Fall 2026
HIS 202H Race, Nature, & Conquest in North America--Taught by Dr. Louis Warren
This course will explore major themes in the history and historiography of the field of US environmental history from the field’s origins in the late twentieth century through some of the most recent works to appear in the last few years. The class will consider how the field’s early insights into how Americans thought about and transformed the environment and were in turn shaped by it have evolved over time. A provisional list of topics includes class, race, gender and sexuality, Indigenous history, Black ecologies, conquest and settler colonialism, environmental justice.
This intensive reading course provides graduate students with an in-depth exploration of the historiography of Latin America in the twentieth century. The course covers a range of topics, including state formation and the influence of mass politics and populism, the Cuban and Central American revolutions, the military dictatorships and democratic transitions in the Southern Cone, and the social, economic, and cultural consequences of neoliberalism.
Winter 2027
Spring 2027
Fall 2025
HIS 202H: Readings in Twentieth-Century U.S. History, 4 units, Tsu, Cecilia
This seminar provides an introduction to the historiography of the United States in the twentieth century, focusing on the theme of state and society in modern America. We will cover social, economic, cultural, and political changes related to the growth and transformation of the American state over the twentieth century, primarily on the domestic front but also involving the nation’s expansion abroad. Topics include: labor, immigration, racial formation, the role of government, reform and social movements, foreign policy, gender and sexuality, suburbanization, and deindustrialization. This course is designed for students interested in preparing for comprehensive examinations and researching or teaching modern U.S. history.
HIS 202I: Major Issues in Historical Interpretation: Latin America - Pérez Meléndez, Juan
"The World of the Haitian Revolution: From the Rise of Saint-Domingue to Post-Independent State(s)"
The French domain of Saint-Domingue became one of the most munificent colonies in the world in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Under a brutal regime of enslavement that co-existed with a growing free or freed interracial population known as the gens de couleur, Saint-Domingue’s sugar reigned supreme. Its production sped ahead other colonial commodities produced in neighboring islands, much to the benefit of the French monarchy’s and its aristocracy’s coffers and taste buds. But Saint-Domingue’s economic rise came aground with the convergence of French revolutionary dilemmas and an insurrection among the enslaved started in 1791. This seminar will examine the build-up to that moment, the revolutionary period itself, and the fallout of the Haitian Revolution amid the state-building efforts that followed. Surveying the recent literature on the subject, the seminar will analyze the Haitian Revolution globally and through multiple lenses as the product of eighteenth-century economic developments; as a fundamental counterpoint to the French Revolution as much as an index of political changes in West Africa; and as a multivalent point reference for slaveholding elites across the Americas in the nineteenth century and Black internationalisms in the twentieth.
Winter 2026
HIS 201I - Sources & General Literature of History: Latin America Since 1810 (4 units)
Topic: Early Colonial America, Professor Andrés Reséndez
M 3:10 pm-6:00 pm, SSH Rm 4202
Course Description: This seminar will survey some of the key works of the early colonial period in the American continent (circa sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), focusing on selected topics such as conquest, African and Native slaveries, race, gender, extractive economies, the environment, colonial power and defiance, etc. While this early chronology will necessarily privilege the Spanish and Portuguese experiences, we will also consider the activities of England and France in the continent.
HIS 201Q — Sources & General Literature of History: Cross-Cultural Women's History (4 units)
Topic: Marriage and Sex in the United States and the World, Professor Traci Parker
This graduate seminar examines the history of marriage, sexuality, and intimate life in the twentieth century through comparative and transnational perspectives. Focusing on the United States within a global context, the course explores how race, class, gender, religion, and empire have influenced marriage and sexual practices, and vice versa. Topics include the regulation of sexuality and reproduction; colonial and postcolonial constructions of family; transnational marriages and migration; feminism and the sexual revolution; state control over intimacy; and the politics of love, labor, and citizenship. Readings incorporate social, cultural, and legal histories, as well as feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories, to explore how marriage and sex have served as tools of governance, resistance, and nation-building.
HIS 201S — Sources & General Literature of History: History of Science & Medicine (4 units)
Topic: SCIENCE & EMPIRE, 1500–1900, Professor Daniel Stolzenberg
This class surveys the intertwined histories of sciences and empires from the age of Columbus to the apogee of European colonialism at the turn of the twentieth century. Reading a combination of secondary and primary sources, we will investigate how empires shaped the development of scientific disciplines; how scientific knowledge and expertise served imperial projects; and how indigenous knowledge contributed to colonial science. The scientific dimension of European imperialism will be a major theme, including the ideological function that the idea of “modern science” played in forming European/Western identity and justifying colonialism. At the same time, we will consider recent studies of science in non-Western imperial contexts, such as the Ottoman Empire, China, and Japan.
Spring 2026
HIS 202H — "The U.S. and Latin America in the Long 19thcentury"(4 units): St. John, Rachel
This graduate reading seminar will focus on the intertwined histories of the United States and Latin America and the varied methods historians have used in telling these stories together. Course readings will focus on a series of critical themes in the histories of both fields and explore how historians have better understood them through comparative, transnational, borderlands, and diasporic approaches. Course themes include: nation-formation; nationalism; liberalism; republicanism; slavery; emancipation; indigeneity; race; capitalism; empire; politics; diplomacy; and resistance.