History Department

Expanded Course Descriptions

The Department of History scheduled these undergraduate courses for WINTER QUARTER 2025. 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 004C: History of Western Civilization (Europe) - Professor Campbell
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s). Development of Western Civilization from the 18th century to the present.
  Description: This course presents an overview of the major questions of European history from the late 18th century to the present. In the first part of the course, we will investigate the fundamental changes to European life that the French and Industrial Revolutions wrought. In the second, focusing on the 20th century, we will turn to the problems that an increasingly mobile and diverse continent confronted in world wars hot and cold, while tracing the gradual emergence of a new European order. Of particular importance to us will be the theme of violence as a means of both challenging and maintaining Europe’s political and economic systems. 
  Grading: Students will be assessed on the basis of short (one-page) weekly writing assignments, a longer final paper, an essay-based final exam, and their participation in weekly discussion.
  
  HIS 007B: History of Latin America, 1700-1900 (Latin America) - Professor Walker
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s). Latin America from colony to republic. The nature of Iberian colonialism, the causes for independence, the creation of nation states, the difficulties in consolidating these nations, and the rise of Liberalism and export economies in the 19th century.
  Description: History 7B covers Latin American from 1700 to 1900. Among the topics we will study are slave uprisings, the mass rebellions of the eighteenth century, the wars of independence, nationalism and caudillos, and export economies. The course focuses on social history how different groups lived and shaped these processes.
  Grading: Participation, mid-term and final exams, 2 papers
  Reading: 
  - Sandra Lauderdale Graham, Caetana Says No: Women’s Stories from a Brazilian Slave Society 
  - Silvia M. Arrom, La Guera Rodriguez The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine 
  - Charles Walker, Witness to the Age of Revolution: The Odyssey of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru
  
  HIS 008: History of Indian Civilization (Asia) - Professor Sen
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s). Survey of Indian civilization from the rise of cities (ca. 2000 B.C.) to the present, emphasizing themes in religion, social and political organization, and art and literature that reflect cultural interaction and change.
  Description: This course is a panoramic tour of Indian history from the dawn of the ancient cities of the Indus valley to the rise of the first kingdoms and empires of the Gangetic floodplains and the peninsular south. It explores the history of the Turco-Mongol and Afghan empires, the ascendency and fall of the great Mughal Empire, the advent of the East India Company and the expansion of British rule in India, and long struggle for independence toward the creation of the Independent nation-state.
  
  HIS 009A: History of East Asian Civilization (Asia) - STAFF
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s). Surveys traditional Chinese civilization and its modern transformation. Emphasis is on thought and religion, political and social life, art and literature. Perspectives on contemporary China are provided.
  
  HIS 009B: History of East Asian Civilization (Asia) - Professor Kim
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s). Surveys traditional Japanese civilization and its modern transformation. Emphasis is on thought and religion, political and social life, art and literature. Perspectives on contemporary Japan are provided.
  
  HIS 012: Food & History (World) - Professor Resendez
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s). Survey of the ways humans have fed themselves from the dawn of humanity to the present. Transformation of plants and animals into food, cooking into cuisine, and ceremony into etiquette.
  Description: This course will survey how humans have fed themselves from the time they were hunter gatherers to the present and study how new feeding patterns have transformed cultures, economies, and societies. We trace the transformation of plants and animals into food, cooking into cuisine, ceremony into etiquette, and home cooking into national cuisine. In short, the course will examine the social and political implications of food and its consumption on a global scale from pre-history to the twentieth century.
  
  HIS 17A: History of the United States (US) - STAFF
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s). The experience of the American people from the Colonial Era to the Civil War.
  
  HIS 17A: History of the United States (US) - 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.
  
  HIS 072A: Women & Gender in America, to 1865 (US) - Professor Hartigan-O'Connor
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s). History of women and gender in America through 1865, emphasizing intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Topics include interracial marriage, slavery, witchcraft, meanings of motherhood, war, domestic labor, moral reform, women’s rights, migrations, the effects of commercialization and industrialization.
  Description: This course is an introduction to the history of early American women—as a group, as individuals, and as members of different classes, races, and ethnic communities. Using the themes of production and reproduction (work and sex), we will explore both the daily lives of women and the changing concepts of “woman” and “womanhood” over time and region. Through primary sources, films, and scholarly literature, we will meet Indigenous traders, accused witches, “true women,” enslaved mothers, and western missionaries. The course will pay particular attention to the interactions between groups of women and the significance of gender in determining the experiences of people across North America, using comparisons among groups, individuals, regions, and across time wherever possible.
  
  HIS 090: Research in History - Professor Anooshahr
  Seminar—3 hour(s); Designed primarily for history majors. Intensive reading, discussion, research, and writing in selected topics in the various fields of history. Emphasis on primary sources and archival research.
• Undergraduate Seminars
• HIS 102D: Modern Europe to 1815 - Professor Stuart
  Seminar 3 hour(s), Term Paper. Designed primarily for history majors. Intensive reading, discussion, research, and writing in selected topics in the various fields of history.
  Topic: “Melancholy is the Devil’s Bath:” Selfhood, Emotions, Madness & Crime in Early Modern Europe.
  Description: Early modern people did not think of themselves as autonomous individuals. They experienced the Self as porous, susceptible to outside influences both divine and demonic. Certain emotions were inherently dangerous. Anger and envy made a person vulnerable to be seduced by the devil into witchcraft. Certain mental states opened a person up to invasion by the devil in the form of demonic possession. Christian churches considered despair in one’s salvation an “unforgivable sin.” People explained all manner of crime, from petty theft to murder, as springing from “the instigation of the devil.” Undisciplined, excessive passions could lead to madness. In this seminar we explore early modern subjectivity and the history of emotions as they intersect with the history of witchcraft, demonic possession, mental illness and crime.
  
  HIS 102J: Latin America Since 1810 - Professor Resendez
  Seminar 3 hour(s), Term Paper. Designed primarily for history majors. Intensive reading, discussion, research, and writing in selected topics in the various fields of history.
  Topic: The Foods of Latin America
  Description: When Columbus set foot in the Caribbean in 1492 not only did two human populations (Europeans and Native Americans) that had not been in contact for eighteen thousand years finally met, but also a host plants, animals, food ingredients, and cooking traditions were exchanged. Moreover, more than ten million Africans were transported across the Atlantic as slaves, bringing their own foodways. This course will use food as a way to explore the history of Latin America and, conversely, study how the foods of Latin America have changed the rest of the world.
  
  HIS 102K: American History to 1787 - Professor Smolenski
  Seminar 3 hour(s), Term Paper. Designed primarily for history majors. Intensive reading, discussion, research, and writing in selected topics in the various fields of history.
  
  HIS 102M: United States since 1896 - Professor Parker
  Seminar 3 hour(s), Term Paper. Designed primarily for history majors. Intensive reading, discussion, research, and writing in selected topics in the various fields of history.
  Topic: Race, Gender, and Consumer Culture
  Description: This seminar explores the pivotal role of race in shaping American consumer culture and, in turn, how consumer culture has profoundly influenced the experiences of diverse groups, including African Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and white ethnic communities. We will examine the intersection of race and consumer culture from the late nineteenth century to the present. Using historical and literary texts, film, advertisements, and music, we will investigate shopping and retail work, the commodification of racial groups and cultures, efforts to create a classless yet racially exclusive consumer culture, market segmentation, consumer activism, and civil rights. Special attention will be given to how consumer culture shaped interracial interactions, social justice movements, and the formation of racial, ethnic, gender, and class identities.
• Upper Division
• 
  HIS 113: History of Modern Palestine/Israel (World) - Professor Tezcan
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Cultural, social, and political histories of Palestine and Israel from the Ottoman Empire to the present. Topics include Zionist and Palestinian national movements; colonialism and the British Mandate; immigration, settlement, and refugees; the development of modern Israeli cultures; questions of statehood and multiculturalism; conflict and regional minority populations.
  
  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.
  
  HIS 130B: Christianity &  Culture in Europe: 1450-1600 (Europe) - Professor Harris
  Lecture—3 hour(s). History of the Lutheran, Zwinglian-Calvinist, Radical, Anglican, and Catholic Reformations as foundation stones of a new culture in Europe, with special attention to the interconnections between the revival of antiquity and the different reform movements.
  Description: Between 1450 and 1600, Christianity in Europe underwent dramatic transformations that permanently redefined the continent’s religious landscape. While most medieval Europeans had shared a common Catholic faith, by the end of the sixteenth century, uniformity of belief and identity were permanently destroyed, replaced by a kaleidoscope of competing churches, sects, and factions. Together, we will explore the ideas and events of the European Reformations, both Protestant and Catholic, devoting particular attention to changing concepts of community and identity and the links between religious beliefs and social, political, and cultural change. Our readings, discussions, and assignments will examine not only the ideas of the key thinkers of the period, such as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Loyola, but also the effects of their ideas on Europeans of all walks of life.
  
  HIS 132: Crime & Punishment in Early Modern Europe (Europe) - Professor Stuart
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Deviance and crime in early modern Europe, contrasting imaginary crimes, e.g. witchcraft, with "real" crimes such as highway robbery and infanticide. Examines impact of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and class in processes of criminalization.
  Description: In the sixteenth century, you would be executed for throwing dung at a statue of the Virgin Mary. Nowadays, this might be considered offensive, but you will no longer be prosecuted for the capital crime of “blasphemy.” In other words, the definition of crime and the classification of criminals changes over time. In this class we explore when, how, and why this happened from the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries. We will contrast "real" crimes such as vagrancy and theft with imaginary crimes such as Jewish ritual murder and witchcraft. One segment of the course covers prostitution, infanticide and witchcraft as specifically female crimes. We will examine to what extent it is possible to relate long-term changes in the incidence and prosecution of particular crimes to changes in economy, social structure, government, religion and culture. We will discuss changes in the nature and purposes of punishment in the early modern period, as public rituals of execution and other bloody punishments to the body were replaced by the penalty of imprisonment in the eighteenth century
  
  HIS 136: Scientific Revolution (Europe) - Professor Stolzenberg
  Lecture/Discussion—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Rise of modern science in Europe, 1500–1750. Transformation of ideas about nature, knowledge, medicine, and technology in the age of Copernicus, Vesalius, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton.
  Description: What does it mean to understand nature in modern—and pre-modern—ways? Today we take for granted that science involves mathematical laws, experimentation, discovering new phenomena, and the creation of technologies that provide power over nature. None of these was true about European natural science in 1500. All had become widely accepted by 1700. This class treats the transformation of European ideas about nature, knowledge, and technology during the age of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. We will explore the intellectual culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to examine issues such as scientific methods, instruments and experimentation, science and religion, and the control of nature. Topics include astronomy, physics, chemistry/alchemy, natural magic, medicine, and natural history. Evaluation is based on short writing assignments, quizzes, and essays. This course satisfies GE requirements for AH, SS, and WC. There are no prerequisites, and no prior knowledge is necessary.
  Reading: Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences, and miscellaneous primary sources.
  
  HIS 142B: The Memory of the Holocaust (Europe) - STAFF
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Examination of the literary, philosophical, theological and artistic responses to the Holocaust of the European Jews. Exploration of how memory is constructed, by whom and for what purposes.
  
  HIS 147B: 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.
  
  HIS 157: Latin American Environmental History (Latin America) - Professor Perez Melendez
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Project. Introduction to the geography, political ecology, environmental movements of Latin America and the Caribbean, regional biomes, commodity markets, and the relationships between non-human ecosystems and Latin American societies. Development of extractive processes, land law, agricultural practices, scientific knowledge, and environmental conservation in neotropical forests, Sonoran Desert, the Amazon, Andes and Pampas, among other ecologies.
  Description: This course centers environmental questions, forces, and actors to historicize ideas about harnessing, exploiting, claiming, and preserving different ecologies in Latin America from colonial times to the present. Lectures and discussions survey key questions in environmental history in order to redefine categories of analysis. We will examine animals, plants, and the manufactures they gave rise to as much as business cultures and systems of knowledge that developed around mining, cattle ranching and other forms extractive industries. The course will introduce students to a wide variety of environments in Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, Brazil, Argentina, and the Andes while asking how ideas about “nature,” “property,” “development” and science shaped the relationship between different societies and non-human ecologies. Paying special attention to companies as increasingly problematic but central players in conflicts over the environment, this course will also rely on numerous sources to explore questions of responsibility, solidarity, and justice in environmental debates.
  
  HIS 163B: History of Brazil (Latin America) - Professor Perez Melendez
  Lecture—3 hour(s). The history of the Brazilian republic from 1889 to the present. 
  Description: Brazil is the largest Latin American country in terms of territory–larger even than the contiguous United States. In terms of population, Brazil figures among the top seven most populous countries in the world, and is home to the largest population of people of African descent anywhere outside of Africa. And yet, despite these standout characteristics, Brazil is only generally known for soccer and samba. This course offers a deeper and more encompassing introduction to the history of Brazil, surveying the most salient features in its successive sociopolitical transformations from the arrival of the Portuguese royal household in 1808 to the most recent political transitions. The course will examine both the way in which patrimonial elites have historically amassed power, and the diverse ways in which indigenous peoples, enslaved women and men, radical republicans, and the black and student movements have struggled in the name of equality and have produced and continue to produce a new historical record.
  
  HIS 170A: Colonial America (US) - Professor Smolenski
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Colonial society from 1607 to the American Revolution, with emphasis on European expansion, political, social and economic foundations, colonial thought and culture, and imperial rivalry.
  Description: This course examines the settlement, growth, and development of European colonial societies in North America from the era of contact and conquest through the Seven Years’ War. Colonial America was a diverse, complex, vibrant, and often violent place; its history contains numerous stories of tragedy and triumph, struggle and survival, cooperation, and coercion. Out of these interactions between Indians, Europeans, and Africans emerged multicultural, creole societies. Over the course of this quarter, we will address many facets of this rich history, exploring such topics as the European “discovery” and conquest of America; the settlement of European colonies; the Indian response to European invasion; the rise of African slavery in the Americas; the evolution of colonial thought and culture; and the rivalry between European imperial powers over the Americas.  The course also means to challenge and develop your abilities to think critically about diverse evidence and to argue persuasively in support of your conclusions. You should not undertake this course unless you are willing and able to attend lectures consistently and to perform the considerable reading and writing assignments punctually. The papers will be critically examined for style as well as content.  
  
  HIS 171B: Civil War Era (US) - Professor Downs
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Examination of the political and social history of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. Causes of the war the war itself and the problems of reconstruction after the war.
  Description: This course explores the Civil War Era, both the deadliest war in American history and the explosive political fights over slavery that brought on the war and the extraordinary, if short-lived, revolutionary experiments with biracial democracy in the Reconstruction that followed. The course thus covers not just battlefield contests but also the expansion of plantation slavery and the development of a powerful pro-slavery politics in the South, and the creation of a free labor ideology in an industrializing North. The course also investigates the development of civil and political rights during Reconstruction and the centrality of the West in shaping the coming and outcome of the war that continues in many ways to shape the nation.
  
  HIS 172: American Environmental History (US) - Professor Warren
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. American history through connections between people and nature, pre-Columbus to climate change. Native America; conquest; epidemics; extinctions; industrialization; pollution; environmentalism; climate change and global warming; ideas of nature.
  Description: From Native American domestication of corn to colonial epidemics, from the making of the atomic bomb to global climate change, this course reveals a new way of understanding the American past by asking big questions about humans, nature, and the shifting bonds between them. How does American history look different when we consider germs, mosquitoes, pigs, plants, and coal as key actors in stories about people? How did Americans go from fearing wilderness to loving it? How did the pursuit of leisure change the landscapes they appreciated, and with what consequences? (When did hiking become "fun"? And were all those national parks actually unoccupied when they were created?) What are the roots of our current industrial food crisis, and how is it connected to the invention of the refrigerator and the automobile, and hamburgers and fish sticks? When did the environmental justice movement begin? How is environmental justice connected to the environmental movement? How did fears of overpopulation contribute to the development of the birth control pill -- and with what consequences for ideas of sex, gender, and nature? Who invented Earth Day and the EPA? How did decisions about agriculture and urban growth contribute to the frequent droughts we are experiencing today? Who discovered global warming, and what does it have to do with the inundation of New Orleans and parts of New York during recent hurricanes? Why and how have climate change deniers seized the upper hand in public debate—or have they? Join us to learn the answers to these and similar questions as we see American history in a new light. Lectures, discussion, readings, film.
  
  HIS 177B: History of Black People & American Race Relations: 1860-Present (US) - Professor Parker
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. History of black people and race relations from 1860-present. Emphasis on Civil War, Reconstruction, Segregation, Age of Accommodation, black nationalism, urbanization, civil rights, and changing ideology of race relations.
  Description: This course traces the history of Black people in the United States from the Civil War era to the present, examining the central role of race in shaping American society, politics, and culture. We will explore key events, movements, and figures in African American history, including Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow, the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, and the ongoing struggles for racial justice. Through a critical analysis of historical documents, literature, film, and other media, we will investigate how race relations have evolved and how the Black freedom struggle has influenced the broader American experience. Topics include emancipation and its aftermath, racial violence and resistance, Black cultural expression, voting rights, mass incarceration, and the role of Black leadership in transforming the nation's racial landscape. By the end of the course, students will gain a deeper understanding of the historical roots of contemporary racial issues in the U.S.
  
  HIS 183A: The Frontier Experience: Trans-Mississippi West (US) - Professor St John
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. The fur trade, western exploration and transportation, the Oregon Country, the Greater Southwest and the Mexican War, the Mormons, mining discovery, and the West during the Civil War.
  Description: This lecture course will provide an introduction to the early history of the place that we now know as the U.S. West. A vast and varied region stretching from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean, the West has both been characterized by its diversity and bound together by a shared regional identity and history. Beginning with the eve of European expansion in the seventeenth century and continuing through the 1870s, this course will focus on the historical processes that have defined the West. It will explore the central role of Native people in shaping the West, both before and after Europeans entered the region, explore how European empires, Mexico, the United States, and other powers struggled to control it, and explain how it was that it finally came to be a part of the United States. Course themes include: competition for land and natural resources, Native power, the expansion of markets and settlement, conquest, nation-building, the role of women and families, and racial and ethnic diversity. Using a range of primary and secondary sources, we will explore the struggles for land, resources, identity, and power which have characterized the West and its role in the nation.  
  
  HIS 189: California History (US) - Professor Warren
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. California history from the pre-colonial period to the present including dispossession of California's Indians, political economy of the Spanish and Mexican periods, Gold Rush effects, industrialization, Hollywood, water politics, World War II, Proposition 13, and the emergence of Silicon Valley. Not open for credit to students who have completed two of HIS 189A, HIS 189B, HIS 189C. 
  
  HIS 194B: Early Modern Japan (Asia) - Professor Kim
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Term Paper. Survey of the cultural, social, economic, and political aspects of Japanese history from the 17th through the 19th centuries emphasizing the development of those patterns of thought and political organization with which Japan met the challenge of the nineteenth-century Western expansionism.
  
  HIS 196A: Medieval India (Asia) - Professor Anooshahr
  Lecture—3 hour(s); Discussion—1 hour(s). Survey of history of India in the millennium preceding arrival of British in the 18th century, focusing on interaction of the civilizations of Hinduism and Islam and on the changing nature of the state
  Description: This is a survey of history of India from the period of the decline of the imperial Guptas during the sixth century CE to the end of the Mughal Empire and rise of British rule during the eighteenth-century CE. It focuses on the rise and fall of Buddhism, the emergence of regional kingdoms and states, the coming of Turkish rule and early forms of Islam, the successive regimes of the Delhi Sultanate, and the rise and decline of the Mughal Empire.
• Graduate Seminars
• HIS 200A: First Year Research Seminar - Professor Fahrenthold
  Seminar 3 hour(s), Tutorial 1 hour(s). Preparation for higher degrees in History. Individual research and analysis resulting in a substantial research paper of publishable quality. Completion required of all Ph.D. candidates. HIS 200A and HIS 200B must be taken in continuous sequence, ordinarily during the first year.
  
  HIS 201I: Sources & General Literature of History: Latin America since 1810 - Professor Walker
  Seminar 3 hour(s), Term Paper. Designed primarily for students preparing for higher degrees in history. 
  Description: This course examines revolutions in twentieth-century Latin America. We begin by reviewing the concept's development and many meanings. The term (Latin revolutio, turn around) has circulated since at least Aristotle and appears in French in the 13th century and English in the 14th. We examine major Latin American revolutions (Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, to be confirmed) and key issues and debates within revolutionary movements, specifically race and gender. I will encourage students to write a final paper on some aspect of revolution or 
  revolutionary movements: theory, practice, specific ones, women in Cuba, meanings in Late 
  Capitalism, etc.
  Reading: 
  - Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto
  - Rius, Marx for Beginners
  - Sarah T. Hines, Water for All: Community, Property, and Revolution in Modern Bolivia 
  - Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution: A Very Short Introduction
  - Greg Grandin, Empire's Workshop
  
  HIS 201Q: Gender, Colonialism, and Nation-Building - Professor Materson
  Seminar 3 hour(s), Term Paper. Designed primarily for students preparing for higher degrees in history.   
  Description: This year's 201Q will examine the diverse ways that gender has shaped colonial projects, colonial subjecthood, and post-colonial nation building. Readings will cover North America, Latin America, Africa, and Asia and will explore a range of themes through comparative and transnational frameworks. These topics include knowledge and power, suffrage and citizenship, masculinity, multiracial identities, sexuality and reproduction, anticolonial revolution, and post-colonial reparations. 
  
  HIS 202H: Major Issues in Historical Interpretation: United States - Professor St John
  Seminar 3 hour(s), Term Paper. Fundamental issues and debates in the study of history. United States. Readings, papers, and class reports.
  Description: This reading intensive course will provide an introduction to the wide range of scholarship on the history of the 19th-century United States. It is intended both to help you prepare for exams and to provide a foundation for teaching, researching, and writing about U.S. history. The course is organized both chronologically and thematically. Some course themes include: slavery and emancipation; labor and economic inequality; capitalism; race and ethnicity; environment and health; gender and kinship; Indigenous power and sovereignty; Civil War and Reconstruction; violence; expansion and empire; and power and politics. The coverage, although extensive, is also necessarily selective. I have selected the readings to acquaint you with some of the main themes and historiographical debates of the field and to provide a variety of approaches, methodologies, and interpretations. Course readings will combine recent scholarship with works of long-standing significance with an emphasis on understanding both historical developments and historiographic debates.
  Reading: 
  - Noelani Arista, The Kingdom and the Republic: Sovereign Hawai’i and the Early United States (2019)
  - William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1992)
  - Tera Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War (1997)
  - Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake (2021)
  - Josh L. Reid, The Sea Is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs (2015)
  - Seth Rockman, Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery (2024)
  - Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (2011)
  - Michael Witgen, Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America (2022)
  
  HIS 203B: Second-Year Research Seminar - Professor Campbell
  Seminar 3 hour(s), Tutorial 1 hour(s). Prepare for higher degrees in history. Individual research and analysis resulting in substantial research paper of publishable quality. Completion required of all Ph.D. candidates. HIS 203A & HIS 203B must be taken in continuous sequence, ordinarily during second year.