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.

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.