Fall 2025 Courses: A Sampling of All History Has to Offer
This list provides a more specific description of particular courses than is found in Course Offerings.
Please note: First-year students are encouraged to try either 200- or 300-level courses in History, according to their own interests. In general, the difference between 200- and 300-level courses is a matter of the topic’s breadth (200-level courses covering longer periods of time and/or larger areas of space than 300-level courses), rather than indicating any degree of difficulty, pre-assumed knowledge, etc. (Note: This distinction will not necessarily apply where History is cross-listed, e.g. AAS 313/HIS 213.)
While a 200-level course is necessary for entry into the Department, students need not “start” their History careers with one. First-year students are welcome and encouraged to take 300-level courses regardless of their previous experience.
Ruled from Constantinople (ancient Byzantium and present-day Istanbul), the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire survived the collapse of the Western Roman Empire by over a millennium. This state on the crossroads of Europe and Asia was Roman in law, civil administration, and military tradition, but predominantly Greek in language, and Eastern Christian in religion. The course explores one of the greatest civilisations the world has known, tracing the experiences of its majority and minority groups through the dramatic centuries of the Islamic conquests, Iconoclasm, and the Crusades, until its final fall to the Ottoman Turks.
Ever wondered what the world would have looked like had the Roman Empire not fallen? Well, this is not a hypothetical scenario. As you’ll find out in this course, the Roman state not only survived for another thousand years after the end of antiquity, but was extraordinarily successful. Its power was admired and feared by the nascent polities at its frontiers – from Germany and Russia to Egypt and Iran – and attentively studied by elites as far afield as Central Asia and China. We shall examine the empire’s institutions of domestic government, its diplomatic strategies, and its military technology. We shall learn why its unprecedented capacity to dominate the economy through the centuries has meant its gold coinage is considered to have been the ‘dollar of the Middle Ages’. We shall study its art, culture and belief-systems (from the Orthodox icon to Fermat’s Theorem), seeing how these continue to influence aesthetics, religion, and science today. And we shall consider its society’s distinctive approach to fundamental questions of identity – such as race and ethnicity, gender, and disability – in order to understand why later eras of colonialism and imperialism dismissively renamed the civilisation "Byzantium" and engaged in the erasure of its history.
Until 1918, empire was the most common form of rule and political organization. This lecture course focuses on England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and the Empire these peoples generated after c.1600, and uses this as a lens through which to examine the phenomenon of empire more broadly. How and how far did this small set of islands establish global predominance and when did this fail? What roles did war, race, religion, economics, culture and migration play in these processes? And how far do the great powers of today retain characteristics of empire?
What is Empire? Until recently, it was often viewed as something in the past, for which Europeans were generally responsible. Yet, not only are China, Russia, and the USA all experimenting at present with modes of imperial expansion, but empire has also been the most widespread form of rule for much of human history. Back in 1900, China, Japan, Russia, Turkey and the United States all styled themselves as empires, as well as many European powers. So, this course aims to address the phenomenon of empire in general as well as the particular experience of Britain, for a short period the biggest empire in history. We will examine how this British empire was made, its relationship with war, naval power, race, capitalism and religion. How this empire worked and the ideas that underpinned it, how it was represented in art and literature, and at those who believed in it, and at those who resisted it. We will also consider the degree to which forms of empire still exist today. Accordingly, this course will bring together British history, imperial history, and global history, important aspects of the past and dangerous trends in the present.
How and why did science - natural history, astronomy, alchemy, medicine and mathematics - shift so radically from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment? Subjects to include: intellectual and social explanations; the clash of natural philosophical and mathematical claims to higher knowledge; relationships with religion; different sites for natural knowledge; new 'scientific' accounts of gender and difference; new institutional, representational and rhetorical forms; artisans, demonstrators and their relationship to 'philosophers'; how 'western' science came to be understood to be something distinct from what came before.
How and why did science shift so radically from European Renaissance to the Enlightenment?
What kinds of people produced new forms of knowledge? Whose skills and knowledge were ignored—or co-opted?
How did mathematics become so central? Experiments? Instruments?
How did new artistic and written forms change how people came to know and argue?
How was ‘western’ science related to Islamic and other sciences?
And how did these new sciences dramatically remake philosophy?
Through the lens of Latin America, this course explains how colonization worked in Early Modernity and what were its consequences. We study how the Aztec and Inca empires subdued other peoples before Columbus, and how Muslim Iberia fell to the Christians. Then, we learn about European conquests and the economic, political, social and cultural trajectory of the continent over more than 300 years, shaped by a deepening connection to an evolving Atlantic capitalist system, by Indigenous and slave resistance, adaptation, and racial mixing, and by insurrectionary movements. This is a comprehensive view of how Latin America became what it is now.
In this course you will discover how what is happening in Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Central America, and pretty much anywhere you’ve read about in the media in recent times, very frequently has its roots in the colonial period. That’s when the devastation of the Amazon began; when voluntary and forced migrations and of Africans, Europeans and the Indigenous shaped societies; when the region’s economies and extractivism facilitated and were embedded in the nascent capitalist order; when human rights as they are currently defined began taking shape; when the color red became bright and durable in painting; when chocolate, cigarettes, corn flakes, and potato chips were made possible. When the American baroque burst forth in architecture, music, and painting. When Castilian and Portuguese became global languages. We will unpack the connections among all this and more, studying fifteenth century Indigenous as well as Iberian societies before they met, clashed, and meshed on American shores, and ending the course with the revolutions that ushered in the modern nation states in the early nineteenth century. You will emerge from this course with a solid understanding of the process of early modern European colonization and what sort of economic, political, social, and cultural legacies it left in the continent. As we discover how Latin America became what it is we will also dispel the many myths that have obscured an accurate understanding of the region and its people.
History 306 studies all Latinos in the US, from those who have (im)migrated from across Latin America and the Caribbean to those who lived in what became US lands. The course covers the historical origins of debates over land ownership, the border, assimilation expectations, discrimination, immigration regulation, intergroup differences, civil rights activism, and labor disputes. History 306 looks transnationally at Latin America's history by exploring shifts in US public opinion and domestic policies. By the end of the course, students will have a greater understanding and appreciation of how Latinos became an identifiable group in the US.
Transnational. Native born. Immigrant. 400 years on the land. Border. Indigenous. White. Mestizo. Black. Asian. Urban. Los Angeles. Chicago. New York. Miami. Rural. Delano. Salinas. Bisbee. Tierra Amarilla. Crystal City. Missions. Barrio. Farm workers. Muralists. Maquiladora workers. Professionals. Activists. Mexico. Caribbean. Central America. South America. There is something for everyone in this class. Latinos are a relatively new and heterogeneous group whose members have a history that runs deep in this nation and who have a large place in its future. Comprising around 1/5th of the US population and rising, come learn the origins of Latinos in the United States that is often left out of textbooks.
"An examination of the transformation of the Russian Empire into the Soviet Union and that Union's eventual collapse. Topics include: the invention and unfolding of single-party revolutionary politics, the expansion of the machinery of state, the onset and development of Stalin's personal despotism, the violent attempt to create a noncapitalist society, the experiences and consequences of the monumental war with Nazi Germany, and the various postwar reforms. Special attention paid to the dynamics of the new socialist society, the connection between the power of the state and everyday life, global communism, and the 1991 collapse."
The Russian Revolution marked the opening of the “short twentieth century” (1917-1991), and its demise signaled that turbulent century’s end. During its lifetime, much of the world viewed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as the defining political experiment, the great modern challenge to liberalism, capitalism, imperialism, and fascism. This course is about the Soviet century.
We will trace the emergence of the Soviet Union from the ruins of a dynastic empire and its violent transformation into the showcase of the future. Lectures, readings, and recitations will explore the building of the world’s first socialist society and its attempts to recast human relations and human nature itself. Topics include the origins of the Revolutions of 1917, the role of ideology in state policy and everyday life, the Soviet Union as the center of world communism, the challenge of forging a new society from an ethnically diverse population, the Soviet Union’s epic defeat of Nazi Germany, its rise to the status of superpower, its various attempts to reform itself, and its sudden implosion in 1991. We will follow the rulers (from Nicholas II to Lenin, from Stalin to Gorbachev) as well as the ruled (peasants, workers, intellectuals; Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Latvians, Armenians, Georgians, Azeris, and many others).
Curiosity about Soviet history and a willingness to explore its drama and complexity are the only prerequisites for this course. No prior knowledge of the subject is assumed.
In the twentieth century, Europe underwent a range of wrenching social and political upheavals that brought into question received truths about ethics, politics, the role of religion, the relationship between the sexes, and the place of Europe in the wider world. Over the course of the semester, we will study a range of different thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Derrida, examining how they responded to these upheavals and offered new ways to thinking about the world and how we should live in it.
What is the best way to organize society? How can we ensure equality between the sexes and different social groups? What is the relationship between religion and modernity? How do we grapple with colonialism, and what is its legacy in the present? How do we promote social change, and when, if ever, is violence required? These were all pressing questions for intellectuals in Europe, as they grappled with one of the most tumultuous periods in human history, encompassing two World Wars, the Russian Revolution, the rise of Fascism, the Holocaust, and the collapse of European Empires. In this course, we will examine intellectuals, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jacques Derrida, track the historical developments that provoked their questions, and discuss whether and how their answers continue to resonate in the present.
How did the United States emerge as a revolutionary republic built on the principle of human equality at the same time that it produced the wealthiest and mightiest slave society on earth? This course approaches that question in an interpretive history emphasizing the contradictory expansion of racial slavery and political democracy. Topics include the place of slavery in the Federal Constitution and the founding the nation, the spread of the cotton kingdom, Jacksonian democracy and the growth of political parties, the rise of antislavery and proslavery politics, and the growing social and political divisions between North and South.
Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the United States came to face the greatest crisis in its history until now, the clash between slavery and democracy. Founded on the principle that “all men are created equal,” with a Constitution devoted to “the general welfare,” the new nation also saw a rebirth of plantation slavery that made it the United States the largest and wealthiest slaveholding nation on earth. That clash would help settle the nation’s destiny for a century and a half to come. Yet its effects still resound loudly to shape the sum and substance of American life today.
History 373 closely examines this most critical period in U.S. history, chiefly through the study of primary documents. Topics include slavery and the framing and ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the market revolution that transformed the country after 1815, and the rise of antislavery and proslavery politics. Reading averages approximately 100 pages per week, much of it in the documents. A course with inevitable current relevance, it also aims to teach the skills of historical understanding and interpretation through sharply defined brief writing assignments.
History 373 routinely receives excellent reviews from students. One student from Fall, 2025, wrote that, the course, taught by “a legend in the field” and “a great professor,” will “make you a better thinker, writer, historian, and human.” Another wrote that, “[e]ven if you don't like history I can guarantee that Professor Wilentz will be able to change your mind.”
Most agree that History 373 is a challenging course which, given the topics covered, it cannot fail to be. But precisely because of those topics, it’s a challenge well worth taking.
This course examines the history of the United States through its intellectuals and major ideas. Starting with the American Revolution and progressing through to the contemporary intellectual scene, it hopes to introduce students to major debates, themes, and intellectual movements in the history of American ideas. We will read a number of famous thinkers and actors in their own words and study the development of important schools of thought, such as Transcendentalism, Pragmatism, the Harlem Renaissance, and the New Left.
U.S. Intellectual History—is a lecture course focusing on the history of American ideas about politics, democracy, religion, and economics. The class tells the history of the United States from a very particular perspective: that of prominent thinkers and writers. It focuses on the stories and ideas of public intellectuals—people like Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, Jane Addams, and W.E.B. Du Bois—who have shaped American culture. We will read and talk about their debates about the meaning of democracy, the nature of truth, and the role of religion in our public life. It will be a chance to learn about and discuss the ideas that shaped our nation. The readings for History 375 course are mostly primary sources written by famous intellectuals themselves.
The history of modern America, with particular focus on domestic political and social changes. Topics include the Roaring 20s; the Great Depression and the New Deal; the homefront of World War II and the Cold War; the civil rights movement and the Great Society; the Vietnam War; the sexual revolution; the Silent Majority, the Nixon administration, and Watergate.
Americans often assume that the past was a simpler and easier time, free from the complications and crises we face, but in truth every era had its own troubles. For the United States, the middle decades of the twentieth century presented one massive challenge after another — the Great Depression, the Second World War, the anticommunist panic of the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, feminism and gay rights, the Vietnam War, and Watergate just to name a few. Throughout this course, we’ll see how Americans tackled these challenges and changed this country, for better or for worse, in important ways we’re still reckoning with today.
Memory plays an essential role in recovering the Asian American past. Since traditional US archives offer scant traces of Asian immigrants, historians have turned to personal recollections to fill in the gaps. In this course, we consider these alternative sources of history, including memoirs, oral histories, personal essays, (graphic) novels, and documentaries. How can these sources help us to reconstruct the lives of Asians in the Americas? What limitations do they hold? And how do they challenge the notion of historical knowledge?
Memoirs, oral histories, personal essays, (graphic) novels, and documentaries help historians to remember forgotten people and reconstruct overlooked moments in Asian American history. In this course, we will consider these alternative sources of history. How can personal recollections help us to understand the lives of Asians in the Americas? What limitations do they hold? And how do they challenge the notion of historical knowledge?
The Enlightenment was one of the most intensely creative and significant episodes in the history of Western thought. This course will provide an introduction to its major works, and will consider its implications for modern politics, culture, and social life. Each class meeting will consist of a two-hour discussion, followed by a 45-minute background lecture on the subsequent week's readings.
The eighteenth-century Enlightenment was one of the most exciting, important, and controversial periods in all history. Out of it came ideas that would have a direct influence on modern politics and social thought, inspiring generations of reformers and revolutionaries. But from the very start it has attracted enormous criticism as well. It was also a period in which the greatest works of thought were written for broad public consumption, in the form of novels, plays, stories, poems, dialogues and essays. They are intensely readable. What to make of the Enlightenment? Find out for yourself in a seminar that will read through its most famous and provocative works, from Montesquieu and Voltaire to Immanuel Kant and Mary Wollstonecraft. There are no pre-requirements other than intellectual curiosity, but first-year students should meet with the professor before enrolling.
Throughout their histories, science and film have been woven together. Film is a medium of communication enabled by scientific research; science is a way of knowing depicted in cinema; and scientific communities use film as a tool of knowledge production. This class explores these entangled histories from film's 19th-c experimental origins through to 21st-c cinematic depictions of scientific ideas. Along the way, we discuss the development of new forms of visualization, the politics of representation, and the power of science and film as means of communications. Weekly assignments include engaging with both textual and filmic sources.
Modern audiences know that scientists and scientific ideas are often depicted at the movies. At the same time film itself is a technology enabled by scientific research, and scientists use film as a tool of research. In short, throughout their histories science and film have been woven together. This class explores these histories from the 19th-century origins of film as an experimental tool of visualization through to 21st-century cinematic depictions of scientific theories and adventure. Along the way, we will keep three major themes in mind: the development of new forms of perception, the politics of representation, and the power of science and film means of communications. Weekly assignments for the course include engaging with both textual and filmic sources.