette. 4 points.
From ancient Athens to eighteenth-century Paris. Explores change and continuity in premodern urban history: the decline or stagnation of once-powerful city-states; the rise of cosmopolitan metropolises; and the commercial ties that often linked these cities to one another. Special focus on the patterns and rhythms of everyday life as well as on aspects of urban planning and environmental history.
Empires in World History
HIST-UA 35 Lecture. Baltacıoğlu-Brammer, Romney, Wang. 4 points.
Empires have been one of the most common and durable forms of political association. Examines case studies from ancient Rome and China to the present and considers the variety of ways in which empires have inspired and constrained their subjects' ideas of rights, belonging, and power. Introduces students to the analysis of historical sources.
World War II
HIST-UA 45 Lecture. Offered every year. 4 points.
Not simply a study of battles; all aspects of the war, from the great civilian and military leaders to the common soldiers, are discussed, as are social, cultural, and economic changes on the various home fronts. Illustrates personalities and events through slides, contemporary literature, photos and posters, and the music of the time.
Introduction to American Education: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
HIST-UA 60 Identical to HSED-UE 1005. Lecture. Offered every year. Fraser. 4 points.
Central themes, issues, and controversies in American education. What is the purpose of “school”? How did schools begin in the United States, and how have they evolved across time? How do children learn? How are they different from each other, and why and when should that matter? How should we teach them? And how should we structure schools and classrooms to promote learning?
Introduction to Science and Society
HIST-UA 66 Lecture. Appuhn. 4 points.
Presents the plethora of techniques proffered by the humanities and social sciences in studying the history of science, technology, and medicine. Topics include: Christian Aristotelianism, the rise of experimentation and the Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment science, Darwin’s theory of evolution and the church, eugenics in 20th-century America, machines and humans during the 19th and 20th centuries, historical explanations of disease, gene patenting, race and genes, and the history of HIV/AIDS.
History in the Headlines
HIST-UA 70 May be repeated once for credit as content changes. Lecture. Offered every year. Naftali. 2 points.
The key events we read about in our morning Twitter feed or on our favorite news sites are usually not unique in world affairs. They have a background, a context, that makes them more understandable and often more interesting. Thinking historically means trying to make sense of the seemingly new in the context of what human beings have done before.
Global Asia Before Modernity
HIST-UA 72 Lecture. Offered every year. Ludden. 4 points.
Global Asia defines Asia as a space of perpetual globalization: a dynamic natural and human environment from the far West to the far East, and all around the old Silk Roads and Indian Ocean, from ancient times to the present. Explores Global Asia over two millennia up to the onset of industrial capitalist modernity in the nineteenth century.
Global Asia in the Modern World
HIST-UA 73 Lecture. Offered every year. Ludden. 4 points.
Explores Asia’s role in making the modern world. Focuses on the mobilities that form global capitalism inside the territories of empires and national states. Trains students to read the present in long-term perspective and to appreciate Asia’s historic role in contemporary globalization.
Topics
HIST-UA 75 May be repeated once for credit as content changes. Lecture. 2 points.
Offerings vary.
Native North America
HIST-UA 87 Identical to SCA-UA 748. Lecture. Ellis, Goetz, Needham. 4 points.
Indigenous peoples fundamentally shaped and defined our nation’s past and continue to shape contemporary American life. Explores their history from the founding of the first European settlements in North America to modern debates over the place and presence of Indigenous peoples in American life, exploring how Indigenous peoples’ history is integral to understandings of American history and culture.
Modern Jewish History
HIST-UA 99 Identical to HBRJD-UA 103. Lecture. Engel. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Advanced Courses
Russian Jewish History
HIST-UA 103 Identical to EURO-UA 190, HBRJD-UA 191, RUSSN-UA 191. Lecture. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
The Medieval Life Cycle: From Birth to Rebirth
HIST-UA 104 Seminar. Bedos-Rezak. 4 points.
Presents a sociological model of the medieval life cycle that considers age as an aspect of social identity. Examines specific age groups—children, teenagers, youth, adults, and the elderly—to expose the effect age had on the course and on the representation of life, and the ways that this effect differed with geographic location, religion, gender, ethnicity, economic status, and social rank.
History of Judaism: The Emergence of Classical Judaism
HIST-UA 109 Identical to HBRJD-UA 100, MEIS-UA 680, RELST-UA 680. Lecture. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Early Middle Ages, 300-1050 C.E.
HIST-UA 111 Identical to MEDI-UA 111. Lecture. Bedos-Rezak. 4 points.
Explores the processes that brought about the making of a new civilization: Western Europe. In shaping and interpreting their environment, early medieval men and women tapped the resources of Roman, Germanic, and Christian cultures. Each of these cultures is a fundamental ingredient in the crucible of Europe; their various alloys and interactions with Judaism and Islam imprinted the European scene with diversity and a wide range of human experience and experimentation.
The Crusades
HIST-UA 113 Identical to MEDI-UA 113. Lecture. Offered every other year. Smyrlis. 4 points.
The history of the Crusades (1095–1291 C.E.) is the first chapter of European imperialism and a manifestation of deep religious conviction. Examines background and origins; the social, political, and economic situation in the eastern Mediterranean before the Crusades; the fortunes of the Crusader (Latin) Kingdom of Jerusalem; the reactions of Europeans and Easterners to one another; and the legacy of the Crusades on both the Eastern and Western worlds.
The High Middle Ages
HIST-UA 114 Identical to MEDI-UA 114. Lecture. Offered every other year. 4 points.
From the late 11th century to the close of the 14th century. Topics and themes: the explosion of energy in the 12th century and the expansion of Europe on all levels, geographic (including the Crusades) as well as intellectual; development of agriculture and cities; the diversity that gave rise to our university system; movements of reform and dissent; and the waning of the Middle Ages.
The Renaissance
HIST-UA 121 Lecture. Offered every other year. Appuhn. 4 points.
From its origins in the 14th century to its waning at the end of the 16th century. Focuses on developments in Italy, especially the development of republican city-states, the social basis for the explosion in artistic and intellectual production, and the emergence of new forms of political and scientific analysis.
The French Revolution and Napoleon
HIST-UA 143 Lecture. Shovlin. 4 points.
Begins with an analysis of cultural, social, political, and economic conditions in France before 1789, then follows the Revolution through its successive phases. Narrates and analyzes the rise of Napoleon and his consolidation of France, his conquests and the spread of his system, and his eventual overthrow.
History of Medicine
HIST-UA 158 Seminar. Offered every year. Oshinsky. 4 points.
Studies the impact of disease at critical points in American history. Considers the great epidemics that devastated our nation, as well as scientific breakthroughs in epidemiology, antiseptic practice, vaccines, and antibiotics that tamed the scourge of cholera, polio, typhoid fever, and influenza. Examines how the battle against disease revolutionized philanthropy and medical research in the United States, as well as the consequences and cultural impact of disease upon different segments of the American population. Ends with current diseases yet to be fully understood or conquered, such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and Zika.
Imperial Cities: Rome, Constantinople, Istanbul
HIST-UA 160 Colloquium. Offered every other year. 4 points.
A comparative study of the capitals of the most powerful empires of the Mediterranean from antiquity to the modern period. Topics: the role of cities as stages for the projection of imperial ideology, the position of religion within the cities, professions, neighborhoods, women, minorities and marginals, revolts, disease and healthcare, and entertainment.
Early Modern Britain
HIST-UA 161 Lecture. Offered every other year. Ortolano. 4 points.
Examines Britain and the British Isles from the end of the Wars of the Roses (1487) through the Glorious Revolution (1688), a period dominated by civil wars, schism, and revolution. Topics include Henry VIII and the Reformation; Elizabeth I and European politics; imperialism in the Americas and South Asia; gender and family; popular culture and everyday life; England, Scotland, and Ireland; the Civil War and Commonwealth; Restoration art and drama; and the “Glorious Revolution” and ascendance of Parliament.
Britain and the British Empire
HIST-UA 162 Lecture. Offered every year. Ortolano, Sartori. 4 points.
Developments and themes in British history since 1688. During this period, Britain emerged as the world’s first industrial nation and a primary imperial power, fought two world wars partly in an effort to maintain that position, and unevenly accommodated the changed realities of the late 20th century. Situates the social and political history of Britain within wider European and global contexts.
Contemporary France
HIST-UA 169 Identical to EURO-UA 288, FREN-UA 164. Lecture. Offered every year. 4 points.
See description under French.
Seminar: Italian Fascism
HIST-UA 171 Identical to ITAL-UA 165. Seminar. Offered every two to three years. Ben-Ghiat. 4 points.
An interdisciplinary examination of the cultural production of the fascist period. Students examine the image that the fascist regime produced of itself through the study of popular novels, architecture, film, and political speeches.
The Irish and New York
HIST-UA 180 Identical to IRISH-UA 180, SCA-UA 758. Seminar. 4 points.
See description under Irish studies.
Topics in Irish History
HIST-UA 181 Identical to IRISH-UA 181. Lecture. 4 points.
See description under Irish studies.
History of Modern Ireland I, 1580–1800
HIST-UA 182 Identical to IRISH-UA 182. Truxes. 4 points.
See description under Irish studies.
History of Modern Ireland II, 1800 to the Present
HIST-UA 183 Identical to EURO-UA 183, IRISH-UA 183. Lecture. 4 points.
See description under Irish studies.
The Irish in America
HIST-UA 187 Identical to IRISH-UA 187. Lecture. 4 points.
See description under Irish studies.
Race, Religion, and Gender in 20th Century France
HIST-UA 192 Identical to FREN-UA 865, SCA-UA 849. Colloquium. Offered every other year. 4 points.
Begins with the Dreyfus Affair, a national convulsion over anti-Semitism and a miscarriage of justice that influenced debates over prejudice in France for decades thereafter. Then turns to the experience of the First World War, including soldiers and workers recruited from the colonies. Concludes with the French-Algerian war (1954–62), when issues of race, religion, and gender surfaced with explosive force in metropolitan France, as well as in Algeria.
Liberal Visions of Empire
HIST-UA 195 Lecture. Offered every other year. Sartori. 4 points.
The changing relationship between British liberal thought and Britain’s expanding empire from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Liberal conceptions of equality and freedom can be understood as anti-imperialistic in impulse; as historically complicit with imperialist agendas; or as inherently and logically disposed to imperialist domination. Examines these different claims in historical context and periodizes their applicability.
Trial of Galileo
HIST-UA 203 Identical to ITAL-UA 173, MEDI-UA 203. Seminar. Appuhn. 4 points.
Explores one of the most famous events in the history of science. Examines Galileo’s works on astronomy and physics as well as key documents from his two trials before the Roman Inquisition. Uses a selection of reactions to the second trial as a way of exploring problems of historical interpretation. Studies the responses of Galileo’s contemporaries, as well as interpretations of the trial through the present day.
Italian Colonialism
HIST-UA 204 Identical to EURO-UA 161, ITAL-UA 164,. Seminar. Ben-Ghiat. 4 points.
See description under Italian studies.
History of Rome: The Republic
HIST-UA 205 Identical to CLASS-UA 267. Lecture. 4 points.
See description under classics.
History of World Trade
HIST-UA 213 Identical to IRISH-UA 150. Lecture. Offered every year. Truxes. 4 points.
Focuses on the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, the Mediterranean, Europe’s Atlantic coast, and the Baltic Sea. The 17th and 18th centuries saw long-distance commerce move to the center of state policy, and in the 19th century bred exploitive colonial systems buoyed by trade. Global war traumatized international trade in the 20th century but ultimately gave rise to our world of supertankers, giant container ships, global air freight, and monetary transfers at the speed of light.
Plague and Public Health in Renaissance Italy
HIST-UA 253 Seminar. Appuhn. 4 points.
In 1348 approximately a third to one half of all Europeans died from a mysterious illness they called the Black Death. For the next 400 years repeated outbreaks of epidemic disease disrupted everyday life, provoking political and economic crises. Both states and individuals sought explanations for the problem of disease and devised new public health institutions and medical theories to prevent its spread. Explores the social, economic, and political consequences of various epidemic and endemic diseases and the efforts to combat them.
World of Medieval Magic
HIST-UA 262 Colloquium. Offered every other year. Bedos-Rezak. 4 points.
Spans the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Western world and both learned and popular medieval cultures. Topics: beliefs in fairies and miracles; the cults of holy men and women; astrology and fortune-telling; alchemy; folk medicine, including remedies and healing spells; death, burial customs, and vampires; the devil, sorcery, and witchcraft. Reactions of official authorities, including repression and persecution.
Culture and Communism in Eastern Europe
HIST-UA 263 Identical to RUSSN-UA 263. Seminar. Offered every other year. O’Donnell, Wolff. 4 points.
How the intellectuals of Eastern Europe, as representatives of their national cultures, responded to the crises, challenges, and constraints of communism between 1945 and 1989. Issues include the nature of political dissidence under authoritarian governments. Focuses on writers from Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, and the former Yugoslavia.
Northern Europe in the Age of the Renaissance and Reformation
HIST-UA 264 Lecture. Offered every year. Juette. 4 points.
The three centuries from 1400 to 1700 were marked by massive transformations on a religious, political, and intellectual-artistic level. At the same time the period saw wars and bloodshed on an unprecedented scale. The geographic focus is on the Holy Roman Empire (i.e. the German lands and the Low Countries), France, and England. Main topics: The “Northern Renaissance,” the Reformation, and the Wars of Religion.
War and Cinema: From World War I to Drone Warfare
HIST-UA 276 Seminar. Ben-Ghiat. 4 points.
Film has been integral to shaping public consciousness of military events as they unfold and the public memory of wars after the guns have fallen silent. Viewings of government propaganda, commercial entertainment films, and independent documentaries. Topics: representations of violence and the enemy; the aestheticization of violence and war as spectacle; how changes in military technology have generated new modes of witnessing; the war film as history film. Case studies include the two World Wars, civil wars, colonial conquest and anti-colonial struggle, Vietnam, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and the Arab Spring.
Worlds of World War I
HIST-UA 277 Lecture. Offered every other year. Ludden. 4 points.
Brings together faculty in history, cultural studies, and film studies. Taught simultaneously in New York, London, and Abu Dhabi. Emphasizes online interaction and collaborative student work through an interactive webpage and student blogs. Interdisciplinary treatment of interpretive prose, painting, poetry, fiction, films, TV dramas, museums, monuments, and archives of public and private material.
Seminar in History of Medicine
HIST-UA 293 Colloquium. Offered periodically. Oshinsky. 4 points.
Topics vary. Does not satisfy the capstone seminar (HIST-UA 4XX) requirement for majors.
Global Asia
HIST-UA 300 Lecture. Offered every year. Ludden. 4 points.
Explores the interconnected histories of Asian social spaces, from the Mediterranean to the Pacific and from the Silk Road around the Indian Ocean, from ancient times to the present. Traces interconnections among cultures, economics, politics, and technologies moving together along routes of human mobility and forming territorial domains of social experience, from small kingdoms and vast empires to contemporary nations and metropolitan regions.
History of the Byzantine Empire I, 4th-9th Centuries
HIST-UA 304 Lecture. Offered every year. 4 points.
From the foundation of Constantinople in 330 to the end of the Iconoclastic controversy in 843. Traces the transformation of the Eastern Roman Empire into the medieval Byzantine Empire and examines political, social, economic, and cultural developments. Topics: the spread of Christianity, heresy, the rise of Islam, the collapse of Late Antique urban culture, the transition to the Middle Ages, and Byzantium as a major power in Europe and the Near East.
History of the Byzantine Empire II, 10th-15th Centuries
HIST-UA 307 Identical to HEL-UA 283. Lecture. Offered every year. 4 points.
Political developments in Byzantium from the end of the 9th century to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453. Examines such essential concepts, institutions, and cultural themes of Byzantium as imperial ideology, church and monasticism, family and women, the economy, and the cultural and artistic revivals of the middle and late periods.
History of New York and Paris: A Tale of Two Cities
HIST-UA 309 Lecture. Offered every other year. Berenson, Needham. 4 points.
Examines the history of the modern Western city by taking New York and Paris as comparative case studies. Examines the nature and meaning of modern urban life and its relationship to modernity in general. Topics include: urban development and redevelopment; nature and the built environment; monuments and their symbolism; politics and protest; poverty and inequality; migration and immigration; popular music and urban culture; gentrification and its discontents.
U.S. Student Protest and Campus Politics in the 21st Century
HIST-UA 311 Identical to HSED-UE 1046. Seminar. Offered every year. Cohen. 4 points.
Explores why student protest has surged repeatedly on 21st century campuses and how American universities became lightning rods for criticism from both the left and the right. Topics include: student movements against racial and gender discrimination; nativism; student debt; exploitation of labor; the concentration of wealth; Eurocentric curricula; the rise of graduate student labor unionization; and freedom of speech on campus. Campus conflicts set into historical perspective, probing the 20th century roots of ongoing struggles over the nature, mission, uses, and failures of the university.
Revolt on Campus: U.S. Student Protest in the 20th Century
HIST-UA 312 Identical to HSED-UE 614. Seminar. Offered every year. Cohen. 4 points.
Explores how college campuses became centers of political protest and cultural change. Topics include: socialist and feminist student activism in the Progressive era; 1920s Black student revolts; 1930s Old Left-led mass student movements; 1960s New Left, antiwar, SNCC, and Third World Student Activism, as well as CIA infiltration; post-60s struggles over political correctness, divestment movements, gay liberation; conservative student activism from 1950s segregationists through YAF in and beyond the 60s.
U.S. Student Activism in the Long 1960s
HIST-UA 313 Identical to HSED-UE 1029. Lecture. Offered every year. Cohen. 4 points.
How college campuses became centers of political protest and cultural change. Topics: socialist and feminist student activism in the Progressive era; 1920s black student revolts; 1930s Old Left-led mass student movements; 1960s New Left, antiwar, SNCC, and Third World Student Activism, as well as CIA infiltration; post-1960s struggles over political correctness, divestment movements, and gay liberation; and conservative student activism from 1950s segregationists through YAF in and beyond the 1960s.
History and Literatures of the South Asian Diaspora
HIST-UA 326 Identical to ENGL-UA 721, SCA-UA 313. Lecture. Sandhu. 4 points.
See description under Asian/Pacific/American studies.
Pirates and Buccaneers: Seaborne Terrorism in the Early Modern World
HIST-UA 369 Identical to EURO-UA 181, IRISH-UA 182. Colloquium. Offered every year. Truxes. 4 points.
The emergence of Spain as a political and economic superpower in the early sixteenth century bred waves of French, English, and Dutch contraband slave traders, seaborne raiders, freebooters, and privateers eager to thwart her attempt at hegemony and expropriate her wealth. The response of the early modern world to piracy is embedded in the “Law of Nations” and the “Law of the Sea,” progenitors of modern international law.
U.S. Immigration
HIST-UA 508 Seminar. Offered every year. Kenny. 4 points.
From the American Revolution to the present. Topics: the origins of migration; forced migration and slavery; naturalization and citizenship; anti-immigrant sentiment (nativism); ethnicity and race; and the evolution of government policy. Considers these topics in the context of historiographical debates concerning the foundation of the U.S. and the three great waves of immigration that followed: largely Irish, British, German, and Chinese before the 1870s; predominantly Eastern and Southern European from the 1880s through the 1920s; and genuinely global from 1965 to the present.
The Ottoman Empire and the World around It
HIST-UA 515 Identical to MEDI-UA 651, MEIS-UA 650. Lecture. Offered every year. Peirce. 4 points.
See description under Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.
Zionism and the State of Israel
HIST-UA 516 Identical to HJBRD-UA 180. Lecture. Engel. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Problems in Contemporary China
HIST-UA 517 Identical to EAST-UA 517. Recommended prerequisite: one content course on modern China. Lecture. Offered periodically. Karl. 4 points.
Starts with an overview of contemporary China, then concentrates on social, intellectual, and environmental issues. The specific areas of inquiry change with changing circumstances. The reading load is heavy, and students are asked to write frequently.
China in the Republican Period
HIST-UA 524 Lecture. Karl. 4 points.
Introduces the contours of Republican-era China (1911-1949), including some of the major issues and historical themes that emerged during the period. Focus on the problems of cultural production, urbanization, social division, and war. Engages not only with the history but, to some extent, with the academic debates on this history as well. Presumes some basic knowledge of modern China. Heavy reading and writing load.
Japan’s Empire in Asia, 1895-1945
HIST-UA 525 Identical to EAST-UA 953. Seminar. Linkhoeva. 4 points.
Japan started out as a victim of imperialism in the 19th century but became an aggressor in the 20th, ruling over other Asian people. Topics: the formation of the modern imperialist global system; colonialism, “colonial modernity,” colonial identities, and colony-metropole relations; collaboration and the anti-colonial movements; regional migration; empire and total war; and decolonization.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution
HIST-UA 526 Identical to EAST-UA 526. Prerequisite: One non-language course in a relevant discipline or field at NYU. Lecture. Offered periodically. Karl. 4 points.
China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR, 1966-1976) was one of the most important political and cultural events of the twentieth century. Many studies of the GPCR remain partial, disorganized, and highly polemical, but there has been an explosion of new work on the topic for students to explore. Intended for students who have at least some background in the study of Chinese history, literature, or culture.
The Emergence of the Modern Middle East
HIST-UA 531 Identical to MEIS-UA 690. Seminar. Offered every other year. 4 points.
Surveys the main political, social, economic, and intellectual currents of the 20th century. Emphasis is on historical background and development of current problems in the region. Topics include imperialism, nationalism, religion, Orientalism, women, class formation, oil, the Arab-Israeli crisis, and the Iranian revolution.
Palestine, Zionism, Israel
HIST-UA 532 Identical to MEIS-UA 697. Lecture. Lockman. 4 points.
See description under Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.
Modern China
HIST-UA 535 Lecture. Offered periodically. 4 points.
China from the late sixteenth century to the present: the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1644, 1636-1911), the so-called Republican period (1912-1949), and the People’s Republic under Communist rule (1949-present). Primary and secondary works are supplemented by visual materials and film screenings.
Gender and Radicalism in Modern China
HIST-UA 536 Identical to EAST-UA 536, SCA-UA 827. Colloquium. Offered every year. Karl. 4 points.
The interrelated rise of political, ideological, and cultural radicalisms and gender issues as a major subject and object of transformative social activity in 19th- and 20th-century China. Approaches gender theory and historical analysis through primary and secondary sources as well as through films and other visuals. Emphasis on synthesizing contradictory material. Extensive writing and class discussion.
Mao and the Chinese Revolution
HIST-UA 546 Lecture. Offered every two years. Karl. 4 points.
The revolution made Mao as much as Mao made the revolution. We investigate Mao’s thought and theories, as well as his revolutionary practice, not as biographical artifacts but as products of and contributors to the revolutionary situation in China and the world in the 20th century. We end with Mao’s afterlives. This is a reading- and writing-intensive course.
Samurai and Mongols: Japan’s Eurasian Dream
HIST-UA 548 Seminar. Offered every other year. Linkhoeva. 4 points.
Examines the history of Japan from the perspective of its relationship with China, Mongolia, and Russia. Topics include: different imperial formations (Japanese–Chinese–Russian empires); colonial practices, the regional power dynamic throughout the twentieth century, and the role of “Mongolia” in Japanese continental policy. Considers contemporary accounts (both Japanese and foreign), legal and political documents, fiction, historical monographs, and films.
Seminar: Topics in Middle Eastern History
HIST-UA 550 Identical to MEIS-UA 688. Seminar. 4 points.
See description under Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.
Topics in Chinese History
HIST-UA 551 Identical to EAST-UA 551. Seminar. Offered every year. Karl, Waley-Cohen. 4 points.
Specific topics vary and may include Women and Gender in Chinese History; Rebellion and Revolution in China, 1683-1864; The Manchus in China; Urban China; American Wars in Asia; China in Revolution, 1949-Present; China After Mao; Maoism and China.
Autobiography and History
HIST-UA 556 Seminar. Hodes. 4 points.
Concerned with historians as autobiographers, and autobiographers as historians. Explores the ways scholars and writers invoke autobiography in the writing of history, and the ways in which autobiographers serve as historians. Topics include: research, sources, evidence, method, argument, interpretation, intention, audience, memory, style, and voice. Although readings focus mainly on United States history, students’ own writings can focus on history anywhere in the world. Students will share their work and reflect on one another’s efforts.
Students and Protest in Modern China
HIST-UA 562 Seminar. Karl. 4 points.
Traces the history of “students” (in the 1920s and after, often overlapping with the category of “youth”) and protest in modern China, from the established culture of memorials/petitioning in the waning years of China’s dynastic system through to the umbrella and “be water” uprisings in Hong Kong (2014, 2019). Considers how students/youth and protest are enmeshed in social, political, and cultural movements, and how forms and practices of protest have developed in tandem with and in opposition to state power, in alliance with or apart from other social constituencies.
Mongol Empires in World History
HIST-UA 563 Seminar. Ludden. 4 points.
Explores Mongol Eurasia’s extended role in globalization. Studies the core Mongol period —250 years from the birth of Chinggis Khan (1162) to the death (1405) of Timur-i-Leng—in the context of Asia’s circulatory system from the seventh to the seventeenth century. Also examines Mongol empires inside imperial histories spanning all of medieval Eurasia, and ends by considering how those medieval centuries shaped the modern world.
African Ways of Knowing
HIST-UA 572 Formerly African Radicalisms and Decolonization. Seminar. Offered every year. d’Avignon. 4 points.
In 1957, Ghana became the first sovereign nation in Africa to declare independence from colonial rule. Dozens of African nations soon followed suit. While people across the continent and the world celebrated the end of empire, not everyone agreed about what Africa’s new nations should look like. Grapples with how Africans constructed their world and their future in the aftermath of colonial rule.
Religion, Race, and Economics: An Introduction to American Jewish History
HIST-UA 589 Identical to HBRJD-UA 172. Lecture. Offered every other year. Diner. 4 points.
Explores the social, political, economic, religious, and cultural development of Jewish life in America from the middle of the seventeenth century through the present and also explores the impact of America—its culture, social structure, economic profile, and place in the world—upon the Jews who lived there. Also asks how the Jewish experience did or did not differ from that of others in a diverse America and from that of Jews in other places.
History of Water
HIST-UA 594 Colloquium. Offered periodically. Ortolano. 4 points.
The United Nations estimates that by 2030 as many as 4 billion people will not have access to enough water for their basic needs. Examines this contemporary issue and the historical context in which it developed. Focuses on the United States, in particular the American West and New York City, with comparative treatment of the Middle East, China, and Africa.
Environmental History of New York City
HIST-UA 596 Colloquium. Offered every other year. Needham. 4 points.
Investigates topics from the seventeenth century to the present. From the city’s origins as a harbor city at the intersection of the Hudson River and the Atlantic, to the Manhattan bedrock that anchors modern skyscrapers, natural geography has determined urban possibility, while infrastructure that has become “second nature” brings water and electricity to the city and carries its waste to distant landfills.
American Colonial History
HIST-UA 601 Lecture. Offered every other year. Eustace, Goetz. 4 points.
Examines European expansion in the early modern period and the creation of an interconnected Atlantic world, with particular emphasis on North America and the Caribbean. Attention to the roles of Europeans, American natives, and Africans in forming systems of trade and patterns of settlement, as well as the evolution of slavery and the development of new political structures, changing religious beliefs, and evolving family relationships in America.
African American History to 1865
HIST-UA 647 Identical to SCA-UA 795. Lecture. Offered every year. Mitchell. 4 points.
Survey emphasizing living conditions, attitudes and theories about race, culture, and the emergence of African American identities. Topics: African ways of life, initial contact between Africans and Europeans, the Atlantic slave trade, slavery and indentured servitude in colonial North America, restrictions on black mobility in a slave society, the domestic slave trade, abolitionism, slave resistance, free blacks, gender, and the impact of slavery on national politics during the antebellum period.
African American History since 1865
HIST-UA 648 Identical to SCA-UA 796. Lecture. Offered every year. Mitchell, Sammons. 4 points.
Survey emphasizing freedom and equality, migratory movements, immigration, cultural contributions, military participation, politics, gender dynamics, and contemporary conditions. Topics: Reconstruction, discrimination and racialized violence, black thought and protest, institution building, racial segregation, World War I, the Harlem Renaissance, communism, World War II, civil rights, black power, nationalism, and crises surrounding busing and affirmative action.
“Culture Wars” in America: Past, Present, and Future
HIST-UA 651 Identical to HSED-UE 1033. Lecture. Offered every year. Fraser, Zimmerman. 4 points.
Examines the origins, development, and meanings of so-called cultural conflict in the United States. Why do cultural issues divide Americans? How have these issues changed over time? And how can Americans find common ground amid their stark cultural differences? Special topics include abortion, same-sex marriage, drug control, and school prayer.
Women and Slavery in the Americas
HIST-UA 660 Identical to SCA-UA 730. Offered every other year. Morgan. 4 points.
Begins with African slavery and the emergence of the Atlantic slave trade and then follows the forced migration of African women to the Americas. Topics: resistance, religion, labor, reproduction, and theoretical questions about the dynamics of status, race, and gender. Ends with a section on the legacy of slavery in contemporary representations of African and African American women.
Black Women in America
HIST-UA 661 Lecture. Offered every year. Mitchell. 4 points.
Explores varieties of African American women’s experiences (including class, ethnicity, sexuality, region, and generation). Goes beyond the black/white binary by considering black women’s relationships to both intraracial and broader communities. Also assesses how gender, race, and class have influenced black women’s work, activism, political involvement, and creative output in the United States.
Empire and Globalization
HIST-UA 662 Offered every other year. Ludden. 4 points.
Considers empire as a feature of globalization in the long term and in the present. First, we establish a critical perspective on modern world history. Next, we explore British imperialism. Finally, we analyze the problem of imperialism in a world covered with legally sovereign nation-states. Throughout, historical capitalism provides a concept that connects empire and globalization.
Slavery, Race, and Radicalism
HIST-UA 663 Lecture. Morgan, Singh. 4 points.
Explores the histories of black radical political engagement via an engagement with the histories and afterlives of slavery and examines the connection between lived experience and politics based on historically rooted claim-making. Key questions: what constitutes black radical politics? Do slavery and anti-slavery constitute the originary site of black radical politics? What is the relationship between African, African American, and Black Atlantic notions of political critique, identity, and engagement? What is the relationship between slavery and race-making?
War Films and American History
HIST-UA 665 Colloquium. Offered every other year. Sammons. 4 points.
How visual representations of war in various media and genres have influenced, challenged, and, in some ways, transformed national identity and citizenship in the United States. Films convey the social values and the mores of the period in which they are produced and address attitudes toward the morality of fighting, the justness of war, the definition of heroism, and the responsibility of the individual to exhibit ethical behavior.
Race and Reproduction
HIST-UA 681 Identical to SCA-UA 158. Lecture. Offered periodically. Morgan. 4 points.
See description under social and cultural analysis.
Left and Right in American History
HIST-UA 688 Seminar. Phillips-Fein. 4 points.
Case studies include: the Communist Party and Nazi/fascist sympathizers (1930s); civil rights, black power, and massive white resistance (1950s-1960s); second-wave feminism and the religious right (1970s); and the Tea Party, right-wing nationalism, and the election of 2016.
American Jewish History
HIST-UA 689 Identical to HBRJD-UA 172. Lecture. Offered every other year. Diner. 4 points.
Study of the major events and personalities in American Jewish history since colonial times; the waves of Jewish immigration and development of the American Jewish community.
Sport and Film in American History
HIST-UA 698 Colloquium. Offered every year. Sammons. 4 points.
Investigates how a visual medium (film), subject to the conventions of drama and fiction, and a popular activity/institution (sport), often associated with frivolity, violence, and puerility, might be used as serious vehicles for conceptualizing and analyzing the past.
Seminar Topics in American History
HIST-UA 699 Seminar. Offered periodically. 4 points.
Topics vary. Does not satisfy the capstone seminar (HIST-UA 4XX) requirement for majors.
Cold War in Asia
HIST-UA 709 Identical to EAST-UA 552. Seminar. Offered every fall semester. Peck. 4 points.
How U.S. global interests and concerns sought to shape Asian realities (and were shaped in turn by them). Topics: the occupation of Japan; the U.S. and the Chinese revolution; the Korean War and the isolation of China; the Vietnam War and the Kennedy/ Johnson years; Nixon’s global geopolitical vision and Asian policies; Carter and human rights diplomacy; Reagan and the intensified Cold War; George H. W. Bush and Asia’s place in “a New World Order”; and finally, the Clinton and George W. Bush years.
Vietnam: The War and its History
HIST-UA 737 Identical to EAST-UA 737. Seminar. Peck, Roberts. 4 points.
See description under East Asian studies.
History of Colonial Latin America
HIST-UA 743 Lecture. Offered every other year. Thomson. 4 points.
Follows the unfolding and demise of a new social order under European rule, over a period from the 16th-century conquest through the early-19th-century wars of independence. Specific topics include Inca and Aztec worlds; Indian-European confrontations; the Catholic Church and popular religiosity; patriarchy and honor codes; racial dynamics and slavery; the development of capitalism; anticolonial struggles; imperial rivalry; reform; decline; and colonial legacies.
Contemporary Latin America
HIST-UA 745 Lecture. Offered every year. Ferrer, Weinstein. 4 points.
A comparative survey of Latin American social, economic, cultural, and political history from 1800 to the present.
Introduction to Native American Studies
HIST-UA 747 Identical to ANTH-UA 747, SCA-UA 747. Lecture. Offered every year. Required for the minor in Native American and Indigenous studies. Anderson, Ellis. 4 points.
See description under anthropology or Native American and Indigenous studies.
Seminar in History of Science
HIST-UA 750 Colloquium. Offered periodically. 4 points.
Topics vary. Does not satisfy the capstone seminar (HIST-UA 4XX) requirement for majors.
History of the Andes
HIST-UA 753 Lecture. Offered periodically. Thomson. 4 points.
Introduces the Andes, which are distinguished by their extraordinary environmental conditions, the historical strength of indigenous culture, and the outcome of the engagement between native American society and Western colonial and capitalist forces. Topics include: Andean regional and cultural identity; Andean ecology and peasant agriculture; local native society and the Inka; colonialism, nationalism and race; global commodity production (from silver to coca) and economic dependency; Indian and working-class political struggles.
Cuba: History and Revolution
HIST-UA 755 Lecture. Ferrer. 4 points.
Cuba was one of the first territories colonized by Spain and among the last to secure its independence. It was among the last territories in the hemisphere to abolish slavery, yet home to the first black political party in the Americas. Its struggle for independence from Spain helped usher in an age of U.S. imperialism. It is the hemisphere’s first and last socialist state. Topics: nationalism and imperialism, race and slavery, the Cold War, and socialist revolution.
Seminar in Eastern European History
HIST-UA 799 Seminar. Offered periodically. 4 points.
Topics vary. Does not satisfy the capstone seminar (HIST-UA 4XX) requirement for majors.
The Holocaust: The Third Reich
HIST-UA 808 Identical to HBRJD-UA 685. Lecture. Offered every year. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Race, Civil War, and Reconstruction
HIST-UA 814 Lecture. Hodes. 4 points.
Proceeds from two premises: first, that race and slavery were central to the causes and consequences of the Civil War; and second, that the war and its legacies remain central to modern U.S. history. We follow multiple threads and trajectories, illuminating the experiences of northerners and southerners; African Americans, whites, and Native Americans; soldiers and civilians; men and women; rich, middling, and poor. We also reflect critically upon the ways in which the Civil War has been remembered and represented in popular culture.
Nationalism and Global History
HIST-UA 816 Seminar. Goswami. 4 points.
Explores the emergence of ideas of nationhood and national belonging in diverse yet interlinked regions, including present day Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia and South-East Asia, and Europe. Central questions: What was the relation between empire and nation? Did nationalist movements alter the meaning and significance of collective identities based on religion, gender, or class? Do contemporary processes of global economic change signal the fading of nationalisms and nation-states?
Urban Modernism in Twentieth-Century Cities
HIST-UA 828 Offered every third year. Ortolano. 4 points.
Examines the history of urban modernism in a range of national contexts during the 20th century and the ambitions behind developments that are now often controversial. The cities examined include Brasilia, Chandigarh, Los Angeles, Marseilles, and New York, and the theorists considered include Ebenezer Howard, Corbusier, Reyner Banham, Jane Jacobs, David Harvey, and Mike Davis.
Seminar in History of New York
HIST-UA 830 Offered periodically. 4 points.
Topics vary. Does not satisfy the capstone seminar (HIST-UA 4XX) requirement for majors.
The Workshop Requirement
In the workshop (HIST-UA 9XX), students learn about and directly engage with the methods and practice of history in a small class setting.
Topics in History
HIST-UA 910, 911, 912, 913, 914, 915 Each fulfills the workshop requirement and may be repeated once for credit as topics change; students cannot take more than four courses (16 points) in total from this list. Workshops. 4 points each.
Topics vary.
Medieval France
HIST-UA 920 Fulfills workshop requirement. Workshop. Bedos-Rezak. 4 points.
Examines France during the Middle Ages (500-1500 C.E.). Modern scholars have challenged the very concept of feudalism, but acknowledge the need to recognize France’s earlier regional units of rule, culture, and society in re-assessing the transformations of power and of economic and social structures that resulted in the late medieval emergence of France as a state. Topics include: ideologies, myths, symbols, linguistic traits, artistic creativity, and attitudes toward those encountered either as neighbors (England, Empire, Iberian Peninsula) or as others (Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Asians).
World War II in East Asia
HIST-UA 931 Fulfills workshop requirement. Workshop. Linkhoeva. 4 points.
Students think through World War II in East Asia in three stages: its causes; the course of conflict; and its consequences into our day. The ideological dimension of the war and conflicting ideas on how states should organize the lives of their citizens. Explores how the war tested communism, fascism, socialism, and liberal democracy. Focus on the research and writing process: feasibility of research topics, developing a sound argument with good evidence, and working together on historiography, methodology, analysis, and writing.
The Capstone Seminar
The capstone seminar (HIST-UA 4XX) is the culminating intellectual experience of the history major. Having taken the relevant lecture courses to provide historical background and context, the seminar student undertakes the research and writing of an original paper. These are small classes in which students present their own work and discuss the work of others. The workshop requirement (HIST-UA 900-999, excluding 994, 996, 980 and 997) is a prerequisite for all history capstone seminars. Any additional prerequisites are noted in the course descriptions below.
Topics in History
HIST-UA 401, 413, 441, 443, 471 Fulfill capstone requirement. Seminars. Offered every year. 4 points each.
Topics vary.
Topics in Environmental History
HIST-UA 403 Fulfills capstone requirement. Seminar. Offered every year. 4 points.
Topics vary.
Histories of Neoliberalism
HIST-UA 421 Fulfills capstone requirement. Seminar. Goswami. 4 points.
Queries the origins of the phenomenon, its regional variants, and the methodological challenges of studying an ongoing phenomenon as a complex historical process. Considers the main scholarly interpretations, such as the multi-causal historical explanation of neoliberalism (linking its emergence to transformations in the order of global capitalism) or instead viewing it as a new political rationality that is manifest in techniques of governance.
Sex, Lies, and Depositions
HIST-UA 422 Fulfills capstone requirement. Seminar. Geroulanos, Goetz. 4 points.
The surviving 17th and early 18th century court records of Accomack County, Northampton County, and York County, Virginia are by far the best source for hearing the echoes of the voices of ordinary Virginians; nowhere else can historians find the words and experiences of planters (both wealthy and poor), indentured servants, African slaves, free blacks, and women (both married and unwed). Crime, scandal, and everyday litigation.
Monarchy in Europe
HIST-UA 442 Fulfills capstone requirement. Shovlin. 4 points.
Explores the changing character of monarchy between the late middle ages and the present with the aim of better understanding the long-term evolution of European politics and government. Topics: how monarchies functioned in practice; the role of coercion in sustaining monarchy; why monarchy ceased to seem a natural form of government; the nature of post-revolutionary monarchy; and the character of the monarchies that persist today in many European countries.
Political Economy and Empire
HIST-UA 445 Fulfills capstone requirement. Seminar. Sartori. 4 points.
In the seventeenth century, English, Dutch, and French empires took their place beside the Spanish and Portuguese imperial polities established in the sixteenth century. These empires expanded to embrace much of the globe by 1900. This background of empire building was a key context within which a new form of knowledge—political economy—emerged in Europe. A political economy emerged to guide policy makers through the challenges of sustaining state power and successfully managed imperial economies.
Britain since World War II
HIST-UA 451 Fulfills capstone requirement. Seminar. Ortolano. 4 points.
Britain has faced many of the challenges typical of Western societies, as well as more particular obstacles resulting from its status as a recent imperial power. Topics: the creation of the welfare state, the end of the British Empire, immigration and racial conflict, 1960s second-wave feminism, labor unrest and the decline of heavy industry, neo-liberal economics, and Tony Blair’s New Labour.
Writing British History
HIST-UA 452 Recommended prerequisite(s): Modern Europe (HIST-UA 12) and/or Britain and the British Empire (HIST-UA 162). Fulfills capstone requirement. Seminar. Ortolano. 4 points.
Introduces a variety of episodes in the historiography of modern Britain, from the wars against the French Revolution to Britain in the 21st century, including in each case a range of primary sources that position students to contribute to this ongoing scholarly conversation.
Topics in Modern Middle East History
HIST-UA 472 Identical to MEIS-UA 688. Fulfills capstone requirement. Seminar. 4 points.
Topics vary.
Honors Program
Honors Seminar
HIST-UA 994 Prerequisite: permission of the director of undergraduate studies. Seminar. Offered in the fall. 4 points.
Students define and research their senior honors thesis topic. Satisfies the capstone seminar requirement for the major.
Honors Thesis/Tutorial
HIST-UA 996 Prerequisite: permission of the director of undergraduate studies. Seminar. Offered in the spring. 4 points.
Students work one-on-one with their faculty director to complete and defend their senior thesis. A grade of at least A-minus on the thesis is required to receive honors in history.
Internship and Independent Study
Internship
HIST-UA 980, 981 Prerequisite: permission of the director of undergraduate studies. Offered every term. 2 or 4 points per term.
Enables advanced and qualified students to work on historical projects for credit for up to 12 hours per week in approved agencies or archival centers.
Independent Study
HIST-UA 997, 998 Prerequisites: permission of the instructor and the director of undergraduate studies. Students may not take more than one independent study course per term. No more than two may count toward the major. Instructors are limited to two independent study students per term. Offered every term. 2 or 4 points per term.
Graduate Courses Open to Undergraduates
Certain courses in the Graduate School of Arts and Science are open to qualified undergraduates each semester, who are encouraged to enroll in those that fit the needs of their program. Permission of the instructor of the course and of the director of undergraduate studies is required.