Expanded Course Descriptions

The Department of History scheduled these undergraduate courses for SPRING QUARTER 2023. This list and descriptions are subject to change, so please check back often.

Registration appointment times available on Schedule Builder and myucdavis.

 

  • Lower Division
  • HIS 4B: History of Western Civilization (Europe) - Professor Stuart
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s).     History of western civilization from the Renaissance to the 18th century.
    Description: We study European history from the late Middle Ages to the French Revolution. We begin with the “Black Death,” an outbreak of the bubonic plague that killed about one third of the European populace within three years. The plague inspired collective religious rites, pogroms against Jews and lepers who were blamed for the disease, as well as new art forms such as the “dance of death.” The mass mortality caused an acute labor shortage, inaugurating what has been called “the golden age of the wage earner,” and a new era of economic growth during the early Renaissance.  We’ll spend some time in Renaissance Florence, the place to be in Europe, ca. 1400-1450. We study the information revolution brought about by the new technology of the printing press. Martin Luther, the religious reformer, described the printing press as a gift from God.  When Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation by protesting what he saw as abuses by the Medieval Catholic Church, he brought about a religious revolution that he could not control, leading to social upheavals and the breakup of Christendom and the development of distinct religious cultures in Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist Europe.  The early modern centuries are a time of paradox. At the same time that scientists were making cutting-edge discoveries in astronomy, anatomy and physics (in a movement commonly known as the “scientific revolution”); merchant capitalists, explorers and monarchs were staking out new colonial and commercial empires, enslaving indigenous peoples and developing the slave trade; learned jurists trained in Roman law were putting old women on trial as witches and burning them at the stake by the thousands.  By the later seventeenth century, after a century of religious war, a new idea emerged: the idea of religious toleration. We’ll study how this, and other radical ideas developed in the eighteenth century, the era of the Enlightenment, and contributed to the emergence of the modern world. 

    Readings: 
     - Voltaire, Candide 
     - Brucker, Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence 
     - Brown, Immodest Acts  
     - Wunderli, Peasant Fires 
     - Machiavelli, The Prince  
     - McKay, A History of Western Society: From Renaissance to 1815 

    HIS 4C: History of Western Civilization (Europe) - Professor Zientek
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s).     Development of Western Civilization from the 18th century to the present.
    Description: This course is a survey of modern western history from the 1776 to the present. It is designed around a series of ten case studies: the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Peterloo Massacre, the unification of Germany, the Belgian Congo, women’s suffrage in New Zealand, the First World War, the Holocaust, the Convention for the Prevention of Genocide, and the Srebrenica genocide. Themes include: theories of representative government; political mass violence; industrialization, capitalism, and socialism; nationalism; imperialism; the spread of human rights; fascism and communism; and the creation of the post-war liberal world system. While the focus is on Europe, some course content will examine North America, Oceania, and the British and French empires. 
    Readings include: 
     - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations 
     - Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto 
     - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness 
     - Slavenka Draculic, S.: A Novel of the Balkans 

    HIS 6: Introduction to the Middle East (Middle East) - Professor Anooshahr
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s).     Survey of the major social, economic, political and cultural transformations in the Middle East from the rise of Islam (c.600A.D.) to the present, emphasizing themes in religion and culture, politics and society.
    Description: This is a introductory survey of Middle East History from the 7th century to the present. We will focus on broad political, social, economic, and religious patterns. Important transitional points and change over time will be emphasized.  

    HIS 7C: History of Latin America 1900-present (Latin America) - STAFF
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s). Latin America since the beginning of the 20th century. Themes include export economies, oligarchic rule, crises of depression and war, corporatism, populism, revolution and reform movements, cultural and ethnic issues, U.S.-Latin American relations, neo-liberal restructuring.
    Description: 

    HIS 10C: World History III (World) - Professor Dickinson
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s).     Major topics from world history of the 19th and 20th centuries, emphasizing the rise and fall of Western colonial empires; Cold War and the superpowers; the spread of the nation-states; and process of globalization.
    Description: 

    HIS 13: Global Sexualities (World) - Professor Decker
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s).     Global history of sexualities, including comparative study of gender, marriage, and fertility before 1800, followed by the modern history of sexualities worldwide as it intersects with imperialism, race, population control, law, and globalization.
    Description: This course offers a survey of the global history of sexualities. We will investigate the theoretical concepts and constructs related to sex, sexuality, gender, marriage, and reproduction. We will also delve into case studies on global sexualities as they intersect with the histories of slavery, imperialism, race, population control, law, and globalization. 
    Readings:
     - Required: Buffington, Luibhéid, and Guy, eds., A Global History of Sexuality: The Modern Era (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014).
     - Optional: Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History Ninth Edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017)
     - All other readings available on Canvas.

    HIS 15B: Africa Today (Africa)- STAFF
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s).     Survey of major themes in colonial and postcolonial sub-Saharan African history, including colonialism, decolonization, nationalism and politics, economic history and labor, urbanization, popular culture, gender, marriage, and family life.
    Description: 

    HIS 17A: History of the United States (United States)- Professor Smolenski
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s). The experience of the American people from the Colonial Era to the Civil War.
    Description: This course covers American history from the Euro-American Encounter in 1492 through the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. It examines not only the political master-narrative, but also the social, cultural, and intellectual history of the emerging American nation, and includes the experience of Native Americans, Women and African-Americans, among other groups.
    Readings:
     - Murrin. Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People vol. 1 to 1877
     - Hollitz. Contending Voices, vol. 1  
     - Klepp. The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley 
     - Hinks. David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World 

    HIS 17B: History of the United States (United States) - STAFF
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s).     The experience of the American people from the Civil War to the end of the Cold War.
    Description: 

    HIS 72B: Women & Gender in America, 1865-Present (United States) - STAFF
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s).  History of women and gender in America since 1865, emphasizing intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Covers emancipation, migration, immigration, war, media, same-sex and opposite-sex relationships, and the birth control, suffrage, labor, civil rights, feminist, and anti-feminist movements.
    Description: 

  • Undergraduate Seminars
  • HIS 102D:  Modern Europe to 1815 (Europe) - Professor Harris
    Seminar—3 hour(s); Term Paper.     Limited enrollment. Designed primarily for history majors. Intensive reading, discussion, research, and writing in selected topics in the various fields of history. Modern Europe to 1815. May be repeated for credit.
    Topic: Thinking with Monsters: Monsters and the Monstrous in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century European Culture
    Description:     Monsters are good to think with. We tell ourselves stories about zombies, space aliens, and Bigfoot as a way of working through our societal values and anxieties and interrogating the fundamental categories through which we make sense of the world. But the monster stories we tell are not always the same in all times and places – they are historically contingent, changing over time and variable across different cultures and societies. This course examines the monsters imagined by the women and men of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe--the stories of Amazons, giants, cannibals, deformed infants, strange animals, and more--as a way of cracking open early modern European culture to understand it from the inside out. Our readings range from primary sources to recent scholarship. Assignments will include weekly reader response papers as well as a series of short writing assignments, including a primary source analysis and an annotated bibliography, culminating in a term paper that explores aspects of the course topic and questions via a close analysis of an assigned primary source. 

    Sample readings (full list under development): 
     - Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture (Minneapolis, 1996). 
     - John Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, trans. C.W.R.D. Moseley (New York, 2005). 
     - R. Po-chia Hsia, Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (New Haven, 1992). 
     - Surekha Davies, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters (Cambridge, 2017). 
     - Karen Harvey, The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder: Mary Toft and Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 2020). 
    - Jay M. Smith, Monsters of the Gévaudan the Making of a Beast (Cambridge, Mass, 2011). 

    Content warning: Historical inquiry often requires us to confront and to engage with topics, beliefs, language, and images that, while acceptable and even common in their day, are offensive today. Our examination of monsters and the monstrous in medieval and early modern European culture will necessarily require us to interact frequently with controversial ideas and materials that are violent in their racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, and more. Our readings (especially our primary source readings), videos, and other materials may use offensive language and/or take positions that are offensive. They may also involve engaging with potentially sensitive topics such as child abuse, animal cruelty, pregnancy and childbirth, and others. I have chosen these materials because they offer a window into the past and are thus particularly relevant to our course’s focus. I will do my best to flag especially graphic or intense content and to make our classroom a space where we can engage thoughtfully and empathetically with difficult content. If you have particular concerns about topics, readings, or assignments, please see me or send me an email. 

    Questions? Contact the instructor at akharris@ucdavis.edu 

    HIS 102D:  Modern Europe to 1815 (Europe) - Professor Stuart
    Seminar—3 hour(s); Term Paper.     Limited enrollment. Designed primarily for history majors. Intensive reading, discussion, research, and writing in selected topics in the various fields of history. Modern Europe to 1815. May be repeated for credit.
    Topic: The Devil Within: Demonic Possession in the Christian West
    Description: We study the history of demonic possession and exorcism in the Christian West from antiquity through the present. Demoniacs, i.e. demonically possessed people, featured in the bible. They provided object lessons of Jesus performing miracles as he exorcised them, as proof of his divinity. The peak period of demonic possession was in the 16th and 17th centuries, however, during the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. Catholics and Protestants both experienced demonic possession, but responded differently. Catholics performed exorcism as religious ritual, but most Protestant churches condemned exorcisms as idolatrous and without biblical foundation, leaving their members defenseless in the face of demonic assault. Catholic and Protestant authorities faced the difficult task of distinguishing between demoniacs and witches. Demoniacs were understood as Satan’s victims, involuntarily taken over by the devil, while witches were seen as Satan’s willing accomplices. Demoniacs received religious support, while witches were subject to criminal prosecution, usually resulting in their execution. Many devout Catholics and Protestants experienced what they believed were divine revelations and religious ecstasy, but authorities feared that they were really deluded by Satan, the “father of lies.” The Catholic Inquisition and Protestant ministers, medical doctors, and criminal prosecutors struggled to distinguish between potential saints or demoniacs, the mentally ill, or criminally fraudsters. The modern discipline of forensic psychiatry developed in response to the European witch-hunt and the seventeenth-century crisis of demonic possession. By the eighteenth century, the medical explanation became dominant. Even in the modern era, however, various religious communities continue to experience demonic possession as real, and representations of demonic possession are prominent in popular culture, in films such as “The Devils” (1971) and “The Exorcist” (1973). We explore these experiences in seminar discussions of common readings, and by analyzing representations in early modern art, and in modern cinema.

    HIS 102J: Latin America Since 1810 (Latin America) - Professor Walker
    Seminar—3 hour(s); Term Paper.     Limited enrollment. Designed primarily for history majors. Intensive reading, discussion, research, and writing in selected topics in the various fields of history. Latin America since 1810.
    Topic: Comics and Graphic History
    Description:     This course will examine comics and graphic novels or histories as a way to write and read about history. We will begin by reviewing a few historical graphic novels, including Spiegelman's Maus and a couple from the Oxford University Press's Graphic History Series https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/g/graphic-history-series-ghs/?cc=us&lang=en&. Students will then select a graphic history to present, commenting on style, content, illustrations, limitations and more. For their final project, students will script a comic (no art skills required!). You will essentially outline a graphic history, the narrative and what you have in mind in terms of illustrations. This will be a story you would like to tell, historical or contemporary. The more artistically gifted might include some drawings or some might take images from the internet. I will share my experiences in creating Witness to the Age of Revolution: The Odyssey of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru. 
    This is a new course, and the syllabus is under construction. There will be no exams, but students are expected to participate in every meeting. The grade will be based on:

     - Participation                           25%
     - Paragraph summaries            15%
     - Final paper                             60%

    HIS 102X: Comparative History (World) - Professor El Shakry
    Seminar—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Limited enrollment. Designed primarily for history majors. Intensive reading, discussion, research, and writing in selected topics in the various fields of history. Comparative History, selected topics in cultural, political, economic, and social history that deal comparatively with more than one geographic field.
    Topic: Colonialism and Psychology
    Description: This is an advanced seminar designed primarily for history majors that entails intensive reading, discussion, and writing.  Our course will be a thematic exploration of colonialism as an historical, cultural, and, above all psychological experience. We will explore topics such as the relation between Self and Other (Colonizer and Colonized) in the colonial encounter; the psychoanalysis of race and racism; violence and decolonization; psychopolitics; gender, language, and the intimacy of the colonial encounter; and the psychic life of the postcolony.  We will follow the itineraries of the renowned Martinican psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) from the Antilles, to metropolitan France, to colonial Algeria. We shall begin in the colony – ‘Albert Camus’s Algeria’ – and end in postcolonial Paris. We will mobilize a diverse array of primary and secondary sources, novels, and films in our exploration, traversing Europe, the Antilles, and North Africa, with a primary emphasis on French colonialism in Algeria and its aftermath in the postcolony. Much like the colonial and postcolonial subjects we will be studying, we may often experience vertigo, a spinning sensation that we are everywhere and nowhere – in the interstitial space between psychology and politics; war and revolution; and metropole and colony. 

  • Upper Division
  • HIS 110: Themes in World History (World) - Professor Sen
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Topics will emphasize the interaction of diverse regions of the world as well as common patterns of historical change. May be repeated when instructor and/or topic differs.
    Topic: The British Empire
    Description: This is a seminar on the history of the rise and expansion of the British Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing largely on India and Africa. It explores social and cultural implications of military conquest, economic exploitation, colonial rule and imperial policy. It begins with the establishment of British rule in India (1757-1857) leading to the establishment of the British Raj as the cornerstone of a far-flung Empire that stretched at its zenith from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Straits of Malacca. It also explores how ideas, policies and practices of imperialism were introduced into parts of the African continent in the age of European inroads, and some of their consequences for indigenous society. We shall discuss how the ideology of empire and colonial expansion was sustained over such a long period of history, what its relationship was to the notion of Englishness and the idea of a Greater Britain, and how empires were represented by rulers for themselves and to those that they sought to rule.

    HIS 110: Themes in World History (World) - Professor Smolenski
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Topics will emphasize the interaction of diverse regions of the world as well as common patterns of historical change. May be repeated when instructor and/or topic differs.
    Topic: History of the Colonial Atlantic World
    Description: Early American historians have in recent years worked to broaden their perspective geographically and thematically, looking at the British American colonies in an Atlantic context. In this class, we will look at the varieties of ways in which colonial cultures evolved around the Atlantic rim. We will make stops in west Africa, Mexico, English America, and Europe and cover the period from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. We will also explore the experiences of a wide range of peoples, looking at Spanish conquistadores, Catholic Kongolese saints, Puritan missionaries, and English factory workers. At every step we will look how the process of colonialism caused individuals and groups throughout the Atlantic world to see themselves in new ways.
    Lecture: 3 hours. 

    Readings from this class will include selected primary sources, scholarly articles, and selected chapters from scholarly monographs. 


    HIS 113: History of Modern Israel  (World) - Professor Eisinger
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Topics include the rise and fall of utopian Zionism, the century-long struggle between Jews and Arabs, the development of modern Hebrew culture, the conflict between religious and secular Jews, and the nature of Israel's multicultural society.
    Description: 

    HIS 126Y: The History of Human Rights in Europe (Europe) - Professor Zientek
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Web Electronic Discussion—1 hour(s). History of the origins, development, and state of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) in Europe. Emphasis on Enlightenment-era and modern theories of the source, utility, and limits of human rights.
    Description: 

    HIS 146B: Europe in the 20th Century  (Europe) - Professor Dickinson
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Survey of the history of Europe since 1939.
    Description: This course will cover the history of Europe in the second part of the twentieth century, from World War II through to the present. Lectures and the course textbook will examine the broad pattern of the evolution of European societies and the European states in these decades, focusing on political, social, and cultural change. The first few weeks of the course will focus on the dramatic events of WWII and its aftermath. The second half of the course will be devoted to the profound processes of transformation that have reshaped European societies since the early 1950s, including in economics, politics, culture, and social life. Our readings--in addition to the textbook--will be drawn from primary documents written during the period, and from scholarly articles examining particular aspects of European social and cultural history. The documents will focus on the daily lives of particular Europeans, on key moments of political conflict, and on key ideas that shaped the thinking and expectations of Europeans in this period. These readings will focus on the ways that individual Europeans' lives "fit into" the broader sweep of history and social development, and on ways in which they experienced and thought about moments of crisis in the development of their societies. The articles we will read will present close analysis of particular aspects of the broader trends and grander events discussed in lectures and in the textbook.  

    Readings from the course will include a textbook, some scholarly articles by historians, and selections from several autobiographies, from several novels and short stories, from a number of scholarly monographs, and from a number of works of political and social philosophy. 
    Each student will be asked to write two short essays (6-8 pages), each worth 35% of the course grade; take a midterm test, worth 10% of the grade; and a final test, worth 15% of the course grade. Participation in discussion will be worth 5 percent of the course grade. 
     

    HIS 147B: Modern European Intellectual History: 1870-1920 (Europe) - Professor Saler
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Cultural and intellectual watershed of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Emergence of modern art and literature; psychoanalysis and the new social sciences. Focus on the work of Baudelaire, Wagner, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber and Kafka.
    Description: This course is designed to introduce several of the major themes and figures in the intellectual history of Europe between 1870 and1920. Among the issues we will explore are the revolt against nineteenth century scientific “positivism” and traditional liberalism by contemporary thinkers, and the corresponding attempts to understand the relations between the rational and the irrational aspects of human existence. Nietzsche called these aspects the “Apollonian” and “Dionysian,” respectively, and the interplay between them interested philosophers, artists, and writers, as well as proponents of the new disciplines of psychoanalysis and sociology. This led to explorations of the unconscious in human life, and a sense that a world "disenchanted" by science and reason could be re-enchanted by the creation of new "myths" and "imaginary worlds" that had concrete effects in political and social life.
    Readings and Assignments: TBA

    HIS 165:  Latin American Social Revolutions (Latin American) - STAFF
    Lecture—3 hour(s). Major social upheavals since 1900 in selected Latin American nations; similarities and differences in cause, course, and consequence. May be taught abroad.
    Description: 

    HIS 168: History of Inter-American Relations (Latin American) - Professor Walker
    Lecture—3 hour(s). Diplomatic history of Latin America since independence, intra-Latin American relations, relations with the United States, participation in international organizations, and communism in Latin America.
    Description: This course examines the relations between the United States and Latin America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as current issues.  We will pay particular attention to the reasons why these relations have been characterized by misunderstanding, mistrust, and tension.  While focusing on a few crucial moments such as the Guatemalan and Cuban Revolutions, we will also look at how the United States media has depicted Latin America (Disney Cartoons) and its people as well as the contemporary problems in U.S.-Latin American relations, particularly the border or la frontera. 

    Readings (one to be added):
     - Ada Ferrer, Cuba: An American History 
     - Mark Danner, Massacre at El Mozote 
     - Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow 

    HIS 178: Water in the West: Environment & Politics in America's Arid Lands (United States) - Professor Warren
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Extensive Writing. Politics and environmental consequences of water development in the arid western United States since 1848, with emphasis on California and western rivers, including the Colorado, Columbia, Missouri, and Mississippi. Irrigated settlement, the making of state and federal water law and bureaucracy, urban vs. rural competition, Native water rights, growth of irrigation technologies, groundwater overdraft, wildlife impacts. One half-day field trip required.
    Description: 

    HIS 179: Asian American History, 1850-Present (United States) - Professor Tsu
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Historical experience of people of Asian ancestry in the United States from the mid-19th century to the present. Migration, labor, community formation, race relations, women and gender, popular culture.
    Description: This course surveys the historical experience of people of Asian ancestry in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will explore the experiences of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans within the broader context of immigration and race relations in U.S. history. Major questions framing the course will be: What are the arguments for a common Asian American experience? What are the limits of a shared Asian American experience? What does the history of Asian America tell us about America? How have Asian Americans resisted and struggled to define their identity, livelihood, and a sense of “home” in America?

    HIS 193B: History of the Modern Middle East, From 1914 (Middle East) - Professor El Shakry
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Middle East from the turn of the 20th century to the present. Themes include the legacy of imperialism, cultural renaissance, the World Wars, nationalism, Palestine/Israel, Islamic revival, gender, revolutionary movements, politics of oil and war, cultural modernism, exile and diaspora.
    Description: This course explores the history of the Middle East from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. Rather than narrate the history of the twentieth century Middle East as a series of wars and conflicts, however, we will focus on the principal intellectual, cultural, political, and social factors that have shaped the countries of the Middle East. Themes include: legacies of colonialism; the late nineteenth century cultural renaissance known as the nahda; cultural modernism; anticolonial nationalism; postcolonial revolutionary movements; Islamic revival; gender; politics of oil and war; torture and state power; and the Arab uprisings. Our focus in the 20thcentury will be largely on the emergence of anti-colonial nationalist revolutions and post-colonial national regimes. Rather than a comprehensive survey of the history of the Middle East, the course will highlight certain countries with the purpose of critically addressing the themes that are dominant in both the scholarly and non-scholarly literature on the region.

    HIS 195C: A History of Vietnam (Asia) - STAFF
    Lecture/Discussion—4 hour(s). Overview of Vietnamese history: early state formation in Southeast Asia; expansion/contention in the 17th and 18th centuries; colonial period; war with the US; and post-war developments (with an emphasis on relations with China and the US).
    Description: 

    HIS 196B: Modern India (Asia) - Professor Sen
    Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s). Survey of cultural, social, economic, and political aspects of South Asian history from arrival of the British in the 18th century to formation of new independent states-India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan in the 20th century.
    Description: What was the state of the Indian subcontinent during the decline of the Mughal Empire? How did the East India Company, through trade and military conquest, succeed in expanding the frontiers of the British Empire in India? How did the British Raj emerge after the great uprisings of 1857, and how did it create the conditions for the rise of the Indian National Congress? What were the consequences of the non-violent movement led by Mahatma Gandhi? What were the circumstances of the Partition of 1947, and the creation of the modern nation-states of India and Pakistan? This survey of the cultural, social, economic, and political history of South Asian history charts the history of the region from the early 18th to the mid-20th century. 
  • Graduate Seminars

  • HIS 201W: Sources & General Literature of History: Advanced Topics in World History - Professor Walker
    Seminar—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Prerequisite(s): Graduate Standing. Designed primarily for students preparing for higher degrees in history. Advanced Topics in World History. May be repeated for credit when subject differs. Valid for Designated Emphasis in Human Rights.
    Topic: Truth Commissions & Global Human Rights 
    Description: This course examines truth commissions across the globe. We will review why/how they were created and the implications for the concepts of "truth" and "justice"; their impact and limitations; and the current questioning of their relevance in the twenty-first century. All of these questions build from and contribute to essential debates surrounding human rights, theory and practice. We will cover truth commissions in South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Mexico (for which we will count on a guest Zoom dialogue with one member of the current truth commission). I will decide on the other "case studies" once I know students' interests--Canada is a likely candidate. No background in Latin American history is necessary.
    Initial Reading List:
     - Emilio Crenzel, The Memory of the Argentina Disappearances: The Political History of Nunca Más
     - Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions
    Requirements:
     - Active participation every week
     - Presentation of readings and your own project
     - Final paper. These will range from an exploratory research paper to a literature review. I will work with each of you to define your paper.

    HIS 201X: Sources & General Literature of History: World History - Professor Chiang
    Seminar—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Prerequisite(s): Consent of Instructor. Designed primarily for students preparing for higher degrees in history. (X) World History. May be repeated for credit when subject differs.
    Topic: Global Sexualities: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives
    Description: This graduate seminar provides a critical introduction to theories and histories of sexuality in the modern world. It pays special attention to the production of knowledge, the operation of power, and how they relate to the construction of personhood and the body as sites of meaning-making, grounds for political struggle, loci of cultural identity and social conflict, objects of scientific study and legal regulation, and guarantors of human difference. A key agenda of this course is to develop the intellectual capacity to bring questions conventionally directed toward the private/intimate sphere to bear on historical narratives and analyses concerning macro-structural transformations. This involves the careful interrogation of the concepts, categories, and questions used by scholars in the past and present, always measured against various scales of empirical evidence.

    HIS 202C: Major Issues in Historical Interpretation: Modern Europe - Professor Saler
    Seminar—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Prerequisite(s): Graduate standing. Fundamental issues and debates in the study of history. Modern Europe. Readings, papers, and class reports. May be repeated for credit when subject differs. 
    Topic: Intellectual/Cultural History: Origins, Methods, Challenges
    Description:     This graduate seminar will introduce the origins, approaches, and current innovations in Intellectual/Cultural History. Intellectual History began in the 1930s within the discipline of philosophy as the “History of Ideas,” and was taken up by historians interested in understanding ideas contextually. This approach tended to focus on systems of thought in philosophy, politics, religion and social theory. Beginning in the 1960s, intellectual history gradually broadened its parameters, incorporating methods and approaches from postmodernism; beginning in the 1980s, it also benefitted from the new methods of cultural history. Today it has becoming global and comparative, welcoming analyses of representations in general, from the “elite” to the “popular,” and pursuing interdisciplinary topics and methods. We will chart the development of the field, examine its approaches and influential works, and conclude with an assessment of its present state and future potentials.
    Readings & Assignments: TBA.

    HIS 202D: Major Issues in Historical Interpretation: India - Professor Anooshahr
    Seminar—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Prerequisite(s): Graduate standing. Fundamental issues and debates in the study of history. India. Readings, papers, and class reports. May be repeated for credit when subject differs. 
    Topic: Mughal India
    Description: This course will examine approaches to the history of the Mughal Empire of India (sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries), the second greatest economic power, and home to perhaps the greatest court culture of the early modern period. The reading for each week will organized by methodology or theme. Please read each week’s assignment before class and come prepared to present the text and critique it. You are not expected to master the all the information covered in this course. Rather, the goal is to begin to be able to identify the problématique and also to summarize and evaluate arguments and methodologies. There are no pre-requisites. Comparative perspectives are most welcome

    HIS 202H: Major Issues in Historical Interpretation: United States - Professor Warren
    Seminar—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Prerequisite(s): Graduate standing. Fundamental issues and debates in the study of history. United States. Readings, papers, and class reports. May be repeated for credit when subject differs. 
    Topic: 
    Description: 

    HIS 203C: Research Seminar - Professor Olmsted
    Seminar 3 hour(s), Tutorial 1 hour(s). Designed for students preparing for higher degrees in History. Individual research and analysis resulting in substantial research paper of publishable quality. Completion required of all Ph.D. candidates. The three courses must be taken in continuous sequence, ordinarily during second year.
    Prerequisite(s): HIS 203A.