COURSES
Spring 2021 Course Descriptions: 500-700 Level
The History Department changed many of our classes to online and hybrid formats to give our students a wider access to our classes should they be unable to attend campus classes in Spring 2021. Most classes that meet online will meet at a scheduled time. Check the meeting information carefully. Classes that meet face-to-face have been moved to larger rooms in order to facilitate social distancing. Please check Genie for updates and your email for updates from your instructors. Changes to the schedule continue to be possible as our world changes.
SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE! Always check the University online schedule for the latest changes.
HIS 502 - African American History Selected Topics: "From Blaxploitation to the Birth of the B-Boy: Black Popular Culture in the 1970s"
11812 W 4:00-6:50 ONLINE
Watson Jennison
The 1970s witnessed an explosion of black popular culture unseen since the Harlem Renaissance of a half century before. A product of the economic, political, and social transformations that shaped black life in this critical decade, black art, both high and low, represented the voice of a people articulating their distinctive vision of American identity. This course will examine the history of black popular culture as well as the context and controversies connected to its creation. In addition to the rise of black artists in music, television, and film, this course will explore other topics such as Afrofuturism, black theater and literature, and the birth of hip hop. Crosslisted with HIS 403.
HIS 508 - Latin American History Selected Topics: "Becoming Urban: Latin American Cities from Colony to the Present"
11817 TR 2:00-3:15
This class meets face-to-face.
Denisa Jashari
Since 1950, nearly two-thirds of the world's population has settled in cities. By 2050, cities will account for all future world population growth. In Latin America, one in four people lives in a poor, underserviced, legally precarious neighborhood. However, informal cities are not only endemic to Latin America. This class engages global issues pertaining to urban poverty and economic and political trends, but it highlights regional dynamics that have transformed Latin American cities. Since the study of cities and urban informality is an inherently interdisciplinary process, this class will draw from history, anthropology, critical geography, and urban studies. Students will encounter classic theorists that will help us understand the ways in which urban space is produced and reproduced, the ways in which it is lived and experienced, and fought over and contested throughout different socio-economic and political transformations. This course proceeds chronologically and thematically and examines transformations in urban life and space roughly from the colonial era to the late twentieth century. We will look at how men and women, rich and poor, native born or immigrants, experienced life in the city. We will explore how struggles over class, race, and gender have manifested themselves in urban space. In addition, we will consider how Latin American cities and their inhabitants have been imagined, and how such representations have impacted state policy, social movements, and everyday life. Crosslisted with HIS 408.
HIS 514-01 - Topics in World History: "Frontiers and Borders in the Classical and Medieval Mediterranean"
13099 MW 3:30-4:45
This class meets face-to-face.
Asa Eger
The world today is a sharply divided and sharply contested landscape of borders and frontiers, delimiting not only nations and political space but ethnicities and religions, languages and cultures. However, current events have equally shown us that these borders and frontiers can often impose arbitrary division where none has existed before or contribute to the creation of new identities and societies. We will analyze the concept of the frontier and frontier societies and how frontier theory contributes to new understandings of history. Geographically, we will focus on the tumultuous world of shifting states and empires in classical and medieval Mediterranean and Europe from the Roman Empire to the Ottoman Empire. Since the idea of frontiers is interdisciplinary we will incorporate historical, archaeological, ethnohistorical, environmental, and anthropological research. Contrary to the assumption that the central place typifies culture, it is perhaps the frontier which visibly manifests interconnectedness of societies and the process of social change. Crosslisted with HIS 414-01.
HIS 514-02 - Topics in World History: "The Global Cold War"
13123 TR 12:30-1:45 ONLINE
David Wight
This course explores the global roots and consequences of the Cold War. While the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, were important leaders in this global struggle, myriad countries from across the world contributed to the start, prolongation, and resolution of the conflict. Furthermore, many of the consequences of the Cold War, particularly its "hot wars," were larger imposed upon societies within the Third World. This course will thus look at the superpowers, allied nations, and non-aligned countries to present a truly global understanding of the defining geopolitical struggle of the second half of the 20th century. Crosslisted with HIS 414-02.
HIS 522 - Early American History Selected Topics: "Race in Native America"
11752 TR 3:30-4:45 ONLINE
Warren Milteer
This course will explore the connection between race and the history of Native America. Students will investigate the ways that the concept of race impacted indigenous Americans and shaped their destinies. We will focus on the ways that Native communities rejected and embraced racial hierarchies and how these decisions supported and disrupted long-held ideas about family, kinship, nation, and social belonging. The class will also focus on the legacies of these decisions and their impacts on present-day Native peoples and their neighbors. Crosslisted with HIS 422.
HIS 551-01 - Gender and History Selected Topics: "Women's Work: Women, Business, and Economics in the U.S."
11821 MW 3:30-4:45
This class meets face-to-face.
Mandy Cooper
Women have always worked. Yet, most narratives of business and capitalism focus on the experiences of men, from the robber barons of the nineteenth century to the tech entrepreneurs of the twentieth. This class asks how focusing on women's work and privileging women's voices better accounts for, challenges, or changes the ways we think about the development of business and global forms of capitalism in the United States? Students will examine women's work in domestic labor within the household, slavery, emotional and reproductive labor, factories, war production, and more. Throughout the course, students will place women's work in the context of trade networks in the Atlantic World, the advent of slavery and the slave economy, the rise of big business and the development of the modern corporation, and the relationship between management and labor. Beginning in the colonial era and continuing to the present, this course reframes our understanding of business and the economy in the United States by placing women's work at the center, highlighting the centrality of women's work to the development of business and capitalism in the United States. Crosslisted with HIS 451.
All 600-700 level History courses are for admitted graduate students only. Prerequisite: Admission to a graduate program in history or interior architecture, or written permission of instructor if you are a graduate student in another department.
HIS 624 History of American Landscapes and Architecture
13189 T 2:00-4:50
This class meets face-to-face.
Christopher Vann (Interior Architecture Department)
Examination of the social and cultural forces affecting the design and use of landscapes and buildings in North America from the colonial period through the mid-twentieth century. Prerequisites: Admission to a graduate program in history or interior architecture, or permission of instructor. Notes: Same as IAR 624.
HIS 625 Preservation Planning and Law
13195 R 12:30-3:20 ONLINE
Autumn Michael (Interior Architecture Department)
Examination and analysis of the relationship of government programs and policies, community and regional planning strategies, and legal case precedents to the field of historic preservation. Prerequisites: Admission to a graduate program in history or interior architecture, or permission of instructor. Notes: Same as IAR 625.
HIS 626 - The Practice of Public History
13181 W 2:00-4:50 ONLINE
Anne Parsons
This course introduces students to the various ways people work and thrive within public history institutions. The course revolves around the theories and practices involved in building relationships with colleagues, audiences, and community partners. Students learn how to write a mission statement, draft a budget, and apply for grants. At the same time, the class engages with the broader issues that underpin these decisions, such as institutional purpose, infrastructural dynamics and sources of financial support. The course culminates in a collaborative class project to conceive of and plan for a public history project to go up in Fall 2021. (Same as IAR 626.)
HIS 629 - Museum Education
11822 W 5:30-8:20
This class meets face-to-face.
Edith Brady
This course surveys the basic principles and practices of museum education, emphasizing facilitated experiences. Through reading works by researchers and practitioners in the field, students will explore the kinds of learning that occur in museums and how that learning takes place. As well, students themselves will practice the skills and techniques utilized by museum educators. Restricted to graduate students admitted to the history museum studies program.
See the M.A. FAQ for more information about the following:
HIS 690 - Internship
HIS 692 - Advanced Topics
HIS 697 - Independent Study
HIS 699 - Thesis
Written permission is required to register for these courses.
HIS 702 - Colloquium in American History
Issues of historical interpretation from Reconstruction to the present.
11824 702-01 R 5:30-8:20 ONLINE
Thomas Jackson
13128 702-02 T 2:00-4:50 ONLINE
David Wight
HIS 704 - Seminar in History
Individual Graduate Faculty
Research and writing on selected topics in history. M.A. students.
HIS 709-01 - Introductory Research Seminar: "The Nineteenth-Century British Empire"
11448 R 2:00-4:50 ONLINE
Jill Bender
Historians have acknowledged the nineteenth century to be Britain's "imperial century," when the island country emerged as the world's preeminent imperial power. This position of dominance was neither static nor assumed, however. In this introductory research seminar, we will examine how other historians have explained this expansion and its impact on both Britain and its colonies. In particular, we will explore questions of power and resistance, as students prepare their own research projects based on primary source analysis.
HIS 709-02 - Introductory Research Seminar
11449 M 5:30-8:20 ONLINE
Lisa Tolbert
This course is designed as an advanced introduction to professional research practice. You will develop your own research project based on your individual interests. But this course will not operate as if you were pursuing a set of unrelated independent studies. Though your topics will differ widely, you will all be facing similar research and writing problems: finding primary sources, understanding what your evidence means, presenting your findings in an interesting and compelling interpretation. Thus the subject of this course is not based on any particular historical period or topic, rather it is the historical method—the process of historical investigation, and particularly the role of writing in the research process. We will follow the approach of Booth, Colomb, and Williams, who explained in The Craft of Research that "writing is not just the last stage of a research project but from its beginning a guide to critical thinking." Your primary goal in this course is to write a compelling proposal for an original research project. You will develop the proposal in stages and, as in any professional grant competition, peer review will be an important part of the research process in the course.
HIS 716 - Graduate Colloquium in World History
11755 M 3:30-6:20 ONLINE
Richard Barton, James Anderson, Jeff Jones, Linda Rupert
Introduction to World history, the historiography of World studies, and comparative, cross-cultural approaches to historical research.
HIS 721 - Public History Capstone II
11829 R 2:00-4:50
This class meets face-to-face.
Torren Gatson
This course is part of a two-semester sequence in which students design and execute original, research-driven, independent-study history projects for public audiences, usually with a community or institutional partner. In this semester, students complete detailed development and produce and publicly present their projects. Restricted to graduate students who have completed HIS 720.
HIS 740 - Topics in Modern European History: Readings in Soviet History
13137 W 5:30-8:20 ONLINE
Jeff Jones
This course is a graduate-level reading seminar on the historiography of the Soviet period from the Revolutionary/Civil War period, through the 1920s, the Stalin period (1928-1953), and the era of Khrushchev’s reforms (1956-1964) to the stagnation of the Brezhnev years (late 1970s/early 1980s), the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989), and the collapse of the USSR in late 1991. Specifically, the course is divided into three sections: Revolution/Civil War/Stalinism; The Great Fatherland War & After; and The Post-Stalin Period. The course mixes some classic titles from the field with Soviet and post-Soviet films and recent scholarly research focusing on several different themes with a wide variety of methodologies, theories, and approaches to history.
