2025-2026 Catalog

HIST 10600. Power and Resistance in the Black Atlantic. 100 Units.

Beginning with the arrival of European explorers on the West African coast in the fifteenth century and culminating with the stunning success of radical abolitionist movements across the Americas in the nineteenth century, the formation of the Black Atlantic irrevocably reshaped the modern world. This class will examine large-scale historical processes, including the transatlantic slave trade, the development of plantation economies, and the birth of liberal democracy. Next, we will explore the lives of individual Africans and their American descendants, the communities they built, and the cultures they created. We will consider the diversity of the Black Atlantic by examining the lives of a broad array of individuals, including black intellectuals, statesmen, soldiers, religious leaders, healers, and rebels. We will examine African diasporic subjects as creative rather than reactive historical agents and their unique contributions to Atlantic cultures, societies, and ideas. Within this geographically and temporally expansive history students will explore a key set of animating questions: What is the Black Atlantic? How can we understand both the commonalities and diversity of the experiences of Africans in the Diaspora? What kinds of communities, affinities, and identities did Africans create after being uprooted by the slave trade? What methods do scholars use to understand this history? And finally, what is the historical and political legacy of the Black Atlantic?

Instructor(s): M. Hicks     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 10600, RDIN 10600, DEMS 10600

HIST 11004. Gender and Sexuality in World Civilizations III: South Asia. 100 Units.

This course will explore major themes in the history of women, gender, and sexuality in modern South Asia. We will address reform, legislation, nationalism, and rights discourses across periods of colonialism and independence in the nineteenth and twentieth century. This includes examining how colonial reforms and criminal codes impacted women with respect to education, marriage, abortion, infanticide, and prostitution, as well as how laws targeted gender expression and criminalized forms of queerness. In independent South Asia, we will consider the development of gender and queer rights discourses and how these have been shaped by the politics of patriarchy, religion, caste, and class. We will also examine instances of gendered and sexual violence during moments of rupture such as the Partition of India and the Bangladesh Liberation War. Students in this course will draw on a range of primary and secondary texts across written and visual mediums to critically think about the place of women and gender/sexual minorities and their expressions of resilience and defiance in modern South Asia.

Instructor(s): Zoya Sameen     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This is an optional 3rd quarter of GNSE Civ. Students must have taken the first two quarters to be able to count this as a Core class.
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 15005, GNSE 15005

HIST 11301. Global British Empire to 1784: War, Commerce, and Revolution. 100 Units.

This course traces the origins, development, and revolutionary transformation of the British Empire. Students will explore the English Civil War, King Philip's War, Bacon's Rebellion, the development of slavery, the Revolution of 1688, the making of British India, the rise of Irish discontent, the Scottish Jacobite Rebellions, the causes of the American Revolution, and the transformation of the British Empire into an authoritarian state. Students will read selections from Locke, Defoe, Swift, Franklin, Burke, and many others.

Instructor(s): S. Pincus     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Assignments: one short paper, a classroom presentation, and one longer research-based paper.
Equivalent Course(s): DEMS 11301

HIST 11703. Jewish Spaces and Places, Imagined and Real. 100 Units.

What makes a ghetto, a ghetto? What defines a Jewish neighborhood? What determined the architectural form of synagogues? Taught in Special Collections in Regenstein Library and making extensive use of the textual and visual sources there, this course will analyze how Jews (in all their diversity) and non-Jews defined Jewish spaces and places. Sources will include: Jewish law and customary practice, cookbooks, etiquette guides, prints, films, novels, maps, memoirs, architectural drawings and photographs, and tourist guides. We may also take a field trip to the Oak Woods Cemetery. The focus will be on Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, but we will also venture back into the early modern period and across the Mediterranean to Palestine/Israel and North Africa and the Atlantic to the Caribbean and the Americas. We will study both actually existing structures and texts and visual culture in which Jewish places and spaces are imagined or vilified. Parallel to our work with primary sources we will read in the recent, very rich, scholarly literature on this topic. This is not a survey course; we will undertake a series of intensive case-studies through which we will address the larger issues. Assignments include: presentations (individual or collaborative), short papers, Canvas postings, and there will also be the option of making a digital map or an on-line exhibition. This is a limited-enrollment, discussion-based course. No previous knowledge of Jewish history is expected.

Instructor(s): Leora Auslander     Terms Offered: Spring. Not offered in 2025–26
Note(s): In order for a Jewish Civilization III course to qualify as a civilization course for the general education requirement, the student must also take Jewish Civilization I and II. A Jewish Civilization III course, however, may also be taken as an independent elective.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 22015, JWSC 12006, NEHC 12006

HIST 12203. Italian Renaissance: Petrarch, Machiavelli, and the Wars of Popes and Kings. 100 Units.

Florence, Rome, and the Italian city-states in the age of plagues and cathedrals, Petrarch and Machiavelli, Medici and Borgia (1250-1600), with a focus on literature, philosophy, primary sources, the revival of antiquity, and the papacy's entanglement with pan-European politics. We will examine humanism, patronage, politics, corruption, assassination, feuds, art, music, magic, censorship, education, science, heresy, and the roots of the Reformation. Writing assignments focus on higher level writing skills, with a creative writing component linked to our in-class role-played reenactment of a Renaissance papal election (LARP). First-year students and non-History majors welcome.

Instructor(s): A. Palmer     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Graduate students by consent only; register for the course as HIST 90000 Reading and Research: History.
Note(s): Assignments: short papers, alternative projects.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 22203, FNDL 22204, ITAL 16000, MDVL 12203, CLCV 22216, KNOW 12203, RENS 12203, SIGN 26034

HIST 12702. Queer Modern Europe. 100 Units.

Queer Modern Europe" provides an overview of queer European history from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Beginning with early sexologists, we will explore topics ranging from the scandals of fin-de-siècle metropoles to the vibrant interwar era, from the devastation of two world wars to modern liberation movements. Students will analyze a diverse array of primary sources, including court transcripts, medical texts, postcards, films, and manifestos. Rather than seeking fixed or essential identities, the course will encourage students to explore how ideas of sexuality and queerness were constructed in specific geographic and temporal contexts. Our focus on modern Europe will extend beyond its geographical boundaries, prompting students to consider Europe as a porous entity with complex, mutually constitutive relationships with the rest of the world. Throughout the term, we will also engage with contemporary works that draw inspiration from historical figures and events. We will consider how historians, filmmakers, and artists touch queer histories and ask what their methods and objectives reveal about the politics of queer historical storytelling. Course assignments will center on queer archives, allowing students to critically examine how the queer past is documented and represented. What kinds of questions can we ask of queer archival materials, and how can we use them to illuminate broader historical frameworks?

Instructor(s): Madeline Adams     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course counts as a Foundations course for GNSE majors
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 22142, GNSE 12142

HIST 12706. Diaspora(s) 100 Units.

This class will orient students to the practices, frameworks, and geographies of diasporic communities from the early modern period to the present. The term's initial origins in Jewish experiences of forced dispersal and migration underscores how its meaning is shaped by histories of collective displacement and loss, as well as invention and heritage. The discourse of diaspora remains foundational for several interdisciplinary fields, including Black studies, Asian American studies, Indigenous studies, Latinx studies, and more. Within these intellectual orientations, diasporic identities are notably expansive and unfixed. As observed by the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall, "diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference," bridging old and new traditions of worldmaking, resistance, and solidarities within and across distinct diasporic sensibilities." Students in this class will work with scholarly, literary, sonic, and visual materials demonstrating how use of diaspora alternately mobilizes and roots people, in ways that claim pasts and futures at once.

Instructor(s): Adom Getachew     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 22700, RDIN 12200, PLSC 22200

HIST 15604. Ancient Empires III :The Egyptian Empire of the New Kingdom. 100 Units.

For most of the duration of the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC), the ancient Egyptians were able to establish a vast empire and becoming one of the key powers within the Near East. This course will investigate in detail the development of Egyptian foreign policies and military expansion which affected parts of the Near East and Nubia. We will examine and discuss topics such as ideology, imperial identity, political struggle and motivation for conquest and control of wider regions surrounding the Egyptian state as well as the relationship with other powers and their perspective on Egyptian rulers as for example described in the Amarna letters.

Instructor(s): Faculty     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Taking these courses in sequence is not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.
Equivalent Course(s): SOSC 20013, CLCV 25900, NEHC 20013

HIST 17000. Myth and Its Critics. 100 Units.

Myth is essential to how humans make sense of the world: our foundational stories explain the nature of the world; they justify and explore social and sexual difference; they teach and test the limits of human agency. The course will survey contexts and uses of myth-making in the ancient Mediterranean world. We will also explore the many traditions of critique and anxiety about myth-making, among philosophers, literary critics and religious authorities.

Instructor(s): Carolina López-Ruiz     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): SIGN 26037, RLST 28498, CLCV 15000

HIST 17800. Formations of Indigeneity. 100 Units.

Whose land are we on? What does it mean to be Indigenous, for generations past and in the twenty-first century? From debates over claims of Indigenous ancestry by political actors to the struggles of sacred lands protection against natural resource extraction, understanding the stakes of these concerns for Indigenous peoples and nations is more relevant than ever. This seminar-part of the sequence for majors in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity-introduces students to core texts and concepts in the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS). Topics will include sovereignty and governance, settler colonialism, citizenship and nationhood, blood quantum and racialization, diasporas and urban indigeneity, and relationships to land and environment. Course activities may include engagement with Indigenous films, dialogues with visiting Indigenous scholars, and field trips to Chicago-area cultural institutions.

Instructor(s): Uahikea Maile     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 12300, ANTH 12800, RDIN 12300

HIST 18702. Race, Politics, and Sports in the United States. 100 Units.

Kneeling or standing for the national anthem? Breaking the glass ceiling, coming out of the closet, or crossing the color line in sports? This course will take up the question of why sports are so central to American identity and what historic role sports and athletes have played in American political life. Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Jackie Robinson, and Bill Russell are only a few of the athletes who fought for freedom, inclusion, and equality in sports and American life. Through close critical readings of popular and scholarly writing, memoirs, and visual culture (film and television), we will examine the seminal overlapping events in sports history and American history to understand the collision and convergence of our politics and sports culture.

Instructor(s): M. Briones     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): History in the World courses use history as a valuable tool to help students critically exam our society, culture, and politics. Preference given to 1st- and 2nd-yr students.
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 18702

HIST 19402. Economic History II: The Early Modern World, circa 1300-1800. 100 Units.

This course both describes preindustrial economic life and weighs the models used to explain fundamental changes to it. We will begin by describing some of the basic structures that determined patterns of production, exchange​,​​ and consumption​​ in a period of low and easily reversible growth. These include agricultural productivity, demographic constraints, modes of transportation, and the social structures that governed the distribution of what little surplus premodern societies produced. Turning to the sources of economic dynamism that may have contributed to later industrialization, we will first examine the growth of long-distance trade networks starting in the late fourteenth century. How were traditional economies characterized by limited movement stimulated by the circulation of people, goods, and money from afar? We will then move to a discussion of the factors leading to (or frustrating) transformational patterns of economic growth: agricultural productivity, institutions, "proto-industrial" production in an era of limited urban growth, and changing norms of consumption. This course is part of the College Course Cluster program: Economic History, from Sumer to the Global World.

Instructor(s): P. Cheney and K. Pomeranz     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ECON 12210

HIST 19903. Central banking history. 100 Units.

This course canvases topics in the long history of central banking. How does the law construct money? What are the economic mechanics of liquidity provision? and what political role have central banks played in nations and empires? Readings from historians, political scientists, legal scholars, economists, and anthropologists will explore the origins and evolution of central banking from the early modern period to today.

Instructor(s): Nic Johnson     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): LLSO 25750, ECON 13010

HIST 20007. Africa in the Middle East and the Middle East in Africa. 100 Units.

From Mansa Musa's Hajj in 1324 to the contemporary Afrobeats scene in Dubai, African and Middle Eastern societies share long histories of interconnection. This course examines these interconnections from the early modern to the contemporary era through a series of case studies ranging from traditions of exchange on the Swahili Coast, to the Ottoman Scramble for Africa, to the creation of a long-standing Lebanese diaspora in West Africa and a more recent Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel. Students will examine debates that animate this field of scholarship including conversations about race; histories of slavery and its legacies; conceptions of indigeneity, nativism, and settler colonialism; religious encounters; gender and society; shared and divergent experiences of European colonialism and struggles for independence; and transnational collective-building projects such as Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism. In addition to scholarship based on textual analysis, students will develop skills to investigate cultural sources such as music, photography, film, fashion, literature, and sports. No prior coursework in Middle Eastern or African studies is required. However, a background in African Civ, Islamic History and Society Civ, or Islamic Thought and Literature Civ is recommended.

Instructor(s): K. Hickerson     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Assignments: Short papers; long paper; in-class presentation
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 20007, GNSE 20007

HIST 20091. Field Archaeology. 100 Units.

Students will learn the basics of survey, mapping, excavation techniques, and excavation recording relevant to the project; they will supervise work in one or more trenches, including daily decision making, managing local workforce, and recording. They will work on one or more type of material culture or other collections (e.g., archaeozoological materials) as part of the team, recording, weighing, measuring, illustrating, photographing and/or describing, as needed. They will also be expected to become familiar with the history of excavation of the relevant site and the project aims. Assessment will be based on the student's field notebook, trench summary and other records, and a critical evaluation of the projects aims and methods.

Instructor(s): Derek Kennet - Augusta McMahon     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): NEAA 20091, ANTH 26612, CLAS 30091, CLCV 20091

HIST 20509. Collecting the Ancient World: Museum Practice and Politics. 100 Units.

Where is this artifact from? Who does it belong to? How did it get here? Who's telling its story? Critical inquiry into the practice and politics of museums has reached a new zenith in contemporary discourse. From discussions of acquisition and repatriation to provenience (archaeological findspot) and provenance (an object's ownership history) and the ethics of curation and modes of display, museum and art professionals-and the general public alike-are deliberating on the concept of museums and the responsibilities of such institutions towards the collections in their care. This course will explore the early history of museums and collecting practices and their impact on the field today, with a focus on cultural heritage collections from West Asia and North Africa. We will first spend time on such topics as archaeological exploration of "the Orient," colonial collecting practices, and the antiquities trade, as well as the politics of representation and reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Next, we will look at critical issues presently facing museums, including ethical collection stewardship, provenance research, repatriation, community engagement, and public education. The course will be structured in a seminar format, with lectures devoted to the presentation of key themes by the instructor and critical discussion as a group. Meetings will include visits to the ISAC Museum at UChicago.

Instructor(s): K. Neumann     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: Theory and Historiography, Asian, premodern (pre-1800), and African
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 30509, ARTH 34815, NEHC 34815, NEHC 24815, ARTH 24815

HIST 21006. The Present Past in Greece Since 1769. 100 Units.

This discussion-based course will explore how conceptions of the ancient past have been mobilized and imagined in the political, social, and cultural discourses of modern Greece from the lead up to the War of Independence through to the present day. Among the themes that will be addressed are ethnicity and nationalism, theories of history, the production of archaeological knowledge, and the politics of display.

Instructor(s): J. Hall     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ANCM 31915, CLCV 21915, HIST 31006, CLAS 31915

HIST 21206. The Reformation in Britain, 1450-1660. 100 Units.

The Reformation in Britain is one of the most contested areas in early modern history. Was it mostly a political event, triggered by Henry VIII's desire for a divorce? Was it an organic movement from the ground up, inspired by the enthusiasm of ordinary believers in the same way as many reform movements in continental Europe? Did it have a distinctive theology of its own: can we call this 'Anglicanism'? Should we be studying the 'British Reformation' on its own terms at all, or should it be viewed simply as an offshoot of the continental European Reformations? And did the puritans really want to cancel Christmas? This course will give students a thorough grounding in the Reformation in Britain c.1450-1660, paying especial attention to the complex historiographical issues that still plague the topic to this day. Students will have the opportunity to study a range of key primary texts from the era, from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs to the letters of Queen Elizabeth I, as well as to examine the modern-day legacies of English reform.

Instructor(s): Kirsten Macfarlane     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 22604, HCHR 32604, HIST 31206

HIST 21307. Religion, Resistance, and Rebellion in Early Modern Britain. 100 Units.

Early modern Britain was a society in the grip of profound flux. From 1500 through to 1660, Henry VIII changed his country's religion with almost as little care as he changed wives; Mary I established a reputation as 'Bloody Mary' for her burning of hundreds of English Protestants at the stake; entire swathes of the country regularly erupted in rebellion and armed resistance culminating in civil war and regicide; Oliver Cromwell presided over an astonishing period of religious freedom in which radical sects sprang up in their dozens; and, amid the chaos and cacophony, thousands of puritans left Old England for New England during the Great Migration. Historians still debate the significance and causes of these events today, and they have continued resonance in contemporary British life, as illustrated by the frequent comparisons between Brexit and the Henrician Reformation made by English media outlets in 2016. This course offers an overview of early modern Britain in the period from 1500 to 1660, with an especial focus on religion, resistance, and rebellion.

Instructor(s): Kirsten Macfarlane     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 22606

HIST 21406. Britain 1760-1880: The Origins of Fossil Capitalism. 100 Units.

Britain rose to global dominance after 1760 by pioneering the first fossil-fuel economy. This course explores the profound impact of coal and steam on every aspect of British society, from politics and religion to industrial capitalism and the pursuit of empire. Such historical investigation also serves a second purpose by helping us see our own fossil-fuel economy with fresh eyes through direct comparison with Victorian energy use. How much does the modern world owe to the fossil capitalism of the Victorians? Assignments include short essays that introduces students to primary sources (texts, artifacts, and images) and a longer paper that examines in greater depth a specific aspect of the age of steam.

Instructor(s): F. Albritton Jonsson     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 31406, CEGU 31406, HIPS 21406, CEGU 21406, CHSS 31406

HIST 22110. Renaissance Demonology. 100 Units.

In this course we analyze the complex concept of demonology according to early modern European culture from a theological, historical, philosophical, and literary point of view. The term 'demon' in the Renaissance encompasses a vast variety of meanings. Demons are hybrids. They are both the Christian devils, but also synonyms for classical deities, and Neo-platonic spiritual beings. As far as Christian theology is concerned, we read selections from Augustine's and Thomas Aquinas's treatises, some complex exorcisms written in Italy, and a recent translation of the infamous "Malleus maleficarum," the most important treatise on witch-hunt. We pay close attention to the historical evolution of the so-called witch-craze in Europe through a selection of the best secondary literature on this subject, with special emphasis on Michel de Certeau's "The Possession at Loudun." We also study how major Italian and Spanish women mystics, such as Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi and Teresa of Avila, approach the issue of demonic temptation and possession. As far as Renaissance Neoplatonic philosophy is concerned, we read selections from Marsilio Ficino's "Platonic Theology" and Girolamo Cardano's mesmerizing autobiography. We also investigate the connection between demonology and melancholy through a close reading of the initial section of Robert Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" and Cervantes's short story "The Glass Graduate" ("El licenciado Vidriera").

Instructor(s): Armando Maggi     Terms Offered: Course not taught in 2025-26
Note(s): Course taught in English.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 26501, CMLT 27602, GNSE 26504, ITAL 26500

HIST 22207. The Social History of Alcohol in Early Modern Europe. 100 Units.

This course will examine the multifaceted role that beer, wine, cider, and spirits played in European society and will challenge students to consider how a seemingly familiar commodity was a key component in shaping early modern social relations. It will focus on several major themes that have guided historical inquiry and show how hard drink intersects with and entangles these histories. Major themes will include alcohol and gender relations; state legality and taxation; moral policing; environmental projects and crises; labor and technology; and colonialism. Using both primary and secondary sources will push students to look below the surface to see how drink alternately challenged or reinforced social hierarchies, much as it continues to do in the present time.

Instructor(s): C. Rydell
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 22207, HIPS 22207

HIST 22315. The Witch Craze in 17th-Century Europe: Scotland, Poland-Lithuania, Russia, and Moravia. 100 Units.

In this course, we look carefully at the reasons for and repercussions of the "witch craze" in the long 17th-century, focussing on primary texts such as trial reports, legal literature, pamphlets, woodcuts, scholarly dissent, and other paraphernalia. The course follows a sweep of the craze from Lancashire in Scotland, where trials began in the 1590s, to Poznań in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, to the Russian village of Lukh on the outskirts of Moscow, where between 1656 and 1660 over twenty-five individuals, most of them male, were tried and several executed, and finally to Northern Moravia under Habsburg rule where inquisitor Hetman Boblig presided over the burning of almost 100 "witches." In each region, trials followed different customs-Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic-and answered to different legislative discourse-ecclesiastical, laic, secular-yet all can be said to be the product of a common desire and collective fear. To supplement our understanding of the multifaceted anxieties that are expressed in works such as King James' Daemonologie (1597), and to ask more questions of the intersectional phobias around gender, sexuality, religion, and class (rural-urban; colony-metropole), we take up theory from Foucault, Federici, and Mbembe, and others.

Instructor(s): Malynne Sternstein     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 24426, REES 24426, GNSE 34426, HIST 32315, REES 34426

HIST 22316. Rousseau Social and Political Thought. 100 Units.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, self-styled "Citizen of Geneva," was a musical composer, best-selling novelist, paranoic, herborizing botanist, professional solitary, chronic exhibitionist and likely the most intensively studied political philosopher of all time. He left his mark on the Enlightenment through discussions of, among other things: consumerism, inequality, education, aesthetics, democracy, the role of women, and geopolitics. He is blamed for the Terror in the French Revolution-the alleged result of the excesses of Enlightenment rationalism; but he was also, simultaneously, worshipped as an icon of anti-modernist, Romantic revolt. Thinkers such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud found inspiration in his writing, while movements as diverse as free love, environmentalism, totalitarianism, and Montessori schooling are attributed to his influence. We will explore this fertile set of contradictions through reading and in-class discussion of several of his works.

Instructor(s): P. Cheney     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 20016

HIST 22409. Studying Medieval History. 100 Units.

This course will introduce students to the study of medieval European history as a dynamic exercise in crafting and evaluating theories and narratives in conversation with the primary sources. We will consider why the Middle Ages have played the role that they do in modern historiography; ways in which the Middle Ages underpin major theoretical movements in the social sciences; and how medieval historians have challenged these theorizations. We will begin with an overview of the periodization of the Middle Ages from Late Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages, visit Special Collections to meet some of the primary sources, and test what we have learned against some of the main arguments about what happened to transform ancient Rome into early modern Europe.

Instructor(s): R. Fulton Brown     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 32409, MDVL 22409

HIST 22804. Understanding One Another in a World of Evil. 100 Units.

The moral turn in the human sciences has led to an increasing emphasis on the problem of evil, especially in the wake of the Holocaust, and more recent attention to the unredressed wrongs of slavery and genocide in the history of empire and colonialism. This course aims to take the problem of evil seriously while also raising a doubt about the certainty with which some scholars have characterized evil as a problem of willful or culpable wrongdoing. We aim to think the problem of evil alongside and through a related problem, namely how we come to understand one another as shared participants in a moral universe. This will lead us to consider a series of subsidiary questions: When do we recognize acts that seem to conform to a rival system of value evil? How do we understand one another when ethical stances strike us as unacceptable or, more emphatically, inhuman? In other words, to what extent is the problem of evil a problem of understanding? And do our pronouncements about evil necessarily carry certain assumptions about transhistorical and transcultural human values? Our course resources include works by Ludwig Wittgenstein on the problem of human understanding, Hannah Arendt's account of the problem of evil, and Stanley Cavell's account of the problem of acknowledgement, as well as a series of film screenings.

Instructor(s): A. Brandel, D. Grant     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Third or fourth-year standing
Equivalent Course(s): BPRO 23200, CCCT 23200, PLSC 23200

HIST 23010. Themes in the European Reformation(s) 100 Units.

This course provides an introduction to the study of the Reformation(s) in early modern Europe. As well as covering the key theological ideas of famous Protestant reformers (Luther; Zwingli; Calvin), it will give ample space to the impact that these religious revolutions had on contemporary society, including attitudes to gender, politics, economics, and visual/material culture. It will cover the reformations and renewals undergone by Catholicism in the same period, and discuss the key arguments, questions, and concerns which have preoccupied historians of the Reformation since the nineteenth century. Students will have the opportunity to read and engage with famous texts from the period (for instance Erasmus's On Free Will; Luther's 95 Theses; Calvin's Institutes) as well as lesser-known but still influential works (e.g. the poetry of the female Italian humanist Olympia Fulvia Morata and the writings of early Jesuit missionaries to China and Japan), in addition to historically significant documents (such as contemporary witchcraft confessions and extracts from Reformation demonologies). Finally, there will be time devoted to unpacking the complex legacies of the Reformation and the 'unintended consequences' attributed to it, focusing especially on the afterlives of Max Weber's analyses.

Instructor(s): Kirsten Macfarlane     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 22655

HIST 23414. Central Europe, 1740 to 1918. 100 Units.

The purpose of this course is to provide a general introduction to major themes in the political, social, and international history of Germany and of the Hapsburg Empire from 1740 until 1914. The course will be evenly balanced between consideration of the history of Prussia and later of kleindeutsch Germany, and of the history of the Austrian lands. A primary concern of the course will be to identify and to elaborate key comparative, developmental features common both to the German and the Austrian experience, and, at the same time, to understand the ways in which German and Austrian history manifest distinctive patterns, based on different state and social traditions. There is no language requirement, although students with a command of German will be encouraged to use it.

Instructor(s): J. Boyer     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor; third- and fourth-year undergraduates & first-year graduate students who have not yet had a general introduction to eighteenth- & nineteenth-century Central European history.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 33414

HIST 23615. Post-Soviet Ukraine. 100 Units.

This course focuses on the cultural life of Ukraine after the Soviet collapse. In a guided process, students will co-facilitate this syllabus, deciding on topics and readings in (translated) Ukrainian literature and film as well as the history of Ukraine. Possible topics include: memory of Soviet wars, the capitalist transition, Chornobyl, artistic movements, subcultures, the Maidan Revolution, Russia's war, language politics, ethnicities, and gender relations. Reading options include Andryukhovich, Zabuzhko, Plokhy, Zhadan. No prior knowledge required.

Instructor(s): Ania Aizman     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): REES 26070, REES 36073, HIST 33615

HIST 23806. The Underground Book. 100 Units.

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, there was an explosion in the practice of "underground" publishing-- that is, textual objects produced through unofficial, and often illegal, presses. In this undergraduate seminar, we will investigate this phenomenon across a range of transnational contexts. We will begin by considering the theoretical and practical concerns of underground publication. We will then examine how underground publishing manifested in locations as diverse as the late Soviet Union, 1980s Chicago, and Brazil under military dictatorship. We will conclude the course by considering how the rise of digital media has shaped the nature of underground publishing. Throughout, we will pay particular attention to the book as a material object, questioning the ways in which materiality shapes and determines underground reading practices. As part of this seminar, students will gain hands-on experience with various aspects of bookmaking and printmaking. By reproducing underground publication techniques, we will develop first-hand knowledge of the material challenges and opportunities associated with the self-publishing medium. In the final weeks of the course, students will have the chance to produce their own book object. As a culminating project, students will work alongside the instructor and the Department of Special Collections to assemble an exhibition on underground publishing, which will be displayed in the University of Chicago Library.

Instructor(s): Benjamin Arenstein     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): JWSC 23810, CMLT 23710, REES 23710

HIST 24008. (Re)Branding the Balkan City: Comtemp. Belgrade/Sarajevo/Zagreb. 100 Units.

The freedom to make and remake our cities (and ourselves) is one of the most precious yet most neglected of the human rights," argues David Harvey. In this course, we use an urban studies lens to explore the complex history, social fabric, architecture, infrastructure, and cultural transformation of the former Yugoslav capitals. Since their inception, these cities have relied on multifaceted exchanges of peoples and political projects, forms of knowledge, financial and cultural capital, means of production, and innovative ideas. Among others, these exchanges produced two phenomena, Yugoslav architecture, embodying one of the great political experiments of the modern era, and the Non-Aligned Movement, as explored in recent documentary films (Turajlić 2023), museum exhibits (MoMA 2018, "Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia 1948-1980"), and monographs (Tito in Africa: Picturing Solidarity). Drawing on anthropological theory and ethnography of the city, we consider processes of urban destruction and renewal, practices of branding spaces and identities, metropolitan citizenship, arts and design, architectural histories and styles, and the broader politics of space. The course is complemented by cultural and historical media, guest speakers, and virtual tours. Classes are conducted in English.

Instructor(s): Nada Petkovic     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 21301, REES 31303, ARTH 21333, BCSN 31303, ARTH 31333, REES 21300, ARCH 21300, BCSN 21300

HIST 24009. Invasion Culture: Russia through its Wars. 100 Units.

This course looks at contemporary culture through Russia's invasions, from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Broadly, this course explores how war shapes cultural life. How do the policies and strategies of war, and the art and literature of wartime, convey ideas about power and the state, traditional vs. modern values, civilizational mission vs. cultural pluralism? Beyond Russian literature and film, we consider voices from Afghanistan, the Caucasus, Chechnya, Syria, Belarus, and Ukraine, asking, How are Russia's wars fought and resisted in the domain of culture?

Instructor(s): Ania Aizman     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 34009, MAPH 34425, GLST 24424, REES 24425, REES 34425, CMLT 24425

HIST 24010. Word, Image, Ritual: Early Russian Culture in Its Historical Context. 100 Units.

The course examines elements of Pre-Modern Russian material and non-material culture through a selection of Old Russian (early East Slavic) texts and church buildings. Topics will include hesychasm, iconography and fresco painting, church architecture, epic songs, chronicles, lives of saints, and Novgorodian birch bark documents, explored in their historical and social contexts. All readings are in English.

Instructor(s): Yaroslav Gorbachov     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 34010, REES 33118, REES 23118

HIST 24122. Buddhist Meditation: Tradition, Transformation, Modernization. 100 Units.

From the Satipaṭṭhāna sutta of the Pāli canon to the "mindfulness" boom of recent years, Buddhism and meditation often appear inseparable. The aim of this seminar is to historicize and critically question this seemingly natural intimacy, for while it certainly cannot be denied that the various Buddhist traditions have always had on offer a plethora of techniques for mental (and physical) cultivation, it is far from clear how or even if all these could be subsumed under the in its current usage relatively recent category of "meditation". Drawing on Buddhist meditation literature from various traditions, historical periods, and literary genre, in this seminar we will take up a twofold question: First, how has the encounter with Buddhist techniques of cultivation shaped the modern understanding of "meditation", and second, up to which extend, and at what cost, has this very modern understanding conversely conditioned us to see Buddhism as a "meditative religion" par excellence?

Instructor(s): Stephan Licha     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 24600, RLST 24600, EALC 24609, HIST 34122, SALC 34600, EALC 34600, HREL 34600

HIST 24123. History of Food in Japan. 100 Units.

Although food is an essential part of human existence, it has only recently become the object of historical analysis, and historical research has drawn attention to its significance in relation to issues of health, gender, class, technology, and culture. This course explores the history of food in Japan in the period from c. 1600 to the postwar era. Topics to be examined include changing practices of consumption and production, medical discourse and conceptions of a proper diet, the impact of introduction of new foods and new methods of preparation, the rise of nutritional science, the development of a "national cuisine," and the impact of war and defeat upon food culture.

Instructor(s): S. Burns     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 34123, EALC 34123, EALC 24123

HIST 24306. New Histories of Chinese Labor. 100 Units.

Past scholarship has often reduced the history of Chinese labor to the history of the Chinese labor movement or the history of the Communist Party in its function as "the leading core" of the proletariat. The factory proletariat, of course, was never more than a small segment of the Chinese labor force - less than five percent under the Republic, less than ten in the People's Republic. Recent work has been more inclusive, looking at work outside the formal sector, in agriculture, handcrafts, and service industries; at the work of women in formal employment and at home; at sex work and emotional work; at unemployment and precarious work; at the work of internal migrants; at Chinese workers abroad; at coerced work in private industry (the 2007 "kiln slaves' incident"); and at carceral labor in Xinjiang and elsewhere. Most of the readings will deal with work in the Mao and post-Mao years, right up to the present. We will combine readings on Chinese labor history with more general texts on the relationship between productive and reproductive work, wage work and non-wage work, male and female work, autonomous and heteronomous work. The guiding question throughout the course is if a new Chinese labor movement is necessary, possible, or probable, and if it is not, under which conditions it might become so.

Instructor(s): J. Eyferth     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 34306, EALC 24455, EALC 34455

HIST 24408. Immersive K-pop: Understanding Korea through Popular Culture. 100 Units.

K-pop today is not a one-time fever but a condensed cultural product of Korean history, philosophy, religion, economy, and discourses. This course will address political, economic, social, and cultural changes in Korean history through a lens of K-pop and how K-pop came to generate immersive force globally. We will listen, watch, read, and critique K-pop with the cross-media use of music, film, TV shows, and literature. By exploring various topics in political economy, including civil movement, economic development, modernization, and capitalism, as well as sociocultural dimensions, such as the politics of body and sexuality, gender, and identity, students will understand immersive K-pop in global music.

Instructor(s): E. Park     Terms Offered: Spring

HIST 24409. Tracing Korea's Twentieth-Century Diasporas. 100 Units.

This course explores Korea's many diasporas in the twentieth century. What factors shaped twentieth-century Korean migration? How were individuals and families impacted by their diasporic contexts? We will examine migration trajectories from Korea to other parts of the Asia-Pacific, to Europe, and to the Americas, tracing the historical processes of colonization, war, marriage migration, international adoption, and labor migration. We will also engage with questions of citizenship, identity, and memory. Readings will include a range of primary sources such as personal letters, diaries, interviews, and artwork, as well as selected excerpts from literature and film. By the end of the course, students will have a deeper understanding of the diversity of experiences within Korea's twentieth-century diasporas.

Instructor(s): H. Park     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 24409, RDIN 24409

HIST 24512. Everyday Maoism: Revolution, Daily Life, and Material Culture in Socialist China. 100 Units.

The history of Maoist China is usually told as a sequence of political campaigns, from land reform to the Cultural Revolution. Yet for the majority of the Chinese population, the promise of socialism was as much about material transformations as it was about political change: a socialist revolution would bring better living conditions, new work regimes and new consumption patterns. If we want to understand what socialism meant for different groups of people, we have to look at the "new objects" of socialist modernity, at changes in dress codes and apartment layouts, at electrification and city planning - or at the persistence of an older material life under a new socialist veneer. In this course, we will analyze workplaces in order to understand how socialism changed the way people worked, and look at rationing and consumption in the households to see how socialism affected them at home. We will look at how specific objects came to stand in for the Maoist revolution, for socialist modernity, or for feudal backwardness. The course has a strong comparative dimension: we will read some of the literature on socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, to see how Chinese socialism differed from its cousins. Another aim is methodological. How can we understand the lives of people who wrote little and were rarely written about? To which extent can we read people's life experiences out of the material record of their lives?

Instructor(s): J. Eyferth     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): MA students can take with instructor's permission.
Note(s): Not offered in 2023-24. This course is almost identical to EALC 24255/34255, except that it is designed for undergradates only.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 24256

HIST 24519. Li Zhi and 16th Century China: The Self, Tradition, and Dissent in Comparative Context. 100 Units.

The 16th century Chinese iconoclast Li Zhi (Li Zhuowu) has been rightly celebrated as a pioneer of individualism, one of history's great voices of social protest, an original mind powerfully arguing for genuine self-expression, and more. He was a Confucian official and erudite in the classics, yet in his sixties he takes the Buddhist tonsure, and late in life befriends the Jesuit Matteo Ricci. He sought refuge in a quiet monastery devoting his life to scholarship, yet invited constant scandal. His A Book to Burn "sold like hotcakes," and attracted enough trouble that reportedly readers would surreptitiously hide their copies tucked up their sleeves, and was later banned by the state soon after his death. In this seminar, we will place Li both within the context of the history of "Confucian" thought, and within the literary, religious, and philosophical conversations of the late Ming. Using his writings as a productive case study, we will think about topics including "religion," tradition and innovation, "spontaneity" and "authenticity," and the relationship between "classics" and commentaries. Throughout, we will bring our discussions into comparative analysis, considering views of thinkers and traditions from other times and places. Chinese not required; for those interested, we will read select essays of Li's in Chinese and students may choose translation as a final project.

Instructor(s): Pauline Lee     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course meets the HS or CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): DVPR 33202, RLST 23202, EALC 33202, HIST 34519, EALC 23202, HREL 33202, FNDL 23202

HIST 24617. Engendering Capitalism: Women, Family, and Economy in Asia. 100 Units.

This course explores the cultural understanding of capitalism through the lens of gender as a critical analytical tool. In studying social, historical, and cultural changes shaping gender relations, we will extend our understanding of gender dynamics and its relationship to the family, the state, civil society, class, and the economy. By reading and discussing significant scholarly works, this course will help students understand Asian women in both local and global contexts. The course will be divided into two parts. The first section will address women's issues and identities, such as women as mothers, wives, and citizens in the framework of family and social institutions, by looking at postcolonialism, patriarchy, and nationalism. Next, the latter half will examine various aspects of women and the economy, including labor, consumption, market economy, governmentality, and class and status

Instructor(s): E. Park     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 12139

HIST 24714. Water in East Asia: Environments and Politics. 100 Units.

Environments in East Asia have drastically changed in the twentieth century. Seawalls and cities rose in coastal areas that were previously untouched along Japan's coast; cement-dams replaced dirt dikes that divided rivers in the Korean Peninsula; and railroads expanded into far-off regions in China, redefining both cities and hinterlands. These are three archetypal examples of technically complex projects that this course will explore. These industrial and technological projects of a national, regional, or global scale connect past to present and pose questions to our future about climate change, public health crises, and energy anxieties. This class asks what engineered environments are and how they shape our everyday life.

Instructor(s): Y. Dong     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 24714, HIPS 24714

HIST 25023. Tutorial: Evolution Beyond Darwin. 100 Units.

One of the most identifiable images associated with evolution is the visage of Charles Darwin. Historical narratives of evolution center on Darwin's work, and scientific publications today still note whether or not Darwin pre-empted their ideas. This course aims to build a narrative of evolution that brings the story up to today, asking why so many see Darwin as a shorthand for evolution and what consequences that might have for the development and communication of the science. In addition, it will interrogate other "iconic" images and narratives in evolution, like the tree of life. We will ask where our ideas about evolution have come from, how they are perpetuated, and what consequence that might have for the discipline of evolutionary biology. The course has three aims: 1) to provide a historical understanding of evolution after Darwin; 2) to reflect on how evolution is communicated between scientists and to the broader public, and to ask how "icons" or Darwin himself suggest implicit meanings counter to the work of the scientists; and 3) to more broadly examine what is a science-a process or a body of knowledge?

Instructor(s): E. Kitchen     Terms Offered: Autumn. Offered in Autumn 2023
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 29637

HIST 25025. Environmental Histories of the Global South. 100 Units.

Drawing on cases from Africa, Latin America, and especially Asia, this course explores key themes in the modern environmental history of the world beyond the rich industrialized North. Our investigations will focus on the ecological impacts of colonialism, war, and development, and how environmental management has helped to construct modern states and capitalist practices in turn. Ranging from the malarial plantations of the Caribbean to the forests of southeast Asia, we will analyze not-so-natural disasters like floods and chemical spills as well as the slow violence of deforestation and droughts. Combining primary sources with classic scholarship, we will encounter pioneering green activists like the original "tree huggers" of the Himalayas and environmental advocates for brutal population control. The course will conclude by examining the emergence of a newly assertive Global South in international climate negotiations, and its implications for the environmental history of our planet at large. The course is open to all, but may be of particular interest to students who have taken "Introduction to Environmental History."

Instructor(s): L. Chatterjee and A. Jakes     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Assignments: in-class presentation and a long paper.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 35024, CEGU 25025, SALC 25025, CHSS 35525, SALC 35025, HIPS 25525

HIST 25027. Infrastructure Histories. 100 Units.

Dams, sewers, container ships, water pipes, power lines, air conditioning, and garbage dumps: the critical infrastructures that enable modern life are so often invisible, except when they fail. This course explores the historical role of infrastructure as a set of planet-spanning systems of resource extraction and crucial conduits of social and political power. Looking at cases from apartheid South Africa and the Suez Canal to Mumbai and Chicago itself, we will consider the relationship of infrastructure with capitalism, settler colonialism, and postcolonial development. We will see how forms of citizenship and exclusion have been shaped and negotiated via wires, leaky pipes, and improvised repairs, and we will consider perhaps the biggest question of all: In this age of ecological crisis, do energy-guzzling infrastructural systems have a strange form of more-than-human agency all of their own?

Instructor(s): L. Chatterjee     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 35270, HIPS 25270, HIST 35027, ARCH 25027, CEGU 25027

HIST 25030. Pacific Worlds: Race, Gender, Health, and the Environment. 100 Units.

This discussion-based course will introduce students to both classical and recent scholarship in Pacific World historiography. By adopting micro-historical, comparative, and transnational methods, students will examine the formation of three overlapping "worlds": The Antipodes, Polynesia, and the northeastern Pacific. Analyzing the myriad intersections of race, gender, health, and the environment, we will explore a range of large-scale historical processes that shaped and reshaped the Pacific between the mid-eighteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. These processes include European exploration, settler colonialism, and indigenous sovereignty; sex, depopulation, and race science; labor, migration, and urbanization; industrialization and environmental exploitation; and imperial expansion and citizenship. The course is intended for students with an interest in the Pacific Islands, Australasia, and the North American West, as well as those interested in race, gender, health, or the environment within indigenous, immigrant, or settler colonial contexts. Required readings - which will consist of book chapters and academic articles - will be used to contextualize and critically analyze a variety of primary sources during each class session.

Instructor(s): Christopher Kindell     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 20151, GLST 25151, HIPS 20151, CEGU 20151, GNSE 22151

HIST 25031. Climate Change, Environment, and Society. 100 Units.

Against the backdrop of 21st-century planetary emergencies, this discussion-based course will investigate how natural and anthropogenic climate change have influenced historical relationships between humans and their environments. Organized chronologically, the course's three thematic units will focus on: (1) natural variations in regional climates before the advent of fossil fuels; (2) the emergence of greenhouse gases as a result of fossil fuel dependency, technology, and infrastructure; and (3) climate change science and global politics. Students will employ historical methods to explore periods of social, political, economic, technological, and ecological transformation, including but not limited to: the rise and "collapse" of Central American populations; European exploration and the Little Ice Age; colonization, Indigenous dispossession, and slavery in the Atlantic World; the Industrial Revolution and the entrenchment of global fossil fuel systems; population growth, (sub)urbanization, and the Great Acceleration of the mid-20th century; and the emergence of modern climate change science and denialism. Required texts consisting of scholarly book chapters and journal articles will be used to contextualize and critically analyze a variety of historical documents.

Instructor(s): Christopher Kindell     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring
Note(s): Students who have taken ENST 21201: Human Impact on the Global Environment may not enroll in this course.
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 20001, GLST 21001

HIST 25032. The Politics of Environmental Knowledge. 100 Units.

How has "nature" been understood and investigated in the modern world? Building upon diverse approaches to environmental history and philosophy, the history of science, and cultural studies, this discussion-based course surveys the major frameworks through which the environment has been understood, investigated, and transformed since the origins of global modernity. Because of its outsized impact (intellectually and materially) on the globe, North American environmentalism and understandings of nature are used as our point of departure. Starting with debates about what to name our current epoch, the course approaches shifting definitions of environmental knowledge through decreasing scales of analysis, from the global, to communities and ecosystems, to species and individuals, ending with the microscopic. The course asks questions such as: What historical and cultural trends shape our current understandings of nature and the environment? At what scales can and should we intervene to shift the ways we know and interact with the natural world? How and to whom should the answers to these complex questions be communicated? Grades will be based on attendance, in-class participation, assigned discussion leading, written papers, and a final project organized as an exhibition proposal.

Instructor(s): Jessica Landau      Terms Offered: Autumn Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 20002, GLST 21002

HIST 25033. Disease, Health, and the Environment in Global Context. 100 Units.

Recent concerns about infectious diseases and the environmental determinants of health have attracted renewed attention to previous accounts of disease, many of which have significantly shaped human political, social, economic, and environmental history. Former examples include: respiratory diseases and sexually transmitted infections among Indigenous communities during the age of European exploration and colonial settlement; nutritional deficiencies resulting from the forced relocation and labor of enslaved Africans throughout the Atlantic World; "filth" diseases and urban sanitary reform during the Bacteriological Revolution; zoonotic diseases and pest control campaigns during imperial expansion projects across the Caribbean; and cancers borne of industrial pollutants in the modern era. Through readings, in-class discussions, and written assignments that culminate in a final project, students in this course will explore how natural and human-induced environmental changes have altered our past experiences with disease and future prospects for health. First, we will examine how early writers understood the relationship between geography, environment, hereditary constitution, race, gender, and human health. We will then analyze the symbiotic relationship among pathogens, human hosts, and their physical environments. Finally, we will explore how social factors and human interventions have influenced the distribution of infectious diseases and environmental health risks.

Instructor(s): Christopher Kindell     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course counts towards the CEGU/ENST 4th year Capstone requirement.
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 22100, HIPS 22210, CEGU 32100, RDIN 22100, CEGU 22100, GLST 22101

HIST 25034. Biodiversity: Past and Present. 100 Units.

Biodiversity is the foundation of all life, essential to human flourishing and economic growth. This course offers a historical approach to biodiversity, including environmental, economic, and intellectual perspectives. How has biodiversity shaped societies over time? How have humans learned to value or ignore biodiversity? Why is a sixth mass extinction increasingly likely?

Instructor(s): Fredrik Albritton Jonsson     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 23107, HIPS 23107

HIST 25121. History of Cartography. 100 Units.

This course offers a grand overview of the key developments in mapmaking throughout history worldwide, from pre-literate cartography to the modern interactive digital environment. It looks at the producers, their audience, the technologies and artistic systems used, and the human and global contexts in which they developed. The course also features experiential learning components with field trips to map collections at Regenstein Library and Newberry Library.

Instructor(s): Yue Lin     Terms Offered: Autumn 2024–25
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 28800, HIST 35121, GISC 38800, CHST 28800, GISC 28800, ARCH 28800

HIST 25205. The Scientific Image. 100 Units.

This course explores the broad field of scientific image-making, focusing in particular on problems of formalism, abstraction, and realism. What makes a "good" scientific image? What kind of work do scientific images do? What philosophical, ideological, and political constraints underwrite attempts to render the complexity of events and entities in the world in stylized visual vocabularies? And how might we approach the work of aesthetics and style in image-making? We will examine these questions through a survey of several contemporary scholarly frameworks used for thinking about problems of representation in scientific practice, and will attend to such image-making practices as graphing, diagramming, modeling, doodling, illustrating, sculpting, and photographing, among other methods.

Instructor(s): M. Rossi     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 35205, CHSS 35205, HIPS 25505

HIST 25300. American Revolution, 1763 to 1789. 100 Units.

This lecture and discussion course explores the background of the American Revolution and the problem of organizing a new nation. The first half of the course uses the theory of revolutionary stages to organize a framework for the events of the 1760s and 1770s, and the second half of the course examines the period of constitution making (1776-1789) for evidence on the ways in which the Revolution was truly revolutionary.

Instructor(s): E. Cook     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 35300

HIST 25305. Magic, Miracles, and Medicine: Healthcare in the Bible and the Ancient World. 100 Units.

This course examines the complex issues surrounding the body, disability, and medical care in antiquity. It will be guided by a variety of questions, such as what was the root cause of bodily infirmity and disease in antiquity? How did cultural views of sex, gender, and race influence perceptions of the body and what it meant to be able bodied? Such questions are significant when considering what kind of access to healthcare marginalized groups had. In order to explore these questions, we will examine ancient Mediterranean views of medical care through material remains (e.g., magical amulets and healing shrines) and textual evidence (e.g., Galen and Hippocrates). After considering this wider cultural context, we will examine treatments in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and early Christianity. We will also explore how Christian concepts of medical care evolved in light of accounts of Jesus as a divine healer. In addition to this ancient evidence, we will engage with modern disability studies and sociological analyses to better orient our readings. At the end of the course, students will be better acquainted with the complex relationship between religion and medicine and how that affects modern healthcare decisions.

Instructor(s): Richard Zaleski     Terms Offered: Spring. Not offered 2025–26
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 20223, HLTH 20223, CCTS 21021, HIPS 20223, JWSC 20923, KNOW 20223

HIST 25318. Wonder, Wonders, and Knowing. 100 Units.

In wonder is the beginning of philosophy," wrote Aristotle; Descartes also thought that those deficient in wonder were also deficient in knowledge. But the relationship between wonder and inquiry has always been an ambivalent one: too much wonder stupefies rather than stimulates investigation, according to Descartes; Aristotle explicitly excluded wonders as objects of inquiry from natural philosophy. Francis Bacon called wonders "broken knowledge." Since the sixteenth century, scientists and scholars have both cultivated and repudiated the passion of wonder; On the one hand, marvels (or even just anomalies) threaten to subvert the human and natural orders; on the other, the wonder they ignite inquiry into their causes. Wonder is also a passion tinged with the numinous, and miracles have long stood for the inexplicable in religious contexts. Above all, wonders demand attention and interpretation. This seminar will explore the long, vexed relationship between wonder, knowledge, and belief in the history of philosophy, science, and religion.

Instructor(s): Lorraine Daston     Terms Offered: Spring. Spring 2024
Prerequisite(s): Consent is required for both grads and undergrads. This course will be taught in the first five weeks of the quarter. Reading knowledge of at least one language besides English would be helpful but not requried.
Note(s): The seminar will take place on Tuesdays & Thursdays, 09:30 a.m. – 12:20 p.m.*, during the first five weeks of the term (March 19 – April 18, 2024)
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 20926, RLST 28926, HIST 35318, HREL 30926, CHSS 30936, KNOW 30926, SCTH 30926, SCTH 20926, PHIL 30926

HIST 25508. Tutorial: Mathematical Knowledge: Race, Politics and Materiality. 100 Units.

Mathematical knowledge is commonly treated as objective and neutral, even though it is produced through specific societal contexts and in turn impacts those same contexts. In this course we will take a thematic approach to studying how mathematical and quantitative knowledges are produced and used through political processes from which they cannot be separated. We will look at examples such as the connections between plantation slavery and the precise measurement of molasses barrels in the 18th century, the gendered nature of the prestigious Tripos exam in the 19th century, 20th century attempts to quantify and manage reproduction, and 21st century issues of algorithmic policing. We will consider multiple angles for approaching the study of mathematics by connecting mathematical knowledge to topics such as labor, racial sciences, pedagogy, material tools, masculinity, nation-building, and embodiment. This will allow us to move beyond simply considering representation (of women in STEM, for example) to think about how gender and race are part of the construction of mathematical knowledge. In particular, this course will encourage students to think creatively about other possibilities for how we could justly and effectively use mathematics in our lives. There are no mathematical pre-requisites; students with a variety of experiences with mathematics will be able to participate fully in this course.

Instructor(s): Abigail Taylor-Roth     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered in Spring 2024
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 29647, GNSE 29647

HIST 25509. Anthropological Archaeology. 100 Units.

Archaeology is but ethnology in the past tense," wrote the prehistorian André Leroi-Gourhan in 1946. He expressed an idea shared by many, namely that archaeology and anthropology share a single set of aims: to investigate the workings of human society and culture, to examine particulars and illuminate universals. In this course, we will become acquainted with archaeology as a discipline of anthropology. Through readings, analysis of case studies, excursions, and practical exercises, we will learn the fundamentals of archaeological theory and method while exploring how archaeologists use them to examine anthropological questions. How do we study the development and structure of the social, political, and economic systems of the past? What can archaeology tell us about the formation of identities-self-same and other? How can the analysis of material remains shed light on the operations of culture, power, and agency? We will also look closely at "anthropological archaeology" as a historical object, from its early investments in ideas of primitive culture to contemporary issues of heritage, patrimony, and repatriation, archaeology's material, economic, and environmental impacts, and the potential of archaeologists to pursue restorative ways of engaging the past and the present.

Instructor(s): Daniel Hansen
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 21108

HIST 25602. Ancient Empires IV: the Achaemenid Empire. 100 Units.

This course introduces students to the Achaemenid Empire, also known as the First Persian Empire (ca. 550-330 BCE). We will be examining the political history and cultural accomplishments of the Achaemenids who, from their homeland in modern-day Iran, quickly rose to become one of the largest empires of the ancient world, ruling from North Africa to North India at their height. We will also be examining the history of Greek-Persian encounters and the image of the Achaemenids in Greek and Biblical literature. The students will visit the Oriental Institutes' archive and object collection to learn more about the University of Chicago's unique position in the exploration, excavation, and restoration of the Persian Empire's royal architecture and administrative system through the Persian Expedition carried out in the 1930s.

Instructor(s): Mehrnoush Soroush     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Taking these courses in sequence is not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 21722, NEHC 20014

HIST 25604. Ancient Empires VIII: Arabia and the Arabs - on the edge of empire (3000 BCE to the 7th century CE) 100 Units.

This course will explore the development of the Arabian Peninsula and Arab identity from the earliest times to shortly after the rise of Islam. Using mainly archaeological evidence, but considering also epigraphic, textual, and linguistic evidence, it will examine a range of case studies chosen to provide an overview of regional developments from the Bronze Age to the Late Antique period. A key text will be Hoyland's (2001) Arabia and the Arabs; from the Bronze Age to the coming of Islam, which will be brought up to date through examination of recent archaeological and epigraphic evidence. The course will also examine the way in which the empires and powers surrounding Arabia (eg Mesopotamia, the Indus, Rome/Byzantium, the Persian empires) affected the development of a this relatively marginal (in economic terms) region, leading to the rise of Islamic/Arab empire in the 7th century.

Instructor(s): Derek Kennet     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 20018

HIST 25610. Islamic Thought and Literature I. 100 Units.

In the first quarter of Islamic Thought and Literature, students will explore the intellectual and cultural history of the Islamic world in its various political and social contexts. Chronologically, the course begins with emergence of Islam in the 7th century CE and continues through the Mongol conquests until the rise of the "gunpowder empires" circa 1500. Students will leave the course with a historical and geographical framework for understanding the history of the Middle East and a familiarity with the major forms of premodern Islamic cultural production (e.g., history-writing, scriptural exegesis, poetry, philosophy, jurisprudence, etc.). Students will also develop the skills and contextual knowledge necessary for analyzing these sources in English translation; they will thus come to appreciate premodern Islamic cultural products on their own terms while engaging in the collective work of historical interpretation. No prior background in the subject is required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.

Instructor(s): O’Malley, Austin , Jack Buredn     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): MDVL 20601, NEHC 20601, RLST 20401, SOSC 22000

HIST 25615. Islamic Thought and Literature II. 100 Units.

In the second quarter of Islamic Thought and Literature, students will explore the Islamic world in its various political, social, and intellectual aspects. Chronologically, the course begins with the consolidation of the "gunpowder empires" in the 16th Century and continues into the modern era. Students will leave the course with a historical and geographical framework for understanding the history of the Middle East and a familiarity with the major debates such as state reform efforts, Islamic modernism, and nationalism; new genres (e.g., the novel); and new modes of communication, such as journals and newspapers. No prior background in the subject is required.Participation in the first quarter of the sequence is assumedThis sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.

Instructor(s): Holly Shissler, Murat Bozluolcay     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Taking these courses in sequence is recommended but not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 20602, SOSC 22100, MDVL 20602, RLST 20402

HIST 25616. Islamic Thought & Lit III - Education, Students and Protests in the modern MENA. 100 Units.

In the modern MENA, universities, schools and campuses were important arenas of intellectual life, political formations, and democratic, anticolonial and feminist struggles. In these educational venues, professors and teachers encouraged debates about Islam as a faith, a civilization, and a culture. This class will thus follow the history of MENA educational institutions, like the Syrian Protestant College (later the American University of Beirut), and the ways in which they shaped ideas about Enlightenment, science and modernity. We will likewise explore the careers and writings of teachers, pedagogues and theoreticians of education, like Butrus al-Bustani, Khalil al-Sakakini, Mary Ajami, Sati al-Husri, Taha Hussein, and Ghassan Kanafani. In tandem, we will look at students' activism in the Middle East. Some of the case studies we will examine include: students in the Levant who defended a professor persecuted for his support of Darwinism in 1882; anticolonial student activism in Egypt in 1919; students' demonstrations against the British and French mandates and the spread of Zionism, which took place in Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Damascus during the interwar period; campus activism of nationalists, communists, and Muslim Brothers in the 1940s and 1950s and the radicalization of universities and schools following the Nakba and global processes of decolonization; and education in Palestinian refurefugee camps and Israeli transit camps.

Instructor(s): Orit Bashkin     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 20603, SOSC 22200, RLST 20403

HIST 25711. Armenian History through Art and Culture. 100 Units.

Who are the Armenians and where do they come from? What is the cultural contribution of Armenians to their neighbors and overall world heritage? This crash-course will try to answer these and many other similar questions while surveying Armenian history and elements of culture (mythology, religion, manuscript illumination, art, architecture, etc.). It also will discuss transformations of Armenian identity and symbols of 'Armenianness' through time, based on such elements of national identity as language, religion, art, or shared history. Due to the greatest artistic quality and the transcultural nature of its monuments and artifacts, Armenia has much to offer in the field of Art History, especially when we think about global transculturation and appropriation among cultures as a result of peoples' movements and contacts. The course is recommended for students with interest in Armenian Studies or related fields, in Area or Civilizations Studies, Art and Cultural Studies, etc.

Instructor(s): Hripsime Haroutunian     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 20692, NEHC 30692, ARCH 20692, NEHC 20692

HIST 25714. Islamic Intellectual History. 100 Units.

The course introduces students to current methodological trends in the Western study of intellectual history and then examines debates and discourses in the field of Islamic intellectual historiography, with a focus on selected examples. Students will develop and present individual original research projects.

Instructor(s): Ahmed El-Shamsy     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 20204, NEHC 30204, HIST 35714

HIST 25810. History of Jews in the Middle East. 100 Units.

This class examines the history of Jews in the Middle East from the early modern period, when many Jewish refugees fleeing Spain and Portugal settled in the Ottoman Empire, to the modern Period, when Jews debated and challenged colonialist, reformist, nationalist, leftist, and secular ideologies. Reading novels, memoirs, and new works in the fields of Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies, we will examine how early modernity and modernity gave birth to new identity formations and new frames of belonging. We will visit the unknown histories of early modern Jews who produced translations and explications of the Hebrew Bible in Arabic, of Jews and Muslims who fought together Christian missionary activities, of Arab Jewish feminists, and of Jewish communists who established anti-Zionist societies in the Middle East.

Instructor(s): Orit Bashkin     Terms Offered: Autumn. Not offered in AY 2025–2026
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 20228, NEHC 20228, JWSC 23405

HIST 25908. Modern Middle East: Three Centuries of Syrian History. 100 Units.

This course uses the vantage point of Syria to survey the history of the Middle East, from the eighteenth century to today. The course will take us from the province of Damascus in the Ottoman Empire to the millions of Syrians in the West in the twenty-first century to understand the changing nature of where Syria is and what being a Syrian meant throughout these three centuries. As this course will reveal, the interlocutors of this question included rioting craftsmen and Janissaries, a local US vice-consul in Damascus, the nomads of the Syrian desert, émigré Syrian critics of the Ottoman Empire, agronomists invested in national economy, men of business as well as those of religion, and an authoritarian regime and a people who rose against it. As we unravel the social, political, economic, and intellectual processes that shaped the Syrian identity, we will cover milestone events such as the infamous interconfessional massacres of 1860, the end of the Ottoman Empire, the Baathist coup of 1963, or the Syrian Revolution in the context of the Arab Spring of the early 2010s. The course material will include scholarly texts as well as excerpts from Syrian texts, novels, and films in translation.

Instructor(s): Murat Bozluolcay     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 36085, NEHC 20116, HIST 35908, NEHC 30116

HIST 25909. Histories of Environment and Technology in the Modern Middle East. 100 Units.

Over the past decade, the field of Middle East history has undergone a surge of scholarly interest in a broad range of "new materialisms." Alongside, and sometimes in conversation with, a marked revival of political economy, this new work has explored, in multiple directions, the mutual constitution and co-evolution of social formations in the region with the tangible materials of the world around them. After revisiting a number of earlier, classic works that examined similar questions under different guises, this course will cover a range of new studies that represent the diversity and promise of these new approaches to histories of environment and technology.

Instructor(s): A. Jakes     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 35909, NEHC 35909, CEGU 25909, NEHC 25909, CEGU 35909

HIST 26106. Tropical Commodities in Latin America. 100 Units.

This colloquium explores selected aspects of the social, economic, environmental, and cultural history of tropical export commodities from Latin America-- e.g., coffee, bananas, sugar, tobacco, henequen, rubber, vanilla, and cocaine. Topics include land, labor, capital, markets, transport, geopolitics, power, taste, and consumption.

Instructor(s): E. Kourí     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 36106, LACS 26106, CEGU 26106, HIST 36106

HIST 26302. A History of Youth in Latin America. 100 Units.

This course will examine the history of youth-as a social category, and as an experience-in Latin America. We will consider histories of childhood, student activism, and youth culture across the region to consider how young people experience everyday life, and how they effect change. Course materials will combine primary sources including film, music, and other visual and performance artworks with scholarship on childhood and youth.

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz-Francisco     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 21816, CHDV 21816, LACS 21816

HIST 26305. Covid-19 and other epidemics in Latin American History. 100 Units.

This course is designed as an introduction to the history of epidemics and pandemics in Latin America from the XVI century to the present. Emphasis will be on using epidemics and pandemics as historical lenses to illuminate key dimensions of Latin America's society like discrimination, citizenship, authoritarianism, popular resilience and globalization. We will discuss the relationship between epidemics and pandemics and international commerce, analyze the role played by structural inequities and inadequate responses by governments in the intensification of disease outbreaks, and assess popular reactions to government's action and inaction. An organizing principle of several sessions will be "Necropolitics" (a concept originally coined by Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe) applied to social studies of health. These studies indicate that it is misleading to consider epidemics and pandemics as equal-opportunity threats since widespread disease outbreaks are usually more acute and tragic for vulnerable populations. A distinctive feature of necropolitics and Covid-19 was a misplaced hope for "herd immunity", embraced by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, namely the natural protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune through previous infection, with the assumption that a large number of people had to die.

Instructor(s): Marcos Cueto     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 25132, LACS 35132, HIST 36305

HIST 26306. Water in Latin America. 100 Units.

The course will explore how water shapes-and is shaped by-humans in Latin America. Drawing from case studies from the pre-Columbian era to the present, the course will consider struggles over aquatic resources, dam building, and hydraulic development, as well as the social life of water in the region. Some background in Latin American history or politics is helpful but not required.

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz-Francisco     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 26381, LACS 26381

HIST 26307. The Simultaneity of Time: Reading Jorge Luis Borges in the 21st Century. 100 Units.

Through complex and evolving perspectives of time, reading, language, and writing, Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) developed both an "ethics" and a "technics" of the "intellectual" vis-à-vis literature, history, and philosophy. Over the 20th century, the political and cultural consideration of his ethics and technics varied depending on the moment, but the debates only increased Borges´ influence as a language crafter and as a thinker, beyond the language he chose to write (Spanish, he could have been an English writer, but he opted for Spanish). The course will seek to serve as a collective close reading of the prose works (fiction and non-fiction) by Jorge Luis Borges, relying on excellent editions and translations: J. L. Borges, Collected Fictions (Viking, Pinguin 1998), translated by Andrew Hurley, and Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Non-Fictions (Pinguin 2000), edited and translate by Eliot Weinberger, Esther Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine. Each session will consist of a short contextualization and introduction by the instructor, a general discussion, and a short dialogue especially addressing the concerns of those students who decide to read Borges´ works in the original Spanish.

Instructor(s): Mauricio Tenorio     Terms Offered: Winter. Course not offered in 2025–26
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 29205, FNDL 29205

HIST 26309. The Economic History of Latin America. 100 Units.

The course explores Latin America's historical evolution, analyzing the factors that have promoted or limited its economic development from the 16th century to the present. It seeks to familiarize students with the main debates on the economic history of the region, including the most recent literature. Despite its diversity, Latin American countries share several common traits, linked to its past, that have resulted in lower levels of income and greater poverty than the Global North, and very high inequality by international standards. This course aims to acquaint students with Latin America's diversity and, at the same time, identify its common characteristics. The course will delve into the following traits, that although unevenly distributed through the region, have shaped Latin America's economic development: indigenous legacies, colonial extraction, slavery, European migration, political fragmentation and instability, integration into the global economy through commodities' exports, low educational levels, poor innovation and financial development, limited industrialization, and frequent macroeconomic crises.

Instructor(s): Aurora Gómez Galvarriato     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 25135, LACS 35135, HIST 36309

HIST 26318. Indigenous Politics in Latin America. 100 Units.

This course examines the history of Indigenous policies and politics in Latin America from the first encounters with European empires through the 21st Century. Course readings and discussions will consider several key historical moments across the region: European encounters/colonization; the rise of liberalism and capitalist expansion in the 19th century; 20th-century integration policies; and pan-Indigenous and transnational social movements in recent decades. Students will engage with primary and secondary texts that offer interpretations and perspectives both within and across imperial and national boundaries.

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz Francisco     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 36380, RDIN 26380, RDIN 36380, HIPS 26380, GLST 26380, ANTH 23077, LACS 26380

HIST 26319. Art and the Archive in Greater Latin America. 100 Units.

How and why do artists engage records of the past in their work? What are the politics of both creating archives and culling from them to visually render or represent the past? Focusing on artists, art-making, and archives in Greater Latin America (including the United States), this course will consider the process of collecting and creating in artistic production from the perspectives of both theory and practice. Students in the course will work directly with archival materials in Chicago and collaborate on contemporary artistic projects that consider issues of relevance to people and places of the Western Hemisphere.

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz-Francisco     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 26384, ARTH 26384, ARTV 20017, RDIN 26384, CHST 26384

HIST 26409. Revolution, Dictatorship, & Violence in Modern Latin America. 100 Units.

This course will examine the role played by Marxist revolutions, revolutionary movements, and the right-wing dictatorships that have opposed them in shaping Latin American societies and political cultures since the end of World War II. Themes examined will include the relationship among Marxism, revolution, and nation building; the importance of charismatic leaders and icons; the popular authenticity and social content of Latin American revolutions; the role of foreign influences and interventions; the links between revolution and dictatorship; and the lasting legacies of political violence and military rule. Countries examined will include Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Mexico. Assignments: Weekly reading, a midterm exam or paper, a final paper, participation in discussion, and weekly responses or quizzes.

Instructor(s): B. Fischer     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Some background in Latin American studies or Cold War history useful.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 26409, DEMS 26409, LACS 36409, HIST 36409, HMRT 26409

HIST 26500. History of Mexico, 1876 to Present. 100 Units.

From the Porfiriato and the Revolution to the present, this course is a survey of Mexican society and politics, with emphasis on the connections between economic developments, social justice, and political organization. Topics include fin de siècle modernization and the agrarian problem; causes and consequences of the Revolution of 1910; the making of the modern Mexican state; relations with the United States; industrialism and land reform; urbanization and migration; ethnicity, culture, and nationalism; economic crises, neoliberalism, and social inequality; political reforms and electoral democracy; violence and narco-trafficking; the end of PRI rule; and AMLO's new government.

Instructor(s): E. Kourí     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Assignments: two essays
Equivalent Course(s): DEMS 26500, LACS 26500, LACS 36500, HIST 36500

HIST 26606. Postcolonial and Decolonial History and Theory. 100 Units.

This course introduces students to some key texts in post and decolonial theory. Our goals in this class are three-fold. First, to familiarize students with foundational thinkers who have inspired both decolonial and postcolonial work. We draw attention to the different ways in which their ideas have been deployed in subsequent post and decolonial scholarship. Second, we ask questions oriented towards comparison of postcolonial and decolonial approaches: What, if any, are the points of overlap between decolonial and postcolonial thought? How do both bodies of work critique and contest the legacies of empire? Third, we investigate the present and possible futures of decolonial and postcolonial thought.

Instructor(s): Rochona Majumdar & Lisa Wedeen     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Enrollment limit: 15
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 20704, CDIN 20704, CCCT 20704, SALC 20704

HIST 26616. From Bollywood to Made in Heaven: Marriage and Sexuality on Indian Screens. 100 Units.

From reality shows like Indian Matchmaking and Made in Heaven to the meme of the "Big Fat Indian Wedding" to the preoccupations of Bollywood films like DDLJ and Rocky aur Rani ki Prem Kahani and crossover ones such as Monsoon Wedding, marriage is an obsession in South Asian culture. Focusing on Hindi cinema, this course will explore the socio-political dynamics of this cultural focus on marriage and couple formation. With examples ranging from classical Hindi films from the 1950s-60s to the star-studded melodramas of 1970s and 1980s and the "new Bollywood" era (post-1991), this cinema exhibited and analyzed the central dynamics of marriage: sexual compatibility, fidelity, reproductive futures, and so on. Debates around class, caste, diaspora, and sexuality are equally anchored in issues of marriage and couple formation. In this course, we ask why it is that marriage-its success and failure-has been so central to Indian on-screen identities. Even as screens multiply-on computers, cell phones, and in the multiplex-marriage continues to dominate. No prior knowledge of Indian languages is required, but you must enjoy watching and talking about movies and popular culture.

Instructor(s): Rochona Majumdar     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 20122, GNSE 20142, HIST 36616, CMST 30122, GNSE 30142, CMST 20122, SALC 30122

HIST 26703. Modernity and Islam in South Asia: Piety, Poetry and Politics. 100 Units.

What did the experience of modernity and colonialism look like for Islamic South Asia? How did South Asian Muslims, especially in North India, respond to the many challenges and opportunities modernity brought in its wake? This course explores how custodians of Islamic religious and poetic traditions responded to colonial modernity. We also introduce some key ideas of postcolonial studies, and apply as well as think critically about them in the light of the Indo-Islamic case-study. We begin the course by exploring the possible meanings of modernity and colonialism, before diving deeper into Indo-Islamic modernity using two broad and highly intertwined themes: religion, encompassing subthemes of science, rationality, and progress, and literature, especially poetry and the fate of the Persian and Urdu ghazal tradition, occasionally making comparisons with other pre-colonial genres in other Indian languages. We will look at the creation of new genres and new kinds of poetry in Persian and Urdu that emerge both to answer the call of modernity and sometimes to reject and attack it.

Instructor(s): Shariq Khan     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 25327

HIST 26907. Into the Unquiet Woods: The Environmental History of South Asia. 100 Units.

Today South Asia is the world region perhaps most acutely threatened by climate change, air pollution, water scarcity, and extreme weather. At the same time, the Indian subcontinent has long been the source of the most vibrant and innovative research in environmental history beyond the West. Drawing on this rich body of scholarship, this course explores the deep historical roots of South Asia's contemporary environmental crises. How have the Asian monsoon, the Indian Ocean, and the Himalayas shaped human history? What were the environmental consequences of British colonial rule? How have South Asian intellectuals and protesters pushed forward the boundaries of green thought and political action, from M. K. Gandhi to the "tree hugging" Chipko movement and anti-dam activists of the 1970s and 1980s? We will investigate both the South Asian avatars of classic topics in environmental history (like the plantation, mineral extraction, industrialized agriculture, and chemical toxicity) as well as place-specific issues like the environmental history of caste and Hindu nationalism. On the way, we will pay particular attention to how historians have wrestled with the conceptual and aesthetic challenges of incorporating non-human agency at diverse scales, from El Niño and unruly rivers to opium poppies and mollusks.

Instructor(s): E. Chatterjee     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 26907, CHSS 36907, SALC 36907, HIST 36907, HIPS 26907, CEGU 36907, CEGU 26907

HIST 27006. Not Just the Facts: Telling About the American South. 100 Units.

The great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once observed: "The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live." This course concerns itself with the various ways people have striven to understand the American South, past and present. We will read fiction, autobiography, and history (including meditations on how to write history). Main themes of the course include the difference between historical scholarship and writing history in fictional form; the role of the author in each and consideration of the interstitial space of autobiography; the question of authorial authenticity; and the tension between contemporary demands for truthfulness and the rejection of "truth."

Instructor(s): J. Dailey     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Open to upper-level undergraduates; graduate students by consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): LLSO 25411, RDIN 27006, AMER 27006, HIST 37006, AMER 37006

HIST 27111. Christianity and Slavery in America, 1619-1865. 100 Units.

We will be examining the relationship between Christian thought/practice and the institutions of slavery as they evolved historically, especially in the context of European enslavement of peoples of African descent in the colonies of British North America and in the antebellum South. The following questions will be addressed in some form through our readings and class discussions: How and why did slavery become a moral problem for abolitionists? How and why did white evangelical Christians, especially in the South, become the most prominent defenders of slavery? What role did race play in the historical development of slavery and how did Christianity sustain and perpetuate racial divisions and sanction for human bondage? How did people of African descent shape and practice Christianity in British North America and in the Southern states?

Instructor(s): Curtis Evans     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 42901, AMER 42901, HCHR 42901, HIST 47102, AMER 21303, RDIN 21303, KNOW 21303, RLST 21303, RAME 42901, RDIN 42901

HIST 27112. Race and Religion in the U.S. 100 Units.

This course examines how religion has been shaped, constructed, and formed in response to and in the context of changing racial realities in America in the 20th century. The structure of the course is designed to approach and understand the intersection and melding of race and religion through literary, social scientific, historical and biographical angles. It is hoped that such variant approaches will deepen our understanding of a complex and changing reality, keeping in mind that "race" as a category and political and social reality has experienced profoundly different meanings in the course of the 20th century. Most of our emphasis will be attuned to the central black/white divide and Christian communities, though you are encouraged to write your final paper on a topic of your choosing that does not fit into any of these categories.

Instructor(s): Curtis Evans     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the HS or SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 37116, AMER 39402, RLST 28402, AMER 28402, RDIN 38402, HCHR 39402, RDIN 28402, RAME 39402

HIST 27209. Martin and Malcolm: Life and Belief. 100 Units.

This course examines the religious, social, cultural, political, and personal factors that went into the making of the two most prominent public leaders and public intellectuals emerging from the African American community in the 1950s and 1960s: Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. We will review their autobiographies, the domestic trends within the USA, and the larger international forces operating during their times. Their life stories provide the contexts for the sharp differences and surprising commonalities in their political thought and religious beliefs. At the end of their lives, were they still radical contrasts, sharing the same views, or had their beliefs shifted - did Malcolm become Martin and Martin become Malcolm?

Instructor(s): Dwight Hopkins     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 24601, RDIN 24601, FNDL 24601, AMER 24601

HIST 27212. An Indigenous People's History of Hawaiʻi. 100 Units.

What you know about Hawai'i is most likely untrue. An archipelago in Oceania's sea of islands, Hawai'i has been locally constructed and globally consumed as a tropical paradise for pleasure and play, attracting tourists, settlers, corporations, and military forces to its shores. It is a fantasized paradise produced through the dispossession, elimination, appropriation, and exploitation of Indigenous people, institutions, worldviews, and practices. This course tells a truer story about Hawai'i. Because ideas and narratives crafted about the history, politics, economics, law, ecology, and society of Hawai'i are dominated and often distorted by non-Indigenous writers, we turn to Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) scholars to learn from their subjugated knowledge. The course examines interdisciplinary research, from the 19th century to the present, and excavates the truths advanced through it: the development of the Hawaiian Kingdom and its government, political order, economy, and society; the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian government and US military occupation and annexation of its territory; legal constructions of race and techniques of gender and sexuality in the territorial period; the creation of the State of Hawaii amid World War II and the Cold War; the birth and evolution of the modern Hawaiian sovereignty movement; and contemporary Kanaka Maoli struggles with federal recognition, militourism, and technoscientific development.

Instructor(s): Uahikea Maile     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 37212, ANTH 22800, ANTH 32800, RDIN 32800, RDIN 22800, GNSE 22806, GNSE 32806

HIST 27304. Narratives of American Religious History. 100 Units.

How do we tell the story of religion in America? Is it a story of Protestant dominance? Of religious diversity? Of transnational connections? Of secularization? This course examines how historians have grappled with such questions. We will read the work of scholars who have offered narratives explaining American religious history, including figures like Sydney Ahlstrom, Albert Raboteau, Mark Noll, Ann Braude, Catherine Albanese, and Thomas Tweed. This course will introduce students to key historiographical questions in the study of American religion, as well as to classic texts which have shaped the field's development.

Instructor(s): William Schultz and Curtis Evans     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course meets the HS or SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): HCHR 41315, RAME 41315, KNOW 41315, RLST 21315, RDIN 21315, AMER 41315, HIST 47304, RDIN 41315, AMER 21315

HIST 27312. Researching Chicago's Historic Parks and Neighborhoods. 100 Units.

Often considered a "City of Neighborhoods," Chicago has a fascinating network of community areas that were shaped by historical events and developments. Many of the city's neighborhoods include parks that have their own significant architectural, landscape and social histories. The class will introduce students to some of Chicago's most interesting historic neighborhoods and parks; expose them to key regional digital and on-site archives; and instruct them in appropriate methodologies for conducting deep research on sites and landscapes, with a special focus on Chicago's historic park system. Students will utilize an array of resources including Sanborn maps, US Census records, historic plans, photographs, and archival newspapers to provide in-depth studies of unpreserved sites. The course will also expose students to historic preservation policies, methodologies, and guidelines to provide practical strategies for preserving lesser-known places and sites. As a Chicago Studies class, its pedagogy will also include excursions into the city, engagement with local guest speakers, and research in relevant Chicago-area archives/special collections.

Instructor(s): Julia Bachrach     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This special class is offered in conjunction with the University’s ongoing commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture. Olmsted and his sons, the Olmsted Brothers, had a substantial influence on the city’s South Side, including the University’s campus and the development of small parks that provided services to dense immigrant neighborhoods in the early 20th century. The class will include field trips during some Friday class sessions.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 20336, CEGU 20336, CHST 20336, ARCH 10336

HIST 27313. Planning for Land and Life in the Calumet. 100 Units.

The collaborative plan to create a Calumet National Heritage Area that touches aspects of environmental conservation, economic development, cultural heritage, recreation, arts, and education will ground this course's exploration of landscape history and landscape planning in the Calumet region. Students will investigate this planning process and its relationship to other local and regional plans. A strong focus of the course is on the opportunities and challenges this complex and richly textured industrial region faces in its transition to a more sustainable future.

Instructor(s): Mark Bouman     Terms Offered: Spring. not offered in 2022-23
Note(s): This course is part of the Chicago Studies Quarter:Calumet. This course includes required field trips every Friday from 9am-3pm.
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 26366, CEGU 26366, PBPL 26366

HIST 27314. Objects, Place and Power. 100 Units.

Objects are not only formed and interpreted through ideas of place and power, but also shape place and identity. This course looks at how material culture has, in part, formed understandings of the Calumet. Through methods drawn from art history and museum studies, we will look closely at objects, collections, and institutions in the region to analyze the power and politics of representation in placemaking.

Instructor(s): Jessica Landau     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course is part of the Chicago Studies Quarter:Calumet. This course includes required field trips every Friday from 9am-3pm.
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 26367, PBPL 26367, CEGU 26367, ARTH 26367

HIST 27316. Soundtrack for Changing the World: Mavis Staples, Chicago, & the Music of the Civil Rights Movement. 100 Units.

Mavis Staples was nine years old in 1948 when she joined her father, Roebuck "Pops' Staples and three siblings to form the Chicago gospel group The Staple Singers. Inspired by the rich musical crosscurrents of the South Side, the Staples fused gospel vocal harmonies with Delta Blues guitar to create a revolutionary form of American music. In the 1960s, the group collaborated with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and traveled the back roads of the South at great personal risk to spread his message. Their music became synonymous with the Civil Rights Movement. A lifelong South Side resident, Mavis Staples continues to blend soul, blues, folk, gospel and rock in her albums and has worked with Bob Dylan, Prince, Public Enemy's Chuck D and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. Students in this interdisciplinary course will blend journalism, history, biography, and musicology to illuminate the pioneering path mapped out by Mavis Staples and her family. The students will explore how art and activism intertwine, and how popular music sparks democratic change. Students will create research projects grounded in the Staples' epic history by developing oral histories and drawing on recordings, photographs, manuscripts, newspapers, film, and video in archives nationwide. Students will be able to further their work by applying for Summer 2025 travel grants and research fellowships. Guest speakers in the course will include artists who were influenced by or played with Mavis Staples and The Staple Singers.

Instructor(s): Greg Kot, former Chicago Tribune music critic and host of public radio's Sound Opinions; Nora Titone     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 24000, MUSI 34200, RDIN 34000, PARR 34000

HIST 27315. Environmental Transitions and Unnatural Histories. 100 Units.

The course considers changes wrought in the natural landscape of the greater Calumet region beginning with indigenous Potawatomi and their forced removal. Students will examine how the Calumet's natural environment became collateral damage of the industrial capitalism that transformed the region into an economic powerhouse and explore efforts to rehabilitate the Calumet's rich biodiversity, identifying the challenges and achievements of this most recent environmental transition.

Instructor(s): Mary Beth Pudup     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course is part of the Chicago Studies Quarter:Calumet. This course includes required field trips every Friday from 9am-3pm.
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 26368, PBPL 26368, CHST 26368, ANTH 26368

HIST 27415. Creating a Different Image: Black Women's Filmmaking of the 1970s-90s. 100 Units.

This course will explore the rich intersections between African American women's filmmaking, literary production, and feminist thought from the 1970s to the early 1990s, with an emphasis on the formation of a Black women's film culture beginning in the 1970s. We will examine the range of Black feminisms presented through film and the ways that these films have challenged, countered, and reimagined dominant narratives about race, class, gender, and sexuality in America. We will explore the power and limitations of filmmaking as a mode of Black feminist activism; the range of Black feminisms presented through film; and the specific filmic engagements of well-known Black feminist critics such as bell hooks, Toni Cade Bambara, and Michele Wallace. As many Black feminist writers were engaged with filmmaking and film culture, we will look at these films alongside Black women's creative and critical writing from the period. Approaching filmmaking in the context of Black feminist thought will allow us to examine the possibilities of interdisciplinary approaches to film studies broadly, as well as to think specifically about the research methods and theories that are demanded by Black women's filmmaking in particular.

Instructor(s): Allyson Field     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): This course is open to graduate and undergraduate students from across the disciplines; our conversations and presentations of the films will both depend on and be energized by different disciplinary perspectives.
Note(s): Not offered in 2024-25. Please email Professor Field at anfield@uchicago.edu before enrolling. Course Description Continued: We will discuss the form, aesthetics, and politics of individual films and we will examine larger efforts by artists and activists to build a Black women’s film culture, asking such questions as: What does a film history of Black feminism look like, and what scholarly and creative methods does such a history demand? To begin to answer these questions, we will revisit the 1976 Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts—believed to be the first ever Black women’s film festival—organized by Michele Wallace, Faith Ringgold, Patricia Jones, Margo Jefferson, and Monica Freeman. The class will collectively participate in a homage series inspired by the 1976 festival, featuring work by filmmakers from the original festival such as Monica Freeman, Madeline Anderson, Michelle Parkerson, Ayoka Chenzira, Carol Munday Lawrence, Edie Lynch, and Camille Billops; as well as others including Julie Dash, Zeinabu irene Davis, Maya Angelou, and Yvonne Welbon. The weekly course screenings will be open to the public and students will gain experience in the public presentation of films by actively engaging in public-facing aspects of film exhibition (writing program notes, delivering introductions, participating in discussions, etc.). The class will culminate with a two-day symposium that will bring together around 35 Black feminist filmmakers and artists, including a number from the 1976 festival, to revisit the threads and legacies of the original event and discuss the present and future of Black women’s film practices.
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 31025, GNSE 20128, HMRT 21025, CMST 31025, HMRT 31025, GNSE 30128, CMST 21025, HIST 37415

HIST 27416. Black Religious Protest in the U.S. 100 Units.

This course examines African American religious protest against the American nation for its actual history and its ideals in view of black oppression. The course begins with David Walker's Appeal (1829) and ends with debates around Jeremiah Wright's "God damn America" sermon. The course situates black religious protest amidst discussions of the American Jeremiad, a particular critique of the nation in relation to the divine, American exceptionalism, and racial injustice. We attempt to trace continuity and discontinuity, hope versus pessimism, and visions of a more perfect union in these public critiques of the nation.

Instructor(s): Curtis Evans     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): AMER 22202, RDIN 23202, AMER 42202, HCHR 42202, RAME 42202, HIST 47416, RLST 22202

HIST 27419. Black Ownership of Wealth: A Theological Consideration. 100 Units.

Since Africans were brought to the Virginia Colony (August 1619), throughout slavery and segregation until today, black Americans (men and women) have always owned wealth. They have always had human agency. These black families accumulated wealth and offered a concurrent narrative and framing from the mainstream understanding of black Americans as victims. Who are these black families who remain mainly invisible from the dominant black story? What is material, financial wealth? Who has it? And how did they get it?

Instructor(s): Dwight Hopkins     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 45800, RDIN 25800, RLST 25800, AMER 45800, THEO 45800, HIST 37419, AMER 25800

HIST 27420. African-American History: 1900-2000. 100 Units.

The Black experience in America is one that encompasses a wide variety of walks of life. Within this introductory undergraduate course, we will explore the 20th century experience of African Americans in Jim Crow segregation, migration, labor, medicine, world wars, civil rights, and black power. This course considers racial barriers in the built environment, with a particular emphasis on the city. We will use primary and secondary sources to construct conceptions of political struggle, economic rights, resistance, and freedom in African American life.

Instructor(s): Caine Jordan     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 21200, HIST 37420, RDIN 31200

HIST 27421. Black Gods of the Black Metropolis. 100 Units.

This course examines the history and significance of the shifting and emergent forms of African American religious culture in the wake of the Great Migration (c.1915-1970). Focusing, initially, on how this process unfolded in Chicago, the course will both introduce select figures, movements, institutions, and popular cultures that emerged in the period, and consider to what ends they have been represented. Together, we will read both indispensable classics and innovative new works on the subject and consider how they have approached and addressed themes of, among others, race, space, class, gender, and sexuality. In addition, this course aims to emphasize how the so-called era of the "sects and cults" has and continues to raise important questions about the archives, representation, and narration of African American religion.

Instructor(s): Matthew Harris     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 22802, HIST 39001, RAME 33000, AMER 22802, RDIN 33000, AMER 33001, AASR 33001, RDIN 23003

HIST 27504. McCarthy's Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West. 100 Units.

Cormac McCarthy's 1985 masterpiece Blood Meridian: Or The Evening Redness in the West has been described as 'the ultimate Western' and the greatest American novel of the twentieth century. Yet it is also a book that is infamous for its baroque prose style as well as its nightmarish depictions of violence and bloodshed. Our primary task in this course is to read Blood Meridian in its entirety. We will explore the novel's themes, including (but not limited to): war and the problem of evil; history and myth; violence and the sacred; violence and the carnivalesque; empire and conquest. But our reading will not be limited to Blood Meridian alone. We will read parts of some of McCarthy's other works, some of the books that McCarthy read in preparation for writing the novel, and some of the scholarship on

Instructor(s): Joel Isaac     Terms Offered: Winter. Winter 2025
Prerequisite(s): Open to Undergraduates
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 37504, SCTH 30686, SCTH 20686

HIST 27510. Religion in the Enlightenment: England and America. 100 Units.

Study in the historiographies of the Enlightenment in England and in America, with special attention to the "trans-Atlantic" communication of ideas regarding the nature of the person, religion, and the role of the political order.

Instructor(s): Richard Rosengarten     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the HS or LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLVC 42100, RAME 42100, HIST 47510, RLST 22110, AMER 22110, HCHR 42200, AMER 42100

HIST 27605. United States Legal History. 100 Units.

This course focuses on the connections between law and society in modern America. It explores how legal doctrines and constitutional rules have defined individual rights and social relations in both the public and private spheres. It also examines political struggles that have transformed American law. Topics to be addressed include the meaning of rights; the regulation of property, work, race, and sexual relations; civil disobedience; and legal theory as cultural history. Readings include legal cases, judicial rulings, short stories, and legal and historical scholarship.

Instructor(s): A. Dru Stanley     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): LLSO 29704, GNSE 27605, HMRT 37605, HMRT 27061, HIST 37605, AMER 27605, GNSE 37605

HIST 27609. The Scopes Trial in Historical Perspective. 100 Units.

This course will explore in depth and in detail the 1925 Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, especially in light of its centennial. We will examine the transcript of the trial, newspaper editorials, cartoons, scholarly analyses, and various contemporary observations on the meaning and significance of the trial. Among the topics covered are the fundamentalist/modernist controversy of the 1920s and its consequences, interpretations of the origins and tenacity of the anti-evolution campaign, and broader debates about science and religion and the contested authority of experts in American society. Though much of the historical analysis will focus on the 1920s, some attention will be paid to the implications of this highly publicized trial and what it came to signify about larger cultural, political, and religious divisions in the United States.

Instructor(s): Curtis Evans     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course meets the HS or SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RAME 32418, AMER 32418, RLST 22418, AMER 22418, HIST 37609, FNDL 22418, HCHR 32418

HIST 27703. What is Asian American Studies? 100 Units.

What is Asian American studies? Who is an Asian American? For that matter, what does it mean to be Asian? Or American? Where do we locate Asian America, and what are its relationships to Asian homelands or other diasporas? Where does Asian America fit into the US racial landscape? What does studying Asian Americans or Asian America help us understand? This course is not a traditional introduction to Asian American studies and its more canonical histories and literatures. Rather, in this course, we will interrogate the normative categories, histories, geographies, and approaches of Asian American studies to consider what it means to study Asian American populations, what we gain from these inquiries, and what the future of Asian American studies research might look like.

Instructor(s): Maya Singhal     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 33001, ANTH 23000, ANTH 33000, HIST 37702, RDIN 23000

HIST 27716. Religion and American Capitalism. 100 Units.

This course will introduce students to the intersection of religion and capitalism in the United States. Through a variety of primary and secondary readings, we will explore how religious people and institutions have interacted with, affirmed, and challenged American capitalism. We will pay particularly close attention to the alternative moral economics envisioned by religious communities in the United States.

Instructor(s): William Schultz     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 21430, HCHR 40200, AMER 40200, AMER 21430, RAME 40200, HIST 37716

HIST 27718. Beyond the Culture Wars: Social Movements and the Politics of Education in the U.S. 100 Units.

Passionate conflicts over school curriculum and educational policy are a recurring phenomenon in the history of US schooling. Why are schools such frequent sites of struggle and what is at stake in these conflicts? In this discussion-based seminar, we will consider schools as battlegrounds in the US "culture wars": contests over competing visions of national identity, morality, social order, the fundamental purposes of public education, and the role of the state vis-à-vis the family. Drawing on case studies from history, anthropology, sociology and critical race and gender studies, we will examine both past and contemporary debates over school curriculum and school policy. Topics may include clashes over: the teaching of evolution, sex and sexuality education, busing/desegregation, prayer in schools, multiculturalism, the content of the literary canon, the teaching of reading, mathematics and history, and the closure of underperforming urban schools. Our inquiry will examine how social and political movements have used schools to advance or resist particular agendas and social projects.

Instructor(s): Lisa Rosen     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered spring 2025
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 37718, CHDV 23011, EDSO 33011, CHDV 33011, SOCI 20588, SOCI 30588, PBPL 23011, EDSO 23011

HIST 27719. The Christian Right. 100 Units.

From the Gilded Age to the age of Donald Trump, conservatives Christians have played a major role in shaping American politics and culture. This course will use primary and secondary sources to explore the development of the Christian Right in the United States. We will answer essential questions about the movement: Who joins it? Who leads it? And who funds it? We will examine how conservative Christians approach not only "moral" issues like abortion but also issues like economic regulation and foreign policy. Finally, we will seek to answer the question: What is the future of the Christian Right in an increasingly diverse America?

Instructor(s): William Schultz     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RAME 35700, AMER 22667, AMER 35700, RLST 22667, HIST 37719, HCHR 35700, HMRT 22667

HIST 27721. Christianity and Consumer Culture in the United States. 100 Units.

In the United States, everything is for sale-including religion. Religious books, objects, and films are produced and marketed to recruit converts and to entertain and edify adherents. Churches can be seen as commodities as people "shop" for a new congregation or sect. Some scholars have suggested that consumption itself has become a religious act, with its own rites, rituals, and promises of salvation. In this course we will explore the intersecting histories of Christianity and consumer culture in the US from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Reading classic texts in history and sociology, as well as more contemporary scholarship on American consumer culture, we will attend to the questions that consumer culture poses for American Christians and for scholars of religion. Has consumer culture contributed to the secularization of American society? Has Christianity been corrupted by consumer culture? Can Christians redeem the marketplace? How can the study of religion help us understand our culture of consumption, and how can consumerism help us understand religion?

Instructor(s): Hannah Ozmun     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 29068, AMER 29068, ANTH 29068

HIST 27722. Histories of Everyday Life. 100 Units.

Butts, birth certificates, pockets, cigarettes, parking spaces, franchises, light, shade, muzak: these are just a few of the seemingly banal things we come into contact with each day without much critical thought. And yet, each has become a conduit for how we see and make meaning from the world, especially in regards to race, gender, economics, and ecology. This course will examine the everyday for its radical meanings across corporeal, social, urban, and political landscapes.

Instructor(s): Hoffmann, Alexander     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 37722, MAPS 32201

HIST 27723. The Corporation in American Society. 100 Units.

Few institutions are as polarizing as the corporation. For some, corporations are modern marvels of American capitalism-models of growth, efficiency, and cooperation. For others, they are grotesque symbols of excess-selfish concentrations of wealth, capital, and power. Regardless of the emotions associated with the institution, it remains ubiquitous within American political economy. Drawing on a range of recent legal, economic, and historical scholarship, this research based, writing intensive, seminar interrogates the role of corporations within American society by asking questions such as: what, if anything, do corporations owe the state and society; does business have a "social responsibility;" to whom/what is the corporation accountable; and what role should state and federal governments play in regulating these consequential institutions? Students will select one area of inquiry and prepare either a research proposal with bibliography or research essay based on an analytical question related to the course theme. This course will count as an LLSO junior colloquium.

Instructor(s): Jared Berkowitz     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Preference is given to third-year students in LLSO.
Equivalent Course(s): LLSO 29715

HIST 27724. The Salem Witch Trials: Magic, Religion, and Hysteria in Colonial New England. 100 Units.

By the time the Salem Witch Trials ended in May 1693, 200 people had been accused of witchcraft, 30 had been convicted, and 19 executed-most of them women. The Trials are one of the best-known outbursts of violence in American history, often seen as a brief but intense slip into witchcraft hysteria almost a century after European witch hunts had faded out. But the Salem Witch Trials did not occur in a vacuum. This course will place the trials in their religious and cultural context, considering how orthodox theology, popular religion, magic, the supernatural, witchcraft, and gender were understood by Puritan New Englanders in the seventeenth century. It will then examine the trials themselves-both Salem and witchcraft trials more broadly-to tease out the anxieties they expressed (all of which are still relevant today): fear of women, fear of God, fear of change, and fear of the other.

Instructor(s): P. Heffington     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 37724, RLST 22724, GNSE 20154, RAME 37724

HIST 27806. Histories of Women in Science. 100 Units.

In the mid-1980s, only two female students drew women when asked what a scientist looked like and none of the male students in the study did. Only 8% of STEM workers in 1970 were women; in 2019 that number was still only 27%. This would seem to suggest that the history of women in science is a recent one. Yet historians of science have foregrounded women's involvement in fields ranging from early modern medicine to twentieth century astrophysics. This class introduces students to these histories, investigates how and why science came to be a gendered as male, and asks to what extent gendered values continue to inform modern conceptions scientific achievement or value. In so doing, this course also introduces students to feminist science studies and challenges students to reflect upon their own (gendered) experiences of science. Students are strongly encouraged to develop final research projects that draw upon their own interests, scientific expertise, and linguistic competencies. No prior experience with history is required for this course, although an enthusiasm for history is advised.

Instructor(s): Kristine Palmieri     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 27011, CHSS 37011, KNOW 37011, ASTR 23700, PHSC 27010, GNSE 37011, GNSE 23162

HIST 27807. Sexuality in U.S. History to 1900. 100 Units.

In this course we will study the history of changing sexual practices, relations, politics, cultures, and social systems in the region of North America now comprising the United States and 574 sovereign tribal nations. We begin in the pre-colonial period and end in the late twentieth century, focusing on how gendered, racial, economic, religious, medical, and commercial discourses shaped and were shaped by sexual ones. Moving through various contexts, such as occupied indigenous territories, the secret parties of enslaved people, scientific societies, urban drag balls, medical schools, liberatory movements, and popular culture, we will use primary and secondary sources to develop a research-based understanding of how sexual discourses are produced, revised, and remixed among and across generations.

Instructor(s): Red Tremmel     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course counts as a Concepts course for GNSE majors.
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 33165, HIST 37807, GNSE 23165

HIST 27810. Histories of Abortion and Forced Sterilization in the United States. 100 Units.

In the United States, the politics of pregnancy and reproductive autonomy have historically been and continue to be categories of significance, meaning, and contention. In this course, we will explore a subsection of these broader categories, examining the relation between abortion and forced sterilization, the state, and women of color. The course will zero in on the experiences of Mexican American and Mexican immigrant women, African American women, Puerto Rican women, and Native American women, considering their struggles against the state and for reproductive justice.

Instructor(s): Caine Jordan     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 31600, HLTH 21600, CHDV 21600, HIST 37810, GNSE 33181, GNSE 23181, RDIN 21600

HIST 27909. The History of Human Rights in Journalism. 100 Units.

From the anti-slavery press through the New Journalists, every movement in American reporting has imagined human rights in a distinctive way. Some of those imaginaries have persisted and grown hegemonic, while others now languish in the archive-the old radical newspapers forgotten and unread. This course is dedicated to investigating the history of American journalism to see how the press and human rights coevolved: piecing together historical links between movements, recovering lost possibilities, and looking for future paths of development. Following a line from the abolitionists through the international movement against the Belgian Congo and onto contemporary New Yorker-style journalism, we will learn the history of the news in America. Through that history, we will see how developments in journalism-in content, form, and technology-ultimately changed international ideas of human

Instructor(s): Matthew Zipf     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HMRT 28724

HIST 28006. Fundamentalism. 100 Units.

Is fundamentalism a useful term that allows us to compare anti-modern movements across a range of religious traditions? Or is it a hopelessly problematic term that lumps together vastly different phenomena? This course will use the troubled career of "fundamentalism" as a window onto the modern history of religion-and the people who study it. We will begin by focusing on the origins of fundamentalism: as a description of the political mobilization of conservative Protestants in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. From there, we will broaden our perspective, considering how the term "fundamentalist" has been applied to Islamic, Jewish, and Hindu movements, as well as to secular phenomena like Marxism and nationalism. At each step of the way we will consider not only "fundamentalism" itself but also the people who study it and those who mobilize against it. Ultimately, we will ask: is fundamentalism an idea whose time has come again, or one whose time has come and gone?

Instructor(s): William Schultz     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course meets the HS or SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 38006, AASR 41440, HCHR 41440, RLST 21440, RAME 41440

HIST 28302. The American Founding, 1763-1789. 100 Units.

This course examines the founding of the United States from the global crisis of the British Empire following the Seven Years' War to the launching of the new national government in 1789. The architects of the American republic believed they were laying the foundations not only of a new political regime but also of a new world. As Thomas Paine's revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense asserted in 1776, American independence would "begin the world over again." The lectures consider the revolutionary origins of the United States in the long-term context of three centuries of world history commencing with Columbus' arrival in the Americas in 1492. Course readings consist of primary sources ranging from major works of Enlightenment social and historical theory to political pamphlets, newspaper opinion pieces, and parliamentary debates. This is a lecture course; the assignments consist of two take-home essay exams and a paper.

Instructor(s): J. Vaughn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 38302, DEMS 28302

HIST 28308. Science, Governance, and the Crisis of Liberalism. 100 Units.

In the era of "post-truth" it has become common to link a crisis of scientific authority with a crisis of liberalism. Democracies around the world are under threat, this reasoning goes, in part because of an attack on scientific truth. But what does liberalism - as political culture and as a form of governance - need (or want) from science? Depending where you look, the answer might appear to be facts, truth, a model 'public sphere,' an ethic of objectivity, tactics for managing risk and uncertainty, or technologies of population management (to name a few). In addition to exploring the complex historical relationship between science and liberalism in the modern era, this course will critically assess how the history of science and the history of political thought have theorized truth and governance. We will examine what models of "coproduction" and "social construction" - nearly ubiquitous in the historiography of modern science - fail to capture about the histories of science and state power. We will also think about how political and intellectual historians' theories of truth and mendacity in politics might be enriched by more attention to scientific knowledge in both its technical and epistemological forms. This course focuses on 19th- and 20th-century Europe and the United States in global perspective, and readings will draw from political theory, history, economic thought, the natural and human sciences, and critical theory.

Instructor(s): Isabel Gabel     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 32504, HIST 38308, KNOW 32204, HIPS 22204

HIST 28309. States of Exception in American History. 100 Units.

Although the United States is officially a constitutional democracy, it has repeatedly involved emergency powers to suspend the constitution and abridge constitutional rights. We explore the history of these 'states of exception' in American history, from the founding era to the present. Eligible for LLSO Junior Colloquium.

Instructor(s): Joel Isaac     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): SCTH 20684, LLSO 29073

HIST 28710. Law and Religion in the Modern United States. 100 Units.

This course explores the persistent tension between law and religious faith in the United States. It will proceed loosely chronologically, beginning with the Supreme Court's first rulings on religious liberty following the Civil War and continuing into the twenty-first century. The course will also introduce students to a range of thematic issues, such as the use of state power by religious actors to regulate behavior, the place of believers (and nonbelievers) within a liberal democracy, the religious rights of corporations, and the emergence of forms of legal pluralism as religious law and civil law increasingly intersect. Readings will include case law, legal and political theorists, as well as religious voices. Students will complete a significant literature review on a topic of their choosing. This course counts as an LLSO junior colloquium.

Instructor(s): Jacob Betz     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Preference is given to LLSO juniors.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 28711, LLSO 29711

HIST 28815. American Spectacle. 100 Units.

Spectacles have shocked, awed, delighted, and horrified Americans for centuries-seemingly all at once. This class reexamines American history through the lens of spectacle in its many guises: the scientific, violent, technological, and political. We explore how these various iterations have not only coexisted over time but also intersected, reinforced, and-at times-complicated each other. We will ask how these overlapping spectacles shaped and continue to shape the United States by underwriting and innovating race, class, gender, and statecraft. Is spectacle foundational to the United States? How does it bridge individual lived experience and sociopolitical and economic abstractions? Running from the early modern Atlantic World to the present, we conclude by asking whether the digital age has made spectacle ubiquitous, and at what cost.

Instructor(s): Hofmann, Alex     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MAPS 31450, HIST 38815, MADD 28815, MAPS 21450

HIST 29002. Envisioning Freedom. 100 Units.

Did the emancipation of millions of African-descended people from the bonds of chattel slavery-beginning with the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti and ending with Brazilian abolition in 1888-mark the beginning of an irrevocable march towards Black freedom? Or was it merely an evolution in the continuing exploitation of Black people throughout the Americas? This course scrutinizes the complex economic, political, ideological, social, and cultural contexts that caused and were remade by emancipation. Students are asked to consider emancipation as a global historical process unconstrained by the boundaries of the modern nation-state, while exploring the reasons for and consequences of emancipation from a transnational perspective that incorporates the histories of the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. By focusing on the ideological ambiguities and lived experiences of enslaved people, political actors, abolitionists, religious leaders, employers, and many others, this seminar will question what constitutes equality, citizenship, and freedom. Finally the course will explore what role emancipated slaves played in shaping the historical meanings and practices of modern democracy.

Instructor(s): M. Hicks     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 39002, LACS 29002, LACS 39002

HIST 29107. Empires and Colonies of the Atlantic World. 100 Units.

This graduate-level reading colloquium explores classic and emerging scholarship that examines the rise and consolidation of European overseas empires and colonies in the early modern Atlantic world (c.1400-1850). While we will analyze transatlantic European imperial structures, the course will pay particular attention to the perspectives of the colonized peoples (such as enslaved and freed people of African descent, creole populations, and Indigenous peoples) and places (such as the Caribbean, West Africa, Latin America, and North America) in the Atlantic World. Among the thematic topics we will discuss include: colonization; the rise of slavery and the slave trade; cross-cultural and political connections; the consolidation of race; gender, sexuality, and the family; the environment; the plantation complex; work and economy; social life; anti-colonial and anti-slavery struggles, revolution; abolition; and the reconstitution of colonial and imperial structures after slave emancipation. Upper-level undergraduates may enroll with instructor consent.

Instructor(s): Lyons, Deirdre     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 39107, ANTH 46455, ANTH 26455, MAPS 33555

HIST 29108. Atlantic Empires. 100 Units.

This course explores classic and emerging scholarship on European empires and colonies in the early modern Atlantic world (c. 1400s-1800s). We will examine the rise and consolidation of empires and colonies through comparative, trans, and circum-Atlantic approaches. Additionally, the course will pay particular attention to the perspectives of colonized peoples (such as enslaved and freed people of African descent, Creole populations, and Indigenous peoples). Geographically, the course will span the Atlantic World, including regions such as the Caribbean, West Africa, Latin America, and North America. Topics we will cover include the formation of empires and colonial systems; Atlantic slavery; the emergence of Atlantic ideologies of race; gender, and kinship; knowledge formation, environment, and disease; anti-slavery struggles, and the "Age of Revolution."

Instructor(s): Lyons, Deirdre     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): MAPS 39108, HIST 39108, RDIN 29108, RDIN 39108, ANTH 39208

HIST 29109. Sex, Gender, and Kinship: Colonial Perspectives. 100 Units.

This course analyzes the contested relationships between gender, sexuality, kinship, and western colonialism from the early modern period through the twentieth century. Drawing on historical case studies, feminist theory, and postcolonial studies, this course will cover a broad range of empires and colonies to explore the mutually constitutive relationship between colonization and ideologies and practices of gender, sex, and kinship. Analyzing case studies predominately from the Atlantic World (with attention to colonies elsewhere), we will explore topics such as the emergence of colonial gender ideologies, gender and colonial governance, family life and kinship strategies, the intersectionality of gender and sexuality with race and class, queerness and queer lives, the politics of sex work and reproduction, and gendered migrations across empires.

Instructor(s): Lyons, Deirdre     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 39109, RDIN 39109, MAPS 39109, ANTH 29109, SOCI 30346, GNSE 23174, RDIN 29109, ANTH 39109, HIST 39109

HIST 29110. Law and Legality in the Colonial World. 100 Units.

This seminar examines the myriad legal encounters which irrevocably shaped colonization around the globe. We will explore law as both a precursor to and instrument of colonization for a range of European empires in the early modern and modern periods. The course will also detail strategies of legal action among a range of colonized subjects including indigenous peoples of the Americas, Asia and Africa. With an eye to diverse theories of law across empires, we will discuss how key colonial legal institutions-including courts and penal spaces-molded both social life and cultural customs. Through an array of case studies, we will further examine themes of the nature of legal protagonism, sovereignty and its evolution, competing jurisdictions, and internationalism and its discontents. Each student will be asked to complete an analysis of a legal primary source of their choosing, as well as a longer historiographical essay pertaining to the course materials.

Instructor(s): M. Hicks     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 39110

HIST 29619. Imperialism and Colonialism in East Asia. 100 Units.

Japan's imperial expansion in East Asia in the late nineteenth and twentieth century have drafted influenced social, political, technological, and environmental relations between different areas in this region. In recent years, we have seen a growing number of scholarship that discusses the influences and process of Japan's imperial expansion in Asia. Besides focusing on the political and social influence of Japan's imperial domination, these scholarships also show new ways to research empire and imperialism through the lens of technology, material culture, immigration, and transnational history. With a focus on recent scholarship on Japanese imperialism and Japan's empire-building, this course will familiarize students with the current debates and discussions on this topic and facilitate students to generate their own research topic. In this course, alongside analyzing and dissecting the current scholarship and their analyses and perspectives on Japan's empire, students will have the chance to build up skills to write a research paper from analyzing primary documents to drafting annotated bibliographies, outlines, proposals, and the final paper.

Instructor(s): Y. Dong     Terms Offered: Autumn

HIST 29631. Taiwan in Asia and the World. 100 Units.

This course examines the distinctive history of the island of Taiwan, from seventeenth-century Spanish colony to outpost of the Dutch empire, from multiethnic pirate cove to Qing coastal fortress, from an essential point of origin for Austronesian languages and cultures to Japan's first model colony, and from decades living under martial law to today's vibrant democratically elected government. There may never have been a time when Taiwan's future was so heatedly debated, or viewed as so central to global politics, as it is at this moment. Readings spanning three centuries and an array of governing regimes. We will explore the historical arguments and narratives that constitute the cultural identity of this diverse and contested place. In addition to reading primary sources and historiography over the quarter, students will develop and share their own research. This will culminate with either a paper or public history project.

Instructor(s): J. Ransmeier     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 24518

HIST 29641. History Colloquium: The World the Suez Canal Made. 100 Units.

Covering a long expanse of time-from the late eighteenth century to the present-this source-based research colloquium will explore the many and shifting roles of the Suez Canal in the production of global inequalities. By analyzing this complex infrastructural system's shifting functions-as a passageway for global commerce and travel, of course, but also as a shaper of ships, a bellows for global warming, a test case for international law, a mover of meat, a curator of tastes, a force of nature, a machine of counterrevolution, a center of currency arbitrage, and a crucible of chauvinistic antagonisms-the course will explain how the more connected world that Suez helped to make also became a world that was hotter, more unequal, and for many peoples around the globe, less free. Drawing on a vast trove of archival materials available through the university's libraries, students will design and pursue their own independent research projects relating to the long, complex, and globe-spanning history of the Canal.

Instructor(s): A. Jakes     Terms Offered: Spring

HIST 29634. African Cities and Urbanism. 100 Units.

This course looks at urbanism and urbanization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through a focus on selected cities in East, Southern, and West Africa. Beginning with existing trade routes and economic centers onto which some colonial cities were mapped, the course explores waves of migration over different historical periods, infrastructural imaginaries and the policies that shaped them, informal and formal economies, and cultural expressions and representations of life and living in the city. We will draw from a diversity of sources including fiction, non-fiction, architecture, town planning, photography, and the arts to examine political, social, economic, and topographical features and forces that drove the growth and development of each city studied, and also to reflect on commonalities that emerged between cities across different regions of the continent.

Instructor(s): T. Thipe     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 29634, ARCH 29634, RDIN 29634

HIST 29683. History Colloquium: Race, Slavery, and Nation. 100 Units.

With its focus on research methods, this seminar supports the production of an original, primary-source-based research paper related to the course's broad themes of race, slavery, and nation. We will dedicate time to historiographical debates, conceptual frameworks, a group visit to special collections, and peer review. Specifically, students will formulate a viable research question, develop a research agenda that uses the appropriate qualitative or quantitative methods, conduct independent research, and draft and revise a final paper. While some background historical knowledge in the student's proposed area of interest is recommended, it is not required.

Instructor(s): R. Johnson     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Priority registration is given to History majors. If possible, students should have taken HIST 17908, African American History to 1865 prior to registering for this course.

HIST 29685. History Colloquium: Asian/Pacific Islander American History, 1850-2021. 100 Units.

Looking through a broad interdisciplinary lens, this course will examine the trajectory of Asians and Pacific Islanders in America. How did nineteenth- and early twentieth-century "sojourners" become "citizens"? What constituted the public's shift in perception of Asians from unassimilable alien to ostensible "model minority"? We will interrogate not only what it means to have been and to be an Asian in America but also what role APIAs have played in striving for a multiracial democracy. The history of anti-Asian violence will be traced from the mid-nineteenth century to the most recent hate crimes in the age of COVID. Conscious of the tendency to homogenize all Asians in the historical imagination, the course will be explicitly comparative, incorporating the diverse and disparate experiences of East, Southeast, and South Asians, as well as Pacific Islanders in America over time. We will, also, at times, investigate the histories of other ethnic/racial groups and compare their experiences to the Asian American experience.

Instructor(s): M. Briones     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Priority registration is given to History majors.
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 27685

HIST 29700. Readings in History. 100 Units.

Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and the History undergraduate advisor.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Summer Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and the associate director of History's Undergraduate Studies Committee.

HIST 29800. BA Thesis Seminar I. 100 Units.

BA Thesis Seminar I provides a systematic introduction to historical methodology and approaches (e.g., political, intellectual, social, cultural, economic, gender, environmental history), as well as research techniques. It culminates in students' submission of a robust BA thesis proposal that will be critiqued in class. Guidance will also be provided for applications for research funding.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): All 3rd-yr history students writing BA theses take HIST 29800 in Spr Qtr. You must receive a B grade in BA Seminar I to continue in the BA Thesis Track and enroll in BA Seminar II.
Note(s): HIST 29800 is required for Thesis and Capstone students unless they are granted an exception due to a conflict with Study Abroad. Please see the college catalog for more guidance.

HIST 29801. BA Thesis Seminar II (Autumn) 000 Units.

BA Seminar II is a forum to successfully complete the BA thesis, the topic of which was developed in BA Seminar I, in a structured forum that allows for ongoing discussion and peer review. Autumn Quarter is devoted to completing the research and beginning the writing of the thesis. By the end of the quarter students will have drafted 10-15 pages. Over the course of the Winter Quarter students will complete a draft of the thesis, which will be workshopped in the biweekly sessions. The final deadline for submission of the thesis is the second week of the Spring Quarter.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): HIST 29800; Students writing BA theses register for both Autumn (HIST 29801) and Winter (HIST 29802) quarters. You must receive a B grade in HIST 29801 to continue in the BA Thesis Track and enroll in HIST 29802.
Note(s): The seminar meets every other week (weeks 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9) in Autumn and Winter for 10 weeks total.

HIST 29802. BA Thesis Seminar II. 100 Units.

BA Seminar II is a forum to successfully complete the BA thesis, the topic of which was developed in BA Seminar I, in a structured forum that allows for ongoing discussion and peer review. Autumn Quarter is devoted to completing the research and beginning the writing of the thesis. By the end of the quarter students will have drafted 10-15 pages. Over the course of the Winter Quarter students will complete a draft of the thesis, which will be workshopped in the biweekly sessions. The final deadline for submission of the thesis is the second week of the Spring Quarter.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): HIST 29800 (BA Seminar I) and HIST 29801 (BA Seminar II-Autumn)
Note(s): The seminar meets every other wk (wks 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9) in Aut and Win for 10-wks total.

HIST 29803. Historiography. 100 Units.

The course provides a systematic introduction to historical methodology and approaches (e.g., political, intellectual, social, cultural, economic, gender, environmental history), as well as research techniques. Students will gain analytical, research, and writing tools that will assist them in their capstone projects, research colloquia, or BA theses.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor. Historiography is required for all majors, but open to all students.
Note(s): We recommend that Capstone and BA Thesis students take Historiography in the 3rd year. Assignments: short papers, in-class presentation, long paper.

HIST 29804. Capstone Seminar (Autumn) 000 Units.

Capstone Seminar is a forum to create, discuss, and critique History capstone projects. Early weeks of the seminar will be devoted to exploring various forms historical work can take, from museum installations to podcasts and documentaries. In-process work will be shared and critiqued in workshops. The final deadline for submission of the Capstone Project is the second week of spring quarter.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Capstone students register for both autumn (HIST 29804) and winter (HIST 29805) quarters; the seminar meets every other week (weeks 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9) for 10-weeks total.

HIST 29805. Capstone Seminar. 100 Units.

Capstone Seminar is a forum to create, discuss, and develop History capstone projects. Early weeks of the seminar will be devoted to exploring various forms historical work can take, from museum installations to podcasts and documentaries. In-process work will beshared and critiqued in workshops. The course meets every other week in autumn and winter, allowing students ample time to develop their projects on their own. The final deadline for submission of the Capstone Project is the second week of Spring Quarter.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Capstone students register for both autumn (HIST 29804) and winter (HIST 29805) quarters; the seminar meets every other week (weeks 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9) for a total of 10 weeks.

HIST 29806. Archival Methods and Historical Thinking. 100 Units.

Archival Methods & Historical Thinking interrogates the concepts, theories, and practices of the archive from a historical perspective. In many ways, history is a discipline defined by a set of questions rather than a singular approach. We will begin by analyzing how historians do the work of interpreting sources to construct historical narratives and arguments. Then, examining archival theory, its lapses, and its possibilities, we will determine what characteristics make an archive and how we can historicize it as an object of inquiry in its own right. We will then tackle a representative sample of the types of sources and archives you are most likely to engage as a social science researcher. Looking at how people have archived written ephemera, material culture, photographs, film, music, urban space, and the internet, we will pair the specific theoretical concerns of a given source type's archiving with practical examples of how social scientists have explicitly mediated, transcended, or succumbed to the experience of the archive: its structure, its customs, its absences, and more. You will gain an understanding of the mechanics of archival work for a social science researcher as well as an appreciation for the complexity of historical thinking. By the end of the course, you will learn how to reconcile archival theory with the realities and practices of research in order to become better, more ethical, and more rigorous researchers.

Instructor(s): A. Hofmann     Terms Offered: Summer. Offered Summer 2023

HIST 29688. Refugee Histories. 100 Units.

This class approaches refugees not as a problem to be solved but as people with stories to tell and with a history that goes back centuries. We will consider some of the reasons that compel people to leave their homeland, read narratives that they have produced about what this experience meant, and examine the myriad ways in which they have shaped their host societies as well as the countries that they left behind. In addition, this class will prepare history majors to produce their own original research paper of 15-20 pages reflecting on some aspect of the refugee experience. About half of our class time will be devoted to readings on refugee history and the other half to historiographical approaches and research techniques.

Instructor(s): F. Hillis     Terms Offered: Autumn

HIST 29902. Tolkien: Medieval and Modern. 100 Units.

J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" is one of the most popular works of imaginative literature of the twentieth centruy. This course seeks to understand its appeal by situating Tolkien's creation within the context of Tolkien's own work as both artist and scholar alongside its medieval sources and modern parallels. Themes to be addressed include the problem of genre and the uses of tradition; the nature of history and its relationship to place; the activity of creation and its relationship to language, beauty, evil, and power; the role of monsters in imagination and criticism; the twinned challenges of death and immortality, fate and free will; and the interaction between the world of "faerie" and religious belief.

Instructor(s): R. Fulton Brown     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Students must have read "The Lord of the Rings" prior to first day of class.
Note(s): Friday discussion sections are optional. Assignments: Short and long papers.
Equivalent Course(s): MDVL 29902, RLST 22400, FNDL 24901

HIST 29908. The Bible Throughout History: From the Dead Sea Scrolls to King James. 100 Units.

While the collection of ancient texts found in modern Bibles appears fixed and is read by many people as a source of edification or theological insight, it has not always been this way. Though absent from most Bibles, there is an entire body of literature commonly known as "rewritten bible": early translations, retellings, or entirely new stories with familiar names and faces that update, retcon, or subvert their "biblical" sources. How might we understand these ancient forms of fan fiction? The class will introduce this corpus (including some of the Dead Sea Scrolls) and its sources, production, and historical contexts. We will confront significant problems in understanding religious texts: how is it that some texts become authoritative while other very similar texts do not? Who gets to retell foundational religious narratives, and within what social or political constraints? What does it mean to relate to sacred texts as artistic prompts or imperfect points of departure? Can a biblical text be rewritten for an entirely different religious tradition? We will consider similar questions for contemporary religious practice, asking: how did rewriting the Bible get started, and has it stopped?

Instructor(s): Doren Snoek     Terms Offered: Winter. Not offered 2025–26
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 20124, JWSC 20924, RLST 20124, FNDL 20124, MDVL 20124

HIST 29913. Memory Bound: Jewish Memory and the Binding of Isaac. 100 Units.

The story of the Binding of Isaac (Gen. 22:1-19) is perhaps the best known narrative in the Hebrew Bible. It may also be the least appreciated for its ongoing influence on Jewish identity and memory. We will apply social and memory theory to the Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19), and its interpretations in rabbinic literature, historical chronicles, and literature, in order to better understand the ways in which foundational narratives and cultural identities engage in a process of continuous mutual interpretation. We will also examine how technology and social media are customizing memory, and dramatically reshaping cultures and their collective memories.

Instructor(s): Aslan Cohen Mizrahi     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 28750, RLST 26622, JWSC 28750

HIST 29915. Tutorial - PIG HISTORY: East Meats West. 100 Units.

If we are what we eat, we're mostly Chinese pigs. Pigs make up the largest part of the global meat market pound for pound, and China produces and consumes about half of the world's pigs, most of which are produced with methods and technology owned by US/UK based agribusinesses. Not only does the Chinese appetite for pigs sustain the global pork industry, it also curated most of the genetic material from which today's industrial pig is formed. Pigs in China were penned as early as six to seven thousand years ago, becoming temperamentally and biologically adjusted to living in captivity, unlike their half-wild European brethren, who were loosely kept under inverse conditions of relative land abundance and labor scarcity. Crossing lean, large, and fast-growing European pigs with fat, docile, and early maturing Chinese ones enabled pigs to make it onto industrializing meat markets in the 19th century. The rest, as they say, is history. Beginning with prehistoric pigs and their multiple sites of domestication, tracing their role in industrializing Britain, colonizing the Americas, feeding soldiers and export markets, and the rise of global agribusiness, this class invites an exploration of modernity from a pig perspective.

Instructor(s): Niu Teo     Terms Offered: Autumn. Offered in Autumn 2024
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 29650

HIST 29917. Rights to the City: Latin American and the History of a Global Framework for Urban Citizenship. 100 Units.

From its origins in 20th century urban social movements and French urban theory, the "right to the city" has become one of the globe's most important urban policy frameworks, adopted by the United Nations Habitat III conference in 2016 as the paradigm most able to address urban poverty, social exclusion, human rights and sustainable development. Among world regions, Latin America has been a pioneer both in grassroots social movements for the right to the city and in developing legal frameworks that purport to support their demands. Yet few would argue that most everyday citizens across Latin America's cities have experienced this remarkable institutionalization of "rights to the city" as an effective pathway to greater levels of inclusion and justice. Why? Focusing on Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, this course explores the limits of urban law as an instrument of urban justice, exploring how and why even the most creative and deeply rooted legal frameworks have not overcome either the historical legacies of urban exclusion or the contemporary challenges of informality, globalization, criminal governance, and environmental degradation.

Instructor(s): B. Fischer     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 39917, HIST 39917, GLST 29917, CEGU 29917

HIST 10101-10102-10103. Introduction to African Civilization I-II-III.

African Civilization introduces students to African history in a three-quarter sequence. Part one considers literary, oral, and archeological sources to investigate African societies and states from the early Iron Age through the emergence of the Atlantic World. We will study the empires of Ghana and Mali, the Swahili Coast, Great Zimbabwe, and medieval Ethiopia. We will also explore the expansion of Islam, the origins and effects of European contact, and the transatlantic trade in enslaved human beings.

HIST 10800-10900. Introduction to the Civilizations of South Asia I-II.

This sequence introduces core themes in the formation of culture and society in South Asia from the early modern period until the present. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. These courses must be taken in sequence.

HIST 11701. Jewish Civilization I: Ancient Beginnings to Medieval Period. 100 Units.

Jewish Civilization I deals with antiquity through the Middle Ages. Its readings will include material from the Bible and writings from the Second Temple, Hellenistic, rabbinic, and medieval periods. All sections of this course share a common core of readings; individual instructors will supplement with other materials.

Instructor(s): Larisa Reznik     Terms Offered: Autumn Winter
Equivalent Course(s): MDVL 12000, JWSC 12000, NEHC 22010, RLST 22010

HIST 11702. Jewish Civilization II: Early Modern Period to 21st Century. 100 Units.

Jewish Civilization II begins with the early modern period and continues to the present. It includes discussions of mysticism, the works of Spinoza and Mendelssohn, the nineteenth-century reform, the Holocaust and its reflection in writers such as Primo Levi and Paul Celan, and literary pieces from postwar American Jewish and Israeli authors. All sections of this course share a common core of readings; individual instructors will supplement with other materials.

Instructor(s): Orit Bashkin Larisa Reznik     Terms Offered: Spring Winter
Equivalent Course(s): JWSC 12001, NEHC 22011, RLST 22011

HIST 12700-12800. Music in Western Civilization I-II.

This two-quarter sequence explores musical works of broad cultural significance in Western civilization. We study pieces not only from the standpoint of musical style but also through the lenses of politics, intellectual history, economics, gender, cultural studies, and so on. Readings are taken both from our music textbook and from the writings of a number of figures such as St. Benedict of Nursia and Martin Luther. In addition to lectures, students discuss important issues in the readings and participate in music listening exercises in smaller sections.

HIST 13001-13002-13003. History of European Civilization I-II-III.

Has Europe ever been civilized? This sequence, which satisfies the general education requirement in civilization studies, invites students to discuss the simultaneously creative and destructive forces inherent in centuries of European history. While resisting shallow critiques and caricatures of Europe's role in the world, students examine in depth major themes in the history of European ideas about civilization, including the interplay of faith, reason, and secularism; the individual, family, and mass society; and monarchy, revolution, and democracy. Students not only grapple with big questions and transformative ideas but also consider unique perspectives and ordinary people by reading a variety of different kinds of historical evidence. The sequence provides students with foundational skills and knowledge for the University of Chicago general education core curriculum more broadly, which owes much of its intellectual project to European ideas of knowledge and education. In keeping with the traditions of the core curriculum, students contextualize and interrogate sources in small, rigorous, and textually immersive classes. Learn to think historically! There are three parts to this sequence. Parts I and II cover the period from approximately the fall of Rome to the present and should be taken in sequence in the Autumn-Winter or Winter-Spring Quarters. The optional Part III treats specialized topics in greater depth in the Spring Quarter.

HIST 13100-13200-13300. History of Western Civilization I-II-III.

Available as a three-quarter sequence (Autumn-Winter-Spring) or as a two-quarter sequence (Autumn-Winter or Winter-Spring). This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. The purpose of this sequence is threefold: (1) to introduce students to the principles of historical thought, (2) to acquaint them with some of the more important epochs in the development of Western civilization since the sixth century BC, and (3) to assist them in discovering connections between the various epochs. The purpose of the course is not to present a general survey of Western history. Instruction consists of intensive investigation of a selection of original documents bearing on a number of separate topics, usually two or three a quarter, occasionally supplemented by the work of a modern historian. The treatment of the selected topics varies from section to section. This sequence is currently offered twice a year. The amount of material covered is the same whether the student enrolls in the Autumn-Winter-Spring sequence or the Summer sequence.

HIST 13500-13600-13700. America in World Civilization I-II-III.

The America in World Civilization sequence examines America as a contested idea and a contested place by reading and writing about a wide array of primary sources. In the process, students gain a new sense of historical awareness and of the making of America. The course is designed both for history majors and non-majors who want to deepen their understanding of the nation's history, encounter some enlightening and provocative voices from the past, and develop the analytical methods of historical thinking. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies in one of two ways. Students who take HIST 13500 (I) must also take HIST 13600 (II) and 13700 (III) to meet the general education requirement via three civilization courses. Students who take HIST 13600 (II) and 13700 (III) will meet the general education requirement via two civilization courses. While it is recommended, the courses do not need to be taken in sequence.

HIST 13900-14000-14100. Russia and Eurasia: Empires, Societies, Cultures I-II-III.

This sequence is an introduction to the histories of Russia and Eurasia between the ninth century and the present. Rather than treat Russia as a stable entity, we ask how Russia was constituted under different political formations. What political and cultural notions animated Russian expansionism and Russia’s relations with other countries and neighboring peoples? What role did violence play in the making of Russian and Soviet polities, societies, and empires? How did literature and the arts represent the social order, interact with power, and condition individual choices and identities? And how did individuals, Russian and non-Russian alike, shape their lives within, and against, social, political, and imperial structures? In pursuing these questions, we take a comparative view, locating Russia in regional and transnational contexts. We analyze a wide array of primary sources: oral legends, hagiographies, and iconic literary texts; political treatises, diplomatic missives, government decrees, and secret police reports; city plans, paintings and photographs, film, and pop and rock music. We read authors who wrote in Russian about Russia, and also about Bashkortostan, Chechnya, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Uzbekistan, and more. And we examine authors, artists, and filmmakers who spoke about themselves--and about Russia--in Georgian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, Uzbek, Armenian, Latvian, and Estonian. All readings are in English translation.

HIST 14001. Russian Short Fiction: Experiments in Form. 100 Units.

Russian literature is known for the sweeping epics that Henry James once dubbed the "loose baggy monsters." However, in addition to the famed 'doorstop novels,' the Russian literary canon also has a long tradition of innovative short fiction-of short stories and novellas that experiment with forms of storytelling and narration. This course focuses on such works, as well as the narrative strategies and formal devices that allow these short stories and novellas to be both effective and economical. Throughout the quarter, we will read short fiction from a variety of Russian authors and examine the texts that establish the tradition of Russian short fiction as well as those that push its boundaries. This course will serve as a general survey of Russian Literature, as well as a focused introduction to a particular genre in that tradition. Although predominantly discussion-based, the class will also include short lectures by the instructor to introduce students to the broader historical contexts of the course texts, and to sample diverse theoretical approaches to those texts.

Equivalent Course(s): REES 25602

HIST 15411-15412-15413. East Asian Civilization I-II-III.

A historically organized, sequential introduction to the civilization of East Asia from ancient times to the present. Two consecutive quarters of the sequence meet the College’s general education requirement in civilization studies. The focus is on the region as a whole, on understanding its formation through the use of a wide variety of texts—from canonical works of philosophy and literature to private letters and internal government documents to modern scholarship on the region—and on mastering the tools required to assess all of these sources critically. The course format includes two lectures and one discussion section per week, with discussions typically focused on intensive discussion of one or more readings.

HIST 15602-15603-15604. Ancient Empires I-II-III.

This sequence introduces three great empires of the ancient world. Each course in the sequence focuses on one empire, with attention to the similarities and differences among the empires being considered. By exploring the rich legacy of documents and monuments that these empires produced, students are introduced to ways of understanding imperialism and its cultural and societal effects—both on the imperial elites and on those they conquered. Taking these courses in sequence is not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.

HIST 15611-15612-15613. Islamicate Civilization I-II-III.

This sequence surveys the intellectual, cultural, religious, and political development of the Islamic world (Middle East and North Africa), from its origins in pre-Islamic Arabia to the late 20th century. The sequence is required for MA students in CMES and counts toward completion of the NELC major and minor. It is recommended that the course be taken in sequence.

HIST 16101-16102-16103. Introduction to Latin American Civilization I-II-III.

Taking these courses in sequence is not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. This sequence is offered every year. This course introduces the history and cultures of Latin America (e.g., Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean Islands).

HIST 16700-16800-16900. Ancient Mediterranean World I-II-III.

Available as a three-quarter sequence (HIST 16700-16800-16900) or as a two-quarter sequence (16700-16800 or 16800-16900). This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. It surveys the social, economic, and political history of Greece to the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC), the Roman Republic (509 to 27 BC), and late antiquity (27 BC to the fifth century AD).

HIST 17311. Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization I: Ancient Science and Medicine. 100 Units.

This undergraduate course represents the first quarter of the Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization general education sequence. Taking these courses in sequence is recommended but not required. This quarter will focus on science and medicine in societies across the ancient world. Students will gain an introduction to methods of healing and knowing practiced in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America before 1500. Students will also acquire an understanding of the many questions that historical research raises for our own understanding of contemporary medicine and science, and some of the methods that historians use to bring the past to light. Topics include ancient surgery and pharmacology; the manifold meanings of "disease;" the function and recognition of "the body," of "mind," and of perception; how to acquire "good" and "true" knowledge; continuity and discontinuity of beliefs and practices over time and place; and exchange of ideas and materials across cultures, among other subjects.

Instructor(s): Michael Rossi     Terms Offered: Winter. Offered in Winter 2025
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 18301

HIST 17411. Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization II: History of Medicine 1500 to 1900. 100 Units.

This course examines the theory and practice of medicine between 1500 and 1900. Topics include traditional early modern medicine; novel understandings of anatomy, physiology, and disease from the Renaissance on; and new forms of medical practice, training, and knowledge-making that developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Instructor(s): M. Rossi     Terms Offered: Spring. Course is offered in Spring 2025.
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 18401

HIST 17412. Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization II: The Scientific Revolution. 100 Units.

This course focuses on one of the most radical transformations in the history of Western thought: the so-called "Scientific Revolution." In addition to analyzing the origin and development of Copernicanism, Galilean mechanics, and Paracelsian alchemy-among other revolutionary ideas-we will examine several institutional and methodological innovations that profoundly altered how early modern Europeans investigated the natural world, including the advent of the experimental philosophy and the creation of scientific academies.

Instructor(s): Zachary Barr     Terms Offered: Winter. Offered Winter 2025
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 18402

HIST 17521-17522. Energy in World Civilizations.

This two-quarter course sequence explores the historical roots of climate change and other global environmental problems by focusing on the social use of energy over time. Part I covers energy systems across the world from prehistory to the end of the nineteenth century. Part II investigates global energy systems from the early twentieth century to the present. The courses should be taken in chronological sequence. Taken together, they fulfill the general education requirement in civilization studies.

HIST 17910. Latin America in/at Chicago. 100 Units.

This course explores the city of Chicago's Latin American and Caribbean roots by considering hemispheric connections, both in the city at large and at the University of Chicago. Students will analyze 1) the ways Latin(e/x) American actors have participated in and shaped Chicago's political economy, 2) how Latin(e/x)s on both sides of the US-Mexico border have impacted and been impacted by social thought at the University of Chicago, 3) the collection and display of Latin American material culture in several of the city's museums, and 4) Latin(e/x) American civil and human rights activism in the city. The course will move through the city chronologically as well as geographically over the long twentieth century.

Instructor(s): Schwartz-Francisco, Diana     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered irregularly in Spring as part of Chicago Studies CIV sequence "Latin America/Latinx Chicago"
Note(s): This class is part of the Chicago Studies Civilizations Core sequence "Latin America/Latinx Chicago." Classes in this sequence include weekly experiential learning activities in the city, usually on Fridays.
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 10200, ANTH 10200, LACS 10200, CHST 10200, RDIN 10200

HIST 18301-18302-18303. Colonizations I-II-III.

This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies. This three-quarter sequence approaches the concept of civilization from an emphasis on cross-cultural/societal connection and exchange. We explore the dynamics of conquest, slavery, colonialism, and their reciprocal relationships with concepts such as resistance, freedom, and independence, with an eye toward understanding their interlocking role in the making of the modern world.

HIST 20405. Ancient Empires VI: The Assyrian Empire. 100 Units.

This course will examine the concept and definition of empire and the practices of imperial control through a case study of Mesopotamia's best-known empire, the Neo-Assyrian (first half of the 1st millennium BCE). At its peak, the Assyrians ruled a vast area covering most of modern Iraq and Syria, plus parts of Iran, Turkey and the Levant, with aspirations to control Egypt. The gradual expansion of this empire from late 2nd millennium BCE beginnings and its extremely rapid collapse in ca. 612 BCE provide an excellent example of the tensions within trajectories of empire. The course themes include warfare and political strategies, identity and ethnicity, imperial bureaucracy, and the practical and ideological purposes of infrastructure building. Evidence examined will include texts (in translation) and the archaeological record at various scales, from settlements through artworks. We will also examine paradoxes, such as the contrast between textual claims of hegemony and limited archaeological evidence for this, and the power of visual propaganda versus its select audience.

Instructor(s): Augusta McMahon     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Taking these courses in sequence is not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 20016

HIST 20406. Ancient Empires VII: Sumerians and Akkadians. 100 Units.

The course introduces students to the first 'empires' in the ancient Middle East. We will study the earliest attempts under both Sumerian and Akkadian leadership at unifying the old Sumerian city states in what is today southern Iraq in the mid-third millennium BCE. Our focus will then be on the two successful empires that arose from these attempts, namely the one founded by Sargon of Akkade in ca. 2300 BCE and the one ruled by the Third Dynasty of Ur from 2092-2003 BCE. While exploring a rich variety of sources, both textual and from archaeological contexts, we will pay particular attention to understanding expansionist efforts, strategies of empire building, the establishment of a centralized state bureaucracy, ideologies of kingship, ethnicity and identity, as well as rebellions against the new political system and theories about why these early empires began to crumble after only a few generations. Since these new forms of dominion were tested and developed for the first time in this formative period and kings of these dynasties acquired a special status in Mesopotamian cultural memory, this course provides a solid base for understanding the later development of ancient Middle Eastern history but can also be studied for the sake of understanding early empire formation.

Instructor(s): Jana Matuszak     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Taking these courses in sequence is not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 20017

HIST 25610. Islamic Thought and Literature I. 100 Units.

In the first quarter of Islamic Thought and Literature, students will explore the intellectual and cultural history of the Islamic world in its various political and social contexts. Chronologically, the course begins with emergence of Islam in the 7th century CE and continues through the Mongol conquests until the rise of the "gunpowder empires" circa 1500. Students will leave the course with a historical and geographical framework for understanding the history of the Middle East and a familiarity with the major forms of premodern Islamic cultural production (e.g., history-writing, scriptural exegesis, poetry, philosophy, jurisprudence, etc.). Students will also develop the skills and contextual knowledge necessary for analyzing these sources in English translation; they will thus come to appreciate premodern Islamic cultural products on their own terms while engaging in the collective work of historical interpretation. No prior background in the subject is required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.

Instructor(s): O’Malley, Austin , Jack Buredn     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): MDVL 20601, NEHC 20601, RLST 20401, SOSC 22000

HIST 25611. Iran: Religion and Empire in Late Antiquity. 100 Units.

This course examines the emergence and evolution of the Iranian Empire in late antiquity, the most enduring territorially extensive political system in ancient Near Eastern history. Its name, Ērānšahr, signaled the centrality of Zoroastrianism to its conception and organization. The seminar will therefore focus on the role of the religion, as a complex of ideas and institutions, in the shaping of Iran's society, culture, political economy, and imperial infrastructure. In so doing, students will gain familiarity with the range of available literary, documentary, and archæological sources.

Instructor(s): R. Payne
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 20721, HIST 35611, NEHC 30721

HIST 25616. Islamic Thought & Lit III - Education, Students and Protests in the modern MENA. 100 Units.

In the modern MENA, universities, schools and campuses were important arenas of intellectual life, political formations, and democratic, anticolonial and feminist struggles. In these educational venues, professors and teachers encouraged debates about Islam as a faith, a civilization, and a culture. This class will thus follow the history of MENA educational institutions, like the Syrian Protestant College (later the American University of Beirut), and the ways in which they shaped ideas about Enlightenment, science and modernity. We will likewise explore the careers and writings of teachers, pedagogues and theoreticians of education, like Butrus al-Bustani, Khalil al-Sakakini, Mary Ajami, Sati al-Husri, Taha Hussein, and Ghassan Kanafani. In tandem, we will look at students' activism in the Middle East. Some of the case studies we will examine include: students in the Levant who defended a professor persecuted for his support of Darwinism in 1882; anticolonial student activism in Egypt in 1919; students' demonstrations against the British and French mandates and the spread of Zionism, which took place in Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Damascus during the interwar period; campus activism of nationalists, communists, and Muslim Brothers in the 1940s and 1950s and the radicalization of universities and schools following the Nakba and global processes of decolonization; and education in Palestinian refurefugee camps and Israeli transit camps.

Instructor(s): Orit Bashkin     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 20603, SOSC 22200, RLST 20403

HIST 25704. Islamic History and Society I: The Rise of Islam and the Caliphate. 100 Units.

This course covers the period from ca. 600 to 1100, including the rise and spread of Islam, the Islamic empire under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs, and the emergence of regional Islamic states from Afghanistan and eastern Iran to North Africa and Spain.

Instructor(s): Ahmed El Shamsy     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ISLM 30500, RLST 20501, HIST 35704, MDVL 20501, NEHC 30501, NEHC 20501, SOSC 20501, CMES 30501