Fall 2025 Courses
Herrán Ávila | | TR 1230-1345 | | CRN 80124
HIST 500-002: T: Cold War in Latin America
This course provides a critical perspective on how Latin Americans experienced the transformations and polarizations of the Cold War period. We assess the role of the United States in these histories but we give primacy to the agency of Latin American actors, and we situate the local and broader global contexts that shaped Cold War conflicts in the region. The course uses primary and secondary sources to get a grasp of different perspectives, and interrogates the extent to which the Cold War still informs much of the region’s present.
Davis-Secord | | TR 0930-1045 | | CRN 80111
HIST 503-001: Early Middle Ages
In 476 the last western Roman emperor was deposed, but the transition from the world of the Roman Empire to that of the early Middle Ages had already begun. During these centuries, Europe and the Mediterranean world were fundamentally transformed by the breakdown of the structures of the Roman Empire and by the rise of new and distinctive cultures in Latin Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic world. Rather than being a time of darkness or decay, the early medieval period was one of vibrancy and the growth of new institutions, cultures, and religious traditions. This course will follow the birth and development of the three cultures of Europe, Byzantium, and Islam from the late-Roman period through the year 1000. Topics will include the spread of institutional Christianity from Constantine to the early medieval papacy, the rise of the Franks and the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire, and the development of characteristically “medieval” forms of social and political organization, religion, art, and architecture in Europe. We will also highlight the transformation of the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople into medieval Byzantium, and the relationship between the West and the East of Christendom. The course will also cover the birth and spread of Islam and the society and culture of the first two Sunni dynasties, the rise of a rival Sunni caliphate in Iberia, and the foundation of a Shi’ite state based in Cairo. Questions we will consider include those of how to define the “Middle Ages,” the utility of this definition for our understanding of history, continuity versus discontinuity between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the relationships between these three “heirs of Rome,” and how medieval European civilization related to the societies on its borders.
Sanabria | | MWF 1000-1050 | | CRN 80136
HIST 512-001: History of Fascism
Fascism, or rather the misuse and misunderstanding of Fascism, has been bandied about recently as part of the discursive arsenal of the American Right toward the American Left and current Presidential administration. This course will take this unfortunate development as a point of departure for a deep semester-long exploration of the theory, origins, and tangible manifestations of European fascism and fascistic dictatorships in the twentieth century. We will certainly delve into the history of the two most famous fascist regimes (Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany), but also explore (possibly French?) origins of fascism, the social and cultural ramifications of living under a fascist regime, especially for women, and the long-lived fascistic dictatorships of General Francisco Franco in Spain and Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal. It is hoped that students, once steeped in a strong understanding of the acute interwar crisis in Europe, will have a strong appreciation of and better definition of fascism than many of our contemporaneous pundits. A midterm, a final, a number of short response papers, and two six to eight page essays, as well as active participation shall be the basis of evaluation.
Ryan | | TR 1230-1345 | | CRN 80134
HIST 518-001: Spain & Portugal to 1700
“Spain is different” was the slogan used by the caudillo Francisco Franco to encourage tourism to Spain in the 1970s, as the country had been effectively isolated by the international community due to Franco’s fascist rule. The slogan was designed to evoke the “exotic” qualities of Spain and its history. Of course, this elided the historical nuances of centuries’ worth of encounter and exchange among the many peoples--particularly Christian, Jews, and Muslims--who called the peninsula home in the premodern past. In this class, we’ll study the history of Spain and Portugal until roughly the end of the 17th century. Among some of the many themes investigated will be the waves of settlers of the peninsula, the formation of the Iberian kingdoms, social and cultural exchanges among Christians, Jews, and Muslims, and cultural and intellectual innovations.
Richardson | | MWF 1200-1250 | | CRN 80132
HIST 594-001: Teaching & Debating History
How should we teach History? In an age of declining History enrollments at colleges and universities, disinvestment in History education at the K-12 level, and a widespread disrespect for historical knowledge, this question matters more than ever. In this course, graduate and undergraduates will work together to study the most hotly contested debates, the best practices, and the most exciting innovations in history teaching.
Graham | | TR 1400-1515 | | CRN 80121
HIST 595-002: Medieval Masterpieces
In this class we will examine in detail some of the greatest masterpieces created during the European Middle Ages, focusing on about a dozen of the most celebrated cultural products made between 700 and 1500 CE. These items span history, literature, art, architecture, and manuscript production. We will also investigate the specific techniques used by medieval craftsmen as they made handwritten books, painted frescoes, set mosaics in place, and constructed huge buildings like the great medieval cathedrals. We will typically spend two classes on each masterpiece discussed, with the first class of each pair dedicated to an in-depth lecture on the specific work and the second class centered upon student responses: students will identify and discuss the work’s key features and will produce brief in-class written evaluations of the work. Each student will also select one work on which to write a detailed research paper, to be submitted at the end of the semester; students will develop this research project in consultation with the instructor. Specific items covered in the course will include (among others): the Book of Kells, a masterpiece of Celtic manuscript art from around the year 800; the Bayeux Tapestry, which is the greatest work of medieval textile art, depicting the Battle of Hastings in 1066; the mosaics of Norman Sicily, which attest to the cultural diversity of Sicily while under Norman rule in the twelfth century; the architecture, sculpture, and stained glass of Chartres Cathedral, perhaps the most spiritual of the great Gothic cathedrals; the mystical writings of Hildegard of Bingen, which include remarkable depictions of the visions she experienced throughout her life; Magna Carta, the most important medieval constitutional document, issued by King John of England in 1215; Dante’s Divine Comedy, the greatest literary work of the Middle Ages, which describes Dante’s visit to the three realms of the afterlife, Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise; and Giotto’s cycle of frescoes depicting the life of St. Francis of Assisi, from his renunciation of the material world to his receiving the stigmata. The central goal of the course is to provide students with a deep immersion in the richest cultural accomplishments of the Middle Ages while situating each item within its deep historical context.
Massoth | | TR 0930-1045 | | CRN 80129
HIST 596-002: History of US Women to 1920
This course offers a broad overview of the history of women in North America from 1700 to the 1920s. As 2020 is the 100-year anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment in the United States, we are going to use this as an opportunity to do a close reading on the history of women’s suffrage from the pre-colonial period until the Nineteenth Amendment. While focusing on the larger history of women in North America, the course will supplement each historical era under discussion with a microhistory of women’s political clamoring for suffrage during that period. A special emphasis will be placed on the experience of women in the North American West across the intersections of class, ethnicity, and race. This course will use the lenses of intersectionality, citizenship, and feminism to explore the history of women, gender politics, and women’s activism in the United States. We will focus on how women’s historical experiences challenge our understanding of the traditional narrative of women’s suffrage, the vote, and citizenship in the larger narrative of U.S. history. The course will encourage students to come to terms with the different meanings of women’s subordination, agency, and resistance across the range and at the intersections of their ethnic, racial, class, and regional experiences. We will critically analyze the history of how women understood their place in society, how they defined citizenship, how the nation understood women’s citizenship and place in society, and how these concepts changed over time and status. By the end of the semester, students will be able to engage critically with the categories of gender and race as historical and cultural constructions and will understand how women grappled with the competing definitions of citizenship, activism, and feminism from ~1700 to 1920. This upper level division course is crosslisted with Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (CRN 81168)
Withycombe | | MW 1100-1215 | | CRN 81223
HIST 596-003: Madness in America
This course will explore the medical and social understandings of madness from the eighteenth century to the present, with a primary focus on the United States. Nearly 1 in 5 American adults live with a mental illness, yet mental illness remains one of the most stigmatized and underfunded medical conditions. This class will explore the historical circumstances that have led to the development of current issues in mental health. As a research seminar, students will complete a number of small research projects that will act as stepping stones to a final research paper based on primary sources.
Gauderman | | TR 1100-1215 | | CRN 80116
HIST 597-001: Early Mexico
The history of early Mexico, or New Spain, witnessed the painful transformation from sophisticated Indigenous civilizations to a complex multi-racial society. In the thirteenth century, when the Mexica migrated to Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico, the region was dominated by Nahua altepetls (city states). By the sixteenth century, when Spaniards invaded the region, the Mexica dominated from their island metropolis, Tenochtitlan, which was one of the largest cities in the world with a population of over 200,000 inhabitants. The fall of Tenochtitlan was hard fought and did not guarantee Spanish control over the region. Indigenous political, economic, and social institutions and practices continued to determine many aspects of life in early Mexico. This course provides an introduction to the Indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica and examines Mexico’s political, economic, and social development up to Mexican Independence from Spain in 1821. Special attention will be given to the social and cultural interaction between early Mexico’s Indigenous, European, and African populations. Students will read, analyze, and discuss translated documents produced by Indigenous peoples and Spaniards, as well as other primary and secondary sources to understand the political and social roles that race, gender and social status have played in Mexico.
Herrán Ávila | | TR 0930-1045 | | CRN 80123
HIST 597-002: 20th Century Mexico
This course explores the political and social history of 20th century Mexico, from the turmoil of the 1910 revolution to the era of neoliberalism. We pay particular attention to roots of social discontent and the questions of equality and democracy. We look at the winding process of consolidation and decline of the post-revolutionary state, and the mobilization of workers, peasants, students, guerrilla organizations, intellectuals, women, indigenous peoples, and the urban middle class. By examining these histories of dissent, protest, and rebellion, the course provides a critical take on the creation, exertion, and contestation of power in Mexico and a historical perspective on the lasting legacies of its seemingly “unfinished” revolution.
Truett | | MWF 1300-1350 | | CRN 77357
HIST 644-001: US-Mexico Borderlands
In this class, we will explore the histories of the American Southwest and Mexican North from a transnational perspective. We will start by examining the colonial legacy of the American Southwest and Mexican North, when both regions were part of New Spain’s far northern frontier. We will then explore how this frontier was transformed into a borderlands between nations—a place divided by national boundaries, and connected by transnational pathways of migration, culture, and economic development. Discussions will move chronologically through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but will take thematic detours to examine such issues as imperialism and exploration, Apache Indians and “bandits,” the romantic Southwest, popular rebellions, mining and other forms of capitalist development, immigration, labor conflicts, Yaqui Indians and their resistance to Mexican and American conquest, the Mexican Revolution, the rise of a new multicultural borderlands in the twentieth century, and the future of the borderlands in a new global age.
Gauderman | | TR 1400-1515 | | CRN 80118
HIST 653-001: Indigenous Latin America
This course focuses on Indigenous peoples in the early and modern periods of Latin America, including the mobilizations, activism, and challenges that Indigenous peoples engage in today. Before 1492, there were no" Indians" in America. Columbus’ notorious expedition brought not only Europeans to America it also brought the “Indian.” Disparate native peoples, with different cultures and languages, living in roaming bands and empires, located on islands, in mountains, deserts, and tropical forests would all, after 1492, be called "Indians." The origin of the “Indian” lies in this infamous crossing of the Atlantic by Europeans. For Indigenous groups and individuals, however, crossing between ethnic identities would not cease; for some it would even be a daily occurrence. In this course, we will examine how Indigenous and non-Indigenous (including people of European and African descendance) understood, maintained, and dismantled ethnic identities from pre-Hispanic to modern times in Latin America. We will begin by looking at Indigenous societies before the Spanish invasion and then explore the political, economic, and social strategies of Indigenous peoples during the colonial and modern eras. We will consider how Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples used ethnic categories to construct power and authority. The central idea of the course is that ethnic identities are interconnected with gender and class and that we therefore have to move away from essentialist approaches and ask how and why, at a certain time and place, a particular group chooses to define itself, or is defined by others, in terms of ethnicity, gender or class.
Leong | | T 1300-1530 | | CRN 27712
HIST 664-001: Advanced Historiography
This course will analyze how historians have researched, interpreted, and communicated historical knowledge for contemporary audiences, and what is at stake in these different approaches. We will explore theories and ethical debates about the production of historical knowledge, how narratives have been constructed and challenged, and how different categories of analysis within the discipline have changed or developed over time. We will discuss how to identify, critique, and engage with various approaches of professional historians within the discipline, while also reflecting upon the ways that some scholars in the 20th century have pushed against normative boundaries of historical knowledge and subsequently have challenged the field in significant ways.
Bieber | | W 1600-1830 | | CRN 77375
HIST 666-001: Sem: Slavery & Race Relations in Americas
This course examines the development of the historiography of slavery since the early 20th century. We will examine literature primarily on slavery in the US and Brazil, with somewhat lesser coverage of the Caribbean. Comparative study enables us to identify core concepts and regional nuances among diverse slave societies. It also allows us to grapple with how historical narratives of race and slavery relate to emerging national identities in the Americas. This course fulfills distribution requirements for the Race and Ethnicity thematic field as well as the regional fields in US history and Latin American history. Graduate students from disciplines outside of the Department of History are welcome.
Smith | | W 1300-1530 | | CRN 77376
HIST 678-001: Sem: Politics, Society, & Capitalism
This graduate seminar focuses on the political and social history of the United States, ranging from the late nineteenth century to the present. Readings will address the revival of interest in political economy, politics, and the history of capitalism. We will investigate scholarly work on populism, conservatism, liberalism, neoliberalism, and the relationship between gender, race, and citizenship. The course is particularly designed to help students who need to prepare for the MA or PhD exams and those who want to develop possible research topics dealing with the twentieth-century United States. By the end of the semester, students will be able to draw on a deeper knowledge of recent and classic scholarship to offer their own interpretations of important aspects of modern U.S. history.
Ball | | T 1600-1830 | | CRN 80108
HIST 679-001: Sem: US Military History
This reading seminar centers the history of war, warfare, and battle in five principal eras of U.S. history: American Revolution, Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam War. All federal arms—army, navy, marines, and air force—will have their day at the seminar table in the appropriate conflict. Nations and societies create armed forces to advance and defend their territorial and political interests against those of their rivals and enemies. (The United States is no different.) Waging war is a means to those ends when political compromise fails to satisfactorily maintain the status quo or diplomatic negotiation fails to establish a mutually acceptable new order. Armed forces execute the tactical destruction, human and material, to fulfill the strategic plan of civilian and military leaders. This seminar ventures inside the destructive power and lethal process of war. Soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen and -women are professionals in violence. War turns reality upside down. For all intents and purposes, war is legal homicide, at the least in the eye of the belligerents, especially the aggressor. Training servicemen and -women to take lives—an unnatural act for most—in battle and persevering under the stress of combat requires a great deal of ideological preparation and psychological conditioning. In most U.S. wars, that education or learning has occurred only near or on the battlefield. This seminar investigates the destroyers and the destroyed in the environment of war and on the field of battle. The readings (books and articles) will explore the mobilization and training of, the arming, deployment, and maneuver of, the combat and killing by, and the demobilization of U.S. armed forces in five major wars. Students will read about and discuss warfare through critical lenses of race, class, and gender; politics, economics, and technology; and society, culture, and the environment. The seminar leader expects all graduate students to read weekly assignments of books and articles and be prepared to discuss them in class. In addition, seminarians will write a series of critical essays on the history of warfare in the United States.
Monahan | | M 1600-1830 | Hybrid | CRN 81513
HIST 685-001: Sem: Eurasian Borderlands
08/18/25-10/11/25 In person. 10/13/25-12/13/25 Zoom. Borderlands a capacious framework in historical inquiry. This course examines various approaches to borderlands in the pre-modern world. We will examine various fundamental questions related to borderlands, gaining exposure to various geographies and approaches. How and when did borderlands supplant frontiers as a conceptual framework? We will pay attention to the processes of making and mapping borders in the pre-modern world, considering the implications of such political actions and cultural developments for understanding borderlands themselves. The reading is designed to expose you to a great deal of history about major polities of across a chronology ranging several centuries. We will read longue durée and monographic studies that challenge us to discern interpretations and methodologies (some contested) at various scales, from the micro- to the transimperial to the global. We will devote significant attention to Ukraine as a borderland amidst early modern empires. We will read scholarly and popular histories and reflect on these different genres You will also gain a sense of historiographical trends and various approaches to understanding the history of this space. You will not emerge experts, but, having completed this reading, you will have significantly more content knowledge and a more robust conceptual perspective on borderlands as an object of historical study.
Florvil | | R 1600-1830 | | CRN 79346
HIST 692-001: Sem: Transnational Gender & Race
From slavery in Barbados to ‘coolie’ workers in the Caribbean and from the emergence of global trans identity and white innocence in the Netherlands, the course will trace the evolving concepts of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality across different temporal, geographic, and affective boundaries. It will focus on the construction and normalization of racial and sexual identities, the experiences of women and men, the shifting racial and sexual attitudes and practices, the formation of raced, gendered, and sexed spaces, the redefinition of womanhood and manhood, the transformations of the family and marriage, the development of racial and sexual politics and activism, the hegemony of colonialism, and many other themes. We will examine how women, men, and trans communities often challenged, reaffirmed, and transformed ideas about race and gender and how these acts and practices often intersected with the concepts of class, space, nation, and empire. In doing so, we will learn about the different meanings of race and gender and how they matter and mattered in the modern world.
