History

How did the most capitalist and consumerist societies in the history of the world emerge from a religious culture that was deeply suspicious of commerce, regarded money as dangerous, and condemned avarice as a deadly sin? This lecture course seeks to answer this question by beginning in the Middle Ages c. 1000, before the emergence of a monetized, market economy, we will be able to see the effects of novel human behaviors on medieval Christians, and the ways in which they responded to them within the institutionalized worldview of Latin Christendom. By pursuing the impact of the changes wrought by the Reformation, from the sixteenth century down to the present, it explores how economics eventually came to be institutionalized and regarded by large numbers of Christians, and in the last century by increasing numbers of non-Christians, as a domain of human life separate from religion and ethics. All along the way it considers ideas, beliefs, practices, social relationships, the pursuit of knowledge, and institutions in their complex relationships to human desires, aspirations, and the exercise of power.

This course is used for transfer course articulation when a student has earned credit for a course in American History at another institution.

This course is used for transfer course articulation when a student has earned credit for a course in European History at another institution.

This course is used for transfer course articulation when a student has earned credit for a course in World History at another institution.

We'll try to see the world whole - looking at genuinely global historical experiences of the last five hundred years. Our aim will be to take the broadest and most comprehensive perspective we can imagine; we'll look not only at every kind of human culture in every part of the planet, but also, for the sake of comparison, at the start and end of the course, at the societies of other, non-human cultural creatures. We'll focus on two stories: first, the mutual impact of human beings and the rest of nature; and, second, the effects human societies have had on each other in an era of accelerating world-wide contacts between cultures. The purpose of the course will be to identify and probe the main themes of the history of the world in the last half-millennium, equip students with a historically informed awareness of global connexions and inter-actions in a globalizing world, and to ask whether (and, if so, how) global history relates to current problems in social policy, international relations, and ethical debate.

This course introduces the history of the peoples of Africa. It begins with African civilizations in ancient times and runs through the present. It concentrates on people and civilizations indigenous to Africa. The origins of Islam, the Atlantic slave trade, and European explorers and missionaries receive attention mainly in their African aspects. The emphasis on Africa in this course provides a valuable alternative perspective on these, and other, seemingly familiar events. We will also explore the reshaping of Africa's political economy during the colonial period and after independence. The course ought to prove full of surprises: you will be privy to the newest and best historical findings about African history, its peoples and languages, as well as to unresolved areas and debates among historians. You will leave the course knowing much more about Africa's history than newspapers or television. This knowledge will be valuable to understand modern Africa and the world where we live

This course is a survey-style introduction to the early modern Atlantic world, the global region brought together beginning in the fifteenth century by commercial interests, military conquest, and the African slave trade. It explores the diverse relations between Europeans and Africans before that trade commenced, and examines how the Iberian conquest of the Americas radically transformed them. It also examines the vast Atlantic diasporas: of Africans scattered around the American continents, of indigenous natives of the southern Americas to Europe and west-central Africa, and Europeans in Africa and the Americas. Students will learn about the life experiences of the men and women who crossed the Atlantic, the effects of these conquests and trade relations on the regions, the development of theories of race, ethnicity, and gender that emerged, and the larger structures of global trade and contact in the early modern world.

For achieving a qualifying score on the appropriate Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) exam, students earn credit for this course in American History.

For achieving a qualifying score on the appropriate Advanced Placement (AP) exam, students earn credit for this course in European History.

For achieving a qualifying score on the appropriate Advanced Placement (AP) exam, students earn credit for this course in World History.

This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to Chinese history and culture, beginning with the archaeological record and extending over the dynastic period and into early 17th century. Providing a chronological overview of development of the Chinese civilization, this course will focus on a few themes and a few approaches. We pose several questions, such as: what forces came together to produce Chinese civilization, and how did those forces adhere or grow apart, persist or perish, over time? How can literature from the past reveal details of the way people lived, of the values and ideas that captivated people's attention, and of the way important historical forces were played out in people's lives? Finally, when first encounter ring the West in modern times, China underwent economic, military, and cultural crises. How did their leaders and subjects respond to those challenges and how did their perceptions of modernity shape the way they treated their cultural heritage, engaged the present, and envisioned their future?

It is tempting to think that South Asia - home to nearly two billion people - is only now beginning to occupy global attention. But India has played a prominent part in global history for centuries. This course will span three millennia - from the Indus Valley civilization, to the time of Buddha, to the powerful Mughal Empire, two centuries of the British rule, the Gandhi-led freedom struggle, and ending with the recent histories of independent India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This introduction to India and South Asia will answer questions such as: Has there been an unbroken Indian civilization? How did a British company come to rule a vast Indian empire? How did India win its independence? What accounts for the region's poverty? Why are India and Pakistan separate countries today, with such divergent trajectories of democracy and dictatorship? And, finally, could India rival China and the United States in this century? South Asia is a place of extreme diversity and paradox: it can be confusing. However, its history offers us explanations. This course will offer an introduction and guide to the history of India's rich history, stormy politics, vibrant cultures, and globalized economies.

African peoples and empires have always been at the heart of transformative world events. Their wealth, ingenuity, and power reshaped the medieval global economy. Their enslavement and back-breaking forced labor fueled industrial and agricultural revolutions. Their struggle against western racism and imperialism awakened pan-African consciousness. And today, their creativity and entrepreneurialism drive popular culture and economic opportunity. In this course, we will explore the many ways Africans shaped the history of the world. We will do so by examining primary documents, reading African fiction, watching African films, and immersing ourselves in current trends in Africa.

This course offers a survey of the central themes in Western Civilization from ancient Mesopotamia to the Renaissance. Emphasis will fall upon problems of social organization, especially the mutual obligations and responsibilities of individuals and states; evolving concepts of justice; aesthetic standards; religious ideas and institutions; basic philosophical concepts; different kinds of states and the ideologies that defined and sustained them.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived side by side for centuries in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean throughout the Middle Ages - the occupied the same towns, shopped in the same markets, dwelt in the same neighborhoods, read each other's books, and borrowed each other's stories. While covering the broad sweep of Latin-Christian, Islamic, and Byzantine civilizations that grew up in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea after the fall of Rome, we will focus especially the on-going interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in this area. While doing so we will constantly ask how can we know - and what kinds of things we can know - about the Middle Ages, as we examine many types of medieval sources, including literary works, historical texts, religious and philosophical writings, and works of art. The course lectures will provide the student with sufficient understanding of the medieval Mediterranean that they will be able to read with profit the assigned texts which are all primary sources, written in a variety of Mediterranean languages, in English translation. The course will proceed partly chronologically - especially when it comes to the politics and geo-politics of the region - and partly thematically.

An introduction to the major historical and cultural periods of ancient Greek and Roman civilization through close reading of texts central to the Classical Greek and Latin literary traditions. Topics to be considered include: concepts of the divine; heroism and virtue; concepts of gender; democracy, empire, and civic identity. The course aims to deepen students' appreciation for the classical roots of their own social, intellectual, and religious lives.

This course traces the history of Catholicism in the modern era. It is self-consciously global in its approach, examining how Catholic people, ideas, devotional practices and architectural drawings circulate around the world. Topics investigated include: Catholicism during the democratic revolutions of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, religion and nationalism, the "social" question and Catholic ideas about the family and the economy, the crisis of fascism in the 1930s, decolonization and the cold war, liberation theology and the global South, the first (1869-70) and second (1962-65) Vatican councils and the current sexual abuse crisis. Students will read and interpret a variety of sources, including memoirs, short stories, papal encyclicals, art works and accounts by contemporary historians. Assignments will include short essays and quizzes. The final assignment will be a report, using materials from the course and working as an historian, written for Pope Francis.

This lecture course examines some of the most important events, ideas, and personalities that shaped late Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods of Russian history during the last one hundred years: from the outbreak of the First World War and the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 through the Great Terror of the 1930s, the experience of the Second World War and the emergence of the Soviet Empire, late Stalinism and post-Stalinist developed or mature socialism, the collapse of the communist rule and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, as well as Russia's uneasy transition "out of Totalitarianism" and into Putin's authoritarianism during the first fourteen years of the twentieth-first century. The course is designed for history majors as well as for students in other disciplines with or without background in modern Russian and East European history.

The First World War is often referred to as the "seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century." It certainly brought the golden age of Europe's prosperity to an end. And its lingering effects would help bring about the rise of Bolshevik Communism in Russia, Fascism in Italy and other parts of Europe, and, of course, the rise of National Socialism in Germany. But what actually happened in the war? The course will include lectures with moments for discussion. Together, we will cover the usual suspects of diplomatic and military history of the war. We will learn about new technologies of war, new strategies and tactics on the battlefield, and the futility of attacking entrenched positions. But this war was "The Great War" because it entailed so much more than the front lines. We'll take a deep dive into memoirs and primary sources, emerging new interpretations of home and war fronts, and revisions to our understanding of both when the war ended and began. We will go beyond the western front and trench warfare to look at the important battles in the East and South. And, importantly, we will also take time to look closely at the larger social and cultural aspects that this era of total war introduced, including the emancipation of women, the growth of the state and the use and misuse of emergency powers, and the ways in which everyday people (at home and on the front) coped and endured with the hardships of war, hunger, and death. Time will also be devoted to the peace treaties after the war nominally ended and the continuum of violence that lingered into the interwar period. Music will be played and students may be encouraged to sign along.

The capitalism and consumerism that now influences the entire world arose within a religious culture -that of Western Christianity - whose central figure extolled poverty and self-denial, and whose most important early missionary wrote that "the love of money is the root of all evils." How did this happen? This course takes a long-term view of the emergence of modern economic life in relationship to Christianity beginning with the upturn in commerce and the monetization of the European economy in the eleventh century and continuing through the relationship between markets and Christian morality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It pays particular attention to the ways in which the religio-political disruptions of the Reformation era laid the foundations for the disembedding of economics from Christian ethics and thus made possible modern Western capitalism and consumerism.

This course will provide a comprehensive overview of European history over the last four centuries. During this period European states emerged as powerful institutions, extending their control over the peoples of Europe, and battling with each other for territory, subjects, and status, both in Europe and throughout the world. The enormous growth of state power provoked opposition from both elites and ordinary people. This course will explore resistance to the state as well as tracing its growth, with special attention paid to the English revolution in the 17th century, the French and Russian revolutions in 1789 and 1917, and the collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 20th century. Particular attention will be paid to the development of the ideologies of liberalism, socialism, and nationalism, which defined new relationships between people and their states in the 19th and 20th centuries. The changing status of women, and the emergence of feminism as another ideological alternative, will be dealt with as well. The conflicted relationship between Europe and its colonial territories will constitute another major theme.

This is a lecture course that will offer students an opportunity to delve into the dark history of Germany and Europe between the First World War and the Cold War. At the center of this course is the National Socialist movement, which dominated Germany from 1933 to 1945 and left its imprint on the world thereafter. The hope is that students become familiar with the movement's intellectual and cultural origins, the political contingencies that made it successful, and the policies that made it popular and feared in Germany and beyond. Topics will include Social Darwinism and racial pseduo-science, the Treaty of Versailles and Weimar Germany, the rise of National Socialism to power, and Nazi society and culture. In addition, we will look at how Nazi politics were received and imitated in central and Eastern Europe and how Adolf Hitler's international politics could appeal to peoples beyond Germany's borders. Students will also learn about the systematic and organized killing of peoples and groups in Europe under occupation, including six million Jews and the Holocaust. The course will conclude with the postwar occupation regimes in Germany and Europe, the erasure of complicity with Nazism in the subsequent histories of Europe, and the failed attempts at deNazification and justice for the regime's victims. Friday sections will consist of smaller discussion groups that will discuss the content of the lectures in part. Most importantly, students will read primary source material, including laws, witness statements, memoirs, and important scholarly debates. The Friday sessions will thus give students the opportunity to directly analyze accounts and sources. These skills will then be assessed in a document analysis paper and on our midterms and final exams.

The Second World War is the largest single event in human history, fought across six of the world's seven continents and all its oceans. It killed fifty million human beings, left hundreds of millions of others wounded in mind or body and materially devastated much of the heartland of civilization." The above quote from historian John Keegan summarizes the significance of studying the Second World War. In this class, students will receive an introduction to the largest conflict in human history, from the origins of the war in Asia and Europe to the postwar settlements that continue to shape the modern world. Class content will focus on the military, diplomatic, and political narratives of the war, while exploring the lived experience of the war through primary source readings. This course satisfies the university history requirement and is open to all students; no previous knowledge of the topic is required.

"Between 1643 and 1789, France underwent one of the most pivotal national transitions in modern European history. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Louis XIV reigned as the most powerful divine right monarch on the continent. He marshaled religious ideology, set cultural standards, pursued economic projects, and waged wars to consolidate his authority over the French and foreign powers alike. Yet, by the late eighteenth century, Louis XVI's crumbling crown gave way to the Revolution. The French ultimately dethroned the king and established a republic. Our class will explore how the French negotiated this tumultuous trajectory from subjects to citizens. We will analyze three main themes over the course of the Old Regime. First, we will wrestle with issues of modern state building including administrative reform, military campaigns, financial ventures, and expansion in the New World. Second, we will study the relationship among politics, culture, and religion as the French vacillated between critique and reform. Finally, we will probe the origins of the French Revolution. These sparks ranged from Enlightenment debates over contract theory and social privilege to the stresses of everyday life including taxes and food shortages. We will close as the revolutionaries imagined nascent citizenship on the eve of the republic. In sum, this course will ask: how did European democracy find its roots in an absolute monarchy? And how did generations of French work out this transition through their everyday lives?"

Between the early rumblings of the Reformations and the last cannon shot of World War I, Europeans profoundly changed how they conceptualized bodies as experience and metaphors. During these four centuries, Europeans grounded the ways in which they interacted with each other and the world in bodily imaginings. On an individual level, the living, human body provided a means of accessing and understanding the material or spiritual world. On a collective scale, the physical body, its adornments, and its gestures provided markers that Europeans used to fracture society along axes of gender, sexuality, class, race, mental aptitude, and even sacrality. Drawing in part from their myriad imaginings of the human body, Europeans constructed metaphorical political bodies. The body politic assumed diverse forms spanning from divine right monarchs to revolutionary republics to modern nation states. Our course will lay bare the human body as culturally constructed, while fleshing out how Europeans' evolving visions affected political imaginings.

This course will explore how and why the Irish adapted to an often-troubling New World. It will examine how those already in America understood them, and how the Irish came to understand themselves. We will do so from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. As we will discover, the Irish moved through the marginal areas of the broader Atlantic world. These were often violence marchlands, and this shaped their culture and the ways that others saw them. We will focus on how the Irish were seen to be an especially violent group, and how they took a term of abuse - The "Fighting Irish" - and turned into an ethnic marker of pride. Irish-American respectability was rooted in nostalgia for the violent past, and this sensibility helps explain why they dominated prize-fighting for a long time in the United States. To do all this, we will view the Irish-American experience from Atlantic, global, and comparative perspectives. We will, of course, cover traditional topics, such as labor, politics, and religion. And we will encounter many colorful characters and fascinating stories. But we will do so by viewing the Irish who came to America as part of a broader, dynamic diaspora. Viewing migration to the American colonies (including the Caribbean) and the United States from this vantage point means that we must consider the changing relationship between Ireland and America, as well as the ways in which both regions were parts of broader economic and cultural systems. We will also see how the process of adaptation in America differed from the ones in Australia, Britain, New Zealand, Argentina, and Canada - all places the Irish ventured to. Needless to say, we will cover the history of both sending and receiving societies in rigorous fashion. Only by doing this sort of work can we understand what defined the Irish-American experience, as well as the idea of the Fighting Irish. We will also spend some time discussing why Notre Dame would embrace the idea of the Fighting Irish and how that has changed over time.

A survey of the social, cultural, and political history of the British North American colonies and the United States to the close of the Civil War. Organized around the question of American "nationhood," topics include Native American, European, and African encounters; regional development and divergence; imperial conflict and revolution; constitutional development and argument; democratization and its implications; religious impulses and reformism; immigration and nativism; the importance of land and westward expansion; slavery and emancipation; sectional division and Civil War.

This course will be a survey of the political, diplomatic, economic, social, and cultural development of the United States from 1865, the end of the Civil War, to 1988, the end of the Ronald Reagan presidency. Major topics to be covered include post-war reconstruction, the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century, the progressive legislation of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the causes of the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression, the New Deal programs of Franklin Roosevelt, World Wars I and II, the Fair Deal and containment policies of Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower's Modern Republicanism, the New Frontier of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the civil rights and feminist movements, Vietnam, Richard Nixon and Watergate, and the presidencies of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan.

In this course, we will study the history of boxing in the United States and learn a great deal about the craft of boxing, what commentators have called "the sweet science." The class will do so in conventional and innovative ways. The course will explore the story of boxing in America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It will start in England and colonial America, move to places like nineteenth-century New York, New Orleans, and the California mining camps where boxing was transformed from a gambling pursuit among the working class into a mass spectator sport, examine the time when boxing became ascendant in America, and end in the late twentieth century when boxing was entangled with urban decay and changing race politics. The story of boxing is the story of America. The class will look at the rise of cities, mass migration, changing understandings of gender, race, and class, urban history, and the fortunes and misfortunes of postwar American culture.

This course traces the history of business in the United States, from the merchant-smugglers of the American Revolution through the rise of big business and the tech boom. We will consider the operation of individual firms as well as situate the history of American business within its wider social, political, and economic context. In particular, we will move between thinking about the specific challenges businesses faced - such as the emergence of new technologies or price-cutting competitors - and a broader conversation about the evolution of American business, such as the "managerial revolution." The course will proceed chronologically, but each week will stress a particular theme, often seen through the story of a particular firm. Topics addressed include the rise of a national market, debates over regulatory capture, outsourcing and globalization, and finally the relationship between management, investment capital, and organized labor.

This course covers the varied experience of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (and other gender-fluid) Americans over the course of the twentieth century. As much as possible, it will focus on the voices of LGBT people themselves, in the context of the changing meanings of what it was to claim those identities. To do this we will draw on primary sources—art, music, film, literature, interviews and oral histories, memoirs and autobiographies, plays, films. The focus will be on the ways people understood who they were--and what homosexual/gay/lesbian/queer/transsexual/transgender/et al identities meant to them--and how these identities changed over the course of the twentieth century, using a wide variety of primary sources and relevant disciplinary frameworks.

In the aftermath of 9/11, with American troops deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and concern about the nuclear ambitions of such nations as North Korea and Iran, "national security" is the phrase that is often discussed and is of crucial importance to informed citizens. This course will examine national security policy: what it is, how it is formulated and executed, and how US national security policies have evolved since the 1890s. Using a variety of readings and films such as <i>Casablanca</i> and <i>Dr. Strangelove</i>, this course will examine US national security policies from the late 1890s through two world wars, the interwar period, the Cold War, the post-Cold War years, and up to the current post-9/11 world. We will identify continuities and departures in historic US national security policies, and consider the roles of policymakers and their critics in a self-governing society.

This lecture and discussion course will examine the presidencies and presidential administrations from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama. The course will aim to provide an overview of the principal strengths and limitations of these administrations in both foreign affairs and domestic policy. The course should appeal to those who have particular interests in American political and diplomatic history.

When Columbus stepped ashore in the Caribbean in 1492, he set in motion a process that led to the creation of wealthy Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas, the genocide of countless numbers of indigenous men and women, the enslavement of millions of African men and women, and the eventual formation of a variety of independent states competing in the world economy. In this semester-long survey, we will examine topics in this history that will allow us to consider how history is produced as well as what happened in the past, from various perspectives, from elite colonial administrators and merchants to indigenous peasants and formerly enslaved men and women.

Food feeds culture. It nourishes societies as well as bodies. No discipline is intelligible without it. It provides economics with products, physiology with sustenance, social sciences with classes and relationships of power. and intellects with food for thought. Food's also essential in ecology. Our most intimate contact with the environment occurs when we eat it. From interdisciplinary perspectives, we'll approach the history of food in all cultures (including, by the way, those of non-human cultural creatures) in all periods that we can say something about, from the origins of carnivorism and cannibalism through famines and fushion to the food-related environmental problems of the future. There may even be time to explore cuisines.

This course will explore the evolution of war in modern history from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 through the present. Content will center upon the relationship between war, technology and society. Central themes will include the military revolution debate, the rise of western Europe, the military origins of modern state, and the challenge of technological change to stable international orders. Students will learn how the evolving conduct of war has shaped the structure of modern societies, and vice-versa. Individual class sessions will explore important moments of conflict and technological innovation. Some class sessions will center on paradigm-defining conflicts, such as the Thirty Years' War or the Second World War. The course will conclude with explorations of new themes in modern warfare, from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the rise of drone and cyber warfare. This course satisfies the university history requirement and is open to all students; no previous knowledge of the topic is required.

A weekly tutorial required for students registered for HIST 10200, Western Civilization I, or its cross-lists.

A weekly required tutorial for students registered for HIST 20390.

Tutorial section of From Humors to Hysteria: Human and Political Bodies in European History, 1517-1918

These are the tutorial sections of the "FDR to Obama" survey course

An introduction to the seminar method of instruction that explores the major methodologies of the historical discipline and which accents the organization and expression of arguments suggested by readings in historical topics.

This course, which is open to participants by nomination only, supports all students endorsed by the University for the Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships. It will help them prepare intensively for their scholarship interviews by sharpening their discussion and presentation skills.

The gateway course will provide students with initial preparation and acquaint them with the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). More specifically, the course will introduce students to the historical milieu of MENA cultures and societies as well as the various dynamics that continue to shape them. It will survey the history of the region from the end of late antiquity to the present. Themes will include the rise of Islam; Muslim-Christian interactions; the caliphate; the age of gunpowder empires; engagements with modernity; encounters with European expansion; Islamic and secular reform movements; nationalism and revolution.

This course examines the history of the Middle East from the late eighteenth century to the Arab uprisings of 2011. We will approach cultural, social, political, and intellectual transformations in the Middle East. We will pursue a number of themes including engagements with modernity; reactions to Western colonial expansion; religious and secular reform movements; nationalism and revolution; changes in gender and family experiences; the Arab-Israeli conflict; the impact of oil and the Cold War; postcolonial state-building; the rise of political Islam and piety movements; globalization and economic disparities; and movements for democracy and social justice.

This course provides an introduction to Islamic civilization and Muslim culture and societies through scholarly works, literature, media clips, films, and audio-video material (some made by the instructor during recent trips to the Middle East). The background readings will provide a context for the audio-visual material, giving a general overview of the history of the Islamic world from the advent of Islam to the present day. The ultimate goal of this course is for students to gain a better understanding of the Muslim peoples and their culture and societies within the broader context of Islamic civilization. Focal point: brief overview of the canons and basic tenets of Islam as a world religion, recognition and transcendence of stereotypes, awareness of Western culture and political influence on today's Arab-Islamic world and vice versa, and exposure to Middle Eastern culture.

This course is an introduction to the history of the peoples of Africa from the late nineteenth century to the present day. During the term, we will consider the ways in which Africans shaped and were shaped by the transformative events of the period. In the second half of the nineteenth century, European powers conquered and colonized much of the continent. Over the next sixty years, Africans lived and died under the yoke of European rule; some resisted, others collaborated, but all influenced the nature of colonialism and its eventual collapse. By the 1960s, most Africans were free of foreign rule. Since then the peoples of Africa have endeavored to achieve political stability, navigate Cold War politics, harness development aid, and adapt to a globalizing economy. In recent years, they have succumbed to brutal wars and endured devastating famines, but they have also inspired the world with their triumph over apartheid, emerging vibrant democracies, rich cultures, and deep history. In this class, we will identify, problematize, and debate these major themes in Modern African history. We also will make use of a variety of texts, from historical documents to classic academic works to works of African art, film, and fiction.

A survey of the central themes in Western civilization from ancient Mesopotamia to the Renaissance. Emphasis will be on problems of social organization, especially the mutual obligations and responsibilities of individuals and states; evolving concepts of justice; aesthetic standards; religious ideas and institutions; basic philosophical concepts; different kinds of states; and the ideologies that defined and sustained them.

We will proceed chronologically and learn abut the first seven centuries of Roman history, broadly speaking from the foundation of Rome (and the murder of Remus) to the murder of Julius Caesar and the civil war. For the foundation of Rome we will consider myths, historical writings and material evidence, then we will look at the evidence about the making of the Roman Republic, and of its destruction. Throughout the course, we will ask two main questions: how did the Romans manage to transform their small town into a world power in a few centuries? That is, why did the Romans and not any other people manage to conquer and unify the Mediterranean? Secondly, we will discuss the political social and cultural consequences of this transformation. These questions exercised the Romans themselves, and some of the responses they gave will be considered in light of current scholarship.

This course examines the history of the Roman Empire, from the establishment of a veiled monarchy under Augustus to the Christianization of the empire following the reign of Constantine (ca. 1st century B.C. to 5th century A.D). Throughout the course, we will analyze and interpret ancient textual and archaeological evidence, from both Italy and the provinces, to assess the multi-faceted institutions and cultures of the Roman people. This body of material includes the writings of emperors (Augustus, Marcus Aurelius) and ancient historians (Tacitus, Suetonius, Ammianus Marcellinus), as well as the personal letters of Pliny to the emperor Trajan. Major themes discussed in the course include the nature of despotism, dynasties and the problem of succession; imperial governance of the Mediterranean (central, provincial, and local); cultural diversity and acculturation (so-called "Romanization"); religions and the imperial cult (worship of the Roman emperor); citizenship; urbanism, politics, and the economy; mortality and ecology; and the discrepant identities of women, children, slaves, freedmen, and freeborn under the imperial system of Rome.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived side by side for centuries in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean throughout the Middle Ages - the occupied the same towns, shopped in the same markets, dwelt in the same neighborhoods, read each other's books, and borrowed each other's stories. While covering the broad sweep of Latin-Christian, Islamic, and Byzantine civilizations that grew up in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea after the fall of Rome, we will focus especially the on-going interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in this area. While doing so we will constantly ask how can we know - and what kinds of things we can know - about the Middle Ages, as we examine many types of medieval sources, including literary works, historical texts, religious and philosophical writings, and works of art. The course lectures will provide the student with sufficient understanding of the medieval Mediterranean that they will be able to read with profit the assigned texts which are all primary sources, written in a variety of Mediterranean languages, in English translation. The course will proceed partly chronologically - especially when it comes to the politics and geo-politics of the region - and partly thematically.

This course aims at establishing a conversation between past and present and between the conceptions, justifications, laws, practices, and experiences of slavery in different cultures. To this goal, we will start from the Greeks and the Romans and then explore forms of contemporary slavery in Europe and beyond including a social ethics lens. An initial comparison between Greek and Roman conceptions of slavery will introduce the students to the variety of the phenomenon: for the Greeks, slavery depended on the superiority of some races over others, and this superiority was so self-evident that it needed no demonstration. It logically follows that they saw slavery as natural, racial, and permanent. Romans practiced slavery on a larger scale, but saw it as a necessary evil, which depended on the bad luck of single individuals and therefore was not necessarily permanent nor racially based. The contract between these two conceptions will provide a blueprint to look at later conceptions of slavery. It will also introduce an interdisciplinary approach, to explore slavery especially from a philosophical, moral, legal, economical, and human point of view.

Global Catholicism will explore the past, present, and future of the Catholic Church from a variety of perspectives. The largest and oldest transnational organization in the world, the Catholic Church also embodies the people of God and the Body of Christ. It therefore lends itself to analysis from many academic disciplines, and, in this course, priority will be given to insights from theology and history, though with reference to other fields such as art history, literature, and the social sciences. Besides exploring the university’s art and archival collections, readings thus will include a novel, a memoir, primary sources both historical and theological, as well as analyses of pertinent issues and episodes that feature historical, theological, sociological, and anthropological approaches. There will also be a visit to Chicago’s Catholic parishes that reflect the Church’s global reach. Besides participation and engagement in class meetings, course requirements include regular brief responses to assigned readings, several group oral reports, and a mid-term and final exam. In addition, students will also prepare a final project that will seek to draw upon historical and theological reasoning to address a contemporary issue of importance for the Catholic Church, proposing a response to the issue from the perspective of a church leader (for example, a bishop, head of religious congregation, Catholic university president, etc.)

This lecture course examines some of the most important events, ideas, and personalities that shaped late Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods of Russian history during the last one hundred years: from the outbreak of the First World War and the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 through the Great Terror of the 1930s, the experience of the Second World War and the emergence of the Soviet Empire, late Stalinism and post-Stalinist developed or mature socialism, the collapse of the communist rule and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, as well as Russia's uneasy transition "out of Totalitarianism" and into Putin's authoritarianism during the first fourteen years of the twentieth-first century. The course is designed for history majors as well as for students in other disciplines with or without background in modern Russian and East European history.

The First World War is often referred to as the "seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century." It certainly brought the golden age of Europe's prosperity to an end. And its lingering effects would help bring about the rise of Bolshevik Communism in Russia, Fascism in Italy and other parts of Europe, and, of course, the rise of National Socialism in Germany. But what actually happened in the war? The course will include lectures with moments for discussion. Together, we will cover the usual suspects of diplomatic and military history of the war. We will learn about new technologies of war, new strategies and tactics on the battlefield, and the futility of attacking entrenched positions. But this war was "The Great War" because it entailed so much more than the front lines. We'll take a deep dive into memoirs and primary sources, emerging new interpretations of home and war fronts, and revisions to our understanding of both when the war ended and began. We will go beyond the western front and trench warfare to look at the important battles in the East and South. And, importantly, we will also take time to look closely at the larger social and cultural aspects that this era of total war introduced, including the emancipation of women, the growth of the state and the use and misuse of emergency powers, and the ways in which everyday people (at home and on the front) coped and endured with the hardships of war, hunger, and death. Time will also be devoted to the peace treaties after the war nominally ended and the continuum of violence that lingered into the interwar period. Music will be played and students may be encouraged to sign along.

The capitalism and consumerism that now influences the entire world arose within a religious culture-that of Western Christianity-whose central figure extolled poverty and self-denial, and whose most important early missionary wrote that "the love of money is the root of all evils." How did this happen? This course takes a long-term view of the emergence of modern economic life in relationship to Christianity beginning with the upturn in commerce and the monetization of the European economy in the eleventh century and continuing through the relationship between markets and Christian morality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It pays particular attention to the ways in which the religio-political disruptions of the Reformation era laid the foundations for the disembedding of economics from Christian ethics and thus made possible modern Western capitalism and consumerism.

This is a lecture course that will offer students an opportunity to delve into the dark history of Germany and Europe between the First World War and the Cold War. At the center of this course is the National Socialist movement, which dominated Germany from 1933 to 1945 and left its imprint on the world thereafter. The hope is that students become familiar with the movement's intellectual and cultural origins, the political contingencies that made it successful, and the policies that made it popular and feared in Germany and beyond. Topics will include Social Darwinism and racial pseduo-science, the Treaty of Versailles and Weimar Germany, the rise of National Socialism to power, and Nazi society and culture. In addition, we will look at how Nazi politics were received and imitated in central and Eastern Europe and how Adolf Hitler's international politics could appeal to peoples beyond Germany's borders. Students will also learn about the systematic and organized killing of peoples and groups in Europe under occupation, including six million Jews and the Holocaust. The course will conclude with the postwar occupation regimes in Germany and Europe, the erasure of complicity with Nazism in the subsequent histories of Europe, and the failed attempts at deNazification and justice for the regime's victims.Friday sections will consist of smaller discussion groups that will discuss the content of the lectures in part. Most importantly, students will read primary source material, including laws, witness statements, memoirs, and important scholarly debates. The Friday sessions will thus give students the opportunity to directly analyze accounts and sources. These skills will then be assessed in a document analysis paper and on our midterms and final exams.

This course has been designed to introduce students to London's history as a global city and some of its many historic buildings, museums and diverse neighbourhoods. Inspired by the in-person "Inside London" class usually offered in London, this online iteration will make use of digital presentations of original source material to introduce students to London's history at a moment when physical exploration is limited. Simultaneously, the course will explore the idea of history, not as a simple set of facts about "what happened in the past", but as a changing interpretive discipline, rooted in the evaluation and interpretation of primary source material.

How should we address the environmental impacts of new and emerging technologies such as Bitcoin, artificial intelligence, or electric cars? To answer this question, and others like it, we must first remember that technology does not exist in a vacuum; just as technologies impact the environment, social systems shape and are shaped by technological development. In this course, students will gain an understanding of these interrelated systems by reading a variety of historical and scientific sources with an emphasis on the impacts of technology upon the environment during history's three Industrial Revolutions (i.e., the rise of the steam engine, the emergence of mass production, and the development of computing technologies). These revolutions were times of rapid technological development with especially dramatic impacts on politics, economics, the environment, and society. Discussions of these readings in conjunction with individual research projects will allow students to incorporate the lessons of the course into a critical analysis of the impacts of rapid technological change, culminating in a discussion of what the future (and present state) of technological change may be. By the end of this course, students will have developed writing, research, and communication skills which will help them craft well-developed research questions and present evidence-driven arguments in their respective fields of study.

Scholars have long speculated about the rise of Asia, but Asia has already risen. Asian economies are driving global growth; Asian governments are some of the largest purveyors of foreign aid and investment; and Asian superpowers like China are shaping and shifting geopolitics. This course, taught by a political scientist and a historian, offers students the opportunity to unpack the complexity and diversity of Asia across time and space. We will explore Asia through political and historical concepts against the background of China's evolving role within the region. At the same time, we will focus on elevating diverse Asian voices to understand how historical concepts and political and economic trajectories have shifted over time and what it means for domestic and global audiences in the 21st century.

We all recognize that the biomedical sciences change rapidly, but amid the seemingly intractable and interminable debate about healthcare reform in the US, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that the same is true of the healthcare system. This interdisciplinary course will examine the American healthcare system in historical and comparative perspective. We look at its institutional structure, its professional composition, and its governance at various levels, with the end learning objective being to understand how these facets of the healthcare system shape not only national health outcomes, but also provider and patient experience. The course draws on the history, sociology and anthropology of medicine, and serves as one the core courses in the new Health, Humanities and Society Minor.

This class provides an educational and entertaining reconfiguration of the historical spread and cultural importance of the Irish as part of the 2st-century transnational world. Based on comparative perspectives with other emigrations, such as people from 19th century Italy and Germany into the New World, our study of the Irish helps students to understand the human narrative of resettlement, the national and global policies of settlement and resettlement, and the global impact of the spread of the Irish into many areas of the world. Based on lectures, films and presentations, we explore some fundamental historical questions, such as how are the Irish Famine, emigration, and economic developments of the 18-20th centuries interconnected, and how did the Irish diaspora shape the historical and cultural trajectory of America. We explore a range of themes relevant to other large-scale population migrations, such as the impact of the Irish spread on trans-Atlantic social memory and global economies across time and space.

This course explores the major forces that shaped social and cultural life in the United States from the earliest period of settlement (ca. 1600), through the Civil War and Reconstruction. It views American history not as a tale of uninterrupted progress, but as a story of hard-fought battles that some won and others lost. Freedom, equality, and democracy for some groups coexisted with oppression, inequality, and exclusion for others. The course therefore focuses on two main questions. First, how did different groups define what concepts like 'freedom,' 'equality,' and 'democracy' meant, and how did they determine to whom these concepts should apply? Second, how was this process of definition shaped by encounters with Indians, Africans, and European immigrants; imperial conflict and revolution; varieties of religious expression; constitutional development; democratization; westward expansion; and sectional divisions that led to the Civil War? The goal is not simply to provide an overview of major conflicts and changes in early America, but to develop students' ability to critically interpret their meanings and implications, and to help them arrive at their own informed conclusions. This course is open to all students; no previous knowledge of the topic is required.

When speaking of the American Revolution, many writers reach for a comment made by John Adams in 1818 that, "[T]he Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. . ." Whether this assertion is true historically or not, it still does not adequately describe what that revolution was. The American Revolution obviously had its political elements, primarily the formation of the United States. To reach its political goals, military means were necessary. Without a successful War for Independence, there would have been no revolution. To leave matters there, however, would be insufficient. A fuller understanding of the revolution would need to address how it affected the whole spectrum of American life. It would consider the revolution as a social movement that challenged the political and social hierarchies of the day. It would also ask how the revolution affected those who were not white males, especially women, slaves, and Native Americans. Without considering the possible negative implications of the revolution, any telling would be incomplete. This class will take up these challenges and attempt to make a full-orbed presentation of the events surrounding the American Revolution. It will introduce students both to elites and to those whom the popular narrative glosses over. It will attempt to count the losses, as well as the gains, which flowed from the move to independence from Britain. Finally, it will attempt to describe the many changes through this period, which resulted, not only in a new political nation, but in a new society and culture--changes that in varying degrees are still with us today and of which contemporary Americans are the inheritors.

This course examines the history of the lands that became the United States from the era of Columbus to the end of Reconstruction in 1877. During this period, a variety of monumental events occurred: Native-European contact; the development of the British colonies; the War of Independence; the rise and fall of slavery; and the Civil War. How and why did these changes happen? What were the turning points and who were the key figures behind them? To answer these questions, this course will examine pre-Reconstruction American history through a variety of lenses including religion, race and ethnicity, war, politics, and intellectual developments. Topics receiving special attention include relations between settlers and natives, Puritanism and the Great Awakening, the American Revolution and formation of the nation, the role of slavery in American life, and the Civil War.

This course surveys American History from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the present. During this period, the United States became a global power, fought two world wars, witnessed momentous cultural changes at home, and became the nation it is today. How and why did these changes happen? What were the turning points and who were the key figures behind them? To answer these questions, this course will examine post-Reconstruction American history through a variety of lenses including religion, race and ethnicity, war, politics, and intellectual developments. Topics receiving special attention include political corruption and Progressive reforms; presidential elections; World War I; the Great Depression and World War II; the Cold War; the Nineteen Sixties; and the rise of the Right. This course is open to all students; history majors may count up to two lower-level courses toward the major.

In this course, we will study the history of boxing in the United States and learn a great deal about the craft of boxing, what commentators have called "the sweet science." The class will do so in conventional and innovative ways. The course will explore the story of boxing in America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It will start in England and colonial America, move to places like nineteenth-century New York, New Orleans, and the California mining camps where boxing was transformed from a gambling pursuit among the working class into a mass spectator sport, examine the time when boxing became ascendant in America, and end in the late twentieth century when boxing was entangled with urban decay and changing race politics. The story of boxing is the story of America. The class will look at the rise of cities, mass migration, changing understandings of gender, race, and class, urban history, and the fortunes and misfortunes of postwar American culture.

In 1941, Time publisher Henry Luce implored the United States to "exert upon the world the full impact of our influence." Delivered in the midst of war, Luce's charge was for his fellow citizens to "create the first great American Century," in which this nation's values and enterprising spirit could be used to combat totalitarianism and advance democracy on a global scale. This course will explore the post-World War II period (1940-2000), when Americans achieved the power Luce predicted, but also wrestled with the complexities and challenges this authority created, domestically and abroad. While proceeding chronologically and surveying a range of social, economic, and political developments that defined America at this time, we will also focus our analysis on particularly crucial trends, including anticommunism and Cold War diplomacy, the rise and fall of New Deal liberalism, the urban crisis and demographic shifts to the suburbs and Sunbelt, liberal and conservative social movements of the 1960s, Vietnam and Watergate, civil rights and the crises of the 1970s, the emergence of the Republican Right, and the effects of globalization. Along the way we will examine documents and multi-media sources from the period, engage recent historical writings about the postwar years, and think and talk about what it means to research and write "good history."

In this course, we will interpret Notre Dame - an institution often defined as America's only truly national University - from the perspective of American studies. Notre Dame--much like America-- can be defined and understood in multiple ways: as a physical location, as social and institutional world, and as an imaginary. We will explore Notre Dame from its pre-history as the homeland of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, to its founding as a missionary outpost of the European Catholic church, through its evolution during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through its present profile as a top-tier research university and the nation's premier Catholic educational institution. We will focus not only on obvious subjects such as Catholicism and football but also on as other key topics and themes in American studies that intersect with Notre Dame's story in the past and present.

This course traces the history of business in the United States, from the merchant-smugglers of the American Revolution through the rise of big business and the tech boom. We will consider the operation of individual firms as well as situate the history of American business within its wider social, political, and economic context. In particular, we will move between thinking about the specific challenges businesses faced - such as the emergence of new technologies or price-cutting competitors - and a broader conversation about the evolution of American business, such as the "managerial revolution." The course will proceed chronologically, but each week will stress a particular theme, often seen through the story of a particular firm. Topics addressed include the rise of a national market, debates over regulatory capture, outsourcing and globalization, and finally the relationship between management, investment capital, and organized labor.

When Columbus stepped ashore in the Caribbean in 1492, he set in motion a process that led to the creation of wealthy Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas, the genocide of countless numbers of indigenous men and women, the enslavement of millions of African men and women, and the eventual formation of a variety of independent states competing in the world economy. In this semester-long survey, we will examine topics in this history that will allow us to consider how history is produced as well as what happened in the past, from various perspectives, from elite colonial administrators and merchants to indigenous peasants and formerly enslaved men and women.

This course will introduce students to the main topics, themes, and debates in Atlantic history, focusing on Spanish and Portuguese America and the Caribbean. It will begin with an overview of slavery and other legal and labor systems in West Africa and the Americas, and then examine how and why the Portuguese and Spanish entered into a slaving trade in West Africa, and what ensued from contact with the American hemisphere after 1492. We will end with abolition and emancipation in the Americas. Along the way we will examine the rise and fall of "Indian," slavery, the cultural meanings of Blackness, the labor and economic conditions in urban settings as well as on rural plantations, and the strategies that enslaved people used to negotiate living conditions and achieve freedom. We will also pay careful attention to different kinds of resistance, including the formation of stable palenques of those who escaped slavery and a variety of rebellions, including the successful Haitian Revolution. Weekly readings will include modern accounts and historical documents. Assignments will predominantly be medium-length (5-7 pages) essays using primary sources and one exercise using the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. We also hope to utilize the collections at the Raclin Murphy Art Museum.

Food feeds culture. It nourishes societies as well as bodies. No discipline is intelligible without it. It provides economics with products, physiology with sustenance, social sciences with classes and relationships of power. and intellects with food for thought. Food´s also essential in ecology. Our most intimate contact with the environment occurs when we eat it. From interdisciplinary perspectives, we´ll approach the history of food in all cultures (including, by the way, those of non-human cultural creatures) in all periods that we can say something about, from the origins of carnivorism and cannibalism through famines and fushion to the food-related environmental problems of the future. There may even be time to explore cuisines.

This course will explore the evolution of war in modern history from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 through the present. Content will center upon the relationship between war, technology and society. Central themes will include the military revolution debate, the rise of western Europe, the military origins of modern state, and the challenge of technological change to stable international orders. Students will learn how the evolving conduct of war has shaped the structure of modern societies, and vice-versa. Individual class sessions will explore important moments of conflict and technological innovation. Some class sessions will center on paradigm-defining conflicts, such as the Thirty Years' War or the Second World War. The course will conclude with explorations of new themes in modern warfare, from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the rise of drone and cyber warfare. This course satisfies the university history requirement and is open to all students; no previous knowledge of the topic is required.

A weekly tutorial required for students registered for HIST 30080, Intro to Islamic History or its cross-lists.

A required tutorial for students enrolled in HIST 20983 or its cross-lists.

A weekly tutorial required for students registered for HIST 30191, Global Africa, or its cross-lists.

A weekly tutorial required for students registered for HIST 20200, Western Civilization I, or its cross-lists.

A required tutorial for students enrolled in HIST 10201/ HIST 30202 or its cross-lists.

A weekly tutorial for students in HIST 10350 and HIST 30350

A weekly tutorial for students enrolled in HIST 10355 or HIST 20355, Rasputin to Putin, or its cross-lists.

A required tutorial section for students enrolled in HIST 10356, HIST 20356, or its cross-lists.

A weekly tutorial required for students registered for HIST 30401 Nazi Germany, Nazi Europe or its cross-lists.

A weekly tutorial required for students registered for HIST 30407, World War 2: A Global History or its cross-lists.

A weekly discussion section required for students registered for HIST 20590, "Irish Hands that Built America."

A required weekly tutorial for students registered for The American Revolution (HIST 20602 or its crosslists).

This tutorial is intended to be taken with HIST 20606 or its crosslists.

A weekly tutorial for students enrolled in HIST 20625 or its crosslists.

A weekly tutorial required for students registered for HIST 10901 or HIST 30901, Colonial Latin America or its cross-lists.

A required tutorial for students enrolled in HIST 20902 or its cross-lists.

A weekly tutorial required for students enrolled in HIST 10996 or HIST 30996, War in Modern History, or its cross-lists.

This course is intended as the first of a two-part survey of Western science. We begin with a survey of the heritage of ancient (largely Greek) contributions to natural philosophy, mathematics, and medicine. We will continue with medieval studies of mathematics, motion, the heavens, living things, optics, materials, and alchemy in Arabic and Latin cultures. Given the importance of religion to the formation of these historical cultures, we will pay particular attention to the relations between broader philosophy, theology, and the emerging activities bearing the hallmarks of naturalistic and rational approaches we often distinguish as "science." Changing institutional homes for the study of nature also contextualize our study of key ideas and methods, from early philosophical schools to monasteries, universities, courts, and academies. Ultimately, we will consider whether there was such a thing as "the Scientific Revolution," and, if there was, what was so revolutionary about it.

In this course, we will interpret Notre Dame - an institution often defined as America's only truly national University - from the perspective of American studies. Notre Dame--much like America-- can be defined and understood in multiple ways: as a physical location, as social and institutional world, and as an imaginary. We will explore Notre Dame from its pre-history as the homeland of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, to its founding as a missionary outpost of the European Catholic church, through its evolution during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through its present profile as a top-tier research university and the nation's premier Catholic educational institution. We will focus not only on obvious subjects such as Catholicism and football but also on as other key topics and themes in American studies that intersect with Notre Dame's story in the past and present.

This course offers an interdisciplinary survey of African-American and other African descendant women’s indigenous knowledge, development and maintenance of social structures, cultural preservation and spiritual engagement within their respective communities. Unfortunately and unconscionably Black women have been derogatorily referred to as “the mules of the world”. Valued for their work, and often not much else. They are venerated for their fertility and their central role they occupy as strong mothers and caregivers in the domestic sphere. Yet, concurrently they are often denied opportunity outside of the home. “Crossing over” occupying a position in more than one realm, much as Sister Rosetta Tharpe moved between secular and sanctified music often became the modus for survival. Maligned as jezebels, or sapphires, lazy and usury, as witches, or relegated to menial, semi-skilled labor. This course aims to interrogate and dispel some of the tropes and caricatures, by utilizing womanist and feminist theory to look closely at the role of Black women as agentive, sage and entrepreneurial. Alice Walker coined the term womanist in the 1980s. As Walker outlines it, a womanist is a person who prefers to side with the oppressed: with women, with people of color, with the poor. These are women who occupy several subject positions in society. By harnessing their “intersectionality” of race, gender, sexuality, class, and transnational identity we can interrogate the historicity and cultural specificity that they have faced in and outside of their communities. With particular emphasis placed upon the subordination that Black women face; and the effects of racism, colonialism, unequal forms of economic development, and globalization on Black Communities, the course aims to see and illustrate where and how Black women have risen above the limitations imposed upon them. To do this, students will engage in critical reading of a range of diverse texts—from memoir, essay, fiction, prose, cultural criticism and sociopolitical analysis. We will look historically and currently at black women’s roles in the home, their religious institutions and in some of the workplaces they occupy as sole proprietors, cottage industrialists, and street vendors. For an undergraduate student body this course will pull excerpts from several core texts that would tend to be read in full if offered on the graduate level.

This course examines the nineteenth and twentieth century histories of print and cultural manufacturing in the U.S., with special attention given to readers, writers, media producers, and distribution. By tracing how literature, broadly defined, has influenced the shape and reshaping of modern life, our primary goal for the semester will be to better understand the role and impact of intellectual transmission on civil society, formal politics, and cultural standards. Related topics we will investigate include the development and growth of American children's literature; the history of racial and ethnic authorship; the rise of industrial publishing; national and transnational censorship; and legacies of "master" communicators to mass audiences (e.g. Franklin Roosevelt with radio, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan with television, and Donald Trump with Twitter). Course readings and film screenings will range from William Llloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, Matthew Rubery's The Untold Story of the Talking Book, Catherine Fisk's Writing for Hire: Unions, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, Capote, and The Social Network.

One way to improve our understanding of ourselves is to compare ourselves with the animals who most resemble us, in informative, challenging and disturbing ways. In this course, we'll look at the relationship that has done most to change human self-perceptions. With a focus on Western texts and experiences, but with reference to many other cultures, we'll concentrate on the problems of how and why human attitudes to other apes have changed since the Middle Ages, and how they have influenced thinking in science, religion, politics, sociology, literature, and ethics.

What did people think about health, disease, exercise, and sports in the past? How did people come to use science to understand health, disease, and human physical excellence? Which scientific approaches have been most helpful, and do we lose anything by taking health and physical excellence more and more as a technical, scientific challenge? This course examines the history of medicine, science, and sports through select episodes from ancient Egypt and Greece up to the present. We will read English translations of documents about health, medicine, science, and sports from people who lived thousands and hundreds of years ago, as well as sources from the science of health and sports today. Along the way, we will survey ancient surgical techniques, tips for the best diets, the rise of academic medicine, discussions of the importance of exercise for human health, the creation of hospitals and major competitions, the Black Death and other epidemics, the development of scientific human anatomy and germ theory, data analytics, and much else. This course assumes no prerequisites and presents the history of science and medicine in terms of stories about people, ideas, places, and objects, rather than in terms of technical problems, problem sets, and labs.

"Why do people invest and how do they do it in different national and historical contexts? This course offers students the opportunity to think about the emergence of financial markets as institutions, evolving legal and business practices and the changing role of investors from a historical and global perspective. Starting with trade finance in the 15th century and the emergence of sovereign bond markets under the Habsburg Spain empire, we move on to London's rise as financial center of Europe, stock market bubbles, the nature of new exchanges in Asia and other global settings to Wall Street, war bonds, and the rise of new financial tools and markets in the post-WWII era. Readings will involve primary documents and exciting literature in economic history, social, business and cultural history and allow students to gain a broader understanding of the nature of financial and political risk, institution-building, human behavior, and the role of financial markets in modern history. "

This course tells the history of Appalachia through humans' relationships with the natural environment. The class starts in geologic time with the formation of the mountains and spools forward through ebb and flow of Native American homelands, the colonial wars and the fur trade, the American invasion, the growth of an agrarian economy centered on corn, pigs, and whiskey, the arrival of the railroads and the extractive industries of coal and timber, and finally the difficulties wrought by de-industrialization, climate change, and the opioid epidemic. The central characters throughout are the men and women who wrested their living from the mountains and the hollows, and their struggles as a series of political, economic, and ecological transformations dispossessed them. Over time, Appalachia was impoverished and made marginal; in the eyes of many, the place and the people were deemed exploitable and expendable. This class seeks to understand how Appalachia became synonymous with grinding poverty and environmental degradation. The class argues that ecosystems and people advanced and declined in tandem and that history shows neither were destined for impoverishment. This course is intended to give current Notre Dame students who have or who might visit and volunteer in Appalachia the historical perspective they may need to fully appreciate the region's problems and potential.

Pictures, diagrams, graphs, and (more recently) computer images are ubiquitous in modern medicine. Depictions of disease are indispensable for medical education, training, and reference, although this reliance on images is a rather recent development. Visualization is also indispensable in medical research, both for communicating evidence, theories, and experiments to other researchers and physicians and for conveying this knowledge to the public. But understanding precisely how images work—both the obvious and hidden things they do—can be surprisingly difficult, and throughout history important questions have been raised concerning the usefulness, and the dangers, of relying on visual depictions to understand the body and disease. In this class we will investigate images related to the generation or transmission of knowledge about nature, the body, and medicine, from the middle ages through the twentieth century. It is both a history of medicine told through the lens of the visual techniques and technologies used over time, as well as a history of visual representation itself as revealed through the history of medicine. Among other things we will address the following questions. What are the material and technological factors underlying visual depictions in medicine over time? What can the images we examine tell us about the communities and societies, including our own, in which they were created? In what ways do images serve as intermediaries between nature and those investigating it? What about between physicians and patients? What roles have images played in the spread of Western medicine over time?

How do we explain the important role of the state in China's economy past and present? Why did China not experience an industrial revolution in the 19th century? Why did capitalism never take off? These are just a few examples of important questions we will address in this course. The relationship between visible and invisible hands, i.e. state and market, provides the framework for our in-depth discussion of China's economic and business history that geographically includes Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Chinese overseas communities across Asia. At the beginning of the 21st century, China has reached a stunning level of growth and entrepreneurship embedded in a complex, constantly changing framework of economic, social, and political structures. A historically informed approach to China's business and economic development allows us to uncover the institutional and organizational origins of firms, different forms of entrepreneurship and the relationship between government and business in a long-term perspective. This course also offers a comparative approach to the issue of China's industrialization and economic modernization across time in a global setting.

This interdisciplinary course will examine the conceptual logic of using a settler-colonial lens to interpret the history and politics of Palestine/Israel. We will explore the religious dimensions of settler colonial narratives and practices and their intersections with secular, religious, and apocalyptic nationalisms. We will ask what the deployment of a settler-colonial lens illuminates, what it obscures, and why. We will scrutinize the recent proliferation of scholarship that has taken a comparative settler colonial approach. We will triangulate it with the literature on Israel’s Jewish identity, its meaning, and how and why it shifted over the decades. We will likewise engage in another set of conversations on nationalism and political theologies and identify the relevance of global anti-racism social movements and their uses and abuses of Palestinian struggles and Israeli narratives.

This course is a survey-style introduction to the early modern Atlantic world, the global region brought together beginning in the fifteenth century by commercial interests, military conquest, and the African slave trade. Using gender, race, and slavery as our primary lenses, it explores the diverse relations among and between Iberians (residents of what would become Spain and Portugal) and Africans before that trade commenced, and examines how the Iberian conquest of the Americas radically transformed them. It also examines the vast Atlantic diasporas: of Africans scattered around the American continents, of indigenous natives of the southern Americas to Europe and west-central Africa, and Europeans in Africa and the Americas. Students will learn about the life experiences of the men and women who crossed the Atlantic, the effects of these conquests and trade relations on the regions, the development of theories of race, ethnicity, and gender that emerged, and the larger structures of global trade and contact in the early modern world. We require two kinds of readings: (1) historiographic debates that highlight the active conversations between historians on this emerging topic, and (2) primary sources that require students to read carefully and critically, and come to an understanding of how historians ask and answer questions about a past that is largely undocumented.

In this course we will examine the historical transformation, literary representations, and contemporary re-imaginations in popular media of China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911). The Qing dynasty was born a Manchu empire that rose outside of China proper to become one of the largest land empires in human history, but was undone by foreign encroachment and internal unrest and eventually fell in 1911. The Qing's dramatic trajectory continues in the competing narratives circulated over a century after its fall. On the one hand, despite its domination by a non-Han people, it is regarded as the pinnacle of China's past, while on the other, it is frequently condemned for its decadency and arrogance precipitating a well-deserved downfall. We will explore the fundamental issues pertaining to the Qing, such as ethnic identity, minority rule, conquest dynasty, imperialism, militarization, and gender, and the lasting fascination with the dynasty regularly captured in contemporary film and television. Through reading, thinking, discussing, and debating, we will enter a different culture and a different time, and come to appreciate how the past continues to influence our world.

This course will provide advanced undergraduates and graduate students with a critical introduction to digital humanities for the study of early China, the fountainhead of Chinese Civilization. Collaborating with the Center of Digital Scholarship, this course will focus on relational data with structured information on historical figures, especially high officials, of early Chinese empires. Throughout the semester, we will read academic articles, mine data from primary sources, and employ Gephi and ArcGIS to visualize data. Those constructed data will cover three major themes: how geographical mobility contributed to consolidating a newly unified empire over diversified regions; how social networks served as the hidden social structure channeling the flow of power and talents; and how criminal records and excavated legal statutes shed light on the unique understanding of law and its relationship with the state in Chinese history.

This course examines US engagement in hotspots across the Muslim world before and after 9/11. In particular focus are nations in South Asia and the Middle East: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq. We will also look at US relations with important Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as policies toward Israel-Palestine and the Bosnian War in Europe. US engagement abroad takes many forms, including public diplomacy, trade, sanctions, alliances, covert operations, financial and military aid, and direct military intervention. What are the drivers of American decision-making in the region? Why is there so much anti-American sentiment in Muslim societies? Does peace depend on a critical reassessment of US foreign policy or the reform of a radical Islamist theology? Do certain interpretations of religion make conflict inevitable, or is it possible to attain reasonable outcomes even when dealing with extremists? Through a blend of history, investigative journalism, case studies, opinion polls, literature, and film, this course broadens our perspectives on some of America?s longest wars in the Muslim world.

What is the Palestine/Israel conflict about? How did it start? How might it be resolved? Some interpretations rely on claims of ancient hatreds. Others invoke sacred and biblical narratives as their authority for claims to a land deemed holy by many different religions. Still others underscore the ills and legacies of settler colonialism and indigenous accounts of historical presence. Some invoke international law and human rights to make their claims. This course will explore these arguments surrounding the Palestine/Israel conflict through screening and discussion of cinematic representation, narrative argument, and documentary films. Multiple genres provide powerful tools to introduce students to multiple perspectives, conceptions of history, experiences of injustice and grievances and loss, and imagining peace and justice. Each screening will be paired with relevant and interdisciplinary reading material. The students will emerge from this course with a detailed and complex understanding of the Palestine/Israel conflict from the present dating back to the late Ottoman period, the British control of historic Palestine, and the definitional moment of 1948 which is marked both as Israeli independence and the Palestinian catastrophe (the Nakba).

This course is an introduction to the history of the peoples of Africa from the late nineteenth century to the present day. During the term, we will consider the ways in which Africans shaped and were shaped by the transformative events of the period. In the second half of the nineteenth century, European powers conquered and colonized much of the continent. Over the next sixty years, Africans lived and died under the yoke of European rule; some resisted, others collaborated, but all influenced the nature of colonialism and its eventual collapse. By the 1960s, most Africans were free of foreign rule. Since then the peoples of Africa have endeavored to achieve political stability, navigate Cold War politics, harness development aid, and adapt to a globalizing economy. In recent years, they have succumbed to brutal wars and endured devastating famines, but they have also inspired the world with their triumph over apartheid, emerging vibrant democracies, rich cultures, and deep history. In this class, we will identify, problematize, and debate these major themes in Modern African history. We also will make use of a variety of texts, from historical documents to classic academic works to works of African art, film, and fiction.

Popular perceptions of Africa are almost wholly defined by the last century and a half of its history, first under the boot of European imperial powers and then struggling to rebuild sovereignty and stability in the post-colonial world. Apart from the slave trade, most often narrated as an American story that happens to begin in Africa, little of the continent’s rich pre-modern past earns more than a passing mention in global history. This course aims to shine a spotlight on these neglected stories and examine the many contributions of Africans to the course of human history. We will begin with Africa as the ancients knew it, a land of bright sunshine, proud empires, and legendary wealth. We’ll then examine the continent’s long history of trade with the wider world, both in goods and in people. Finally, we will consider the sources of the great upheavals that swept the continent in the 19th century and how they heralded the coming of colonization. Along the way, we will work with a wide range of sources, from legends and travelogues to fiction and film, in order to better appreciate the lives and perspectives of everyday Africans.

Few places on earth exhibit the dynamism of contemporary Christianity like sub-Saharan Africa. Such dynamism creates new challenges and opportunities for the Catholic Church and other ecclesial bodies, and also shapes African life in profound ways. Through novels, historical studies, social-scientific and theological works, and present-day reflections from a variety of perspectives this course will explore Christianity in Africa, beginning with the early Christian movement and with heightened attention to the more recent growth of Christianity on the continent. It will also examine Christianity's interactions with Islam and forms of African ways of being religious that predated Christianity and Islam, many of which have ongoing vitality. Attention will also be paid to African Christian theology, carried out formally and informally, as well as the implications of the spread of African Christianity for world Christianity. The shape of class meetings will depend on the size of the class, but seminar-style discussion should be anticipated on a regular basis. Ideally students will grow in capacity to participate fully in such activity, through close reading of assigned texts before class and learning the practices appropriate to advanced seminars: attentiveness to others; careful explanation of opinions; courteous and respectful criticism of others' views; disciplined connection of immediate readings and issues to larger conceptual and practical questions. Regular critical writing also will contribute to vitality in the seminar format.

This course studies the intellectual origins, political developments and social and cultural manifestations of nationalism and national movements in the Middle East. We will begin with a theoretical survey of nationalism in general and then proceed to discuss specific cases of national movements (Zionist, Arab, Lebanese, Iraqi, Turkish, Iranian, Egyptian). We will use these cases to analyze themes such as historiography and nationalism, anti-colonialism, gender, religion and art as they have been manifested in these national movements.

This course offers a survey of Middle Eastern history from the rise of Islam in the seventh century CE until the rise of Mongol successor polities in the 15th century. The course is structured to cover political, religious, and cultural developments and their relationship with broader changes in society during the formative centuries of Islamic civilization. Specific topics include the career of the Prophet Muhammad and the origins of the earliest Muslim polity; the creation and breakup of the Islamic unitary state (the Caliphate); ethnic, racial, and religious tensions and movements in the medieval Islamic world; the impact of Turkic migrations on the Middle East; the diversity of approaches to Muslim piety and their social and political expression; popular culture; non-Muslims in Islamic society; and the creation of the medieval Islamic "international" cultural order. Among the more important themes will be long-term cultural and social continuities with the Islamic and ancient Near East, and concepts of religious and political authority.

This course is on the religion, philosophy, and intellectual history of China and introduces the student to the worldview and life experience of Chinese as they have been drawn from local traditions, as well as worship and sacrifice to heroes and the cult of the dead. Through a close reading of primary texts in translation, it also surveys China’s grand philosophical legacy of Daoism, Buddhism, “Confucianism,” and “Neo-Confucianism.”

Many Muslim thinkers and scholars have articulated the meaning and message of Islam in the modern period. This course will focus on one particular group of interpreters of Islam, namely the traditional or orthodox religious scholars called the Ulama and their institutions. This course will provide historical contexts in order to explore how traditional Muslims navigate the discourses of modernity and how they resist it. We will read original texts in translation and secondary sources of descriptions of representatives of the orthodox tradition in regions of Asia, the Middle East and in the West. The course will pay particular attention to the institutions of learning known as madrasas, jami` and hawzas. Of course, the orthodox views are challenged by other Muslims and some of those debates will also be channeled in the class while the focus will remain on the Ulama. The course aims to equip students with analytical skills and the resources to understand how religious ideas impact religious communities and global affairs.

This course examines the interplay between history, memory and violence in the modern the Middle East. We will discuss specific case studies of violence and war and their social, political and cultural dynamics of commemoration, forgetfulness and silence. The course will start with an overview of theories and concepts emanated from the field of Memory Studies and then continue with our case studies. These will include the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), the 1948 war that led to the establishment of Israel and Palestinian displacement, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the violent regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Armenian genocide during World War I and the Algerian war of independence (1955-1962).

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh account for more than a fifth of humanity: nearly two billion people in one of the most densely populated parts of the planet. South Asians speak more than a hundred languages, and represent most of the Hindus, Muslims, Sikh, Jains, and Zoroastrians in the world. The region's major economy, India, is by itself among the ten largest economies and one of the fastest growing. Yet, there is much about South Asia that can be perplexing. Caste based violence remains widespread in a society that is fast modernizing; billionaires mushroom alongside widespread malnourishment; space missions are launched to Mars amidst vast numbers of illiterate and uneducated citizens; Bollywood thrives while freedom of expression is often under threat; religious fundamentalism exists alongside extraordinary religious pluralism; gay rights expand alongside the murders of atheist bloggers; a democratic government lives in fear of military overthrow; a society that has that has chosen women as heads of state also sees increasing reports of sexual crimes. This course will unravel these knots and explain the processes that gave rise to them. Beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, this course will progress chronologically and bring us to the present day via themes on politics, economy, society, and popular culture. It offers an understanding of contemporary India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and their place on the global stage.

The course provides students with a unique introduction to Asia in all its diversity, ranging from its languages, cultures, and histories to its political and economic systems and its relations with the United States. As the global balance of power continues to shift towards Asia, it is more important than ever for Notre Dame students to understand the continent's many complexities. This course provides just that: an opportunity to understand the multiple domestic and foreign forces that constitute the expanding global presence of these nations and regions (Burma, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam). Classroom sessions will be structured around a set of common assumptions about Asia as a whole or about specific Asian countries. Through reading, discussion, and lectures, students will be encouraged to reflect critically on those assumptions and consider a range of alternative interpretations. Assignments include primary work from visiting experts and will revolve around making comparative connections across the range of topics. Readings for the course will introduce perspectives gained from these experts' research and practice so that students will be able to formulate their own critical understanding of the region and its global environment.

Baseball is one of the most enduringly popular and significant cultural activities in the United States. Since the late 19th century, baseball has occupied an important place for those wishing to define and understand "America." Who has been allowed to play on what terms? How have events from baseball's past been remembered and re-imagined? What is considered scandalous and why (and who decides)? How has success in baseball been defined and redefined? Centering baseball as an industry and a cultural practice, this course will cover topics that include the political, economic, and social development of professional baseball in the United States; the rise of organized baseball industry and Major League Baseball; and globalization in professional baseball. Readings for this course will include chapters from texts that include Rob Rucks's How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game (2011), Adrian Burgos's Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (2007), Daniel Gilbert's Expanding the Strike Zone: Baseball in the Age of Free Agency (2013), Robert Elias's How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad (2010), and Michael Butterworth's Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity: The National Pastime and American Identity During the War on Terror (2010). Coursework may include response papers, primary source analysis, and a final project.

Enlightenment anatomists journeyed to Peter The Great’s collection of monsters to study the human body. In 1800s London, Humphrey Davy discovered potassium, sodium, and chlorine at the newly built Royal Institute, which he funded from hugely popular, public lectures he gave. Private firms bolstered their R&D by hiring research scientists after WWI. An integration of private management methods and production techniques, federal money, and scientists who were previously cloistered in universities built the atomic bomb. The above anecdotes gesture at an intimate relationship between science and the public. To explore the entanglement of science and the public, this class offers a “survey” of science beginning in the Enlightenment and ending in the late twentieth century. Rather than covering every scientific development over 300 years, this course will focus on the topics that best reveal how science and the public relate in a series of case studies chronologically arranged. Using those case studies, the course investigates the principal question: how did scientists and their theories interact with the public? From this, sub-questions emerge, such as “what is the public?” “what is the basis of scientific authority?” and “how has public support changed science?” Students will grapple with these questions by examining the history of science and technology.

This CAD course looks back to 1850, when urban industrial America began, and looks forward to 2050, when Notre Dame promises to be carbon neutral, to critically engage competing visions of individual, communal, and ecological flourishing. It focuses on economic, racial, and environmental justice as students explore how US political culture, the discipline of American Studies, and Catholic social teaching have clashed and converged and Americans proposed varying solutions to poverty, racism, and environmental degradation.

In this seminar we will investigate the history of Jewish people living under Christian rule in Western Europe as well as under Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula and in the Eastern Mediterranean. Most written source materials that are still extant today were produced by Christians (or Muslims respectively) who either ruled over their Jewish subjects or who most likely recorded atrocities against their heterodox neighbors. Very often these sources are distorted through an inversion of perpetrators and victims. They therefore need to be read with greatest attention and care. It is one aim of the seminar to enable students to deconstruct these distortions and reconstruct the real power relations which shaped the events and their recordings. This of course also holds true for other individuals and groups which were presented as ‘others' to the respective mainstream society. As religion played an important role as a marker of identity and group formation throughout this period, we will also address the portrayal of alleged heretics and so-called ‘pagans' in Christian sources. We will use these medieval examples to critically analyze and discuss how these societies dealt with individuals and groups which they perceived and constructed as ‘other'. Finally, we will also discuss if certain forms and phenomena of anti-Jewish discrimination and violence might justly be understood as premodern forms of Anti-Semitism. All readings and discussions in English.

History is not a single "true story," but many competing narratives, each defined by values, interests, and political commitments. This course on ancient Japanese history provides an overview of three sets of competing narratives: first, the politically charged question of Japan's origins, when we explore archeological evidence and chronicles of the Sun Goddess; second, the question of whether culture (through continental imports of writing, religious forms, and statecraft) or nature (as disease and environmental degradation) defined the Yamato state from the sixth to the ninth century; and, third, whether Heian court power rested on economic, political, military, judicial, or aesthetic grounds and if its foundations were undermined internally or by the invasion of the Mongols. In examining these competing narratives, we aim to develop the disciplined imagination necessary to enter another culture and another time.

Can human societies learn to live well and peacefully within ecological constraints? This burning question guides our investigation of early modern (Tokugawa) Japan. Around 1600, Japan managed to close itself off from the world for about 250 years, neither importing food nor exporting people. It was, in short, an almost hermetic ecological system, but instead of outstripping their natural resources, denuding their mountainsides, overrunning their food supply, and warring over resources, Japanese people managed to attain a level of well-being above that of most other people on the planet at that time. Given these circumstances, might early modern Japan serve as a model for a sustainable society? Some scholars say yes, calling Tokugawa Japan an "eco-utopia;" others disagree pointing especially to the emerging social tensions toward the end of the period. Some of the issues we'll discuss are population stabilization, reforestation, the power of the central government versus local autonomy, peasant ventures in agricultural and other technologies, new efficiencies in energy production, sanitation, and how monetization undermined social cohesion. Sustainability and social resilience in the face of nature constraints and disasters over centuries is rare. We'll explore whether Japan was truly "green."

This course examines the theory, practice, and development of ancient Greco-Roman democracy. Particular attention is devoted to comparing ancient with modern forms of self-rule. Among the special topics studied are the origins of Greek democracy, its advantages and disadvantages as a form of government, alternatives to democracy, and democracy as an abiding legacy of classical civilization for the modern world. Familiarity with ancient Greco-Roman history is recommended, but not required.

This introduction to modern Japanese history focuses on political, social, economic, and military affairs in Japan from around 1600 to the early post-WWII period. It considers such paradoxes as samurai bureaucrats, entrepreneurial peasants, upper-class revolutionaries, and Asian fascists. The course has two purposes: (1) to provide a chronological and structural framework for understanding the debates over modern Japanese history; and (2) to develop the skill of reading texts analytically to discover the argument being made. The assumption operating both in the selection of readings and in the lectures is that Japanese history, as with all histories, is the site of controversy. Our efforts at this introductory level will be dedicated to understanding the contours of some of the most important of these controversies and judging, as far as possible, the evidence brought to bear in them.

This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to Chinese history and culture, beginning with the archaeological record and extending over the dynastic period and into early 17th century. Providing a chronological overview of development of the Chinese civilization, this course will focus on a few themes and a few approaches. We pose several questions, such as: what forces came together to produce Chinese civilization, and how did those forces adhere or grow apart, persist or perish, over time? How can literature from the past reveal details of the way people lived, of the values and ideas that captivated people's attention, and of the way important historical forces were played out in people's lives? Finally, when first encounter ring the West in modern times, China underwent economic, military, and cultural crises. How did their leaders and subjects respond to those challenges and how did their perceptions of modernity shape the way they treated their cultural heritage, engaged the present, and envisioned their future?

Our understanding of early Chinese Empires is primarily determined by the available sources and our methodologies. This seminar will provide advanced undergraduates with a critical introduction to the most important sources and major themes, both textual and archaeological, for the study of early imperial China. We will consider materials from the earliest historical period, circa 1300 B.C., down to the consolidation of the empire in the first century B.C. We will focus on outstanding problems and controversies pertaining to this period, such as the relationship between archaeology and classical historiography, the nature of the Chinese writing system, myth and history, the textual history of the transmitted texts, Chinese empires and its rivals, and gender issues in ancient China. Finally, we will consider the basic methodological tools presently used by historians, textual critics, paleographers, and archaeologists.

Whether it is controversies about the removal of statues, bans on teaching the New York Times’s The 1619 Project, critiques of the musical Hamilton, or originalist interpretations of the United States Constitution, early America seems to have gained new prominence in debates about the present-day United States. But why does this period—which spans four centuries from approximately 1450 to 1850—hold such meaning today? And what does this history have to teach us about our present moment? In this class, we will learn about the vast, diverse, and complex world of early America and use this knowledge to better understand current issues and events. Like Americans today, early Americans dealt with pandemics, racial injustice, political corruption, and economic inequality. They adapted to changing markets, globalization, and climate change. What do their experiences have to teach us about navigating these issues in our own time?

This lecture and discussion course surveys China's journey from 17th century to the present. We will focus on how the Chinese — politicians, intellectuals, ordinary people, and others —endeavored to transform their country while facing internal and external challenges. In particular, we will analyze the collapse of the last Chinese empire when it encountered the political incursions, economic exploitations, and military aggressions of foreign imperialist countries in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will investigate the contending understandings of modernity and how they shaped the way Chinese people treated their cultural heritage, engaged with the present, and envisioned their future. Also, we will ask how China's experience in dealing with other parts of the world in the age of globalization changed Chinese people's self-identities.

Football is one of the most enduringly popular and significant cultural activities in the United States. Since the late 19th century, football has occupied an important place for those wishing to define and understand "America." And Notre Dame football plays a central role in that story, with larger-than-life figures and stories, from Knute Rocknes. Win one for the Gipper line to the Four Horsemen backfield that led the program to a second national championship in 1924. The mythic proportions of the University's football program cast a long shadow on the institution's history, cultural significance, and traditions. This course focuses on Notre Dame football history as an entry point into larger questions about the cultural, historical, and social significance of football in the U.S. Who has been allowed to play on what terms? How have events from Notre Dame football's past been remembered and re-imagined? How has success in Notre Dame football been defined and redefined? In particular, the course will focus on how Notre Dame football became a touchstone for Catholic communities and institutions across the country navigating the fraught terrain of immigration, whiteness, and religious practice. This course will take up those questions through significant engagement with University Archive collections related to Notre Dame football, working toward increased levels of description and access for these materials. This course will include hands-on work with metadata, encoding and markup, digitization, and digital preservation/access through a collaboration with the University Archives and the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship. Readings for this course will include chapters from texts such as Murray Sperber's Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football (1993), TriStar Pictures' Rudy (1993), Steve Delsohn's Talking Irish: The Oral History of Notre Dame Football (2001), Jerry Barca's Unbeatable: Notre Dame's 1988 Championship and the Last Great College Football Season (2014), David Roediger's Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White (2005), David Roediger's The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991), and Noel Ignatiev's How the Irish Became White (1995). Class meetings will be split between discussions of conceptual readings and applied work with library and information science technologies and systems. Coursework may include response papers, hands-on work with data, and a final project. Familiarity with archival methods, library/information science, data science, or computer science tools and methods is NOT a prerequisite for this course.

The Indian subcontinent has shaped global history for thousands of years. This course will survey the last three millennia—from the still mysterious Indus Valley civilization, to the ancient India that birthed great religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, to the influence of Islamic rule during the powerful Mughal Empire, to when India became the jewel in the British Empire’s crown, ending with the stormy politics of contemporary India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. These battles between gods, empires, and nations have produced the astonishing diversity that we see in the most populous part of the world. This course offers a guide through South Asia’s rich history, fractious politics, vibrant cultures, and globalized economies. As the countries of South Asia exert ever increasing influence on global politics and the world economy, understanding them is imperative. Their history offers us a way.

America, at its core, is an idea. The lands that became America have been imagined and in certain ways and constantly reimagined. The history of the ideas that made America is less a lesson in philosophy and more about a series of clashes between contending visions: Democracy vs. Republicanism; Free vs. Slave; Christian vs. Secular; Individual vs. Society; and Universal vs. Particular. This course traces a long arc from the Puritans to the Culture Wars to understand the ideas Americans draw upon to comprehend the world and act in it.Lectures and discussions will consider the notions of equality, democracy, pluralism, religious freedom, and the tensions between contending visions for America. Readings for this course will include autobiographies, speeches, sermons, canonical texts, lyrics, novels, newspaper articles, and poetry.

How have LGBTQ people shaped modern America? And how has modern America shaped LGBTQ lives and experiences? In the popular imagination, the Stonewall Riots often mark the beginning of the modern gay rights movement and a turning point in the visibility and cultural acceptance of LGBTQ people. In this course, we will think about the longer and wider histories of LGBTQ people in the United States, tracking their cultural and political histories from the late 19th century to the historical present. We will also discuss theoretical approaches to studying the history of sexuality, including how sexual and gender categories (and people’s experiences of them) have changed over time and how they intersect with histories of race, class, religion, and region. In true American studies fashion, we will think with a wide range of primary texts—spanning across music, political zines, photography, film, law, and historical newspapers—and read interdisciplinary scholarship ranging from classics in LGBTQ history to more recent works that expand our archive of LGBTQ studies. Students will also pursue a historical research project on a topic of their own choosing, bringing their own interests and insights to the class.

How does one make sense of the moral vocabularies of contemporary Islam? Prominent in the media are debates about Sharia, known as Islamic law. On other occasions people talk about Islamic ethics and values in Muslim societies and communities. These categories are often non self-evident to even the most casual observer. How do we get a better grasp of moral debates in Muslim societies on questions as diverse as suicide terrorism, organ transplantation to democratic politics and fetal life? These ethical debates impact policy questions ranging from gender, democratic citizenship, technology and sexual violence to matters related to issues of Islamic family law and constitutional debates. But of equal importance is the need to give attention to the various contexts in which Muslim ethical discourses and moral vocabularies are deployed. Some of the contexts range from nation-states in-the-making, liberal democracies in the West, societies disintegrating as a result of failed states to countries being occupied by global powers. Hegemonic capitalist globalization, triumphant political liberalism and misrule all contribute to the social context. This course will explore a select sample of questions from an ethical and moral perspective. One of the presumptions that this course makes is that Muslim ethics is not only the site for the renewal of an ethical tradition; in many instances it is also the site of resistance against cultural and political imperialism, as well as that of accommodation. These complicated maneuvers account for the diversity and multiplicity of contemporary Muslim ethical discourses and moral vocabularies. Studying Muslim moral vocabularies do not provide a CT-scan of the "Muslim mind" as some have egregiously averred, but provide maps of the histories of interpretative communities in the past and present. This approach will enable us s to identify the various typologies as well as trajectories of the Muslim subject over time. In a mediatized world of real-time communication, moral terms are poorly communicated, distorted and often come across as a cacophony of voices, confusing to insiders and outsiders alike. Needless to say, ethics is not neutral to political debates: it is often at the center of fractious and divisive debates. Often the representation of ethical debates are caricatured and manipulated in the media to serve political ends. Students will get an introduction to Muslim moral philosophy, a history of the jurisprudence and a set of case studies dealing with concrete questions. Muslim religious discourses are, of course, essentially regimes of interpretation. Students will get an opportunity to become familiar with the interpretation of the primary religious sources of Islam that result in diverse iterations and accounts of Muslim ethics in various contexts.

African peoples and empires have always been at the heart of transformative world events. Their wealth, ingenuity, and power reshaped the medieval global economy. Their enslavement and back-breaking forced labor fueled industrial and agricultural revolutions. Their struggle against western racism and imperialism awakened pan-African consciousness. And today, their creativity and entrepreneurialism drive popular culture and economic opportunity. In this course, we will explore the many ways Africans shaped the history of the world. We will do so by examining primary documents, reading African fiction, watching African films, and immersing ourselves in current trends in Africa.

Violence and bloodshed have long been central to the modern conception of the middle ages. In recent film and literature, the perceived "realism" of a given work tends, by and large, to correspond directly with the willingness of the creators to depict brutality. Even in the medievalism of popular fantasy, the depiction of violence in all its varied forms, from the battlefield to the bedchamber, has been justified and excused by claims of representing past realities of common experience. This course will question just how violent the middle ages were, and for whom. More importantly, it will seek to understand how the varied cultures and peoples of medieval Europe conceptualized and understood violence themselves, and what role it played in their lives and imaginations. In the course of our investigation, we will explore literary narratives of vengeance and crusade and farcical tales of household bloodshed. We will read law codes and sermons attempting to regulate and channel violence. We will read accounts, justifications, and repudiations of torture, execution, and mercy. We will read about peace-making and peace-breaking, and the stories that were told about it. We will question what constitutes violence, and how violence relates to shifting categories of gender, class, and group identity. In all of this, we will seek to identify how the differences and similarities between their conceptions of violence and our own can teach us not only about them, but about ourselves.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived side by side for centuries in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean throughout the Middle Ages - the occupied the same towns, shopped in the same markets, dwelt in the same neighborhoods, read each other's books, and borrowed each other's stories. While covering the broad sweep of Latin-Christian, Islamic, and Byzantine civilizations that grew up in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea after the fall of Rome, we will focus especially the on-going interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in this area. While doing so we will constantly ask how can we know - and what kinds of things we can know - about the Middle Ages, as we examine many types of medieval sources, including literary works, historical texts, religious and philosophical writings, and works of art. The course lectures will provide the student with sufficient understanding of the medieval Mediterranean that they will be able to read with profit the assigned texts which are all primary sources, written in a variety of Mediterranean languages, in English translation. The course will proceed partly chronologically - especially when it comes to the politics and geo-politics of the region - and partly thematically.

Bismarck once declared that, as long as he was Imperial Chancellor, Germany would not pursue a colonial policy. He was mistaken. Colonialism would fundamentally shape the German Empire as well as the diverse places and peoples it colonized. The legacies of colonial rule remain critically important today. Between 1884 and 1918, Germany would establish colonies in Togo, Cameroon, Southwest Africa, East Africa, China, and on islands across the Pacific. During this comparatively brief period, colonialism transformed both the German Empire and its overseas possessions in radical, often horrifically violent, ways. This course will examine why the German Empire embarked on a policy of colonial expansion, how Berlin laid claim to such vast territories far from Central Europe, and the complex ways in which German colonial states and colonized societies interacted with each other. It will examine how colonialism reshaped political structures, cultures, religions, economies, national identities, notions of race, and ideas about gender in both Germany and colonized societies. Finally, it will explore the profound legacies of colonialism which continue to shape Germany, its former colonies, and their contemporary relations.

Public history centers on the ways in which the past is invoked in public settings, such as museums, historic houses, memorial sites, public monuments, or historical markers - and all public history is in some way controversial. Whose history will we tell? How do we choose which materials to include? What narrative is presented to the audience? And how should we interpret the narratives we encounter in the public sphere? This course offers an introduction to the field of public history as practiced in Europe and the United States through the exploration of contemporary debates surrounding controversial monuments and sites of memory in the West. As we learn about public history methods and the practice of public historians, we will familiarize ourselves with the stakes and contexts of these debates; we will explore the history of contested memorialization in the West, from the early British Empire through the American Civil War to the World Wars and Europe's colonial legacies in Africa and the Americas. Our goal will be to discover and assess the range of possible responses and solutions to memorial crises within both cultural and political spheres. Throughout the course, students will utilize digital and public history methods to develop a portfolio centering on a controversial site of memory with transnational significance, broadly construed.

An introduction to the nature and influence of Roman law, one of the most celebrated and distinctive elements of ancient Roman culture. The course surveys the development of Roman civil law from the very early and enigmatic Twelve Tables to the very late and amazingly great Digest of Justinian. Topics covered include legal procedures, the creation of law, and Roman jurisprudence, all of which are studied in the broad context of Roman government and administration. The lasting effects of Roman law on modern legal systems are also considered.

In the wake of the Holocaust, the German author Gunther Grass concluded that we now finally knew ourselves. The Holocaust changed everything. Nazi Germany murdered more than six million men, women, and children in a systematic effort to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Its shocking and spectacular barbarism shattered comfortable ideas about European civilization and called into question the essential goodness of humanity. It compelled scholars to search for new ideas about evil, new words like "genocide" simply to place and comprehend the scale of the slaughter and devastation. Politics, art, culture, and even religions would be fundamentally and irrevocably transformed by the Holocaust. This course will investigate why Nazi Germany attempted to systematically exterminate the Jews of Europe, explore why so many Germans either participated in or accepted this act of mass violence, and consider why other Europeans so often assisted them. It will investigate the legacies of the Holocaust; how survivors and their families attempted to rebuild their lives in the wake of horror, how Germans variously struggled to come to terms with what they, their countrymen, or their ancestors had done, and how various understandings of the Holocaust have shaped political, cultural, and social discourses around the world. Along the way, students will practice the skills of historical literacy. They will digest, analyze, and criticize scholarship (secondary literature). They will discern the relevance of particular interpretations for important debates. They will use sustained analysis of primary sources to develop, articulate, and defend their own historical interpretations and arguments.

The purpose of this interdisciplinary course is twofold: to examine the social context and cultural change of the sixties and to explore the various journalistic and aesthetic representations of events, movements, and transformations. We will focus on the manner in which each writer or artist witnessed the sixties and explore fresh styles of writing and cultural expression, such as the new journalism popularized by Tom Wolfe and the music/lyrics performed by Bob Dylan. Major topics for consideration include the counterculture and the movement--a combination of civil rights and anti-war protest.

This class analyzes the politics and cultures of remembrance in Europe from the late nineteenth century to today. Taking examples such as the politicization of Holocaust memory in Europe or the grassroots removal of monuments in Britain as points of departure, students will learn about processes of remembering and forgetting, and how memories of the past have shaped European identity and culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will pay particular attention to the mobilization and commemoration of Europe's traumatic pasts, including the World Wars, imperialism and decolonization, the Cold War, and histories of genocide, to investigate how Europeans have remembered these difficult histories and how these memories have shifted over time. We will look not only at how the traumatic past is represented today; but how memory work was enacted at the time and how Europeans have fought to revise these representations and demand new recognition of alternative visions of the past. In its focus on memory, broadly defined, this course will deeply explore how representations of the past have shaped European identity, culture, and politics both at the time and today. In its focus on memory and memorialization, this class also attends to the visuality and material culture of history and historical research. Students will learn to read visual and material sources as sources akin to political tracts, diaries, and memoirs. We will engage with sources including photo albums, monuments, memorials, museum spaces, memorial landscapes, film, cultural kitsch, and art all as critical primary sources to understanding the production and circulation of memory. We will read foundational texts on collective memory and remembrance to understand how scholars and theorists have defined and conceptualized memory. Students will also conduct an original research project on a topic of their choosing by exploring a case study of memory work or collective memory in the context of Modern Europe.

An outline introduction to the history of ancient Greece from the Bronze Age to the Roman conquest. The topics covered include the rise of the distinctive Greek city-state (the 'polis'), Greek relations with Persia, Greek experiments with democracy, oligarchy, and empire, the great war between Athens and Sparta, the rise to power of Philip and Alexander of Macedon, and the Greeks' eventual submission to Rome. Readings include narrative, documentary, and archaeological sources. The course prepares students for advanced study in ancient history. Offered biennially.

This course examines the military achievements of Alexander of Macedon (356-323B.C.) and their far-reaching political, social, cultural, and religious consequences. Topics covered include the Greek, Macedonian, Persian, and other cultural contexts of the time, Alexander's attitude toward divinity (including his own), his concept of empire, his generalship, and his legacy for Greco-Roman antiquity. Particular attention is devoted to representations of Alexander through the ages, beginning during his own lifetime with the accounts of ancient writers "historians and others" down to novels and films of the present day. Ancient authors and documents are read in translation.

Julius Caesar, general and poet, dictator and grammarian, historian and savior (or destroyer?) of the Roman Republic, has been a fascinating figure since his own day. This course considers his life and times: his rise to supreme power; his military campaigns at home and abroad; the vibrant artistic and cultural productions of Caesar's generation; the other impressive figures, like Pompey and Marc Antony, with whom he shared the world stage; the pressing public issues of the late Roman Republic with which Caesar grappled; and the relationship of Caesar's achievements to the birth of the Roman Empire. The course will also briefly consider the place of Caesar in later thought. Primary readings will be taken from the histories of Plutarch, Suetonius, and Caesar himself; the oratory, philosophy, and letters of Cicero; the poetry of Lucretius, Catullus, and Shakespeare; and others.

In the modern world, sports and sport-like spectacles are a source of livelihood, entertainment, and social interaction for huge swathes of the global population. Fans and practitioners of physical feats of strength were likewise a major component of ancient Greco-Roman society, from the earliest Olympic Games at the dawn of Greek history to the gladiatorial contests and chariot races that characterized the most decadent phases of the Roman Empire. The purpose of this course is to provide an interdisciplinary examination of the origin and nature of sport and spectacle in the Classical world and to compare the role that athletics played in ancient society to the position it occupies in our own lives - from the point of view of athletes, spectators, and patrons alike. Topics covered will include: Near Eastern precursors to Greco-Roman sport; the development of Greek and Roman sport and spectacle through time, the Olympic Games; the role of religious thought in ancient sport; the position of the athlete within society; ancient and modern rewards for athletic valor; athletes in architecture, literature, and art; and the political appropriation of athletes and athletics. The course will focus mostly on formal athletic contests in ancient Greece and on athletic spectacles in ancient Rome, but general recreation and physical education will be considered as well.

An outline introduction to the history of ancient Rome from Romulus to Constantine. The topics covered include the meteoric spread of Roman rule in the ancient Mediterranean, the brilliance of a republican form of government tragically swept away by destructive civil war, the rise of repressive autocracy under the Caesars, and the threats to empire in late antiquity posed inside by the rise of Christianity and outside by hostile invaders. Readings include narrative, documentary, and archaeological sources. The course prepares students for advanced study in ancient history. Offered biennially.

The course will provide a historical overview of Roman Republican and Imperial law from the XII Tables to Justinian's Digest. We will investigate not only the Roman judiciary and juristic writings, but also the other branches of government, in order to create a thorough understanding of the bureaucratic operation of the ancient Roman state. Specific topics covered include civil law, criminal law, constitutions, juries, jurists, magistracies, assemblies, and provincial administration. In addition to taking a midterm and final, students will write and rewrite one three- to five-page paper. Prior study of Roman history is recommended, but not required.

Perhaps our greatest inheritance from the ancient Romans is their law code and legal procedures. Students will study the development of Roman criminal law from the 12 Tables to the late antique period, including the emergence of jury courts and the persecution of Christians and heretics. By studying primary sources like Cicero's speeches and laws etched in bronze tablets, students will explore the seedy side of Roman life. Topics for discussion include murder, sorcery, bribery, forgery, treason, extortion and adultery. This course will not duplicate, but complement, Roman Law and Governance (CLAS 30210).

During the mid-nineteenth century, Ireland suffered a series of famines that nearly halved the island’s population—in less than one decade, from 1846 to 1855, between 1.1 and 1.5 million people died at the hands of starvation or disease and another 2.1 million emigrated. The difficulties of these years were captured at the time and later recalled through art, literature, music, and more. Indeed, few (if any) events have had a larger impact on Irish history, politics, or national memory than “The Great Hunger.” This course is designed to introduce students to the history of Ireland’s Great Famine and its lasting political, social, and cultural repercussions.

This course proposes to discuss the lives of Celtic women. To some, this might seem like an impossible task: if one is able to surmount the initial difficulty of defining just what a ‘Celtic woman’ is, then there remains the intractably spotty historical record to contend with. In this course, we will examine the historiographical difficulties of defining the Celtic World. We will undertake a broad and varied examination of the women who appear in the texts of ancient historians, of the historically attested women of the medieval political and ecclesiastical realms, and of literary and legendary women whose lives are placed in an ancient Celtic past by the medieval and modern authors who created them. Finally, a study of women active in the ‘Celtic Revival’ intellectual movement will demonstrate the continued significance of the ancient and medieval Celtic past into the modern era.

This course will examine the mythological and legendary traditions of the Celtic and Scandinavian worlds in the Iron Age and medieval periods. We will examine these traditions via the literary works produced by medieval Irish, Welsh, Scandinavian, and Icelandic writers, as well as in information recorded about them by foreign authors and in the archaeological record. We will also trace how these traditions impacted modern folklore and political ideologies. In so doing, we will aim to gain a better understanding of these historical peoples and the resonances and varied influences of their enduring literary traditions.

This course examines the differing roles and stereotypes, forms of behavior, and values associated with women and men in Greco-Roman antiquity. Special attention is given to the preoccupations of the Greeks and Romans with the categories of "female" and "male" and to the dynamics of relations and relationships between women and men. The course both deepens knowledge of Greco-Roman society and provides an informed background for contemporary gender debates.

Rome's reputation as an eternal city was not an inevitable development: it emerged as a carefully cultivated ideal in the fifteenth century. This course traces the swift transformation of Rome from a medieval city to a modern European capital through an inspired campaign to cultivate its unique engagement with its ancient past, its fundamental association with the papacy, and its growing attraction as an artistic and cultural center of truly global reach. The early modern city is best known for its imposing ruins and its great monuments of art and architecture, but we can also learn a great deal about daily life at a crucial moment in the history one of the world's most significant cities.

The Middle Ages have been praised and reviled, romanticized and fantasized. The spectacular popularity of Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and Narnia have brought a revival of interest in and curiosity about the Middle Ages. But what were they like, these ten centuries between Rome and the Renaissance? In this course, we will explore major themes and issues in medieval civilization in an attempt to offer some basic answers to that question. We will have in view three kinds of people: rulers, lovers, and believers. But we will also study carefully those who wrote about those kinds of people. We will constantly ask how can we know about the Middle Ages, and what kinds of things can we know? We will consider major literary texts as both works of art and historical documents. We will explore various kinds of religious literature. We will try to understand the limits, boundaries, and achievements of philosophy and theology. Some lectures will incorporate medieval art so as to add a visual dimension to our explorations. This course will constitute an extended introduction to the dynamic and fascinating world of the Middle Ages.

This course provides an introduction to the world of the Vikings. Frequently romanticised and often misunderstood, the Vikings changed the course of European history. Following an examination of the possible reasons for the Viking incursions, attention will turn to the Viking homelands, early raids and settlements in Ireland, Britain and continental Europe. Important related themes include the emergence and consolidation of the medieval Scandinavian kingdoms, commercial enterprise, and religious change. Particular emphasis will be placed on the exploration and colonisation of the North Atlantic, especially Iceland, which provides an interesting case study of a state founded by Viking migrants. Students will read widely from a range of primary sources to understand how the Vikings perceived themselves and how they, in turn, were viewed by their near contemporaries. They will be encouraged to reassess the Vikings and their legacy, and to frame their achievements, some more lasting than others, within a wider European context. No prior knowledge of Old Norse or a modern Scandinavian language is required.

This course will explore modern visions of the Middle Ages through film. We will view several feature-length films and numerous film clips, interspersed with readings from and about the Middle Ages. Together we will discuss and analyze both the texts and films. The films range from early silent films to Hollywood Golden Era classics to recent blockbusters. The course is divided into six segments: (1) the Crusades; (2) Eleanor of Aquitaine: wife and mother of kings; (3) Robin Hood; (4) King Arthur; (5) the Black Death; and (6) Joan of Arc. Students will write short daily assignments, two short essays, and a final paper or take-home exam. There are three required textbooks: Robert Brent Toplin, Reel History: In Defense of Hollywood (2002); Daniel Hobbins (trans.), The Trial of Joan of Arc; and Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematograph (2016).

Over the last several decades, one of the most exciting areas of research in history has been in historians’ efforts to uncover the history of sex, gender, and sexuality in different societies. Throughout this course, students will learn about how queer medieval people and communities have been studied by historians while also learning about the medieval people and communities themselves. We will discuss topics such as family structure, marital norms, the gendered division of labor, sexuality, and changing understandings of masculinity, femininity, and nonbinary gender. Students will learn how normative and non-normative medieval genders and sexualities were structured in different places and times within the medieval world according to social, legal, theological, and scientific belief and practice. Students will also learn how to weigh original source material, modern theoretical approaches, and the multiple agendas involved in producing scholarship.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to major themes in the global history of slavery with a specific focus on the location of slavery in the making of the modern world bringing together histories from the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Ocean worlds. The course will focus upon these themes through literature, economics, and politics. In addition, the course will also introduce students to recent museum exhibitions, art exhibitions, digital history projects, films, and documentary compilations that all together have transformed how the global history of slavery is understood.

This course provides an in-depth introduction to the archaeology of ancient Greece, from the Bronze Age to the Early Classical Period (from the 16th to 5th century B.C.). The survey of material culture spans the ancient Aegean and traces its settlement formation and development, beginning with the Minoan and Mycenean civilizations. It explores Archaic and Classical Greece and introduces students to the analysis and interpretation of archaeological sites, monuments, artifacts and art, including the Panhellenic sanctuaries of Olympia and Delphi, and the Athenian Acropolis in the age of Pericles. Students learn how to evaluate the material culture of ancient Greece on the basis of historical and social context. In addition to exploring architecture, coins, inscriptions, sculpture, paintings, ceramics and other ancient material, students also consider the methods, results, and theory of archaeological research, in the areas of field excavation and intensive surface survey. Through the material record, the course attempts to reconstruct what life might have been like in ancient Greece.

On March 10, 2020, the U.S. "Youth, Peace, & Security" (YPS) Act was introduced into the House of Representatives with broad support from international peacebuilding organizations. The bill is intended "to support the inclusive and meaningful participation of youth in peace building and conflict prevention, management, and resolution, as well as post-conflict relief and recovery efforts." But, is all of this attention on "youth" actually warranted? More importantly, is this attention good for young people both in the United States and globally? In order to answer these questions, this course will consider the historical context of the shifting politics of recognition related to youth/childhood over the course of the Cold War and its aftermath. We will explore which populations got counted as (vulnerable) children or (dangerous) youth in U.S. politics and foreign policy based on age-based, racialized, gendered, imperial, and other dynamics. Through examination of historical documents and tools of critical analysis, students will be prepared to evaluate the international youth, peace, and security agenda as well as monitor the mixed public responses to the U.S. YPS Act as they occur in real-time right now.

This course aims to accomplish the following: 1) to develop students' understanding of the Cold War and its major political developments; 2) to develop students' understanding of the ways sports and society influence and reflect political developments; 3) to see sports programs as a reflection of the nation-states in which they develop, and to use athletic traditions in different nations to develop students' understanding of different societies; 4) to improve students' ability to use contemporary periodical sources in historical research; and 5) to improve students' analytical reading and writing skills through readings, exams, and a paper.

This course is designed as a general introduction into the early and middle Byzantine period, focusing on the various aspects of transformation from the late Roman Empire to Byzantium at the end of the so-called ‘Dark Ages'. The main topics are the Christianization of the Empire and the separation between East and West; reactions to the barbarian migrations, the Slavic expansion, and the Islamic conquests; patterns of social and economic change; iconoclasm; Byzantine relations with the Carolingian and Ottonian Empires.

This course explores the major developments in Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean from the time of the crusades and the eastward expansion of the Italian naval powers until the rise of the Ottoman Empire to a new universal power unifying the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor under the rule of a Muslim sultanate. The encounter between Latin and Greek Orthodox Christians in the wake of the crusade led to political rivalries and religious discord, culminating in the Latin conquest of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade of 1204. While the eastward expansion of Italian naval powers had already begun in the late eleventh century, it was mainly as a result of 1204 that Venice and, later on, Genoa became predominant political and economic factors in the Eastern Mediterranean, controlling much of the long-distance seaborne trade between Italy and the Syrian coast. The Anatolian Seljuk Turks initiated the gradual Turkification and Islamization of Asia Minor. In the thirteenth century, the Eastern Mediterranean endured increasing pressure from the Mongols and the Mamluk sultanate. One of the results of this development was the rise of the Ottoman principality to a leading political power incorporating large parts of the Balkan Peninsula and, in 1453, the city of Constantinople. We will discuss both socio-economic and political aspects of these developments.

From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, several simultaneous transformations took Western Europe from the peripheries to the center of the global stage. Political units grew more centralized and administratively organized, allowing all levels of society to be more highly regulated and forming the structures of the modern state. Thanks to exploration, trade, conquest, and enslavement, these same states enjoyed a massive influx of material goods and information from all parts of the globe. Increasing knowledge of the world beyond Europe fused with the ongoing information revolution of the printing press. The accelerating speed at which knowledge could be produced and transmitted, however, contributed to the fragmentation of earlier systems of thought: new media proved vital to the spread of Renaissance humanism and Reformation theology. The new worlds of knowledge that developed were deeply shaped by—and often oriented towards—the growing power of Western states. A couple centuries downstream from these transformations, this course will survey the distinct but intertwined histories of power and knowledge in early modern Europe, with special attention to issues of politics, intellectual life, and media.

This course traces the history of Catholicism in the modern era. It is self-consciously global in its approach, examining how Catholic people, ideas, devotional practices and architectural drawings circulate around the world. Topics investigated include: Catholicism during the democratic revolutions of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, religion and nationalism, the "social" question and Catholic ideas about the family and the economy, the crisis of fascism in the 1930s, decolonization and the cold war, liberation theology and the global South, the first (1869-70) and second (1962-65) Vatican councils and the current sexual abuse crisis. Students will read and interpret a variety of sources, including memoirs, short stories, papal encyclicals, art works and accounts by contemporary historians. Assignments will include short essays, one exam and a final paper or podcast.

This course offers a chronological survey of Ireland and the Irish from the Act of Union with Great Britain to the present day. It will consider the social, political, religious, gendered, cultural and economic aspects of that history, and will place the island of Ireland within its wider contexts, as part of the United Kingdom, as part of Europe, as part of the British Empire, and as the source of the global Irish Diaspora. The course will focus on a number of central issues, including: how enduring sectarian divisions have influenced the development of Irish history; the Famine, mass emigration, and the rise of the Diaspora; the development and course of both Ulster and Southern unionism, and of Irish nationalism; the relationship of Ireland and the Irish to the British Empire and the wider Anglo-world; the Irish revolution, counter-revolution, and partition; the development of the Irish Free State, and Republic of Ireland; the history of Northern Ireland, the Troubles, and the peace process; the collapse of the "Celtic Tiger".

This course looks at visions of church and Christian life in ecclesiology and spiritual theology from the Council of Trent to the present.

The Irish language has a fascinating and turbulent history. From being the earliest and most copiously attested European vernacular outside the classical world of Greece and Rome, to a language on the verge of extinction in the late nineteenth century, few languages in Europe have endured such vicissitudes over a millennium and a half. Ireland is indeed unique in Western Europe in modern times in having been the colony of a neighboring country over a period of centuries. Not surprisingly, this colonial experience has left a profound and enduring imprint on the language and on its community of speakers. As much recent work on language endangerment around the world has brought to our attention, a language depends for its continued vitality on the entire material, social and cultural world, or "ecology", that sustains it. When this ecology is attacked and undermined, as occurs under colonialism, a language suffers as a result. The history of the Irish language is therefore a case study in the complexity of a particular human experience over a period of 1500 years; it is a history not of linguistic forms and expressions per se but rather the history of the people who have used and who still use them, of the institutions that have nurtured and been sustained by the language and of the political slings and arrows of fortune that have undermined and threatened (but ultimately failed) to extinguish it. It is therefore a holistic history, a history of Ireland which foregrounds language (principally Irish but also those other languages and their speakers with which it has interacted and competed) as its overarching theme.

In this class, we will trace the history of Christianity from its origins, focusing especially on its impact on women and gender. We will see that women have always played a vital role in the life of the Church, contributing works of theology, philosophy, natural philosophy, literature, and art, many of which have been forgotten or obscured. We will also see the variable influence that Christianity has had on conceptions of gender over time.

This lecture course examines some of the most important events, ideas, and personalities that shaped late Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods of Russian history during the last one hundred years: from the outbreak of the First World War and the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 through the Great Terror of the 1930s, the experience of the Second World War and the emergence of the Soviet Empire, late Stalinism and post-Stalinist developed or mature socialism, the collapse of the communist rule and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, as well as Russia's uneasy transition "out of Totalitarianism" and into Putin's authoritarianism during the first fourteen years of the twentieth-first century. The course is designed for history majors as well as for students in other disciplines with or without background in modern Russian and East European history.

This course explores the history of early modern Catholicism. One might be familiar with two distinct yet related caricatures of so-called “Tridentine” Catholicism. The first is fairly negative, depicting a repressive medieval institution that quashed all voices of opposition and vainly resisted the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment. The second is more positive and imagines a unified Baroque Church dedicated to a sumptuous Latin liturgy, a bulwark against the heresies of Martin Luther and his successors. Despite their differences in subjective judgment, these caricatures both share a conception of early modern Catholicism as a uniform institution. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, not only was the diversity of medieval Christian custom preserved, but the founding of new religious orders, the proselytization of new continents, and the development of theological speculation made Catholicism more spiritually, culturally, and intellectually dynamic than ever before. Beginning in the very late Middle Ages, this course will trace the origins and character of this dynamism from the Tiber to Tibet, identifying ways in which the Church both resembled the medieval world from which it sprang and reflected the variety of the Age of Exploration and Enlightenment. This survey will enable students to move past the caricatures and appreciate the complexities of early modern Catholicism.

What do the paintings and sculptures in museums and the manuscripts and antique books in archives tell us about our collective past? What do they tell us about how value, importance, and worth have been ascribed across time? As users of these cultural collections, how might we address inequities and silences within them? The first half of this 1-credit course provides a lightning introduction to the history of cultural collecting and its many issues. Through the Zoom window students will apply a critical gaze to the collections held in our campus repositories - the Snite Museum of Art, Rare Books and Special Collections and University Archives - and in museums and archives beyond the Notre Dame campus. In the second half of the course, students will create a single online exhibition around the theme of diversity using our campus collections. This exhibition will be published on the Hesburgh Library's Digital Exhibitions and Collections page and students will be given curatorial credit for their work. The course schedule will begin with seminar-style meetings and move to individual work, one-on-one sessions with instructors, peer review and project evaluation.

In AD 1095, the Roman (Byzantine) Emperor Alexius Comnenus sent a letter to Pope Urban II, asking for succor from Latin Christendom in order to repel the Muslim invaders who were overrunning his empire. Pope Urban II did not merely comply with this request, but transformed it into a call to restore to Christendom the lands of Christianity's origin, which had been lost to Muslim rule in the seventh century. In doing so, Pope Urban inspired and unleashed an outpouring of religious fervor- and bloodshed- unique in the annals of Christian history. This course will be dedicated to the examination of this extraordinary movement, from the initial overwhelming response it aroused among Christians across Europe through the fall of Acre in 1291. Among the issues it will explore are the historical, political, and ideological background to the Crusades, in Byzantium, Europe, and the Islamic world; The Peasants' Crusade and the Children's Crusade; the Latin principalities in the Near East, their organization and societies; interactions between Muslims and Christians; the status and treatment of religious minorities; the legend of Prester John and how it inaugurated the beginning of the European exploration of Central and Eastern Asia; the Italian communes and growth of commerce; the military orders; the career of St. Louis in the Near East; the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultanates and the geopolitical consequences of the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century; and more. Students will spend the second half of the course researching and writing a capstone research paper utilizing primary sources in translation.

The capitalism and consumerism that now influences the entire world arose within a religious culture-that of Western Christianity-whose central figure extolled poverty and self-denial, and whose most important early missionary wrote that "the love of money is the root of all evils." How did this happen? This course takes a long-term view of the emergence of modern economic life in relationship to Christianity beginning with the upturn in commerce and the monetization of the European economy in the eleventh century and continuing through the relationship between markets and Christian morality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It pays particular attention to the ways in which the religio-political disruptions of the Reformation era laid the foundations for the disembedding of economics from Christian ethics and thus made possible modern Western capitalism and consumerism.

Welcome to Women and Gender in the History of Christianity. In this class, we will trace the history of Christianity from its origins in the first century through the present, focusing especially on its impact on women and gender. We will see that women have always played a vital role in the life of the Church, contributing works of theology, philosophy, natural philosophy, literature, and art, many of which have been forgotten or obscured. We will also see the variable influence that Christianity has had on the construction of gender over time, investigating its impact on ideas of manhood, masculinity, womanhood, and femininity. We will trace these shifting ideas from antiquity through modernity in order to reveal the roots of many assumptions and ideas that we take for granted today.

A vampire stalks you through a dark tunnel. A mad scientist gives human form to an android. Regimented masses march beneath monumental swastikas. Some of the most enduring images of the twentieth century were crafted by German filmmakers. They filmed in the shadow of the First World War, in the midst of economic turmoil, in the service of the Nazi dictatorship, and in a Germany divided by the Cold War. They used cinema to grapple with the legacies of military defeat, to articulate their anxieties about industrial modernity, to envision utopian futures, to justify the murder of millions, and to come to terms with these monstrous crimes. This course will integrate the disciplinary insights of history and film studies to examine how Germans confronted the upheavals and traumas associated with modernity, the utopian fantasies and cataclysmic horrors of the twentieth-century. Together, the class will pursue three major objectives. First, students will learn about the most important events and developments of modern German history. They will examine how shifting economic, cultural, and political realities shaped the German film industry, and how filmmakers used their work to understand and intervene in their social, political, and cultural issues of their day. Second, students will learn to critically analyze films. They will learn how the structural components of a film - choices in composition, editing, and sound-mixing - craft meaning through immersive spectacles that speak to audiences on multiple intellectual and emotional levels. Students will explore how filmmakers deploy these techniques to produce awe-inspiring entertainments, sophisticated instruments of propaganda, and radical social critiques. As historical artifacts, films reflect the society which created them. But students will also consider how films, as works of art, survive beyond their historical context, and are reinterpreted by new audiences with new priorities. Finally, students will practice the skills of historical literacy. They will digest, analyze, and criticize important scholarship (secondary literature). They will discern the relevance of particular interpretations for important debates. They will use sustained analysis of films as primary sources to develop, articulate, and defend their own historical interpretations and arguments.

This is a lecture course that will offer students an opportunity to delve into the dark history of Germany and Europe between the First World War and the Cold War. At the center of this course is the National Socialist movement, which dominated Germany from 1933 to 1945 and left its imprint on the world thereafter. The hope is that students become familiar with the movement's intellectual and cultural origins, the political contingencies that made it successful, and the policies that made it popular and feared in Germany and beyond. Topics will include Social Darwinism and racial pseduo-science, the Treaty of Versailles and Weimar Germany, the rise of National Socialism to power, and Nazi society and culture. In addition, we will look at how Nazi politics were received and imitated in central and Eastern Europe and how Adolf Hitler's international politics could appeal to peoples beyond Germany's borders. Students will also learn about the systematic and organized killing of peoples and groups in Europe under occupation, including six million Jews and the Holocaust. The course will conclude with the postwar occupation regimes in Germany and Europe, the erasure of complicity with Nazism in the subsequent histories of Europe, and the failed attempts at deNazification and justice for the regime's victims. Friday sections will consist of smaller discussion groups that will discuss the content of the lectures in part. Most importantly, students will read primary source material, including laws, witness statements, memoirs, and important scholarly debates. The Friday sessions will thus give students the opportunity to directly analyze accounts and sources. These skills will then be assessed in a document analysis paper and on our midterms and final exams.

This seminar explores the relationship between religion and human development with the critical intervention of how technology-from ancient to modern times-shapes both religious vocabularies and notions of human flourishing. In the light of the raging environmental and political crises advocates of techno-science and policy-makers are challenged by both the limitations and capacity of technology to deal with the emerging "postnormal" times. The course offers a focused consideration of complexity, chaos and contradiction. What is the nature of the transitional epoch of the unthought and human ignorance in thinking and practice and possible remedies, if any?

"The Second World War is the largest single event in human history, fought across six of the world's seven continents and all its oceans. It killed fifty million human beings, left hundreds of millions of others wounded in mind or body and materially devastated much of the heartland of civilization." The above quote from historian John Keegan summarizes the significance of studying the Second World War. In this class, students will receive an introduction to the largest conflict in human history, from the origins of the war in Asia and Europe to the postwar settlements that continue to shape the modern world. Class content will focus on the military, diplomatic, and political narratives of the war, while exploring the lived experience of the war through primary source readings. This course satisfies the university history requirement and is open to all students; no previous knowledge of the topic is required.

The period from 1485 to 1603, often feted as something of a 'Golden Age' for England, saw that country undergo serious changes that challenged the traditional ways in which the nation conceived of itself. These included the break from Rome, the loss of England's foothold in France, and the unprecedented experience of monarchical rule by women. Each of these challenges demanded creative political responses and apologetic strategies harnessing intellectual resources from classical, Biblical, legal, chivalric and ecclesiastical sources. This course will examine these developments. It will also look at how the English, emerging from under the shadow of the internecine dynastic warfare of the fifteenth century, sought to preserve political stability and ensure a balance between continuity and change, and, furthermore, how individuals could use these unique circumstances to their own advantage.

England's seventeenth century provides one of the most compelling epochs of human history, full of a cast of remarkable characters. Once Elizabeth I died in 1603, a new dynasty, the Scottish royal house, the Stuarts, came to the throne in the person of James VI & I. A new political dynamic ensued. Insoluble tensions arose between perceived licentiousness in high politics on one hand and puritan moral rigour on the other, between royal control of religion and a hankering after policies based on literal Biblical interpretation and also between a gaping royal treasury and public reluctance to contribute financially to the realm. These, and other factors, resulted in the unthinkable: the dissolution of the ties that had held English politics and society together. The Civil War (or "Great Rebellion", or "Puritan Revolution" depending on the interpretation favoured) that resulted gave rise to a welter of new constitutional ideas, religious experiments and virulent anti-Catholicism. These were all set loose as King and Parliament fought for domination of the country. We will pay particular attention to the figure of Oliver Cromwell, who came to command English politics both before and after the hitherto unimaginable public execution of the king (who many believed was God's anointed). We will also ask why the English after allowing their king to be executed and their toleration a substantial Interregnum subsequently restored Charles II, their erstwhile king's son, as monarch. Remarkable figures that we will encounter and evaluate include the Leveller John Lilburne, the poet John Milton, Praise-God Barebones (yes, that is a name) and the libidinous Samuel Pepys.

This course explores the history of the six north-eastern counties of Ireland which became "Northern Ireland" in 1920/1. Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom and had a built-in Protestant unionist majority, while the Catholic minority, alienated from the state from the outset, looked across the new border and to Dublin, capital of the Irish Free State, as the site of their allegiance. Northern Ireland was thus, from the beginning, dysfunctional, scarred by sectarian violence and systematic discrimination in housing and employment. After examining the origins of the state and the early decades of it existence, the class will turn to its main concern, "the troubles," which broke out in the late 1960s. The major episodes under scrutiny include the civil rights movement, Bloody Sunday, the hunger strikes, and the Good Friday Peace Agreement.

From the Plantation of Ulster in the early seventeenth century to today the hegemony, and later the survival, of native Irish culture in the Irish language has been challenged by English language culture. This course seeks, by analyzing primary sources in Irish (available to students in translation) in their historical context, to chart this process over time. The course also seeks to ask questions about the extent to which the Irish Catholic population resisted or collaborated in the process of anglicization that took place. Was the 'Sacsa nua darbh ainm Éire' /(New England going by the name of Ireland) culturally alien to the Irish population that resided in it

Between 1643 and 1789, France underwent one of the most pivotal national transitions in modern European history. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Louis XIV reigned as the most powerful divine right monarch on the continent. He marshaled religious ideology, set cultural standards, pursued economic projects, and waged wars to consolidate his authority over the French and foreign powers alike. Yet, by the late eighteenth century, Louis XVI's crumbling crown gave way to the Revolution. The French ultimately dethroned the king and established a republic. Our class will explore how the French negotiated this tumultuous trajectory from subjects to citizens. We will analyze three main themes over the course of the Old Regime. First, we will wrestle with issues of modern state building including administrative reform, military campaigns, financial ventures, and expansion in the New World. Second, we will study the relationship among politics, culture, and religion as the French vacillated between critique and reform. Finally, we will probe the origins of the French Revolution. These sparks ranged from Enlightenment debates over contract theory and social privilege to the stresses of everyday life including taxes and food shortages. We will close as the revolutionaries imagined nascent citizenship on the eve of the republic. In sum, this course will ask: how did European democracy find its roots in an absolute monarchy? And how did generations of French work out this transition through their everyday lives?

The French Revolution created a turning point in history by paving the way for modern politics and society. Napoleon's empire, on the other hand, toppled some of the oldest European monarchies and shook up the international status quo. During two and a half turbulent decades, the French destroyed feudalism, created a constitutional monarchy, founded a republic, and built an empire that stretched across the continent. Our course will focus on how the French reinvented the social, cultural, and political dimensions of their world from the 1780s to 1815. We will ask major questions such as: What were the origins of the French Revolution? How did the revolutionaries recreate political culture and social structures? Why did the Revolution radicalize at first but eventually slide into an empire? Was Napoleon the "son of the Revolution" or did he betray its major goals? Of special note, our course includes a 4-week "Reacting to the Past" game that allows you to engage in history from a completely new perspective. During this historical role-playing unit, you will become a specific member of the National Assembly or the Parisian crowd. To win, you must pass a constitution favorable to your position while wrestling "with the threat of foreign invasion, political and religious struggles, and questions of liberty and citizenship." Although we may change the course of history within the unit, you will root your arguments in resources available to your historical persona: primary documents, political treatises, inspiring speeches, secret collaborations, and "current" events.

The French Revolution, along with the American Revolution, is often considered the founding moment of modern democracy. And yet, democracy was not achieved once and for all in 1789. Over the course of the next two hundred years, France went through five republics, two empires, two monarchies, and one (arguably) fascist regime. In addition, it took hundreds of years for the egalitarian promises of the revolution to be extended to all members of French society. This course tells the story of this ongoing experiment in democratic governance—one that continues to this day. It introduces students to the major themes in the political and cultural history of modern France from 1789 to the present, examining how the universalist promise of the Republic has been contested and reshaped through its encounter with colonialism, industrialization, the rise of radical ideologies, religion, war, feminism, and multiculturalism. Course materials are drawn from a variety of sources, including novels, manifestos, political cartoons, films, works of art and philosophy, as well as secondary works by historians.

Between the early rumblings of the Reformations and the last cannon shot of World War I, Europeans profoundly changed how they conceptualized bodies as experience and metaphors. During these four centuries, Europeans grounded the ways in which they interacted with each other and the world in bodily imaginings. On an individual level, the living, human body provided a means of accessing and understanding the material or spiritual world. On a collective scale, the physical body, its adornments, and its gestures provided markers that Europeans used to fracture society along axes of gender, sexuality, class, race, mental aptitude, and even sacrality. Drawing in part from their myriad imaginings of the human body, Europeans constructed metaphorical political bodies. The body politic assumed diverse forms spanning from divine right monarchs to revolutionary republics to modern nation states. Our course will lay bare the human body as culturally constructed, while fleshing out how Europeans' evolving visions affected political imaginings.

Catholic Great Power. Medieval Holdover. Sick Man on the Danube. Prison of the Peoples. Laboratory of the Apocalypse. The Habsburg Empire has been called many things, but I bet you never have heard of it. But I bet you have heard about the Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination sparked the outbreak of the First World War; or maybe your parents made you listen to Mozart as a child in the hopes that you'd be brilliant. What you probably don't know, because historians have generally forgotten it, is that the Habsburg Monarchy stood at the center of Europe and European politics and culture for nearly four hundred years. Germans, Croatians, Slovenes, Poles, Jews, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Bosnians, Romanians, Italians, Ukrainians and (last but not least) Hungarians all played a role in the longevity and vibrancy of this multinational Empire. In this course, we will explore the history of this great continental empire from its modern origins during the reign of Maria Theresia (1740-1780) to its collapse and dismemberment in the First World War. In the process we will learn much about the history of Europe itself and about what becomes common knowledge and what does not. Our topics will include Enlightened Absolutism, the French Revolution, Liberalism, German Unification, Music and Culture, modernity, economic development, Jewish emancipation and identity, and finally the First World War.

This course begins with Prussia's initial challenge to Austria's dominance in central Europe; it ends with the unification of Germany under Bismarck's Prussia--and Austria's exclusion from it. In addition to covering the ongoing Austro-Prussian rivalry in Germany, we will cover political, cultural, social, and religious transformations of the period. Specific topics may include Enlightened Absolutism, the influence of the French Revolution in German-speaking lands, as well as the revolutions of 1848 and the struggle for German unification. We will also consider larger long-term processes such as the emergence of civil society, political ideologies such as liberalism, nationalism, and socialism, and German contributions to cultural and intellectual movements such as the Enlightenment and Romanticism. This course is the first half of a two-semester sequence in modern German history, although students may take either course independently of the other. The format of the course will include lectures and class discussions of primary documents and texts. Assessment will be based on class participation, short written assignments, and mid-term and final exams.

This course examines modern Germany from national unification in 1871 to the recent unification of the two Germanies and beyond. We will investigate cultural, political, and social dimensions of Germany's dynamic role in Europe and in the world. Topics include Bismarck and the founding of the Second Reich, World War I and the legacy of defeat, challenge and authority in the Weimar Republic, the National Socialist revolution, war and Holocaust, collapse of the Third Reich, conflict and accommodation in East and West Germany, and unification and its aftermath. Class format will combine lectures with discussion of readings from political, social, literary, and diplomatic sources.

This lecture/discussion course explores how historical actors, writers, artists, filmmakers, and historians, over the last century, have portrayed and interpreted the 1917 revolution. We will also explore how the centenary of this defining event is being commemorated in Putin's Russia.

This course will examine the history of Russia from its medieval origins until the age of Catherine the Great in the 18th century. We will begin with the genesis of Orthodox Slavic civilization in medieval Kievan Rus and that state's destruction in the Mongol invasion. Then we will study the rise of the tsardom of Muscovy and the fateful developments that nearly doomed it in the 16th-17th century: the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the Time of Troubles, the imposition of serfdom, the schism of the Orthodox Church, and widespread popular revolts. Lastly, we will see how Peter the Great and his 18th century successors attempted to stabilize the social order, Westernize the upper classes, and make Russia a great European power.

The course begins in the early 1700s with the reforms of Peter the Great, which made Russia into a highly centralized, powerful, oppressive society whose nobles grew wealthy and Europeanized while its peasants were reduced to poverty and serfdom. Successive tsars made Russia the greatest power of continental Europe while failing to reform its increasingly archaic sociopolitical order. As a result, the regime ultimately faced a restive peasantry, a radicalized intelligentsia, and deepening economic and military backwardness. The course concludes with the final, vain attempt by the monarchy in the 1860s-70s to stave off revolution by dismantling the system that Peter had created.

Russia under the tsars was a vast empire, a land of stunning achievement and immense inequality, mired in backwardness yet also a laboratory of modernity. Through works of scholarship, art, and cinema, and writings by Russians from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, we will explore how women and men, peasants and aristocrats, conservatives and revolutionaries, experienced the power and contradictions of the Romanov empire. This is a seminar. There will occasional lectures, but mostly we will have oral discussions about the readings, Russian historical films, and works of art that depict the everyday life of diverse groups in imperial Russian society. There are many ways of knowing the world - scientific, artistic, and other ways. Ours will be historical. This means that we will examine how the totality of life changed over time. We will consider the past from many angles, for instance, politics, culture, and the social order. We will discuss interpretations proposed by historians, analyze the primary sources on which they are based, and construct our own interpretations. We will not render facile judgments on the people of the past, but we will also explore what their legacy means for us today. We will examine imperial Russian history from three distinct perspectives: - What do we know about the actual course of imperial Russian history? - What are the original sources on which our knowledge is based? - What role do artistic representations of this era play in modern Russian culture?

Europe made a violent and dramatic entry into the modern age in the tumultuous decades from 1789 to 1871. The period opens with the French Revolution and closes with the unification of Germany and Italy. In between lie the revolutionary Reign of Terror in France, the Napoleonic Wars, the independence wars of Latin America, the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, the Industrial Revolution, and the invention of liberalism, conservatism, socialism, feminism, nationalism, democracy, atheism, and modern science. Europeans in 1789 still lived in a world that in many ways was similar to the 16th and 17th century; by 1871, the outlines of Europe in the 20th century were beginning to form. How this profound transformation occurred will be the subject of the course.

This course examines the political, cultural, social, and religious history of Italy from about 1350 to 1550. Starting with an extended study of Florence, its economic foundations, social and political structures, artistic monuments, and key personalities, the course then examines how the culture of the Florentine Renaissance spread to the rest of Italy, especially to the papal court of Rome and the princely courts of northern Italy, and, finally, to the new nation-states of northern Europe. Key topics will include: the growth of the Italian city-state; the appearance of new, Renaissance "characters" (the merchant, the prince, the courtier, the mercenary, the learned lady, the self-made man); Renaissance humanism and the classical revival; the relationship between art and politics; and Renaissance ideas of liberty, virtue, historical change, and the individual's relationship to God. The course will not tell a story of steady progress from medieval to modern institutions, societies, and modes of thinking; rather, we will consider the Renaissance as a period in flux, in which established traditions thrived alongside creative innovations and vigorous challenges to authority. Students will write one long paper and take a midterm and a final exam.

The course traces the interlocking histories of the city of Rome, its rulers, its buildings, and the wider world from Antiquity to the birth of the modern Italian state. The organizing question is that of power: how do individuals and states gain it, and how do they express it in concrete terms—in this case, in the fabric of a city, in its buildings and artistic spaces? Rome has provided a model for the articulation of political power (whether republican or imperial) from pagan times to the rise of the Catholic Church, from the age of absolutism to the age of revolutions—an age in which, it could be argued, we continue to live. Topics will include the ideologies and architecture of the ancient Republic and Empire; the transformations of Christian Rome; the urban fabric of Rome from the Renaissance to the Baroque; and the reactions to and reappropriations of Roman ideals by revolutionaries, Fascists, and modern urban reformers from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. The course includes a trip to Rome over spring break with class visits and presentations. Students will write a short paper on an ancient or early Christian monument and then undertake a longer research project on a post-medieval Roman building, topographical site, or interior space in its historical and political contexts, on which they will present their findings both in Rome and in a final research paper.

"Civilizations, Nations and Identities in Modern Europe aims to examine European modern history of civilizations, nationalism, religions, identities and ideologies through symbols and facts, in the field of social and cultural studies, with particular attention to many elements related to the social and cultural life of people, in their own environment. The cultural international history approach devotes particular attention to the period between 15th and 20th centuries, putting emphasis on the "delay of modernity" in Eastern Europe compared to West as well as to modernization factors (urbanization, centralization, cultural standardization, women empowerment)."

Since the eighteenth century, Europeans have grappled with a number of transformative events and developments, from the French Revolution and the birth of an industrial economy, to catastrophic wars and the rise and fall of European empires. In the process of making sense of these events, they produced works of philosophy, political theory, art, and literature that continue to shape the way we understand our place in the world today. This course introduces students to the history of European thought from the Enlightenment to the present, a period that birthed the many great "isms" that have defined the modern world: liberalism, socialism, nationalism, feminism, existentialism, totalitarianism, and colonialism. Course readings will be drawn from a range of primary sources, including novels, works of philosophy, political treatises, films, and works of art, as well as secondary sources by historians. By reading these two kinds of sources together, we will explore not only how ideas and works of art were shaped by the historical context in which they were produced, but also how they themselves shaped the course of European history.

Our world today traces its origins back to the radical cultural, political, and economic upheaval of the imperial crises and revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Representative democracy, political rights, the nation-state, feminism, egalitarianism, and antislavery emerged from this era. This course explores the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, considering their origins in the English Civil Wars of the 1640s, through to the eruption of the revolutionary movement that swept the Atlantic World from 1776 in North America on to France and Haiti, up to the fracturing of Latin America in the 1820s. Working with the latest scholarship and an array of primary sources, this course will explore these revolutions in their Atlantic and global contexts, emphasizing their interconnectivity. Students will come to understand these movements from diverse perspectives and their significant distinctions and overlaps while working throughout the semester to complete an original research project. The course will challenge students to engage with the commemoration and memory of these Revolutions and grapple with the Age’s contested significance and legacies.

This class introduces students to the history of Catholicism since the French Revolution, focusing primarily on Europe. It examines how Catholics confronted the challenges of modernity - from liberal democracy and nationalism; to capitalism and modern science; to new political ideologies such as fascism and communism. We will explore not only how these encounters transformed the Church, but also how Catholicism itself has shaped modern politics and culture. The first part of the course begins with the nineteenth-century - culture wars - between Catholics and anticlerical forces, focusing in particular on popular devotions like the Lourdes pilgrimage and the perceived "feminization" of religion. The second part of the course shifts to the twentieth century and examines the relationship between the Catholic Church and modern political ideologies such as nationalism, fascism, communism, and democracy. The third part of the course explores modern Catholic art, literature, and film. Finally, we close by examining the more recent history of Catholicism since the transformative changes of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Readings are drawn from a range of primary sources - including novels, speeches, Church documents, works of art, and films - as well as secondary sources by historians.

This course explores the historical relationship between the Catholic Church and the rise and fall of European overseas empires since the sixteenth century. We will consider how Catholic missionaries both reinforced and resisted colonial power structures; how the Church made sense of racial, religious, and cultural differences in its efforts to evangelize colonial subjects; how African, Asian, and Latin American Catholics developed their own distinctive spiritual practices; and how Catholics in both Europe and its former colonies grappled with the challenge of decolonization and how to undo the legacies of colonialism within the Church itself. Readings will be drawn from a range of sources, including missionary diaries and manuals, memoirs, artwork, papal encyclicals, films, novels, works of theology, and historical scholarship.

This course will explore the efforts to reduce biological phenomena to physical explanations in the modern and recent period in the efforts to gain a physical understanding of life. The course will be divided into 5 sections: (1) Early Modern discussions (Harvey, Descartes, Newton); (2) The development of “organic” physics around 1800 (Lavoisier, German biophysics); (3) The debates over mechanism, vitalism and holism in the early 20th century and the impact of the “new” physics (Loeb, Driesch, Niels Bohr, Schrödinger); (4) the foundations of “molecular” biology (Jacob, Monod, Delbrück, Watson and Crick; systems theory); (5) Toward a “Phenomenology” of Life (Husserl, Hans Jonas, Robert Sokolowski). STV Students will be asked to complete two take-home midterm examinations and a written final. HPS graduate students will be asked to make a class presentation, complete a take-home midterm, and write a paper.

This course will explore how and why the Irish adapted to an often-troubling New World. It will examine how those already in America understood them, and how the Irish came to understand themselves. We will do so from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. As we will discover, the Irish moved through the marginal areas of the broader Atlantic world. These were often violence marchlands, and this shaped their culture and the ways that others saw them. We will focus on how the Irish were seen to be an especially violent group, and how they took a term of abuse - The "Fighting Irish" - and turned into an ethnic marker of pride. Irish-American respectability was rooted in nostalgia for the violent past, and this sensibility helps explain why they dominated prize-fighting for a long time in the United States. To do all this, we will view the Irish-American experience from Atlantic, global, and comparative perspectives. We will, of course, cover traditional topics, such as labor, politics, and religion. And we will encounter many colorful characters and fascinating stories. But we will do so by viewing the Irish who came to America as part of a broader, dynamic diaspora. Viewing migration to the American colonies (including the Caribbean) and the United States from this vantage point means that we must consider the changing relationship between Ireland and America, as well as the ways in which both regions were parts of broader economic and cultural systems. We will also see how the process of adaptation in America differed from the ones in Australia, Britain, New Zealand, Argentina, and Canada - all places the Irish ventured to. Needless to say, we will cover the history of both sending and receiving societies in rigorous fashion. Only by doing this sort of work can we understand what defined the Irish-American experience, as well as the idea of the Fighting Irish. We will also spend some time discussing why Notre Dame would embrace the idea of the Fighting Irish and how that has changed over time.

Urban civilization as we know it was born in 19th century Europe. Rarely have the bright and dark sides of progress been so starkly juxtaposed as in the cities immortalized by Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, with their railroads, department stores, and other modern wonders, but also their slums, cholera, and ubiquitous coal smoke. Those cities were the first to confront the challenges that cities have faced ever since: How can a government unify the people, police the streets, and preserve a livable environment? How can society organize itself to build infrastructure, develop the economy, integrate immigrants, educate the young, and uplift the poor? How can everyday men and women share in the city's wealth and freedom without succumbing to its cruelty and alienation? Through modern scholarship and through fiction, journalism, images, and other sources from the period, we will explore the grimness and the glory of the 19th century European city. This course is a research seminar. Each student's main activity will be to write an extended research paper on a topic of his or her choice. We will spend weeks 1-6 acquiring an overview of the subject, and developing topics for research papers. Weeks 7-10 will be devoted to analysis of different types of sources and scholarship. During weeks 11-15, students will work on their papers and make presentations to the class about their research.

Public art is a major facet of modern and contemporary American culture and is often controversial: in the 1980s, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was criticized by some for being anti-American, in the 1990s, the Smithsonian cancelled an exhibit on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima after certain members of Congress said it was not patriotically correct, in the 2000s, the design and construction of the national September 11 Memorial (dedicated in New York in 2011) was beset by protests. This course examines the politics and aesthetics of public art in American from the perspectives of its producers and audience. What is public art? Why is it made? Who is it for? How and why does it embody tensions in American culture and society regarding identity, authority, and taste? Specific topics to be explored include American memorials and remembrance rituals, the development of the public art industry, community art projects (such as murals), national arts programs and policies, landscape architecture, tourism, museums, and national fairs. Our objectives are to recognize how public art shapes and directs local and national understanding of history and memory, self and society, in the United States. Course includes field trips; students will develop their own Wiki Public Art pages.

The European settlement of this continent was one of the more significant events in the past several centuries. That claim may appear self-evident, but Americans today are still confronting the legacies of many of the decisions that people made hundreds of years ago during colonization. This course explores early American history and attempts to recapture that world, suggesting how it is not as distant from our own society and culture as we sometimes think. The class combines lectures and discussions to cover the period from first contact between European and Native peoples through the American Revolution. Some of the major themes will be the interaction of European, Native, and African peoples; the extraordinary diversity of early America; the cultural, political, and economic incorporation of the colonies into the British empire; and the surprising decision to pursue independence. Students will have the opportunity to read both documents from the period and modern works of history as they explore the people, events, and places that shaped early America.

When speaking of the American Revolution, many writers reach for a comment made by John Adams in 1818 that, "[T]he Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. . ." Whether this assertion is true historically or not, it still does not adequately describe what that revolution was. The American Revolution obviously had its political elements, primarily the formation of the United States. To reach its political goals, military means were necessary. Without a successful War for Independence, there would have been no revolution. To leave matters there, however, would be insufficient. A fuller understanding of the revolution would need to address how it affected the whole spectrum of American life. It would consider the revolution as a social movement that challenged the political and social hierarchies of the day. It would also ask how the revolution affected those who were not white males, especially women, slaves, and Native Americans. Without considering the possible negative implications of the revolution, any telling would be incomplete. This class will take up these challenges and attempt to make a full-orbed presentation of the events surrounding the American Revolution. It will introduce students both to elites and to those whom the popular narrative glosses over. It will attempt to count the losses, as well as the gains, which flowed from the move to independence from Britain. Finally, it will attempt to describe the many changes through this period, which resulted, not only in a new political nation, but in a new society and culture--changes that in varying degrees are still with us today and of which contemporary Americans are the inheritors.

This course surveys the years 1848 to 1877 and centers on the constitutional crisis of the mid-19th Century that exploded in the U.S. Civil War. We begin with the political controversies over slavery, consider the eruption of violence between abolitionists and slaveholders, the breakdown of the political system that climaxed in the election of 1860, the southern rebellion to Lincoln's election, the experience of the war itself, the process of emancipation, and the political struggles during Reconstruction over federal power and the place of African-Americans in the Republic. This course emphasizes constitutional, political, social, and cultural events, the decisions made by public officials and voters, by men and women, by whites and blacks. In order to understand this tumultuous era, we will read political and legal documents as well as poetry, fiction, and private letters. Lastly, we will consider the ways in which historians evaluate the period and the ways the public remembers it. The course will be a mix of lecture and discussion.

This interdisciplinary course will foreground the lives of the enslaved in colonial America and the Caribbean (inc. Haiti). We will consider indigenous Native-American and West African practices pertaining to enslavement and captivity, as well as the development of hereditary slavery in the colonies. Throughout, we will maintain a focus on understanding the lived experience of individuals who were captured/enslaved, with special emphasis on gender and material culture.

This course offers an introduction to the history of the United States from Reconstruction through the First World War with particular emphasis on the social, cultural, and intellectual formations of the period. The United States made a dramatic transition in these years: from a predominantly agrarian and rural society to an urban, industrial society and imperial, world power. It is also said that in this period, a new, national, and distinctly modern culture emerged. We will test the merits of this claim and attempt to understand how Americans grappled with these broad transformations by examining the history of social formations, including class, race, and gender, together with the history of cultural formations - American popular culture, the adaptations of bourgeois culture, and the creation of mass culture. In reading sources such as short stories, poetry, political speeches, and novels, and analyzing photography, film, advertising, and architecture, we will explore the making of a modern America.

This course provides a multifaceted look at one of the most dynamic and pivotal eras in US history, the legacies of which we are still living with today. During the 1970s American society weathered tumultuous changes in politics, economy, and culture generated by unprecedented upheaval at home and abroad. Moving chronologically through the decade, we will assess large-scale forces that recalibrated American life, developments related to deindustrialization and globalization, for instance, as well as geopolitical contestations over oil, nationalism, and the Cold War. We will also pause to detail and analyze key turns in different sectors of American society. Topics addressed will include the energy crisis and environmentalism, stagflation and the ascent of Wall Street, working-class malaise and the decline of organized labor, Watergate and the fragmenting of American politics, the emergence of the culture wars and religious right, Title IX and feminist and civil rights activism, disco, punk rock, and the Hollywood Renaissance.

American ruins are increasingly visible today, from images of urban decay and piles of debris in Detroit and Gary to movies and novels (The Book of Eli, The Road) depicting post-apocalyptic "ruinscapes" of abandoned towns, derelict factories, crumbling monuments, and deserted shopping malls, variously populated by zombies, vampires, and survivalists. Ruins typical signify "disaster," "failure," "defeat," and "the past." Why, then, in a nation that has repeatedly defined itself in terms of promise, progress, and success-the American Dream-are visions of ruin, real and imagined, so prevalent today? This class explores the history and meaning of American ruins, relating contemporary fascination with ruins ("ruin porn") to currently held attitudes about modernity, technology, citizenship, consumerism, the rule of law, and the environment. Course materials include novels, films, and photographs; coursework includes fieldtrips (to Detroit and Gary), essays, and discussion.

This course explores the history of American sport in global context. American football was one of a number of sports (including soccer, rugby and various "football" games) that emerged from common roots. Ice hockey began as a Canadian sport but grew popular in parts of the United States by fusing Canadian talent and management with American capital. Basketball was invented in Massachusetts by a foreign-born educator who viewed physical education as a religious calling, and his creation grew internationally, with the international game developing important differences from the American game. Since the time of sporting goods baron Albert Spalding, businessmen and politicians have used sport to try to market specific products, the American way of life, or a diplomatic agenda. Alone among the industrial nations, the United States developed a talent-development system centered on schools and colleges, with distinctive results - both for the athletes, and for higher education. This course will consider these and other issues.

What roles do protest and dissent play in the making of America? Focusing especially on cultures of dissent including activist art, civil disobedience, radical action, and various cultures of struggle, dissent, and refusal, this course examines the practices, politics, technologies, and theories guiding America's foundational history of protest. Class includes lectures, discussion, essay assignments, and field trips.

This course offers a broad thematic overview of the history of capitalism from the early sixteenth century up to the late 1980s. As a discussion-based seminar, we will devote most of our conversations to discovering, analyzing and reflecting on the transformation of the U.S. from a newly-independent British colony, to the most influential economic power in the world. Topics and themes we will consider include: the rise of early modern transnational capitalism, European imperialism and trade, and indigenous dispossession after 1492; science and technological transformations; social and economic thought; slavery and servitude, broadly construed; and characteristics of prosperity, wealth, and economic flux. Our readings and viewings will be a mix of scholarly and primary sources, including an abundance of canonical literary and artistic material, such as novels, visual art, and film excerpts (e.g. Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879), Aaron Douglas's Building More Stately Mansions (1944), and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (1920)). Over the course of the semester, students will draw upon this eclectic combination of sources to synthesize the dominant historical dimensions of capitalism in and beyond the U.S. via four short essays (4 - 5 pages, double-spaced-between 1,100 and 1,400 words), and a final paper (10 - 12 pages, double-spaced) based on cumulative texts.

This course traces the developments that have shaped modern America. We will examine the American state from the growing pains of the Gilded Age to the chaos of the Great Depression and the challenges of the 1980s. Throughout, this course explores debates about who is an American and what are their rights, from the civil rights movement to #BlackLivesMatter and the immigration controversies of today. On the global stage, we will examine the United States' emergence as a major power from the ashes of the first and second world wars through the bitter rivalry of the Cold War. This course traces the arc of the American Century and asks whether it continues today.

"Over the last two years, "fake news" has been one of President Donald Trump's most oft-repeated phrases, undermining confidence in the press. In 2016, it was a term used by the media to describe deliberate misinformation spread on social media during the presidential campaign, often comprised of conspiracy theories. So what is "fake news" and how should we understand it, identify it, and make sense of how it is being used? In this discussion-based course, we will analyze the historical precedents of "fake news." Course readings will take us from the German Reformation, to imperial China, revolutionary France and America, colonial India, through totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and up to the present day. Each week, we will delve into a different historical event in which rumor, conspiracy theory, or propaganda played a central role. We will dissect the meaning of these terms across time and space and ask how and why they become meaningful in particular societies at particular moments. In the process, we will examine how historians treat deception, misinformation, and forgery in attempting to explain what happened in the past. Finally, we will ask whether "fake news" is a useful analytical category; what does it mean, how can we study it, and how can we handle it in our current society? Students will leave the course with a mastery of the historical context of fake news, an ability to identify and decode false information, and an understanding of methods for approaching a confusing and contested past. Course materials will include books, articles, podcasts, and films. Students will be evaluated primarily based on class participation, weekly discussion questions, and two essays. "

"The Constitution holds a unique place in American law and political culture. Not only is it the basis of the federal government, it provides the framework for political debates about all manner of controversial issues in modern America. Today, there is much talk of a "constitutional crisis" in the United States. What does this mean? How can a history help us make sense of the Constitution and of our politics? This course explores the historical context in which the American Constitution was framed, ratified, and amended over time. Together, we will ask and answer the questions of how and why it was written the way it was; how and why it gained legitimacy; and how it was put into practice and interpreted over time. The class will introduce students to central historical problems, which include: Is the American Constitution democratic? Did the Constitution codify slavery into law? Is originalism a useful and valid way to interpret the Constitution? Course readings will consist primarily of primary source material, though students will also read historical interpretations of the Constitution and the process of forming, amending, and interpreting it. The discussion-based class will empower students to think historically about the American Constitution by interpreting primary source material, building arguments about causes and effects of particular constitutional points, and intervening in scholarly dialogues about the founding and its legacy. Students will be evaluated primarily based on class participation, a short primary source analysis, a role-play activity, and a final paper. "

This course is an introduction to colonial American history, from the first contact between Native Americans and European settlers, through the rise of what Thomas Jefferson called the American "Empire of Liberty." Approached through the lens of empires, the class provides a foundation for thinking about the emergence of the United States as a multi-ethnic nation and its ongoing global connections. Students will explore the missionary work of Jesuits and fur trappers in New France, the emergence of plantation-based slavery in the Caribbean and American South, Spanish imperial ambitions in the Southwest, Native American empires in the Great Plains, and the Westward expansion of the United States as a young nation. Less emphasis will be placed on memorizing facts and figures, and more attention will be given to identifying change over time related to social, political, religious, economic, and cultural themes. Students will ask and develop answers to questions like: What was new about the "New World" for both Europeans and Native Americans? How did Native Americans shape the course of European colonization? How did imperial rivalries and conflicts contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolution? When Jefferson referred to the United States as an "empire of liberty," what did he mean? Was the new nation an empire? Through the consultation of primary source material and in-class discussion, you will practice thinking historically. Students will be evaluated on class participation, a group timeline and podcast, in addition to a short midterm paper and final exam.

This course will explore Native American literature, History, Arts, Perspectives, Government, and Law. However, it is important to remember that there is no singular "Native American" point of view. Rather, there are diverse perspectives, ideas, thoughts, movements, and priorities among more than 500 distinct cultural and linguistic groups who are the Indigenous people of the modern United States.

This seminar examines the rise of the modern fashion and garment industries in Europe and North America during the 20th century. We will trace the movement away from custom-made clothing to ready-to-wear and the invention of the department store. We will read early reformers who criticized women's dress as deadly and later home economists who taught how to dress according to standards of efficiency and beauty. Along the way, we will notice the significance of changing styles, and how they affected the lives of modern men and women of different classes and races through the decades. We will pay particular attention to the dress revolutions of the 1920s and 1960s. Students will be introduced to several on-line databases including HEARTH, the Vogue archives, and the Ebony archives.

This course traces the history of business in the United States, from the merchant-smugglers of the American Revolution through the rise of big business and the tech boom. We will consider the operation of individual firms as well as situate the history of American business within its wider social, political, and economic context. In particular, we will move between thinking about the specific challenges businesses faced - such as the emergence of new technologies or price-cutting competitors - and a broader conversation about the evolution of American business, such as the "managerial revolution." The course will proceed chronologically, but each week will stress a particular theme, often seen through the story of a particular firm. Topics addressed include the rise of a national market, debates over regulatory capture, outsourcing and globalization, and finally the relationship between management, investment capital, and organized labor.

Few American regions have generated as many cultural narratives, myths, and icons as the American West. Exploring conflicts and conquests alongside Western culture and the creation of the mythic West, we will examine the West through the multiple perspectives of the many peoples who have lived there. Using novels, histories, first-hand accounts, art, and film, we will trace the history and culture of the West. While discussing the evolution of the West's regional identity, we'll explore topics like episodes of violence and conquest, the creation of the US-Mexico border, the rise of national parks and tourism, and the West Coast's counterculture. In this course, we will investigate how violent frontier battles and brutal discrimination became tamed and commodified to sell the West to Americans through fashion, film, and tourism. This course is open to all students; no previous knowledge of the topic is required.

This course will use Notre Dame as a physical place and as a force for good in America, but also as an idea and ideal. We will trace the history of Notre Dame from before the arrival of Father Sorin and learn about the education of the Native people who resided (and worshiped) here and then watch Notre Dame both evolve and grow. We will simultaneously look at some other key colleges around the United States and track their growth as well. The course will study how Notre Dame goes from being just an idea on another continent to a small chapel in the backwoods in Northern Indiana, to a religious pseudo-trade school, to the place where ideas are not only tested, but also created and how Notre Dame becomes competitive with some of the other schools we study. This is the class to take to understand the complicated relationships that states and the federal government have with their schools. We'll trace national trends and study primary sources and, to be consistent, we will create our own knowledge from the resources we have in our archives and the resources that fans have collected from around the world. We will see the injustices and struggles that higher education creates and the tremendous good that comes as the nation's universities create knowledge that not only changes lives but saves some as well (though at what costs?). This class is the place to learn American history through the watchful countenance of Mary facing South in hopes to stand in harmony and as another example of Liberty Enlightening the World. Notre Dame is a global university and as such we must understand what that means and how being players in global relationships comes with the responsibility to welcome and make ourselves available to be welcomed--not just to teach, but to understand and recognize when we are the guest and when we are the host. We'll watch these things and more as we struggle to understand higher education, especially Notre Dame, and the potential for good.

The course will explore twentieth and twenty-first century labor in the U.S. from historical, literary, and theological perspectives, and is designed at the 20xxx-level to attract a broad range of students. Our historical study of labor questions and movements will pay particular attention to the evolution of labor unions and their political challenges and impact, but we will also look at laborers outside the sphere of organized labor (domestic workers and other non-union workers), as well as the persistence of and challenges to racialized and gendered identities that long segmented labor markets and restricted some from unions. Throughout these historical explorations, we will spend significant time visiting the life stories of select individuals (often in their own words), foregrounding the tangible intersectional nature of work and the politics of work, and showcasing the importance of family, community, solidarity, and faith in many labor activists' own careers. A mix of Catholic and non-Catholic perspectives might include Samuel Gompers, Terrence Powderly, Jane Addams, John Ryan, Florence Kelley, Rose Schneiderman, Pauli Murray, Dorothy Day, George Higgins, A. Philip Randolph, Walter Reuther, George Meany, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Mary Kay Henry, and Rich Trumka. Alongside our historical readings, we will probe the representation of labor, laborers, and class differences in literary works - short stories, novels, and plays - by writers whose own class and ethnic backgrounds vary widely, using the tools of close reading and historicist criticism. Our reading list will highlight Catholic writers such as J. F. Powers, Pietro di Donato, Hisaye Yamamoto, Edward P. Jones, Toni Morrison, and Lolita Hernandez, but for comparison will also include works by well-known figures such as Frederick Douglass, Jack London, Tillie Olsen, and John Steinbeck. As we analyze literary works, we will pose questions about aesthetics and canon formation: What narratives most provocatively explore work? Why are some labor activists attracted to experimental forms while others insist on social realism? Can a worker's speech or diary or song "count" as literature? All our historical and literary readings will intersect with our readings in CST, ranging from Pope Leo XIII's papal encyclical on labor, Rerum Novarum, to Dorothy Day's The Long Loneliness, to John Ryan's A Living Wage, to Monsignor George HIggins' lifetime of engaged scholarship. The tenets of Catholic teaching about labor will inform all our discussions about historical events and literary representations. We will also ask students to explore the Higgins Labor Program's new Just Wage Framework and Online Tool, considering ways that historical and literary approaches to "just wage" questions might inform this multistakeholder tool rooted in CST and designed to encourage employers, workers, advocates, policymakers, and community groups to discern, dialogue, and debate policies that promote a Just Wage.

This class considers the environment's role in shaping history. We will discover how our stories of the past change when we include microbes, pigs, and the climate, alongside of more typical subjects like presidents, wars, and ideas. We will ask what nature has meant in the past to a range of people, from the Comanche on the Great Plains, to settler-farmers in New England, to coal miners in Colorado. Throughout the course we will also ask the question: What is nature? And how have ideas about nature changed over time? A premise of this course is that nature is not something "out there," but in fact is everywhere. Thus, we will explore a robust set of thematic topics that will illumine the the varied meanings of "nature": the ways it is constructed, how ideas about it have changed over time, how it surrounds us, nourishes us, has been used to justify violence and racism, how it impedes on our lives.

This course provides an introduction to the history of American slavery. After examining the origins and transformation of Atlantic world slavery, the courses focuses particularly upon slavery in the United States. Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the United States grew into the largest slaveholding society in the modern world. U.S. slavery's growth was driven forward by massive global economic transformations and territorial conquest. Yet, in the face of unprecedented violence, enslaved people themselves brought about the end of slavery and transformed the meaning of freedom in the United States. This course focuses upon this history from the perspective of enslaved people themselves with particular attention to struggles for freedom. Through an examination of this history and its legacies, the course will introduce students to histories of resistance.

This course gives students the opportunity to learn more about how Americans have thought about criminal responsibility and how their ideas have changed over time. Historians contend that the 19th century witnessed a transformation in the understanding of the origins of criminal behavior in the United States. The earlier religious emphasis on the sinfulness of all mankind, which made the murderer into merely another sinner, gave way to a belief in the inherent goodness of humankind. But if humans were naturally good, how are we to explain their evil actions? And crime rates varied widely by sex and race; European women were said to have been domesticated out of crime doing. What do those variations tell us about a common human nature? The criminal might be a flawed specimen of humankind born lacking a healthy and sane mind. Relying in part upon studies done in Europe, American doctors, preachers, and lawyers debated whether insanity explained criminality over the century and how it expressed itself in different races and sexes. Alternative theories were offered. Environment, heredity, and free will were all said to have determined the actions of the criminal. By the early 20th century, lawyers and doctors had largely succeeded in medicalizing criminality. Psychiatrists now treated criminals as patients; judges invoked hereditary eugenics in sentencing criminals. Science, not sin, had apparently become the preferred mode of explanation for the origins of crime. But was this a better explanation than what had come before? Can it explain the turbulent debates in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries over variations in crime rates by race? Can it explain why men, not women, are still more likely to commit murder?

Gender has been fundamental to the organization of nearly all human societies, but what gender has meant in terms of identity, opportunity, and economic activity has varied widely across time and space. This course will explore gender at work in US history, taking a chronological approach to show gender's evolution and ongoing intersections with class, race, age, religion, region, and sexuality from 1776 to the near present. The term "gender at work" expresses a double meaning here -- first, it connotes that this is a labor history course, with an emphasis on the ways gender has operated at the workplace; second, it suggests the ubiquity of gender in shaping Americans' lives, experiences, and imaginations not only at the workplace, but also in formal politics, informal communities, and every space in between. By exploring the ways gender has been both omnipresent and contingent throughout US history, students should better understand -- and perhaps act upon -- seemingly intractable contemporary conundrums involving questions of equal opportunity and pay, household division of labor, work-life balance, and the proper relationships among employers, workers, households, and government.

"I but put that brow before you," Herman Melville wrote in his 1851 novel, Moby-Dick, "read it if you can." Melville was describing the brow of the mighty sperm whale, but his words apply equally to his mighty book. In this seminar, we can and will read Moby-Dick, Melville's maddening masterpiece. We will read Moby-Dick as an invitation into its multiple historical contexts at the middle of the 19th-century American and wider worlds. We will explore the world of whaling and the age of sail, the ecological and imaginary expanses of the 19th-century ocean, the intellectual and literary culture of the "American Renaissance," and a nation on a collision course with itself.

This course explores some of the critical questions and themes in U.S. Catholic history by examining how priests and nuns have been depicted, from the nation’s founding until today, in American art (including Thomas Nast’s cartoons and Paul Henry Wood’s painting, “Absolution Under Fire”), literature (including the lurid tale of Maria Monk and the short stories of J.F. Powers), television (including The Flying Nun’s Sister Bertrille and M*A*S*H’s Father Mulcahy), and film (including On the Waterfront, The Bells of St. Mary’s, Dead Man Walking, and Doubt). Tracing the evolution of cultural portrayals of priests and nuns illuminates how Catholics in the U.S. have been both feared outsiders and exemplary citizens, and how the Church in America has navigated encounters with nativism and anti-Catholicism; evangelization and ecumenism; immigration, industrialization, and urbanization; race, ethnicity, and civil rights; politics, diplomacy, and war; gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse; assimilation, secularization, and religious reform among many other topics.

Americans have long supported religious liberty under law, yet many also believed that only a religious people could guarantee the success of the Republic. Americans argued over how to define religious liberty, and over which particular religion best suited a republican government. Some said God had made certain people too inferior for citizenship, while others shot back that He had made all people equally capable. One man's piety was another man's oppression, one woman's equality another woman's blasphemy. We begin with the colonial era the concerns of the Revolutionary generation, look at the 19th Century's reform movements and new state institutions, then consider the Civil Rights movement of the 20th Century, and the place of religion in public schools. This discussion class will examine legal documents, like judges' rulings, and popular beliefs in political speeches and best-selling novels.

This course explores how ideas about race and racism have been intertwined with scientific, medical, and technological developments, shaping society since the 18th century. While recognizing that race is fundamentally a social construct, the course delves into scientific efforts to quantify, measure, and categorize individuals by race from early anthropometry to contemporary developments like the Human Genome Project and artificial intelligence. By critically analyzing scientific theories that produced and built upon ideas of racial hierarchy, students will develop a deep understanding of how race, racism, and racial inequality have been embedded into scientific knowledge, and thus, societal understanding. Students will also examine the historical context of racial disparities in healthcare, including the development of racialized medical theories, and will explore the role of technology in reinforcing or challenging racial biases, from the early days of photography to modern AI and surveillance technologies. This course is tailored for students with interests in the history of science and the production of scientific knowledge, as well as those curious about the origins of scientific racism and racial inequality.

This course traces the development of consumer society in the United States from the colonial era through the late twentieth century. It asks how Americans came to define the "good life" as one marked by material abundance and how transformations in buying and selling have shaped American culture, politics, and national identity. One of our aims will be to develop a usable historical definition of consumer society and to evaluate when such a society emerged in the United States. We will examine the role that consumption has played in defining and policing ideals of gender, race, sexuality, and class. We will also consider how Americans have used consumer practices and spaces to advance political claims and notions of citizenship. The course is organized around key turning points in American consumer capitalism: the consumer boom of the eighteenth century; the market revolution and feminization of consumption; the birth of the department store; the rise of mass consumption and commercial leisure; the development of modern advertising and sales; the spread of chain stores and shopping malls; and the globalization of American consumer culture. In addition to recent scholarship and text-based primary sources, we will analyze artifacts of consumer culture, such as advertisements, catalogs, product labels, broadsides, film, and television.

This course considers U.S. history from the "Jazz Age" through the depression decade. Drawing on secondary literature and primary sources including novels, films, and non-fiction writing, we will focus especially on the social and cultural dimensions of consumerism, the rise of industrial unionism, religious fundamentalism, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, prohibition, immigration restriction, and the Great Depression and New Deal. We will consider the U.S. role in the world through a period often characterized as one of American isolationism; understandings of capitalism between the roaring ‘20s and the descent into economic depression; and intellectual thought and the participation of artists and intellectuals in public life.

This course traces American feminism from the margins of democratic thought in the eighteenth century to the center of modern political discourse and culture. Drawing on primary sources and recent scholarly work, we will investigate how the goals and meaning of feminism have changed over time, as well as how the boundaries drawn around who could and could not claim the title of "feminist" have shifted. We will approach feminism as an argument--not a received truth--responsive to contemporary historical developments and marked by divisions of race, class, sexual orientation, age, and religion. Course readings are organized around major turning points in the American feminist movement and chart significant continuities and contradictions that have animated each new wave, including questions of gender difference, economic dependence, reproductive rights, marriage, subjectivity, and citizenship.

Did Puritans really only wear black and white, or did they wear fashionable lace, silk ribbons and bright colors? Did early settlers wash their bodies to get clean? What role did fashion play in the making of the American Revolution? And how did slaves and Native Americans adorn their bodies? This course will address such questions by focusing on dress and material culture. We will consider the role of dress in the construction of colonial identities, and examine the ways that bodies operated as sites for negotiating class and ethnic encounters.

Why are Americans so divided today? What explains the fracture? Why do Americans seem to live in different worlds? Why do we see reality in such divergent ways? This course suggests we can find answers to these pressing questions in the so-called Culture Wars of the late twentieth century. In the wake of the social movements of the 1960s, Americans attempted to push culture in very different directions. Some wanted to continue a cultural revolution, whereas others sought to check the brakes on this project. As a result of the push and pull, a range of intense disputes took place in political, legal, and cultural realms. This course considers a wide range of cultural flashpoints: the rise of the religious right, the advent of queer theory, the growth of radical feminism, and the birth of critical race theory. It looks at debates over censorship and art, public mores and sexuality, gender and race, academic curriculum and decolonization. We study some of the period’s most provocative films, pieces of art, music videos, and public demonstrations. It studies events such as the AIDS crisis, the Rodney King Riots, Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and the Anita Hill hearings. It attempts to bring together a wide range of voices – conservative, liberal, secular, religious, radical, and mainstream. In the end, we will speculate if the Culture War is still raging, and how we as Americans might find commonalities in our differences, in the name of reviving our own democratic traditions.

What did shopping, tavern-keeping, and midwifery have in common in early America? They could all be considered legitimate forms of women's and girls' labors both inside and outside of the home. We will consider work that was skilled or unskilled, free or enslaved, and paid or unpaid, and how changing definitions of "women's work" helped to shape boundaries of race and class. Servants were restricted from marrying and procreating while the value of enslaved women resided in both their work and their reproductive potential. Hence this course will also consider the dual facets of women's labor in work and their laboring in childbirth.

This course views the key question of American Studies—What does it mean to be an American?—through the lens of religion. Using two orienting themes—crossing and dwelling—it introduces students to the history of religion in the lands that became the United States. It focuses on how diverse peoples imagined and transformed the landscape, interacted with one another at different sites, and moved within and across borders. It is divided into four sections. We begin—and end—by asking: How should we tell the story of religion in America? To help students prepare to answer that question on the last day of class, and to provide a variety of sources—from diaries and laws to images and films—the next three sections each introduce a different way to tell the story of U.S. religion: by chronology, tradition, or theme. Section two provides an historical overview, telling the story by tracing chronological shifts, including developments since the 1960s. The third section focuses on religious traditions that have flourished in the United States: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, as well as Native American and African American traditions. In the course's final section we explore a series of topics or issues, including gender, sexuality, war, politics, literature, law, economy, science, and immigration. To accommodate different learning styles, we assess your progress in multiple ways, using both in-class and take-home assignments. Those include three short essays and an Intellectual Journal. Your last journal entry, which is your answer to the course's central question, will prepare you to contribute to our final session, when our class will collaborate to write our own account of the history of religion in America.

Coming to grips with American political thought is at once an historical and a philosophical task. Students in this course will take on that task under the guidance of one faculty member from the Department of History and one from the Department of Philosophy. The guiding questions of the course are: How have ideas about freedom, equality and the social contract played out in the history of American political thought? When have we realized those ideas and when have we failed? Do those ideas provide us adequate guidance? The exploration of American political thought will be divided into six periods: The Founding, the Civil War era, the late 19th-century, the New Deal to the 1960s, the 1960s to the 1990s, and the 1990s to the present. The course has no prerequisites, though students wishing to count it toward the Philosophy requirement must previously have taken "Introduction to Philosophy."

The legacy of comics is ever present in society today. Many graphic novels are present in culture today, from various streaming services to box office sensations and flops to superheroes. For decades, graphic novels have provided critiques of environmental pollution, racism, the urban crisis, xenophobia, and authoritarianism. From rewriting the history of Texas to advocating for labor rights for Latina domestic workers, Latina/o creators have turned to graphic novels as a medium for documenting and disseminating their history. This course offers a broad overview of and introduction to the production of Latina/o History through Graphic Novels. The course will balance a thematic approach of central themes throughout Latina/o History, such as migration, labor, and social movements, and the methodology and terminology of reading comics. Once the center point of culture wars, graphic narratives are increasingly accepted today as forms that cultivate sophisticated types of verbal-visual literacy that actively critique forms of knowledge and contemporary policies and offer alternative forms of history. This class will explore how Latina/o graphic narratives have long been an essential source of cultural expression and central to the Latina/o communities documenting their history on their terms. From revisionist accounts to biographies of leaders to instilling superpowers to child migrants and domestic workers, graphic novels offer a compelling perspective into complementary historical narratives.

This class examines the social, spatial and intellectual history of "integration" in the United States and Europe, from the publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract (1762) up to the so-called "global revolutions" of 1968. Students will gain a comprehensive introduction to how peasants, (im) migrants, people of color, and other disempowered populations negotiated confraternity and inclusion - despite tenacious subjugation and exclusion - within and across Western nation-states and colonial possessions. Related topics range from "Indian removal" to religious persecution; from absolutist monarchies to gender discrimination; and from legalized slavery to histories of genocide. Our seminar, eclectic in scope and method, will put particular emphasis on transnational histories of social movements and cultural transformations. In addition to four short writing assignments (4 - 5 pages, double-spaced) connecting two or more course readings, students will develop a final paper (7 - 8 pages, double-spaced) based on cumulative sources, including texts such as: Alexander Pushkin's The Moor of Peter the Great (1837), Maya Jasanoff's The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World (2017), Todd Tucker's Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan (2004), and Winston Churchill's "United States of Europe" speech (1946). No prior background in American or European history is either required or assumed.

This course will offer students a rigorous and lively encounter with multiple energy sources and their manifold effects on American society, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.Recent political developments in the US offer plenty of reasons for a course of this sort, one that can contextualize contemporary debates over energy-related matters such as global warming,national security, federal regulation, and sustainability in broad sweeps of change over time. Yet The primary goal of this course will be to provide a history of energy on its own terms. One Cannot grasp the complexities and entanglements of modern life in its entirety without first coming to terms with the ways humans demand, consume, and interact with energy - and in turn,the ways it shapes and reshapes our social structures, realigns our lived and material infrastructures, and even dictates cultural values and trends.We will interrogate these values and structural outcomes with the help of path-breaking scholarship - books and articles about coal, petroleum, electricity, and nuclear energy that not only chart their development over time, but also reveal the ways in which, at key junctures in the nation's past, they forged new patterns of labor and race relations, corporate and community growth, state governance and land-use policy, gender and religion, regional growth andAmerica's global reach. Moving from the Civil War to the present, from the oil patches ofwestern Pennsylvania and West Texas to American petroleum sites in the Middle East - from the electrification of east-coast cities in the late nineteenth century to the damming of western rivers for hydropower in the early-twentieth, this course will give students the opportunity to ponder past and present energy systems within prisms of vast societal impact.

This course asks how we should narrate and understand the great ordeal of Civil War and emancipation. Reading both primary and secondary sources, it considers the Civil War era and life of Abraham Lincoln in light of the rise of abolition and antislavery politics; attitudes toward race, slavery, and labor; the political and social meanings of war and emancipation; the political and social challenge of reconstructing the nation amidst the tangled legacies of racial slavery and a destructive war.

This seminar explores the dynamic and complex history of medicine in the United States, from colonial times to the present, with a focus on how race, gender, class, and geography have shaped medical practices, healthcare institutions, and public health policies. Medicine in America has never operated in a vacuum—it has both shaped and been shaped by broader social structures. The course critically examines how medical authority was established and legitimized, often at the expense of marginalized communities, and how those communities have responded and resisted. We will investigate the professionalization of medicine, the role of public health, the ethical dilemmas surrounding medical experimentation, and the evolution of biomedicine and the pharmaceutical industry. Through historical analysis, case studies, and discussions, students will develop a deeper understanding of how historical developments in medicine continue to inform contemporary debates on healthcare access, inequality, and medical ethics.

How have Americans structured intimacy and care throughout U.S. history? This course asks students to analyze the concept of “family” and examine the ways ideas and practices regarding familial formation have changed in the past few centuries. When and why have certain relationships been legally incentivized? Regulated? Criminalized? Ignored? How have various historical processes impacted the ways people have cared for themselves and each other? How have people politicized family matters to enact their own social agendas? This course covers the broad sweep of U.S. History, 1783-present. We will analyze how the structure and function of households changed over time. What were the legal, economic, social, and political dimensions of households across the nation and how did these affect, reflect, and reinforce broader cultural trends? We will explore the variable ways households were private and public spaces and show how not everybody had equal access to domestic privacy. In this course, we will examine a variety of topics, such as fights over polygamy, emancipation, institutionalization, the transition to a wage economy, fights over marriage and divorce, declining birthrates, eugenics, the development of public education, the proliferation of birth certificates and marriage licenses, the postwar baby boom, the advent of birth control, sexual liberation, 20th-century social rights movements, and fights over abortion.

Sports play a big role in American culture. From pick up soccer and the Baraka Bouts to fantasy football and the Olympics, sports articulate American identities, priorities, aspirations, and concerns. They reflect our dominant values but also highlight our divisions and serve as a means to question those values. Athletes, organizers, spectators, fans, and the media all have a stake. This course will examine sport's role in American society and culture thematically, covering the late 19th century to present and paying special attention to sport as a physical performance (including issues of danger, drugs, disability, spectatorship, and fandom), sport as an expression of identity (the construction of race, gender, class, community, and nation), sport as a form of labor (with issues of power and control, safety, and amateurism), and sport as a cultural narrative (how do writers, historians, and the media attach meaning to it?). We will examine history, journalism, documentary film, and television coverage; topics will range from Victorian bicyclists and early college football to Muhammad Ali. Requirements include reading and regular discussion, a variety of short analytical papers, and a culminating project in which students will choose one course theme to analyze through a topic of their own choice.

This major-level course is designed to provide students with a substantive overview of Latina/o immigration and community formation in Chicago during the twentieth century, and how it became one of the largest Latino cities in the United States. The Windy City's rise in the nineteenth century as an industrial metropolis transformed it as a magnet for capital, culture, and labor. A series of key events around the turn of the century and into the early decades of the twentieth century - the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, the rise of economic production during World War I (1914-1918), and the Immigration Act of 1924 that greatly reduced Eastern and Southern European immigration - would come to shape the patterns, processes, and terms of Latina/o migration into Chicago, particularly those of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Mexicans and other Latin Americans joined the Great Migrations of African Americans and ethnic whites to look for better opportunities in the north, and since then, Latino Chicagoans have forged communities as they have also negotiated the broader social, cultural, and political currents of American history throughout the twentieth century. This course will introduce students to these broader patterns as explored through recent scholarship on Latinos/as in Chicago. Students will also read key primary sources in the field and consider the historiographical debates about retelling this aspect of Chicago's history.

This course explores the Black Freedom Struggle from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Power and into Black Lives Matter. How have African Americans mobilized to secure recognition of human dignity from the American Political system? How did the Freedom Struggle shape American culture? By studying the Civil Rights Movement in America, this class opens up conversation on the central issues of American history: race, racism, rights, and freedom.

This course covers the varied experience of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (and other gender-fluid) Americans over the course of the twentieth century. As much as possible, it will focus on the voices of LGBT people themselves, in the context of the changing meanings of what it was to claim those identities. To do this we will draw on primary sources—art, music, film, literature, interviews and oral histories, memoirs and autobiographies, plays, films. The focus will be on the ways people understood who they were--and what homosexual/gay/lesbian/queer/transsexual/transgender/et al identities meant to them--and how these identities changed over the course of the twentieth century, using a wide variety of primary sources and relevant disciplinary frameworks.

Parietals, ResLife and SYRs— ND’s Vagina Monologues, the old Keenan Revue, and the “Gay? Fine By Me” t-shirt campaign— 30+ years of queer student groups (forbidden, unofficial, and unofficial) -- ND’s never-quite-adopted “nondiscrimination policy” — these and a host of other customs, traditions, events and scandals comprise Notre Dame’s rich history of sex, sexualities, gender and love. Today most of this history has been forgotten, misremembered, even mythologized. Nonetheless, similar issues of sex, sexualities, gender and love remain both controversial and central to students’ ND experience. If students and their supporters neither remember nor understand these past controversies, how can they assess today’s controversies, however similar or different? How can this generation of students understand the part that they, themselves, are playing in this longstanding history? How can they tell the difference between a return to past practices and changes that are truly novel? This seminar begins a multi-semester project recovering and making available this rich history. During the semester, students serve as both historians and archivists. That is, first and perhaps most important--each student serves as historian, utilizing student publications like the Observer to research and write a short, informative essay that uncovers, and explains one important event, aspect, or trend in Notre Dame’s past. These individually researched essays constitute this project’s heart and centerpiece, because only such essays can explain to modern students what sex, sexuality, gender and love meant to that generation of students—at least as exemplified in the subject of the essay. They will also explain how and why previous generations’ views, practices and ND experiences differed from those of ND students, today. Oral history makes up a second component of students’ historical practice. During the last half of the semester, each student will learn “best practices” for gathering and processing oral histories, and then act accordingly. Ideally each student will interview someone who remembers the event or trend which they wrote about in their essay. Yet as long as the interviewee knows or remembers something relevant to this course, and as long as they consent to provide and donate their oral history, anyone is fair game: alum, administrator, professor, staff, parent, etc. At the same time, the entire class will begin to build a permanent, accessible, Archive/Database of Sex, Sexuality, Gender, Love at ND, 1972-2022. Initially, the backbone of this Archive will be constituted of relevant articles found as we comb through the rich reportage of past ND student publications—Observer, Scholastic, Rover— etc. Students’ research will inevitably carry them to other types of primary sources, which will be included in the Archive, whenever feasible.

The field of American Studies takes as its central concern the tension between the ideals and institutions that unite us as a nation, and the diversity of identities, perspectives, and experiences that make that unity so difficult to achieve. This course examines how those tensions have played out in 20th century American history, with a focus on domestic politics and the production of culture, particularly music. The course also examines how those tensions have been reflected in the writing of American history itself. Taking a cue from the 1619 Project that re-conceptualized American history by placing the institution of slavery at its center, we will explore what 20th century U.S. history looks like when we move traditionally marginalized voices to the fore, and focus explicitly on the relationship between racialized power and the production of culture. Through the Blues and folk music to Elvis, girl groups, Chicano rock, disco, and hip hop, this blends historical perspectives and method with approaches from American studies to rethink 20th century history as well as the making of that history. Assignments will include extensive reading, midterm and final essay exams, and three short papers/projects. Classes will include some lectures as well as a significant amount of discussion.

This course examines American visual and material cultures from the pre-contact, pre-colonial era to the present day. Providing a broad historical account and considering a variety of media from paintings and sculptures to quitls, photographs, world's fair, and fashion styles, this survey explores American art within the context of cultural, social, economic, political, and philosophical developments. In particular, it considers the role that American art has played in the formation of national identity and collective understanding of class, race, gender, and ethnicity.

The 1950s, we're told, were America's "best" years: an idyllic era of suburban family togetherness, television shows like Leave it to Beaver, Disneyland (which opened in Anaheim in 1955), and really big cars. Magazine publisher Henry Luce and other mid-century American power-brokers promoted the postwar US on hegemonic terms: as a unified nation defined by a liberal political economy and by the expectations and desires of middle-class citizens united by the shared goals of upward social mobility and consumerism (white collar jobs, home ownership), college educations, family/suburban lifestyles, etc. This was called the "consensus model" of American identity. Not surprisingly, this ideal of America and these normative expectations about "being" American created a number of tensions in post-World War II America. First, the goals themselves were unattainable for some Americans due to the nation's persistent habits of racism, sexism, class preference, and homophobia. Second, some Americans felt restricted and restrained by expectations of middle-class conformity, among other things. This led to a number of counter-hegemonic cultural expressions: from art that came off the wall to artists who went on the road. This course examines those American artists and their rebellions, from artists like Jackson Pollock¿who took his paintings "off the wall" and made them on the floor¿to writers like Jack Kerouac, whose novel On the Road was published in 1957. It surveys American art from the Great Depression of the 1930s through the early 1970s, looking at art styles and movements including Regionalism, Abstract Expressionism, Beat, Funk, Pop, Minimalism, Conceptual art, Psychedelia, Earthworks, Feminist art, and the Black Art Movement. Themes include the "triumph of American painting" after World War II, links between art and politics, the development of postwar art theory, and intersections between the avant-garde, popular culture, and consumer culture. A special "Elvis Day" examines post-World War II youth culture and counter-hegemonic rebellion.

How did the most divisive war in American History shape the nation's biggest church community? This course explores Catholics as both supporters and detractors of the Vietnam War. American Catholics wished to see America defeat Communism but, importantly, the power of faith motivated many to criticize the state's escalation of the conflict. Students will explore the tensions and transformations of this important moment in American life. Lectures and classroom discussions will address decolonization, the global and national nature of American Catholicism, the power of the liberal state, conscientious objection, the "Spirit of the Sixties," sacramental protests, the rise of human rights, geopolitics, and the Cold War. Course readings will include the latest scholarship, but also primary sources like poems, films, songs, letters, prayers, newspaper articles, and art. Students will have access to the rich materials of Catholic peace activists found in the University of Notre Dame Archives

This course traces the history of Buddhism in the United States since the nineteenth century. After considering the history of Asian immigrants who brought Buddhism with them and American-born converts who embraced it here, we take some steps toward a cultural history of Buddhism in the US since 1945, analyzing the tradition's influence on other faiths and on politics, activism, fiction, poetry, painting, video art, film, music, architecture, martial arts, how-to literature, psychology, and medicine.

Historians have argued that conservatism has been the dominant political ideology in the United States since the late 1960s. Yet, during this time, different actors have demonstrated diverse understandings of what it means to be conservative. Furthermore, at no point during our period of study was conservatism a monolithic force. We will look at some of the key events, persons, movements, and ideas that shaped conservatism in the postwar United States. We will also read excerpts of the rich historiography on the subject that has identified various social, cultural, and political factors as driving forces behind the rise of conservatism. By contrasting such explanations with the self-image of American conservatives conveyed through their writings, communication, and activism, we will get a critical understanding of the complexity of our subject. The course will focus on sourcework. We will learn to apply the historical method to diverse material and how to ask and answer historiographical questions using sources.

This course covers the main developments in American foreign policy from World War II through the end of the Cold War. The principal topics of investigation will be wartime diplomacy and the origins of the Cold War; the Cold War and containment in Europe and Asia; Eisenhower/Dulles diplomacy; Kennedy-Johnson and Vietnam; Nixon-Kissinger and détente; Carter and the diplomacy of Human Rights; Reagan and the revival of containment; Bush and the end of the Cold War.

Topics may include representations of sexuality in movies and advertising; new courtship practices among unmarried heterosexuals (from courting to dating to hooking up); changing concepts of same-sex love (from inversion to homosexuality to gay liberation to LGBTQ); the demographic shift to smaller families; the twentieth-century movements for and against birth control and legal abortion; and the late-twentieth-century politicization of sexual issues.

This course explores the relationships among and between workers, employers, government policymakers, unions, and social movements since the end of World War II, as well as the ways in which those relationships have shaped and been shaped by American politics and culture more broadly. The United States emerged from the Second World War as the globe's unequaled economic and political power, and its citizens parlayed that preeminence into a long postwar economic boom that created, however imperfectly, the first truly mass middle-class society in world history. At the heart of that new society was the American labor movement, whose leaders and members ensured that at least some of the heady postwar profits made it into the wallets of workers and their families - and not just the wallets of union members, as working Americans generally experienced great improvement in wages, benefits, and economic opportunity during the quarter-century ending in 1970. During those same years, civil rights activists challenged the historic workplace discrimination that kept African Americans at the bottom of the labor market, confronting the racism of employers, unions, and the government, and inspiring others, primarily Mexican Americans and women, to broaden the push for equality at the workplace. Since that time, however, Americans have experienced a transformation in the workplace -- an erosion of manufacturing and the massive growth of service and government work; a rapid decline in number of union members and power of organized labor; and unresolved conflicts over affirmative action to redress centuries of racial and gender discrimination. Meanwhile, income inequality and wealth disparities have grown every year over the past three decades. What accounts for the decline of organized labor since 1970, and why have the people of the mythic land of milk and honey experienced declining upward mobility and widening gaps between the rich and everyone else? Are these phenomena linked? What has the decline of the labor movement meant for workers specifically, and the American economy and politics more broadly? How and why have popular perceptions of unions changed over time? What has been the relationship of organized labor to the civil rights movement, feminism, modern conservatism, and the fortunes of individual freedom more broadly? What is globalization, and what has been its impact upon American workers? Through an exploration of historical scholarship, memoirs, polemical writings, and films, this course will try to answer these questions and many others. It will also address the prospects for working people and labor unions in the twenty-first century.

Visual Anthropology provides a powerful and engaging means of sharing historical and anthropological stories. This new course is based on the assumption that people think in terms of images, movement and sound and that film can be used to create powerful and important human narratives. This class is designed to train students in how to research, design, manage and produce short documentary film projects using both state of the art production equipment and accessible forms of media capture such as iPhones and GoPros. As a graduate/undergraduate elective, this course thematically focuses on understanding and documenting the historical, social, economic and personal stories centered on 19th through 20th century Indiana local barns, and placing these in a meaningful cultural and historical context. Students will work in teams of two to research an assigned farmstead, focusing on the barn as a material setting and documenting the past through the integration of historical research, oral history and digital video.Students will develop 2 minute videos for inclusion in a video book (as seen here https://islandplacesislandlives.com/) that touches on local history as well as a longer 8 minute video that explores the life, history and social context of the barn. The result will be a collaborative effort that creates a body of work by the class exploring local history and linking Anthropology with filmmaking to tell stories.

From his national television appearance in support of the doomed Goldwater presidential campaign in 1964 through his failed presidential runs in 1968 and 1976 and his presidency (1981-89) on to the official dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ronald Reagan played a significant role in, and in reaction to, major developments in American politics, foreign policy, and society. This class will consider the turbulence and protest movements of the 1960s; the conservative backlash; the individualism of the Me Decade and beyond; foreign policy issues including Vietnam, détente, the "second Cold War," and the end of the Cold War; and national political disputes over issues like taxes, abortion, foreign policy and nuclear weapons.

This course will survey historical scholarship on the development of American cities and suburbs from World War II to the present. Making use of primary and secondary sources, and print and visual media, we will seek to understand what defines American cities and suburbs, how the idea and ideals of cities and suburbs have changed over time, and what forces have shaped the places in which we live today. We will explore how a metropolitan approach to modern American history sheds light on major events, movements, and transformations of the twentieth century along thematic lines of race, class, and education; politics and protest; modernity and religion; gender and sexuality; ethnicity, immigration, globalization, and citizenship; urban crisis, renewal, and gentrification; and urban sprawl and environmentalism. Course objectives include learning to analyze and interpret primary sources, including written texts, film, photographs, and the built environment; to read secondary sources critically and effectively; to identify significant people, places, and events in twentieth-century American urban, social, and political history; to recognize major changes and continuities in postwar urban history; and to place contemporary issues and debates in historical and cultural context.

The United States became "modern" at the turn of the twentieth century: a primarily rural, agrarian society became an increasingly urban, industrial one that made and consumed forms of mass culture. This was a period defined by heightened immigration, the rise of corporate capitalism, and the extension of U.S. imperial power overseas. What did these years of great transformation sound like? How did people hear and listen to the world around them? This course, a discussion-based seminar, explores sound and practices of listening between 1870 and 1920 in the United States. In analyzing primary and secondary sources, we will study urban soundscapes and attempts at sound regulation, hearing and deafness, acoustics, and sound reproduction technologies. We will also explore music - popular, bourgeois, religious, and military music, for examples - as well as the making of musical genres, the commercialization of sound, aspects of performance, and organology (the science of instruments). All the while, we will consider the intersection of sound, hearing, and listening with race, gender, and class formations and the role of sound, hearing, and listening in the making of a modern America.

This course introduces students to core questions, problems, and concepts in United States urban history by studying one particular city, Chicago. The goal is not to learn the history of Chicago per se, but to use Chicago as a vehicle for exploring different approaches to understanding urban development and the urban experience. In that sense, Chicago will serve as our laboratory of discovery. Drawing on the rich trove of existing historical studies of Chicago, we will consider the city's past from numerous angles, such as the economy, law, political culture, space and architecture, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality. Our readings will incorporate historical studies as well as a diverse range of primary sources, including fiction, art, photography, maps, travel journals, and poetry. Students will have the opportunity to produce their own original research employing the urban history approaches encountered in the course.

How is a national park different from a national wilderness area, a city park, the lakes at Notre Dame, or your back yard? Why are some considered more wild than others, and why is wilderness such an attractive idea? Writers, historians, painters, photographers, and politicians have described American landscapes as wild to great effect, in concert with identities of gender, class, race, and nation. This class will explore how the idea of wilderness - and the places associated with that idea - have developed during the 19th and 20th centuries. We will examine how wilderness has supported the growth of a national identity but largely failed to recognize the diversity of the American people. Course themes include: 1) developing the wilderness idea; 2) national parks and the problem of wilderness; 3) wilderness experience and politics; and 4) wilderness narratives. Readings will range from Henry David Thoreau and John Muir to Edward Abbey and Jon Krakauer, and there will be a strong visual culture component. For their final project students will choose a wild place of their own to interpret.

While "race" is a notoriously difficult concept to define, it is undoubtedly a powerful force in American life. But how do we know what we know about race? Where do these ideas come from? How will matters of race and representation change in the era of Barack Obama? Focusing on the late nineteenth century to the present, this course explores the ways in which ideas about race are formed, negotiated, and resisted in the arena of American popular culture. From blackface minstrelsy on the Vaudeville stage to contemporary comedy, television, and music, this course will ask how popular culture actively shapes - rather than merely reflects - American ideas about race and ethnicity. Rather than emphasizing on a particular racial or ethnic group, we will more broadly examine the politics and practices of representing difference in the United States. By engaging with a diverse set of theoretical, historical, and primary texts, students will learn to approach and analyze popular culture with a critical eye.

We'll study two contrasting but related collections of source material. For a sense of what Columbus was really like, we'll read a selection of his writings (not the editorially distorted "Four Voyages" that have misled most students, but authentic ipsissima verba). To study the transmission of his image, especially in the U.S., the Catholic Church, and the University of Notre Dame, we'll scrutinize Gregori's famous or notorious murals (supplemented by the text of Gregori's contract with his source of patronage). Along the way we'll work on critical, informed examination of written and pictorial documents, unremitting perfectionism in writing, improved attentiveness in listening, and growing effectiveness in communicating. We will focus on skills typically under-represented in students' education so far: how to identify and explore interesting problems in history and art history, and how to understand documents from unfamiliar periods by analyzing language, imagery, and, in pictorial works, iconography.

This course offers an introduction to the history of Latin America through the study of film (in combination with more traditional print sources).

When Columbus stepped ashore in the Caribbean in 1492, he set in motion a process that led to the creation of wealthy Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas, the genocide of countless numbers of indigenous men and women, the enslavement of millions of African men and women, and the eventual formation of a variety of independent states competing in the world economy. In this semester-long survey, we will examine topics in this history that will allow us to consider how history is produced as well as what happened in the past, from various perspectives, from elite colonial administrators and merchants to indigenous peasants and formerly enslaved men and women.

The most influential voices in the United States today—including those working in media outlets (i.e., CNN, FOX, MSNBC), the entertainment industry (i.e., Hollywood and Netflix), and the government (i.e., senators and governors)—overwhelmingly describe the countries of Central America and the Caribbean as “unruly”, “violent”, and unilaterally “impoverished.” Not too different from those given by their counterparts during the 19th century, these descriptions have been primarily framed in relation to the “tropics,” an “imagined region” of the world composed of “banana republics”, as we will discuss in this class, that always seemed to be far from the benefits of “modernity” and the advances of “Western civilization.” But in complicating these vague, misleading, and treacherous descriptions of the broader Latin American region, students will also be presented with the opportunity to explore a variety of challenges that ordinary Latin Americans face today, from a historical perspective. For example, in discussing the roots and long-term effects of modernization theory and military interventions, students will explore why Haitians and Hondurans, but not necessarily Costa Ricans, have left their respective countries in massive numbers. In comparative cases, they will also learn why ordinary people in El Salvador have welcomed a ruthless government of “law and order”; why their neighbors in Guatemala have instead looked for a populist leftist leader to demand justice and greater democracy; why Nicaragua has betrayed a once egalitarian revolution with a totalitarian regime; and why Puerto Rico has failed to protect its “citizens” from environmental and health disasters, and in comparison, why socialist Cuba has fared better in these regards, but has otherwise silenced those who criticize the ruling elite and has often been accused in international courts of violating human rights. Finally, as further points of contrast, students will learn why liberal and conservative politicians at times welcomed the presence of US foreign agents in their respective countries and why American politicians at times joined cautionary forces with their counterparts in Israel, France, and Argentina in combating the long Cold War in Central America and the Caribbean. In providing historical context to these and other questions (that I further detailed below), this course will introduce students to the ambivalent and often complicated relationship(s) between the United States and its neighbors in Central America and the Caribbean, from the early 19th century to the present.

This is an interdisciplinary history course examining the Latino experience in the United States after 1848. We will examine the major demographic, social, economic and political trends of the past 150 years with an eye to understanding Latino/a America. Necessarily a large portion of the subject matter will focus on the history of Mexican-Americans, and Mexican immigrants in the Southwest and Midwestern United States, but we will also explore the histories of Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Latin-Americans within the larger Latino/a community. Latinos are US citizens and as such the course will spend significant time on the status of these groups before the law, and their relations with the state, at the federal, local, and community level. To explore these issues within the various Latino communities of the US we will explore the following key topics covered: historical roots of "Latinos/as" in the US; the evolution of a Latino/a ethnicity and identity within the US; immigration, transmigration, and the shaping of Latino/a communities; Latino/a labor history; segregation; civil rights; nationalism and transnationalism; the Chicano Civil Rights Movement; Latinos in film; and post-1965 changes in Latino/a life.

The aim of this class is to try to understand what conquest, as we have traditionally called it, meant to the people who experienced it in some parts of the Americas that joined the Spanish monarchy in the sixteenth century. We'll concentrate on indigenous sources - documentary, pictorial, and material - and try to adopt the indigenous point of view, without neglecting sources mediated by Europeans. Although the class will concentrate on selected cases from Mesoamerica, the lecturer will try to set the materials in the context of other encounters, both within the Americas and further afield; and students will be free, if they wish, to explore case-studies from anywhere they choose in the Americas (in consultation with the lecturer and subject to his approval) in their individual projects.

This class examines the history of capitalism and development in the Americas and its relationship with the political history of its societies. The American continent was at the forefront of capitalist expansion, decolonization, the construction of nation-states, and the emergence of new imperial powers. We will study the history of economies and how entrepreneurship, business, and commerce shaped the structures of societies in South and North America: from the coffee plantations in Brazil Empire to the Banana plantations in Central America of mid 20th century; from the colonial silver mines in Central Mexico in late 18th century to the gold dredge exploitations in Alaska in the early 20th century; from the consumption of English textiles in Argentina in the early 19th century to the creation of Latinx markets in the United States in the second half of the 20th century. There are no prerequisites.

This course is designed to introduce students to the modern history of “Greater Mexico” and its people. The emphasis on “greater” in the title is an attempt to complicate narrow ideas of the “nation” that generally exclude Mexicans residing in the United States or erroneously describe them exclusively as “immigrants.” The first two parts of the class pay particular attention to political and artistic movements that developed during the Porfiriato (1876—1910), the Revolution (1910—c.1940), and the post-revolutionary period (c.1938—1970s). The third part of the class continues on its emphasis on art, but also examines the role of youth and its response to the neoliberal period (1980s-present). Students will examine what it meant to be a “militant” in the political world of artistic production and social movements in Revolutionary and “Greater Mexico” and the different ways in which the Mexican and American governments responded to this militancy. We will learn how and why a broad range of representative leaders of Greater Mexico’s most important political and cultural revolutions used paintings, murals, graphic art, photography, cartoons, music, graffiti, and especially film to (A) lead a social, cultural, and political restructuring of their respective communities; (B) export their unique notions of “Revolution” to the nation and to the world; and (C) question the contradictions that some artists (at times) faced within their own revolutionary movements in both the national and global contexts, from the revolutionary to the neoliberal period. The success of the course relies on a combination of note-taking during the lectures, a willingness to analyze art (individually and collaboratively in group work), and a constant engagement during the class and group discussions.

This is a course on twentieth century Latin American history. It examines the region through the lives, writings, global impact, mythical significance, legacy, and contradictions of revolutionary icons Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and Ernesto Che Guevara (1928-1967). While the discussions of the readings and film screenings will mostly concentrate on the events that shaped Kahlo’s and Guevara’s lives from the 1920s to the 1960s, the class will also delve into their respective relationships to the Mexican and Cuban Revolution, the impact of their deaths, and their legacies in the Americas. We will pay particular attention to the social and political environment that surrounded their respective lives in Mexico and Argentina, their political awakening as bohemian and revolutionary leaders, their rise as icons of the broader Latin American Revolution following the 1954 CIA-sponsored coup in Guatemala, and their relevance to the liberationist movements of the late 1960s and 1970s. We will conclude the class with a discussion on the emergence of Frida Kahlo and Che Guevara as pop icon commodities in more recent decades.

In 2007, after decades of organizing on the part of indigenous activists, the United Nations issued a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Declaration was the result of years of work by people from particular communities--each with its own history, culture, language, and home--who decided to call themselves, and work together as, Indigenous people. This creative step allowed indigenous peoples to work collectively for justice on a global scale, rather than individually and in confrontation with single states. This class explores the concept, and reality, of Indigeneity in both historical and contemporary perspective: we will consider the many shared struggles and opportunities of indigenous peoples around the globe today and the ways that similar (or distinct) histories have led to similar (or distinct) present realities.

This course examines the origins and development of contemporary opinions and policies concerning migrations and migrants. It does so by looking backward to the age when transoceanic mobility became more frequent and increasingly more accessible before moving forward to our own times. It is the central claim of this course that it is impossible to understand what drives policy today without first surveying the changing ideas of migration and the movement of people over time. It will therefore take students through the history of migration in the modern world, as well as studying the migrant journey, connections to home, the process and difficulties of assimilation and community creation, and the problems or opportunities that could arise for migrants from characteristics like race, religion, ethnicity, or language. Also considered will be the complex relationship between colonization and migration. In the process, Migrants and Mobility will also examine how different societies place value judgments upon migrants and analyze how and why migration/migrants have been categorized as “good” or “bad” over time. Students will also encounter and consider the effects of growing urbanization and industrialization, changing demography and global trade patterns, and, more recently, the impact of climate change. Migrants and Mobility will be primarily seminar based, placing a premium on participation and analytical discussion.

While the domination of capital and the displacement of people have long structured Caribbean life, intensified "development" during recent decades has spurred an unexpected human exodus toward North America and Europe. Yet, dispersal of up to 20% of some island populations has resulted neither in total assimilation into host locations nor severed ties to the home. Caribbean migrants have rather created forms of social relation that link together their societies of origin and settlement. Their communities span multiple sites across nation-states, linked by constant comings and goings of messages, people, politicians, spirits, gifts, and money. This course explores the histories, transnationalist orientations and practices of people from Barbados, Belize, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique and Puerto Rico. We study the unfolding of domestic, economic, ritual, and political relations across transnational social fields. Our sources include ethnography, fiction, poetry, history, art, music, theatre, food, and film. Documentary and feature films, a theatre trip and meeting with Teatro Vista cast in Chicago, and a Caribbean dinner will round out our exploration of Caribbean diasporas.

This seminar introduces topics in the history of slavery and Blackness in Latin America. Its focus is on the criminalization of mobility and the occupation of space by people described as Black and historically tied to enslavement. Blackness, a social condition associated with phenotype, emerged from the Atlantic slave trade, which brought enslaved laborers from Africa to European New World colonies. But slavery was not simply a labor or commodity relation, it became a way to explain the existence of social hierarchies that included free people of color and associated a variety of gendered physical characteristics with them. We will spend some time examining how law and social relations dealt with Atlantic slavery, and then move into the modern period to think about how these ideas and frameworks played out in a world of Latin American nations (and territories) without explicit African slavery.

In this course we will examine the historical construction of gendered roles in the Spanish colonial world. This will entail thinking about gender in the societies which "encountered" each other in the New World, and also thinking about how that encounter produced new forms of gendered relations. Among the questions we will consider: how was the conquest gendered? How did colonial society produce masculinity as well as femininity? What gendered forms of power were available to women? How did ethnicity and caste, as well as gender, determine people's sense of themselves and their "others"? The course will look at a mixture of primary and secondary materials, including letters and chronicles written by men and women, testimony before the Spanish Inquisition, poetry, and novels. While there are no prerequisites for this seminar, some familiarity with colonial Latin American history will be helpful.

We'll study what one might call the infrastructure of global history: the work of route-finders who led the dispersal of humankind into every habitable biome, then re-forged links between sundered cultures to make possible the world we inhabit today. Along the way we'll work on critical reading, unremitting perfectionism in writing, improved attentiveness in listening, and growing effectiveness in communicating. We'll focus on skills typically under-represented in students' education so far: how to identify and explore interesting problems in history and anthropology, and how to read texts from unfamiliar cultures by analyzing language and imagery.

The difference between rich and poor nations is not, as Ernest Hemingway once said, that the rich have more money than the poor, but is in part because the rich produce more goods and services. Industrialization, in other words, has often brought wealth (as well as social dislocation and protest) to those who have succeeded. This course examines the process of industrialization from a comparative perspective and integrates the history of industrialization and its social consequences for Western Europe (Britain and Germany), the United States, Latin America (Mexico), and East Asia (Japan and South Korea). We will concentrate on these countries' transition from agriculture-based societies to industrial societies. We will analyze the process of industrialization on two levels from above the role of political authority and from below a view of factory life, industrial relations, and protest from the perspective of workers and the working classes. No specific prerequisites in history or economics are necessary.

This interdisciplinary research lab enlists students in the efforts of the Just Wage Initiative (JWI), a collaborative research and advocacy project of the Higgins Labor Program at the Center for Social Concerns. Students will help develop, refine, and update the Just Wage Framework, a multistakeholder online tool designed to advance a more inclusive and equitable economy. Students will also undertake research projects connecting their own intellectual interests and disciplinary expertise to the JWI's foundational question: What makes any given wage just or unjust? In addition, students will collaborate with the instructor and local, national, and international practitioners to envision and execute collaborative research and advocacy campaigns to promote a just wage economy. Extended weekly class sessions will feature visits by scholars and activists, as well as facilitate interactive group discussions and collaborative experiments.

In 1964, when Martha Reeves sang, "Calling out around the world/Are you ready for a brand new beat?/Summer's here and the time is right/For dancing in the street," was she beckoning listeners to join a party or the civil rights struggle? Or both? From spirituals sung by enslaved workers to protest anthems shouted at union rallies, music has provided the soundtrack to social justice causes throughout American History. Whether performed by rank-and-file reformers or famous recording artists -- from Frank Sinatra to Nina Simone to Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, and beyond -- popular music has accompanied and sometimes fueled transformations in American politics, culture, and social life. In this course students will explore American popular music in its many forms -- blues, country, jazz, folk, rock, punk, disco, hip hop, tejano, and more -- to understand its power and limits as both a force for social change and a window into major themes of the American experience.

This course traces the development of the uneasy relationship between Mexico and the United States. The course is organized around key moments in the bilateral relationship from the arrival of English colonizers and Spanish conquerors to the Americas to the effects of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1938). The chronological framework of the course will help the student to understand how different events have affected the formation of a common space of conflict and exchange between Mexico and the United States. The course will focus on the process of state formation, but non-state actors will also be considered (women, intellectuals, immigrants, exiles, indigenous peoples, traders, etc.). The study of violence and ideas will play an important role in the course too, as they are interrelated with the developments that marked the shared history of both countries. In addition to recent scholarship and text-based primary sources, we will analyze artifacts of consumer and political culture, such as novels, songs, and film. Students will achieve an historical perspective on the meaning and consequences of the interactions between Mexico and the United States within their societies and how that resulted in the emergence of different conceptions of citizenship and nationality. I will lecture in English. Moreover, the course is designed without a Spanish language requirement nor previous knowledge of Mexican history in mind. However, a reading knowledge of Spanish is highly recommended, and I will provide opportunities to read texts in Spanish for those willing to improve their proficiency in the language.

Departing from Michel Foucault's controversial theory of "race war", this class will examine the historical relations between the idea of race and material practices of violence. To do this we will focus on a selection of "debates about race" from across the Americas that in many ways define American modernity. These might include: Las Casas and Sepúlveda on the humanity of indigenous Americans; slavery and the formation of American nation-states; nineteenth-century race science, eugenics, and their rejection; the race-and-culture debates (e.g. Boas, Dubois, Freyre, against the race scientists); the so-called "problema indígena" debates in Latin America; race and rights struggles in the post-WWII era; immigration and migrant labor; Negro Sim (Brazil), Black Lives Matter (USA), and related protest movements worldwide; social media and the consolidation of white supremacist paramilitarism. Which selection of these topics we pursue will be guided by student interest. Language of instruction is Spanish and English. Comparative work is encouraged. This course can count for the Modern Latin-American area requirement for Spanish Major/Supplementary Major.

Race is a social construct. So why have scientists spent centuries trying to quantify, measure, and categorize people by race? From early anthropometry to the Human Genome Project, this course examines the production and embedding of race into scientific knowledge since the 18th century. Designed for students interested in the history of science and the production of scientific knowledge or those curious about the origins of scientific racism and racial inequality, this course is also well-suited for students pursuing careers in the health professions. By focusing on historical discourses on the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge of race, students will be able to: Understand how race, racism, and racial inequality are embedded in scientific knowledge Outline the various methodologies different fields of science have used to group people into races Carefully evaluate scientific technologies for racial biases This is an upper level undergraduate and graduate seminar.

We'll try to see the world whole - looking at genuinely global historical experiences of the last five hundred years. Our aim will be to take the broadest and most comprehensive perspective we can imagine; we'll look not only at every kind of human culture in every part of the planet, but also, for the sake of comparison, at the start and end of the course, at the societies of other, non-human cultural creatures. We'll focus on two stories: first, the mutual impact of human beings and the rest of nature; and, second, the effects human societies have had on each other in an era of accelerating world-wide contacts between cultures. The purpose of the course will be to identify and probe the main themes of the history of the world in the last half-millennium, equip students with a historically informed awareness of global connexions and inter-actions in a globalizing world, and to ask whether (and, if so, how) global history relates to current problems in social policy, international relations, and ethical debate.

What do the paintings and sculptures in museums and the manuscripts and antique books in archives tell us about our collective past? What do they tell us about how value, importance, and worth have been ascribed across time? As users of these cultural collections, how might we address inequities and silences within them? The first half of this 1-credit course provides a lightning introduction to the history of cultural collecting and its many issues. Through the Zoom window students will apply a critical gaze to the collections held in our campus repositories - the Snite Museum of Art, Rare Books and Special Collections and University Archives - and in museums and archives beyond the Notre Dame campus. In the second half of the course, students will create a single online exhibition around the theme of diversity using our campus collections. This exhibition will be published on the Hesburgh Library's Digital Exhibitions and Collections page and students will be given curatorial credit for their work. The course schedule will begin with seminar-style meetings and move to individual work, one-on-one sessions with instructors, peer review and project evaluation.

This course explores how ideas about race and racism have been intertwined with scientific, medical, and technological developments, shaping society since the 18th century. While recognizing that race is fundamentally a social construct, the course delves into scientific efforts to quantify, measure, and categorize individuals by race from early anthropometry to contemporary developments like the Human Genome Project and artificial intelligence. By critically analyzing scientific theories that produced and built upon ideas of racial hierarchy, students will develop a deep understanding of how race, racism, and racial inequality have been embedded into scientific knowledge, and thus, societal understanding. Students will also examine the historical context of racial disparities in healthcare, including the development of racialized medical theories, and will explore the role of technology in reinforcing or challenging racial biases, from the early days of photography to modern AI and surveillance technologies. This course is tailored for students with interests in the history of science and the production of scientific knowledge, as well as those curious about the origins of scientific racism and racial inequality.

This course surveys the recognition and response to mental illnesses as a component of the history of western medicine. Topics include the integration of physical and mental illnesses in classical medicine, the great ages of nervousness in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the emergence and cultural role of psychodynamic psychiatry, the asylum and subsequent deinstitutionalization, and the modern era of psychoactive medication. We consider multiple perspectives - those of states and communities, professions, institutions and charities, families and sufferers. Our focus will not only be with "madness" per se, but with broader questions of mental incapacity - with conditions known as melancholia and neurasthenia, as well as feeble-mindedness and dementia, and finally the set of issues we now face.

In this seminar-style course we will put our collective thinking-caps on and reflect on the discipline of history. We will read classic texts from philosophy on the uses and abuses of history as well as more modern historical theory. Central to our inquiry will be the question of how history can reflect what is true and how it can and should create knowledge (and therefore meaning). Topics include Nietzsche, the construction of narrative, the Holocaust, and History in non-print media like video games and film.

Food feeds culture. It nourishes societies as well as bodies. No discipline is intelligible without it. It provides economics with products, physiology with sustenance, social sciences with classes and relationships of power. and intellects with food for thought. Food´s also essential in ecology. Our most intimate contact with the environment occurs when we eat it. From interdisciplinary perspectives, we´ll approach the history of food in all cultures (including, by the way, those of non-human cultural creatures) in all periods that we can say something about, from the origins of carnivorism and cannibalism through famines and fushion to the food-related environmental problems of the future. There may even be time to explore cuisines.

This course demonstrates how Reconstruction and the period directly after Reconstruction provide keys to understanding modern American history, culture, and politics. It covers a relatively brief period of time (less than forty years) at a level accessible to students with no background in history. It presents history - this specific history - as a vital and living part of our daily lives and shows how history frames our world and our experiences. We will cover the period from the end of the Civil War to the late nineteenth century, as well as the way historians and the public have understood this period from its end through to the present day. We will read a mix of historical documents and modern histories, the equivalent of about a chapter per class meeting. As a case study, it gives students a chance to pick up a new perspective and a new set of research and critical reading skills in a quick, low-key environment, while providing history majors, minors, and enthusiasts with the option of doing a deeper dive with the option of doing independent research instead of the (short) final paper. A central focus of this course is the history of work for and against social justice around race in America. It shows how the racism of the Reconstruction Era continues to shape our public life and demonstrates how the end of Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal protection for Black people in the South helped set the course for American racial politics going forward. In doing so, it also provides an example of how to think historically about modern issues and how to identify when and how historical myths are being built and perpetuated.

As the story often goes, much of human history was consumed by brutal religious conflict. This changed only during the Enlightenment, when Europeans began to embrace the virtue of tolerance, first of other Christians, and then of all religions and none. Though this sweeping narrative does capture a significant shift in the values upheld by the West, it smooths over the practical aspects of religious coexistence. Long before the rise of tolerance, communities have struggled to find ways to live with the religious other in their midst. Moreover, as modern history has proven time and again, even the highest ideals of tolerance do not nullify the friction created by contact between different faiths and creeds. This course, therefore, considers the long history of toleration, both as it existed prior to the modern era, and how it has changed since the days of Spinoza, Locke, and Voltaire. Though our primary focus will be on Christianity, we will also discuss other models of coexistence practiced in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, as well as how these systems collided in the age of European colonialism. As we approach the present day, we will examine how toleration intersects with issues of racism, secularism, and fundamentalism, and ask whether historical experiences of coexistence have anything to teach us about how to live in peace with neighbors whose beliefs differ from our own.

This class examines the history of technology over the last 250 years. This history has gifted many of us with long lives, an abundance of tools and toys, and immense power at our fingertips. It also means that we live in a fully engineered world: from the food we eat to the ways we move through space, the places we live and work, and many of the ways we interact with our fellow humans. It has left us with alternate visions of technological utopia (a world without work?) or of technological apocalypse (climate change and AI). Technology--that is, humans' effort to manipulate the world around us--touches touches nearly every aspect of our lives. This course focuses on the interaction between technological innovation and social, economic, and political contexts in countries and places around the world. We will examine specific issues and episodes in the global history of technology in the modern world, with some attention to engineers and engineering. Engineers came to design, implement, and manage nearly all elements of the modern world from their positions within corporations and state bureaucracies; they quickly became the primary agents of "development" in the twentieth century. The class assumes no prior knowledge and is designed for students with majors in the humanities, social science, and STEM disciplines. (new description)

This course will introduce students to important topics in the history of modern medicine in the Western world, tracing the changing experience of health, disease, and the healing professions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While broadly chronological, the course will also be organized topically, particularly for the twentieth century, and will address both the content of evolving medical knowledge as well as its social and political contexts. Possible topics include: hospitals; asylums and mental health; the development of bacteriology; transformations in surgery, such as the introduction of anesthesia and antisepsis; the rise of public health; the intersections of gender, race, and medicine; the growth of the modern drug industry; and case studies of individual diseases, such as syphilis and HIV/AIDS.

In this course, students will study the history of boxing in the United States and learn a great deal about the craft of boxing, what commentators have called "the sweet science." They will do so in conventional and innovative ways. The course will explore the story of boxing in America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It will start in England and colonial America, move to places like nineteenth-century New York, New Orleans, and the California mining camps where boxing was transformed from a gambling pursuit among the working class into a mass spectator sport, examine the time when boxing became ascendant in America, and end in the late twentieth century when boxing was entangled with urban decay and changing race politics. The story of boxing is the story of America. The class will look at the rise of cities, mass migration, changing understandings of race and class, urban history, and the fortunes and misfortunes of postwar American culture. Now for the innovative. Students will also learn about the finer points of craft, how training for boxing changed over time, and how technique developed. They will do so by doing it themselves. They will learn to throw a punch and to defend. They will practice footwork. They will train as boxers did and still do. By doing all this, students will come to appreciate the finer points of a dynamic and changing sport, one tied to America's past. Each class session will include this sort of active learning, turning what we learn from reading and discussion into the kinetic.

In recent conflicts the United States has found itself struggling to defeat technologically inferior opponents whose cultures U.S. leaders have difficulty understanding. These conflicts, however, are not new, nor are they limited to the United States. This course will examine a number of these conflicts in history, including King Philip's War in colonial New England, the Arab Revolt in World War I, the Malayan Emergency (1940s and 1950s), the U.S. war in Vietnam, and the Cuban involvement in Angola (1975). Among the issues we will consider are military strategies and tactics, the role of politics, and the ways in which wars are remembered and the so-called lessons learned from them affect subsequent conflicts.

This course is an exploration of the history of race and reproduction in America from the colonial period to modern day. We will familiarize ourselves with traditional and envelope-pushing modes of historical analysis in order to investigate the possibilities of understanding race, reproduction, and gender'as well as sexual harassment and assault, birth control, abortion, and eugenics - in ways that are outside traditional academic discipline and scholarship. We will learn how scholars have used creative source bases, methods, and interpretive frameworks to uncover the stories of women and persons who transgress, uphold, and challenge expectations of race, reproduction, and gender.

Modern Science seems to shape our culture everywhere we look. Scientific techniques and explanations weave into the texture of our daily lives, from the clothes we wear to the food we eat and electronic devices we use. Increasingly, it seems, science and the people who speak for it also tell us what the world around us is, who we are, and even what it all means. Yet the relatively high cultural status accorded to productively manipulating and explaining the natural world is a recent historical development. This course explores important episodes in the history of modern science and its cultural authority from the so-called Scientific Revolution to present-day controversies over science, belief, and public policy. We will read important texts from scientists, as well as sources showing how other writers adopted, repurposed, attacked, or modified scientists' words and ideas. By the end of the course, students will have a better understanding of the main contours of key moments in modern science, as well as the trends and complexities of science in modern society.

This course will explore the origins of the Second World War from 1919 to 1941. Students will engage in the major historiographical debates on the origins of the war, including the Treaty of Versailles, the rise of Hitler, the militarization of Japan, and the question of appeasement. Students will gain an appreciation of the complex interwar political and social environment while wrestling with questions of causation, structure and agency in history.

This course will explore the evolution of war in modern history from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 through the present. Content will center upon the relationship between war, technology and society. Central themes will include the military revolution debate, the rise of western Europe, the military origins of modern state, and the challenge of technological change to stable international orders. Students will learn how the evolving conduct of war has shaped the structure of modern societies, and vice-versa. Individual class sessions will explore important moments of conflict and technological innovation. Some class sessions will center on paradigm-defining conflicts, such as the Thirty Years' War or the Second World War. The course will conclude with explorations of new themes in modern warfare, from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the rise of drone and cyber warfare. This course satisfies the university history requirement and is open to all students; no previous knowledge of the topic is required.

No one under 30 has ever lived through a month of global temperatures below the 20th-century average." Why bother with history if the future, because of climate change, will be nothing like the past? That's the central question of this course. Scientists now tell us that the relatively benign epoch of human flourishing designed the "Holocene" is over. The change is so great and so rapid that some scientists have even proposed a new epoch called the "Anthropocene" to designate this irreversible rupture with the previous 11,700 year when human beings first discovered agriculture, created cities, and developed writing systems?when most of what historians have called "history" occurred. To confront this dilemma, this course asks three questions: (1) What is the "Anthropocene" and what are scientists telling us about this epoch which began by most accounts in the mid-twentieth century with the Great Acceleration in economic activities and population growth? (2) What does history show us about how we arrived at this crisis? Historians have long been interested in political and economic questions about power, state structures, democracy, and development, but have they sufficiently considered the relationship between their own stories of modernity and the dilemmas we now face? (3) Were there political and economic formations in the past more conducive to environmentally sustainable communities and can historians now help by uncovering them? The readings combine scientific debates over the "Anthropocene" with historians' work on sustainable communities from Victorian England and early modern Japan. We end by reading the famous novelist and anthropologist Amitav Ghosh's The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable.

This course will explore the political efforts to restrict and control immigration in the United States between 1882 and 1924 as a means to understand the historical constructedness and instability of American racial categories. The course begins with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and ends with the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. Chinese exclusion marked what Erika Lee has called the beginning of the American gatekeeping era. This was when the country debated which racial, religious, class, and gender categories should be restricted and removed from the United States. These categories, however, were neither fixed nor natural. They needed to be created. This course will focus on the competing and overlapping racial ideologies, and unstable racial categories, that informed American immigration restriction in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Students will complete a final project that allows them to use the knowledge acquired through class readings and discussions to make their own arguments about a contemporary issue regarding immigration and race.

The South African War pitted Britain, the region's imperial power, against the Boers, who were white, Dutch (Afrikaans) speaking settlers based in two semi-independent republics, the Transvaal and Orange Free State, and also in the British territory of Cape Colony. Yet, it was not just "a white man's war". The conflict sucked in the majority African population often with devastating consequences. Furthermore, the war went beyond South Africa: Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders took part in order to defend the integrity of the British Empire and assert their own notions of nationhood. The course will explore the origins of the war, a contentious issue that exercised contemporaries and has maddened historians, especially the argument over whether Britain fought at the behest of the gold mining companies situated in Boer territory. The military aspects will be given due consideration: the early British defeats, the overwhelming British reaction and then the Boers' resort to guerrilla warfare. This led to the British using a scorched earth policy, the recruitment of Africans by coercion and voluntary enlistment for both military and logistical work, and the introduction of concentration camps, where thousands of civilians, both Boer and African, died of disease, a policy that has been termed "methods of barbarism". Overall, the course will look at a conflict that affected, in varying degrees, all the societies involved. It has shaped modern South Africa, especially with regard to race, and engendered myths that still resonate today. Consequently, students will be encouraged to unravel the myths and gain their own perspective on Britain's largest and mostly costly colonial war.

A weekly tutorial for students enrolled in HIST 10355 or HIST 30355, Rasputin to Putin or its cross-lists.

This is the discussion section for HIST 30399.

A required weekly tutorial for students registered for The American Revolution (HIST 30602 or its crosslists).

This course seeks to explore connections between environment and culture change by introducing students to the diversity of cultures living in the Southwest. We begin by learning about indigenous people living in the Southwest today including the Pueblo peoples (e.g., Hopi, Zuni, Santa Clara, Cochiti, Acoma), Navajo, Ute, and Tohono O’odham using ethnography and contemporary native histories. We will then travel back in time to learn about the complex histories of these people, particularly the ancestral Pueblo, to places like Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, the Rio Grande, the Mimbres Valley, and the Phoenix Basin. Our explorations will cover from the earliest Paleoindians (11,500 years ago) to the 13th century Migrations to European contact, the establishment of Spanish Missions, and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680-1692. We will then bring this discussion full circle to today. Along the way, we will explore the impact of large-scale, long-term processes such as the adoption of agriculture, village formation, religious change, migration, and warfare on the rich historical landscape of the Southwest.

This course is a requirement for - and open only to - History majors and minors. Designed as the gateway into the undergraduate history programs, History Workshop is a seminar that introduces students to how historians study the past by emphasizing active participation in the research and writing of history (not just reading what other historians have already written). Students gain insight into the nature of historical inquiry through discussion of how historians work, analysis of primary source documents from at least two different time periods and places, and, most importantly, their own efforts to write history via original interpretive historical essays.

Although occupying a central position in the cultural, legal, literary, and political history of Europe, the Holy Roman Empire remains far too frequently sidelined within Anglophone surveys of the medieval period. This course is designed to serve as a corrective to this tendency, repositioning the Western Empire in all its diversity and geographic range at the heart of European development during the crucial millennium of the Middle Ages and its aftermath. Using a combination of primary and secondary sources, we will follow the development of the Empire in conception and reality from its Carolingian beginnings, through the heights of the Ottonian Renaissance, the fraught Salian age, and up through the great conflicts of the Staufer period, ending with the interregnum of the late-thirteenth century, during which an empire without an emperor was forced to both redefine and reinvent itself. In this course we examine what the empire was and was not during the early centuries of its existence. To what extent was the empire understood to be a revival or extension of the Western Roman Empire? To what extent was Voltaire's 18th-century indictment of the empire as "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire" an accurate assessment? What relevance does the early history of an institution long famed as a political anachronism have for us today? Focusing on primary sources, we will trace both the institutional and cultural development of the empire and its varied peoples over the course of the Early and High Middle Ages, comparing our own interpretations with those of scholars both past and present. In so doing, we shall also seek to contextualize the history of the Holy Roman Empire alongside the contemporary kingdoms of France and England, while consciously eschewing normative models of institutional, legal, and (proto-)national development.

Welcome to The Reformation. In this class, we will focus on the history of Christianity in the late medieval and early modern periods, focusing especially on the divisive movements that have come to be known as “The Reformation.” We will begin by investigating the origins of reforming impulses in the late medieval church, leading up to the watershed moment in 1517, when Martin Luther famously challenged the Church’s authority by posting the Ninety-Five Theses. We will then trace the fallout of Luther’s proclamation across Europe and, indeed, the globe.

This course explores the historical relationship between the Catholic Church and the rise and fall of European overseas empires since the sixteenth century. We will consider how Catholic missionaries both reinforced and resisted colonial power structures; how the Church made sense of racial, religious, and cultural differences in its efforts to evangelize colonial subjects; how African, Asian, and Latin American Catholics developed their own distinctive spiritual practices; and how Catholics in both Europe and its former colonies grappled with the challenge of decolonization and how to undo the legacies of colonialism within the Church itself. Readings will be drawn from a range of sources, including missionary diaries and manuals, memoirs, artwork, papal encyclicals, films, novels, works of theology, and historical scholarship.

This course blends the History of Education and American Indian History and is open to students interested in action research on these two topics. The course may include an opportunity to collaborate on a project with a school that is part of the Native mission network schools and may include travel to a Native community. The course is by invitation only as it has an outcome opportunity of a conference in September 2016. Please email the professor if interested.

A research seminar, this course will mine the American history for provocative sources dealing with the movement of people, animals, and stuff. Why did Americans travel? What stories did they tell about their movements? The time period and type of locomotion are open. Students could investigate early American ship voyages, Overland Trail journeys, or twentieth-century family vacations. Following the sources and their interests, students will produce a final paper based on primary research. Students will learn how to research, write, and revise, and they will learn about American history through the blur of motion.

This course offers an overview of the interaction between Catholics and public life in America during the half century following the Second Vatican Council and the election of a Catholic as President in 1960. The course should permit students to gain a greater familiarity with the engagement and response of various Catholic individuals and groups on some major political and social-cultural issues. It will explore the extent of Catholic influence in American politics and society during the period and will explore the role of religion in shaping (or not shaping) the outlooks of a number of significant Catholic political figures beginning with JFK, RFK, and Eugene McCarthy, moving to Mario Cuomo and Daniel Patrick Moynihan down to contemporary figures. The course offers each student the opportunity to research and write a major paper on a topic of his or her choosing in this area.

As a global pandemic drives ever more business interactions into the virtual realm and companies forgo office space in favor of dispersed work-from-home operations, American capitalism seems to be assuming a new sense of placelessness. Yet capitalist development has historically relied on its rootedness in space and place - from the mills of New England, to the plantations of the South, to the factories of the Rust Belt. Perhaps no spaces or places have been more formative to the culture, contours, and trajectory of American capitalism than American cities. Home to the first marketplaces, the largest labor pools, the newest technologies, the most influential exchanges, and the greatest accumulations of wealth, cities have played an indispensable role in upholding and, at times, constraining capitalist development. In this course, we will probe the historical relationship between capitalism and urban centers in the United States, reaching from the Early Republic through the late twentieth century. We will consider how cities promoted the growth and evolution of American capitalism, as well as how capitalism promoted the growth and distinctive identities of different American cities. We will examine cities as sites of contestation over various forms of capitalism. Likewise, we will explore how these capitalisms shaped urban society, culture, politics, and the built environment. Throughout the course, we will pay particular attention to urban inequality, notably the ways that capitalism created or advanced divisions of class, race, gender, and sexuality.

The aim of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the history of the Arab-Israel conflict. We will begin our analysis with a discussion of the origins of this protracted conflict examining, in particular the role of nationalism and religion in the early years. Was this and does this remain at its heart a conflict between two national movements; Palestinian Arab nationalism on the one hand and Zionism an expression of the Jewish national movement on the other? How have other players, initially the Ottomans, then the British and thereafter the super powers engaged in this arena and what role have the Arab states played in what has often been considered a regional conflict. The course will examine the ebb and flow of the conflict paying attention to peace efforts and the reasons for their particular successes and failures. Students will be expected to read different scholastic approaches to the subject as well as primary sources in order to secure a deeper understanding of this seemingly unsolvable conflict.

Help create an historical archive documenting Notre Dame's experience during the COVID-19 pandemic by conducting oral history interviews with members of the campus community. As part of a University-sponsored project, interns will work under supervision to plan, conduct, and prepare interviews for submission to an official collection in University Archives. Interviews can be conducted in-person or virtually, and campus residency over the summer is not required.

This course attempts to explore the power of law and the concept of justice via examination the legal thought and legal practices in early Chinese empires. Whereas the rule of law serves as the basic principle of modern political thought and the spirit of democracy, the mature legal empires in early China fostered a prominent and enduring intellectual tradition that viewed the law with disdain, a tradition that still has its legacy in Chinese society of modern day. By examining philosophical texts and recently discovered legal statutes and administrative documents from Qin-Han empires, this course will investigate the fundamental differences between Eastern and Western perspectives on law and governance. By digesting scholarly articles and analyzing primary sources, we will explore questions such as what justice meant in the Chinese context; how the relationship between sovereignty and the people defined the legal rights and responsibilities of commoners and nobilities; how the legal practices of early China can aid our understanding of the Confucian persistent criticism of law and its enforcers, namely, the technical bureaucrats; and how the history of early Chinese empires provides perspectives for observing its legacy in the modern politics of East Asia.

"Why do people invest and how do they do it in different national and historical contexts? This course offers students the opportunity to think about the emergence of financial markets as institutions, evolving legal and business practices and the changing role of investors from a historical and global perspective. Starting with trade finance in the 15th century and the emergence of sovereign bond markets under the Habsburg Spain empire, we move on to London's rise as financial center of Europe, stock market bubbles, the nature of new exchanges in Asia and other global settings to Wall Street, war bonds, and the rise of new financial tools and markets in the post-WWII era. Readings will involve primary documents and exciting literature in economic history, social, business and cultural history and allow students to gain a broader understanding of the nature of financial and political risk, institution-building, human behavior, and the role of financial markets in modern history. "

This semester our seminar focuses on the history of money in economies and societies across time and space. We will explore key developments in the evolution of money and finance in world history, starting with finance as it emerged with the first civilizations of the Near East in the third millennium BCE to the recent debates about cryptocurrencies -- in short, from Babylon to blockchain. Through a wide variety of readings, short lectures, and well prepared discussions, we will explore all aspects of money and finance as tools and technologies to manage the economics of time and risk in different cultural settings. Topics include the role of money and finance as contributors to urban growth and social specialization across civilizations, the evolution of concepts such as investment, trust, and interest, and more generally how money and finance allowed people past (and present) to think about the future.

Can human societies learn to live well and peacefully within ecological constraints? This burning question guides our investigation of early modern (Tokugawa) Japan. Around 1600, Japan managed to close itself off from the world for about 250 years, neither importing food nor exporting people. It was, in short, an almost hermetic ecological system, but instead of outstripping their natural resources, denuding their mountainsides, overrunning their food supply, and warring over resources, Japanese people managed to attain a level of well-being above that of most other people on the planet at that time. Given these circumstances, might early modern Japan serve as a model for a sustainable society? Some scholars say yes, calling Tokugawa Japan an "eco-utopia;" others disagree pointing especially to the emerging social tensions toward the end of the period. Some of the issues we'll discuss are population stabilization, reforestation, the power of the central government versus local autonomy, peasant ventures in agricultural and other technologies, new efficiencies in energy production, sanitation, and how monetization undermined social cohesion. Sustainability and social resilience in the face of nature constraints and disasters over centuries is rare. We'll explore whether Japan was truly "green."

Explore the remarkable histories of women who refused to conform or submit: witches, warriors, rebels, heretics, and others who embraced their power and changed their worlds. In this course, we will read texts written by, for, and about some of these incredible women in medieval and and early-modern England and western Europe and the early American Colonies. We will analyze how these women’s experiences with power were reflected in their own writing, or in texts written about them: how gender and power dynamics shaped their identities, what they pushed back against or supported, and how they negotiated their cultural roles. Through critical analysis and creative expression, students will sharpen their writing and analytical skills while engaging in thought-provoking discussions that matter far beyond the classroom. Prepare to encounter stories of resilience, defiance, and untold heroism as we uncover the hidden voices of women who shaped the course of history.

In this course students will be introduced to the general narrative of the First World War. From there, we will examine three different topics and eventually show how they are interrelated. First, we will study historiography; that is, the evolution of how historians have written about and understood the First World War. Students will quickly learn how historians work with narrative and elements of story-telling both to explain and to argue (with and against one another). Students will then study memorialization and public history work on the First World War. We will see how history-writing, literature, art, and memorialization are present in the way museums and memorials tell their own stories about trauma, heroism, social inequality, and - in the main - seek to impart understandings about the past. Finally, taking the idea of narrative as a point for opening up our understandings of the past, we will then examine works of fiction, memoires, and poetry that focus on the First World War. The Great War was distinguished by being a "People's War," which meant that all people of all classes fought side by side, farmers next to scholars, workers next to noblemen. There were thus many men (and women) involved in the war who were capable of recording what they saw and felt in both prose and poetry, leaving an extraordinary and unprecedented literary record of their experiences. This course also includes a class trip to memorials and museums in Belgium, and France over fall break. We are working on funding from various sources to pay for most, if not all, expenses for this trip. This course requires an application to enroll. Students interested in the course should contact John Deak (jdeak@nd.edu) for a link to a google form.

This course will explore the origins of the Second World War from 1919 to 1941. Students will engage in the major historiographical debates on the origins of the war, including the Treaty of Versailles, the rise of Hitler, the militarization of Japan, and the question of appeasement. Students will gain an appreciation of the complex interwar political and social environment while wrestling with questions of causation, structure and agency in history.

This course will delve into the complex and transformative history of Europe from the ashes of World War II to the present day. Designed for History majors and students in European Studies, this course moves beyond a simple chronological survey to explore the enduring themes of rebuilding, forgetting, and belonging that have shaped the continent's postwar trajectory. We will grapple with the profound legacies of Nazi occupation, war, and genocide, including the uncomfortable realities of European complicity. To illuminate these themes, we specifically will examine the distinct experiences of smaller nations like Belgium, Austria, and Hungary, whose postwar narratives offer unique insights into the broader European story. Examining the fraught division of Europe into Cold War blocs, we will analyze the multifaceted processes of infrastructural and psychological reconstruction. We will also take time to study pivotal moments such as the 1968 revolutions, the evolution of economic integration, and the emergence of a transnational European culture. In this course students will gain a nuanced understanding of the forces driving European integration and fragmentation. Finally, we will critically assess the seismic shifts following the fall of communism, focusing on the ongoing negotiations of identity, memory, and belonging in a rapidly changing Europe.

This course explores the history of the six north-eastern counties of Ireland which became "Northern Ireland" in 1920/1. Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom and had a built-in Protestant unionist majority, while the Catholic minority, alienated from the state from the outset, looked across the new border and to Dublin, capital of the Irish Free State, as the site of their allegiance. Northern Ireland was thus, from the beginning, dysfunctional, scarred by sectarian violence and systematic discrimination in housing and employment. After examining the origins of the state and the early decades of it existence, the class will turn to its main concern, "the troubles," which broke out in the late 1960s. The major episodes under scrutiny include the civil rights movement, Bloody Sunday, the hunger strikes, and the Good Friday Peace Agreement.

The French Revolution created a turning point in history by paving the way for modern politics and society. Napoleon's empire, on the other hand, toppled some of the oldest European monarchies and shook up the international status quo. During two and a half turbulent decades, the French destroyed feudalism, created a constitutional monarchy, founded a republic, and built an empire that stretched across the continent. Our course will focus on how the French reinvented the social, cultural, and political dimensions of their world from the 1780s to 1815. We will ask major questions such as: What were the origins of the French Revolution? How did the revolutionaries recreate political culture and social structures? Why did the Revolution radicalize at first but eventually slide into an empire? Was Napoleon the "son of the Revolution" or did he betray its major goals? Of special note, our course includes a 4-week "Reacting to the Past" game that allows you to engage in history from a completely new perspective. During this historical role-playing unit, you will become a specific member of the National Assembly or the Parisian crowd. To win, you must pass a constitution favorable to your position while wrestling "with the threat of foreign invasion, political and religious struggles, and questions of liberty and citizenship." Although we may change the course of history within the unit, you will root your arguments in resources available to your historical persona: primary documents, political treatises, inspiring speeches, secret collaborations, and "current" events.

Russia under the tsars was a vast empire, a land of stunning achievement and immense inequality, mired in backwardness yet also a laboratory of modernity. Through works of scholarship, art, and cinema, and writings by Russians from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, we will explore how women and men, peasants and aristocrats, conservatives and revolutionaries, experienced the power and contradictions of the Romanov empire. This is a seminar. There will occasional lectures, but mostly we will have oral discussions about the readings, Russian historical films, and works of art that depict the everyday life of diverse groups in imperial Russian society. There are many ways of knowing the world - scientific, artistic, and other ways. Ours will be historical. This means that we will examine how the totality of life changed over time. We will consider the past from many angles, for instance, politics, culture, and the social order. We will discuss interpretations proposed by historians, analyze the primary sources on which they are based, and construct our own interpretations. We will not render facile judgments on the people of the past, but we will also explore what their legacy means for us today. We will examine imperial Russian history from three distinct perspectives: - What do we know about the actual course of imperial Russian history? - What are the original sources on which our knowledge is based? - What role do artistic representations of this era play in modern Russian culture?

Since the eighteenth century, Europeans have grappled with a number of transformative events and developments, from the French Revolution and the birth of an industrial economy, to catastrophic wars and the rise and fall of European empires. In the process of making sense of these events, they produced works of philosophy, political theory, art, and literature that continue to shape the way we understand our place in the world today. This course introduces students to the history of European thought from the Enlightenment to the present, a period that birthed the many great "isms" that have defined the modern world: liberalism, socialism, nationalism, feminism, existentialism, totalitarianism, and colonialism. Course readings will be drawn from a range of primary sources, including novels, works of philosophy, political treatises, films, and works of art, as well as secondary sources by historians. By reading these two kinds of sources together, we will explore not only how ideas and works of art were shaped by the historical context in which they were produced, but also how they themselves shaped the course of European history.

This course explores the historical relationship between the Catholic Church and the rise and fall of European overseas empires since the sixteenth century. We will consider how Catholic missionaries both reinforced and resisted colonial power structures; how the Church made sense of racial, religious, and cultural differences in its efforts to evangelize colonial subjects; how African, Asian, and Latin American Catholics developed their own distinctive spiritual practices; and how Catholics in both Europe and its former colonies grappled with the challenge of decolonization and how to undo the legacies of colonialism within the Church itself. Readings will be drawn from a range of sources, including missionary diaries and manuals, memoirs, artwork, papal encyclicals, films, novels, works of theology, and historical scholarship.

This seminar explores the history of the United States in the world between 1846 and 1945. We begin with the United States’s consequential war with Mexico, a war powered by a belief in the imperial republic’s manifest destiny, and we conclude with U.S. intervention in the second world war, when publisher Henry Luce promoted a new age—the “American Century”—and a new leadership role for the United States. Along the way, we’ll consider continental imperialism and how “mainland” United States took its contemporary shape, the international dimensions and ramifications of the Civil War, how the U.S. acquired territories and undertook colonialism overseas, how Americans debated intervention, neutrality, and isolationism through two world wars and built foundations for global hegemony. We will consider various means by which Americans asserted influence—political, economic, cultural, humanitarian, military—and the interests and ideologies shaping these engagements. Not focused narrowly on foreign policy, we will also investigate how peoples outside the United States responded to these projections of power and how international and domestic developments shaped each other. Students will undertake a research paper in the second half of the course.

Over the last two years, "fake news" has been one of President Donald Trump's most oft-repeated phrases, undermining confidence in the press. In 2016, it was a term used by the media to describe deliberate misinformation spread on social media during the presidential campaign, often comprised of conspiracy theories. So what is "fake news" and how should we understand it, identify it, and make sense of how it is being used? In this discussion-based course, we will analyze the historical precedents of "fake news." Course readings will take us from the German Reformation, to imperial China, revolutionary France and America, colonial India, through totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and up to the present day. Each week, we will delve into a different historical event in which rumor, conspiracy theory, or propaganda played a central role. We will dissect the meaning of these terms across time and space and ask how and why they become meaningful in particular societies at particular moments. In the process, we will examine how historians treat deception, misinformation, and forgery in attempting to explain what happened in the past. Finally, we will ask whether "fake news" is a useful analytical category; what does it mean, how can we study it, and how can we handle it in our current society? Students will leave the course with a mastery of the historical context of fake news, an ability to identify and decode false information, and an understanding of methods for approaching a confusing and contested past. Course materials will include books, articles, podcasts, and films. Students will be evaluated primarily based on class participation, weekly discussion questions, and two essays.

This seminar examines the rise of the modern fashion and garment industries in Europe and North America during the 20th century. We will trace the movement away from custom-made clothing to ready-to-wear and the invention of the department store. We will read early reformers who criticized women's dress as deadly and later home economists who taught how to dress according to standards of efficiency and beauty. Along the way, we will notice the significance of changing styles, and how they affected the lives of modern men and women of different classes and races through the decades. We will pay particular attention to the dress revolutions of the 1920s and 1960s. Students will be introduced to several on-line databases including HEARTH, the Vogue archives, and the Ebony archives.

In this course, we will explore the history of boxing in the United States and learn a great deal about the craft of boxing—what the writers Pierce Egan and A.J. Liebling have called “the sweet science”—as well as the craft of writing and thinking. The course will chart the story of boxing in America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It will start in England, move to places like nineteenth-century New York, where boxing was transformed from a gambling pursuit among the working class into a mass spectator sport, examine the time when boxing became ascendant in America, and end in the late twentieth century when boxing was entangled with transformations to American cities and with changing race politics. The story of boxing is the story of America. The class will look at the rise of cities, global trade, labor, mass migration, changing understandings of gender, race, and class, and the highs and lows of American culture. In other words, this is not a sports history class. We will also learn about the finer points of boxing, how fighting changed over time, and how technique developed. By doing all this, students will come to appreciate the inner workings of a dynamic and changing craft, one tied to America’s past. We will read and discuss all sorts of fascinating books and essays on the subject, each giving us a different perspective on both the “sweet science” and the people who tried to master it. We will watch film, read literature, and work with some documents from different time periods. Through lectures, we will also encounter some of the more enlightening and enlivening stories of boxing’s past.

Animals are everywhere in North American history. From the living room to the back alley, animals created history on their own and with humans help. Steeds bore generals into battle while rats bore fleas with diseases that flattened armies. This course will introduce students to animal studies and offer them a sampling of the manifold ways non-human creatures drove economies, shouldered burdens, entered families, and entertained audiences. The topics covered in the class will include co-evolution, the fur trade, people eating animals and animals eating people, pet keeping, animal symbolism, and endangered species. The course invites students to see North American history anew through the eyes of a race horse, a sled dog, a passenger pigeon, a grizzly bear, or a field mouse.

"I but put that brow before you," Herman Melville wrote in his 1851 novel, Moby-Dick, "read it if you can." Melville was describing the brow of the mighty sperm whale, but his words apply equally to his mighty book. In this seminar, we can and will read Moby-Dick, Melville's maddening masterpiece. We will read Moby-Dick as an invitation into its multiple historical contexts at the middle of the 19th-century American and wider worlds. We will explore the world of whaling and the age of sail, the ecological and imaginary expanses of the 19th-century ocean, the intellectual and literary culture of the "American Renaissance," and a nation on a collision course with itself.

This course will examine the long history of struggle for civil rights by the Latina and Latino communities. Representing an estimated 65.3 million residents of the United States, the demographic is the largest minority group. However, their experiences represent a clear paradox. Despite their “American” identity, they remain “Others” to many in the United States. Beginning with the forceful incorporation of ethnic Mexicans in the mid-nineteenth century, this course covers the triumphs and failures of collective action by this community for a variety of rights and access on their path to inclusion. These include workplace strikes for equal pay, unionization drives, walkouts against educational discrimination, interfaith alliances for immigration rights, and more. Through covering various topics, this course documents the strategies Latinas and Latinos utilized in their social movements and negotiates the consequences of those tactics and their lasting influence in their communities. In these struggles for equality, Latinas and Latinos advocated for educational reform, reshaped public space, and influenced the negotiations of their place in society.

This course asks how we should narrate and understand the great ordeal of Civil War and emancipation. Reading both primary and secondary sources, it considers the Civil War era and life of Abraham Lincoln in light of the rise of abolition and antislavery politics; attitudes toward race, slavery, and labor; the political and social meanings of war and emancipation; the political and social challenge of reconstructing the nation amidst the tangled legacies of racial slavery and a destructive war.

This course explores the history of photography in America, and the history of America in photography. Beginning with the medium's introduction in 1839, we consider the many ways in which photographic images have been used (and abused) to advance arguments, demarcate social boundaries, define racial and ethnic types, document poverty and injustice, and capture conflict. This course is also about looking and seeing, and how to look and see. The images we will consider in their context come first as a form of beguiling transport to a moment in time—a scene, a person, a place that is more immediate than any painting, drawing, or description. But they also invite work. The picture is not just a view, it is also, we will work to understand, a point of view that we will work to explore, examine, and, as best we can, to inhabit as we reconstruct and recreate the points of view and assumptions that helped to make them. This course invites students to see how US history shaped the development of photographic styles and technologies and how photography, photographers, and photographs have changed the course of US history.

This summer course is for those who have applied and been selected for the NA-ND experiential learning program for summer 2025. Developed in partnership with the US Naval Academy, the staff ride course explores operations and strategy during the American Revolution in the American southeast. In the second half of the war this was the dominant theater of the American Revolution, ultimately leading to the American victory at Yorktown. Students selected for the trip will be notified by February, following which there will be several preparatory events to discuss staff ride etiquette and historical content. The staff ride will commence on July 7 in Charleston and conclude in Washington, DC on July 19.

This course is an upper-level history seminar aimed at exploring the history of space flight from political, military, diplomatic, technological, and cultural perspectives. It begins with works of imagination - like Jules Vernes’ From the Earth to the Moon - that inspired the early generation of rocket scientists, like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Goddard. It then traces how the military utility of modern rockets, first mass produced for use as a weapons system in the First World War, turned the new science into a key strategic competition between Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1930s. From Germany’s V-2 rocket program to the missile race of the 1950s, the course then explores the strategic impetus behind the highly militarized space competition of the early Cold War. Following the success of Apollo, the strategic aims and goals shifted, and resources drained away from the American and Soviet space programs; readings will then explore the role of spaceflight in intelligence gathering and science diplomacy. Following the Cold War, competition in space seemed to be at an end, but the privatization revolution and growing strategic competition with China and Russia have given birth to a new space race, with targets including the Moon and Mars. In sum, students will address the key question: why space? How has the human imagination, technological change, and strategic necessity driven humanity into orbit, to the moon, and beyond?

This course introduces students to core questions, problems, and concepts in United States urban history by studying one particular city, Chicago. The goal is not to learn the history of Chicago per se, but to use Chicago as a vehicle for exploring different approaches to understanding urban development and the urban experience. In that sense, Chicago will serve as our laboratory of discovery. Drawing on the rich trove of existing historical studies of Chicago, we will consider the city's past from numerous angles, such as the economy, law, political culture, space and architecture, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality. Our readings will incorporate historical studies as well as a diverse range of primary sources, including fiction, art, photography, maps, travel journals, and poetry. Students will have the opportunity to produce their own original research employing the urban history approaches encountered in the course.

Archives, libraries, and museums collect and curate material for both a specialized and a general public. They organize their holdings according to professional principles as well as their own internal dictates. Historians often present archives as a kind of "problem" -- they are not always organized in ways that make it possible to find the materials that a particular user wants, and they do not always contain materials that support all kinds of research. This is especially true for scholars who want to learn about the experiences of non-elite subjects: enslaved people, women, the poor, children, members of sexual minorities, and many others. In class we seek to accomplish three things: (1) reveal the ways that archives and museums are historically created projects, reflecting particular understandings of the world; (2) critique the ways that they privilege and silence different perspectives and contemplate the ways that these patterns might be overcome (if they can be overcome); (3) investigate specific archives, museums, libraries and other collecting places, via site visits on campus and through the growing number of digital archives online. We'll include walking tours, the University cemetery, the ND sports archive, and other places you may not have considered as archives or museums as well. We will meet with librarians, curators, and archivists to understand their perspectives. Students will create their own projects to curate, collect, and describe materials. This seminar will use the campus to think through many of these issues, by reading what historians have written in response to these challenges, and by visiting archives, libraries, and museums to see what their realities are. We will examine monuments and ask whose stories they can and should tell. We will also think about story-telling in history, especially about events and people that are overlooked or excluded from elite narratives. We'll end by choosing our own historical sites and crafting our own narratives, in a walking tour around campus.

In this course we will examine the historical construction of gendered roles in the Spanish colonial world. This will entail thinking about gender in the societies which "encountered" each other in the New World, and also thinking about how that encounter produced new forms of gendered relations. Among the questions we will consider: how was the conquest gendered? How did colonial society produce masculinity as well as femininity? What gendered forms of power were available to women? How did ethnicity and caste, as well as gender, determine people's sense of themselves and their "others"? The course will look at a mixture of primary and secondary materials, including letters and chronicles written by men and women, testimony before the Spanish Inquisition, poetry, and novels. While there are no prerequisites for this seminar, some familiarity with colonial Latin American history will be helpful.

This course examines the "Global Sixties" (c.1956-c.1976) with particular attention to politics, culture and religion in the United States, Western Europe, and Latin America. The emphasis will be placed primarily on the topics of youth activism and state repression from the perspective (and influence) of the "Global South." The main goal of the course is to provide an opportunity for extensive reading in the Global Sixties historiography. For this, it pays particular attention to influential primary texts, ideas, interpretations, ideological currents, and repercussions of the period with emphasis on the broader context of the Cold War. Additional and more specific goals include: (1) exploring the different approaches and methods that historians have used to interpret the history of the Global Sixties; and (2) providing methodological background and advice that will aid students to write original research papers.

This seminar is part of a university-sponsored project to create a historical archive documenting the Notre Dame community's experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Designed for history majors and minors, this course will train students in the field of oral history. Students will be introduced to the theories, methodology, and practice of oral history and apply what they learn in a final project that requires them to conduct an oral history interview of their own. Throughout the semester, they will learn how to plan oral history projects; prepare interview questions and scripts; and perform, record, and transcribe interviews. Students who complete this course will be contributing to creating an archival legacy of Notre Dame's pandemic experience.

"No one under 30 has ever lived through a month of global temperatures below the 20th-century average." Why bother with history if the future, because of climate change, will be nothing like the past? That's the central question of this course. Scientists now tell us that the relatively benign epoch of human flourishing designed the "Holocene" is over. The change is so great and so rapid that some scientists have even proposed a new epoch called the "Anthropocene" to designate this irreversible rupture with the previous 11,700 year when human beings first discovered agriculture, created cities, and developed writing systems when most of what historians have called "history" occurred. To confront this dilemma, this course asks three questions: (1) What is the "Anthropocene" and what are scientists telling us about this epoch which began by most accounts in the mid-twentieth century with the Great Acceleration in economic activities and population growth? (2) What does history show us about how we arrived at this crisis? Historians have long been interested in political and economic questions about power, state structures, democracy, and development, but have they sufficiently considered the relationship between their own stories of modernity and the dilemmas we now face? (3) Were there political and economic formations in the past more conducive to environmentally sustainable communities and can historians now help by uncovering them? The readings combine scientific debates over the "Anthropocene" with historians' work on sustainable communities from Victorian England and early modern Japan. We end by reading the famous novelist and anthropologist Amitav Ghosh's The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable.

This course will explore the origins of the Second World War from 1919 to 1941. Students will engage in the major historiographical debates on the origins of the war, including the Treaty of Versailles, the rise of Hitler, the militarization of Japan, and the question of appeasement. Students will gain an appreciation of the complex interwar political and social environment while wrestling with questions of causation, structure and agency in history.

The 12th and 13th centuries were a dynamic period in world history as civilizations across the globe experienced significant growth, reorganization, and even collapse. Trade, wars, missionary work, and exploration fostered extensive and far-reaching interactions among neighboring and more distant cultures. Genghis Khan, the Crusades, the Khmer Empire, the end of the Toltec Empire, and the peak of the ancestral Pueblo occupation of the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings are but a few of the forces and civilizations shaping the world at A.D. 1200. Traditionally, these civilizations and events are studied diachronically and in relative isolation from contemporaneous global developments. This course departs from tradition and adopts a synchronic analysis of the dramatic changes experienced across the globe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By examining these cultural shifts in light of simultaneous transitions in other areas of the world, new questions and answers can be generated concerning the activities and processes that shape people's lives in past and present civilizations.

Herodotus has been called both the "Father of History" and the "Father of Lies." Thucydides is revered by some as the first "scientific" historian; others deny him the title of historian altogether. The most famous tales in Roman history come from the early books of Livy, and yet it is unlikely that he had any way of obtaining reliable information for that period. The historians of the classical Greek and Roman world stand among the greatest writers of the Western tradition. But to what extent were they performing the task that we call "history"? In this course we will survey the works of the major historians of ancient Greece and Rome, including Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus and others. We will examine the origins of Greek historiography, the methods espoused and practiced by Greek and Roman historians, the effect political and social changes had on ancient historiography, and the relationship of ancient historical writing to that of the modern scholars. The class will be primarily discussion-based. All readings in the ancient authors will be in English.

This course provides an in-depth introduction to the archaeology of the ancient Greek world, focusing on the Classical, Hellenistic and Early Roman Imperial periods (ca. 480 BC to AD 138). The survey of material culture traces the development of architecture, painting, sculpture, coinage, and other archaeological material in relation to cultural, political, social and philosophical issues. The course explores the urban, sacred, rural, funerary and provincial landscapes of Greece and introduces students to the analysis and interpretation of archaeological sites, monuments, artifacts, and art. Topics include the Athenian Acropolis in the age of Pericles, the masterpieces of Praxiteles and Lysippos, the creation of the Roman province of Greece under Augustus, and Hadrian’s Roman Agora in Athens, as well as the methods, results, and theory of archaeological research in the areas of field excavation and intensive surface survey. Through the material record, the course attempts to reconstruct what life might have been like in ancient Greece.

This course aims to accomplish the following: 1) to develop students' understanding of the Cold War and its major political developments; 2) to develop students' understanding of the ways sports and society influence and reflect political developments; 3) to see sports programs as a reflection of the nation-states in which they develop, and to use athletic traditions in different nations to develop students' understanding of different societies; 4) to improve students' ability to use contemporary periodical sources in historical research; and 5) to improve students' analytical reading and writing skills through readings, exams, and a paper.

This is a survey course in Islamic law and ethics aimed at upper level undergraduates and law school students. The course will provide an outline of Islamic legal theory and jurisprudence and then cover topics such as Muslim family law, fatwas on a range of topics such as gender, sexuality and cultural and political conflict.

Through a close examination of twelve historical events, we will study African American resistance in the United States from the 17th century through the 20th century. We will employ a case study method and seek to categorize and characterize the wide variety of African American resistance. Our study will include the politics of confrontation and civil disobedience, polarization of arts, transformation of race relations, the tragedies and triumphs of Reconstruction, interracial violence, black political and institutional responses to racism and violence, the Harlem Renaissance, Jazz, Blues, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Students will be confronted with conflicting bodies of evidence and challenged to analyze these issues and arrive at conclusions. Music and film will supplement classroom discussions.

This course explores the contours and implications of Christianity as a global reality. It will examine some of the rich explosion of scholarship that is now pouring forth on the recent and remarkable world-wide expansion of Christianity, while also putting such growth in a historical and theological perspective. The course readings will draw from fiction, theology, history, and the social sciences. In addition to sampling major general interpretations by scholars like Dana Robert, Mark Noll, Andrew Walls, and Lamin Sanneh, readings will concentrate on certain regions of startling change over the last century as well as places for which scholarship is burgeoning. Some of the course readings come from the standpoint of missionary activity, but more reflect new expressions of indigenous faith. Studies of Protestant, Catholic, and independent movements are included; readings come from a wide variety of Catholic, Protestant, and secular perspectives.

This course examines the participation of the United States in its "longest war"--the conflict in Vietnam. The course is taught primarily from an "American" as opposed to a "Vietnamese" perspective. Broad topics to be covered include: Vietnamese background (land, people, history, culture); American Political and Diplomatic Decision Making; 1950-75: How the War was Fought; Debating the War; The War at Home; The Aftermath of War; and Lessons of the War. This is a lecture AND a discussion course.

In this seminar we will examine the historical construction of gendered and sexual roles in the Spanish and Portuguese colonial worlds. This will entail thinking about gender and sexuality in the societies which "encountered" each other in the New World, and also thinking about how that encounter, as well as Atlantic slavery, produced new forms of gendered and sexual relations. Among the questions we'll consider: how was the conquest gendered? How did colonial society produce masculinities as well as femininities? What gendered forms of power were available to women? How did ethnicity and caste, as well as gender and class, determine people's sense of themselves and their "others?" What were normative and alternative sexual roles in the pre-modern Americas, and how did a European Catholic conquest affect these? Readings will include monographs and primary sources. Students will write an extended research essay in this class, and History majors may use it for their departmental seminar in consultation with the instructor.

History Lab Research allows undergraduate students to assist a faculty member's research project(s) for credit.

This seminar examines the rise of the modern fashion and garment industries in Europe and North America during the late 19th through the 20th century. While fashion is often viewed as a subject of interest only to women, this course contends that it has held significant meaning in the lives of both men and women, and different classes and races. Clothing could signify who was praised as beautiful, modern, and respectable, or who was damned as immoral. We will trace such economic shifts as the movement from custom-made women's clothing to mass-produced ready-to-wear and the invention of the department store, and consider the impact of mass consumption on modern peoples. We will read how the aesthetics and practicality of women's and men's dress were criticized by reformers, and how American home economists taught the art of dressing according to standards of efficiency and beauty. We will address the impact of technological innovations, such as the removable collar and the stiletto heel, and of political concerns, such as the world wars and the Civil Rights Movement. We will pay particular attention to the dress revolutions of the 1920s and 1960s, and the question of whether they signaled concrete liberation or merely a fantasy of liberation. This course is a seminar, so class time will be devoted to discussion. During discussion and in short assignments, students will practice the analytical skills necessary to writing the research paper. Students will have two kinds of reading assignments. Secondary sources demonstrate how historians evaluate and interpret different kinds of evidence found in the historical record. Students will learn to both appreciate and question the historical narratives that these scholars offer. Primary sources are the evidence drawn directly from the historical record. For this class, the primary sources range from a fictional short story about women who try to sew a dress to fashion illustrations, photographs, and feature articles from popular women's magazines and newspapers. We will use our secondary sources as examples of how to evaluate these kinds of evidence and learn to justify our own interpretations. We will use both kinds of sources as we write our own narratives of the history of dress, and of how its shape and its meaning shifted over the past 100-plus years.

In this seminar, we will trace the various ways in which early modern Europeans looked to antiquity for inspiration in their own present, and try to find new ways to examine that legacy. The writings, institutions, and physical remains of ancient Greece and Rome were fundamental to the formation of early modern European culture. "Renaissance" may be a modern term, but sixteenth-century Italians referred constantly to a "rebirth" of literary and artistic achievement. They had no intention of giving up medieval improvements to life like paper and compasses and Hindu-Arabic numerals: rather, they were convinced that better familiarity with the ancients could inspire new solutions to present problems, from the structure of the universe, to the principles of good government, to the criteria by which to judge a valid work of art, architecture, or literature. Their idea of "antiquity" went beyond Greece and Rome to include the ancient Hebrews, Egyptians, Etruscans, Goths, Batavians, Britons, Phoenicians, Ethiopians, Indians, and Chinese. Like human nature, "antiquity" in the early modern period was a two-edged sword. The Roman Empire provided a brutal model of aggression and exploitation (and environmental destruction); as the ancient Roman author Tacitus famously noted: "They create a desert and call it peace." Rome was also, however, a model of inclusion that eventually spanned three continents. Antiquity also provided marvelous opportunities for early modern forgers and impostors, some of whom exerted remarkable influence before their exposure as frauds.

The Roman architect Vitruvius Pollio dedicated his ten papyrus scrolls on architecture to the emperor Augustus in the late first century B.C.E., confident that his work furnished all the information an attentive reader needed to make competent decisions about building, from choosing a site to the fine points of interior decor. In addition, the form and structure of his treatise made a second, and no less ambitious, claim: that architecture should be considered a liberal art, requiring intellectual acuity above and beyond any technical skill. This course will investigate Vitruvius both as a man of ancient Rome and as one of the most influential writers of all time, showing how his aesthetic systems are rooted in ancient rhetoric - that is, in oratory and literature -, and how his pioneering treatise, thanks to its broad philosophical framework, innovative vocabulary, and systematic reasoning, became one of the most influential books of all time, including its role in shaping the curricula of the first universities. We will also investigate the ways in which readers from different centuries and different cultures have adapted (and often distorted) interpretation of the ancient text to fit different circumstances and views of the world, aiming to read him as clearly as possible, for his own time and for ours. We will be using the illustrated translation published by Cambridge University Press. Students who want to follow the text in Latin are encouraged to do so.

This departmental seminar will focus on the rich and various historiography of the First World War in several dimensions: Global History, International Politics, Military History, Political Economy, the history of Europe, and the domestic politics of the various combatants. Additionally, we will be reading more recent treatments of the war: its effect on the social state, the home front, literature, poetry, and historical memory. As this is a departmental seminar, the course is geared to the student's production of a substantial research paper. To this end the first half of the course will consist of seminar meetings to discuss the wide range of historiography; the reading will be greater and more intensive than in a typical course and students will read diligently to throw themselves selflessly into the material. In addition, we will be using class time to explore resources available in the library and online to assist you in your research and writing. After surviving the trenches of historiography, students will go over the top themselves. During the second half of the course, our focus will be the production and successful completion of a substantial research paper totaling approximately twenty-five pages. Class meetings and scheduled small group and one-on-one meetings during the second half of the course will focus on the research, writing, and revision of your work. The strong and the lucky will survive....

This course explores the history of the six north-eastern counties of Ireland which became "Northern Ireland" in 1920/1. Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom and had a built-in Protestant unionist majority, while the Catholic minority, alienated from the state from the outset, looked across the new border and to Dublin, capital of the Irish Free State, as the site of their allegiance. Northern Ireland was thus, from the beginning, dysfunctional, scarred by sectarian violence and systematic discrimination in housing and employment. After examining the origins of the state and the early decades of it existence, the class will turn to its main concern, "the troubles," which broke out in the late 1960s. The major episodes under scrutiny include the civil rights movement, Bloody Sunday, the hunger strikes, and the Good Friday Peace Agreement.

Russia under the tsars was a vast empire, a land of stunning achievement and immense inequality, mired in backwardness yet also a laboratory of modernity. Through works of scholarship, art, and cinema, and writings by Russians from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, we will explore how women and men, peasants and aristocrats, conservatives and revolutionaries, experienced the power and contradictions of the Romanov empire. This is a seminar. There will occasional lectures, but mostly we will have oral discussions about the readings, Russian historical films, and works of art that depict the everyday life of diverse groups in imperial Russian society. There are many ways of knowing the world - scientific, artistic, and other ways. Ours will be historical. This means that we will examine how the totality of life changed over time. We will consider the past from many angles, for instance, politics, culture, and the social order. We will discuss interpretations proposed by historians, analyze the primary sources on which they are based, and construct our own interpretations. We will not render facile judgments on the people of the past, but we will also explore what their legacy means for us today. We will examine imperial Russian history from three distinct perspectives: - What do we know about the actual course of imperial Russian history? - What are the original sources on which our knowledge is based? - What role do artistic representations of this era play in modern Russian culture?

Since the eighteenth century, Europeans have grappled with a number of transformative events and developments, from the French Revolution and the birth of an industrial economy, to catastrophic wars and the rise and fall of European empires. In the process of making sense of these events, they produced works of philosophy, political theory, art, and literature that continue to shape the way we understand our place in the world today. This course introduces students to the history of European thought from the Enlightenment to the present, a period that birthed the many great "isms" that have defined the modern world: liberalism, socialism, nationalism, feminism, existentialism, totalitarianism, and colonialism. Course readings will be drawn from a range of primary sources, including novels, works of philosophy, political treatises, films, and works of art, as well as secondary sources by historians. By reading these two kinds of sources together, we will explore not only how ideas and works of art were shaped by the historical context in which they were produced, but also how they themselves shaped the course of European history.

This course explores the historical relationship between the Catholic Church and the rise and fall of European overseas empires since the sixteenth century. We will consider how Catholic missionaries both reinforced and resisted colonial power structures; how the Church made sense of racial, religious, and cultural differences in its efforts to evangelize colonial subjects; how African, Asian, and Latin American Catholics developed their own distinctive spiritual practices; and how Catholics in both Europe and its former colonies grappled with the challenge of decolonization and how to undo the legacies of colonialism within the Church itself. Readings will be drawn from a range of sources, including missionary diaries and manuals, memoirs, artwork, papal encyclicals, films, novels, works of theology, and historical scholarship.

This course explores the historical relationship between the Catholic Church and the rise and fall of European overseas empires since the sixteenth century. We will consider how Catholic missionaries both reinforced and resisted colonial power structures; how the Church made sense of racial, religious, and cultural differences in its efforts to evangelize colonial subjects; how African, Asian, and Latin American Catholics developed their own distinctive spiritual practices; and how Catholics in both Europe and its former colonies grappled with the challenge of decolonization and how to undo the legacies of colonialism within the Church itself. Readings will be drawn from a range of sources, including missionary diaries and manuals, memoirs, artwork, papal encyclicals, films, novels, works of theology, and historical scholarship.

Urban civilization as we know it was born in 19th century Europe. Rarely have the bright and dark sides of progress been so starkly juxtaposed as in the cities immortalized by writers such as Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, with their railroads, department stores, and other modern wonders, but also their slums, cholera, and ubiquitous coal smoke. Those cities were the first to confront the challenges that cities have faced ever since: How can a government unify the people, police the streets, and preserve a livable environment? How can society organize itself to build infrastructure, develop the economy, integrate immigrants, educate the young, and uplift the poor? How can everyday men and women enjoy the city's wealth and freedom without becoming trapped by its cruelty and alienation? In this course, through modern scholarship and through fiction, journalism, images, and other sources from the period, we will explore the grimness and the glory of the 19th century European city.

This graduate seminar explores the history of American work, workers, labor movements, and labor policies from the nation's founding to the near present. It argues for the centrality of The Labor Question to the human experience: Who does the work? What are the terms? Who gets the fruits? Who makes the rules? The course adopts a chronological approach, probing continuities and changes in work at the levels of law, culture, and lived experience over two-plus centuries of US history. It also casts an expansive net in terms of workplaces: the focus will be on those who worked for others, whether that work was paid or unpaid; coerced, contracted, or consented to; or even considered work by contemporaries. Designed to introduce students to important questions and debates via classic and cutting-edge scholarship, the course aims to integrate labor history and historiography within the broader study of the American past, intersecting fields such as the history of capitalism, gender history, economic and social history, political history, religious history, and the histories of race and ethnicity.

"Over the last two years, "fake news" has been one of President Donald Trump's most oft-repeated phrases, undermining confidence in the press. In 2016, it was a term used by the media to describe deliberate misinformation spread on social media during the presidential campaign, often comprised of conspiracy theories. So what is "fake news" and how should we understand it, identify it, and make sense of how it is being used? In this discussion-based course, we will analyze the historical precedents of "fake news." Course readings will take us from the German Reformation, to imperial China, revolutionary France and America, colonial India, through totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and up to the present day. Each week, we will delve into a different historical event in which rumor, conspiracy theory, or propaganda played a central role. We will dissect the meaning of these terms across time and space and ask how and why they become meaningful in particular societies at particular moments. In the process, we will examine how historians treat deception, misinformation, and forgery in attempting to explain what happened in the past. Finally, we will ask whether "fake news" is a useful analytical category; what does it mean, how can we study it, and how can we handle it in our current society? Students will leave the course with a mastery of the historical context of fake news, an ability to identify and decode false information, and an understanding of methods for approaching a confusing and contested past. Course materials will include books, articles, podcasts, and films. Students will be evaluated primarily based on class participation, weekly discussion questions, and two essays. "

"I but put that brow before you," Herman Melville wrote in his 1851 novel, Moby-Dick, "read it if you can." Melville was describing the brow of the mighty sperm whale, but his words apply equally to his mighty book. In this seminar, we can and will read Moby-Dick, Melville's maddening masterpiece. We will read Moby-Dick as an invitation into its multiple historical contexts in the 19th-century American and wider worlds. We will explore the world of whaling and the age of sail, the ecological and imaginary expanses of the 19th-century ocean, the intellectual and literary culture of the "American Renaissance," and a nation on a collision course with itself over slavery and empire.

The United States became "modern" at the turn of the twentieth century: a primarily rural, agrarian society became an increasingly urban, industrial one that made and consumed forms of mass culture. This was a period defined by heightened immigration, the rise of corporate capitalism, and the extension of U.S. imperial power overseas. What did these years of great transformation sound like? How did people hear and listen to the world around them? This course, a discussion-based seminar, explores sound and practices of listening between 1870 and 1920 in the United States. In analyzing primary and secondary sources, we will study urban soundscapes and attempts at sound regulation, hearing and deafness, acoustics, and sound reproduction technologies. We will also explore music - popular, bourgeois, religious, and military music, for examples - as well as the making of musical genres, the commercialization of sound, aspects of performance, and organology (the science of instruments). All the while, we will consider the intersection of sound, hearing, and listening with race, gender, and class formations and the role of sound, hearing, and listening in the making of a modern America.

This course introduces students to core questions, problems, and concepts in United States urban history by studying one particular city, Chicago. The goal is not to learn the history of Chicago per se, but to use Chicago as a vehicle for exploring different approaches to understanding urban development and the urban experience. In that sense, Chicago will serve as our laboratory of discovery. Drawing on the rich trove of existing historical studies of Chicago, we will consider the city's past from numerous angles, such as the economy, law, political culture, space and architecture, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality. Our readings will incorporate historical studies as well as a diverse range of primary sources, including fiction, art, photography, maps, travel journals, and poetry. Students will have the opportunity to produce their own original research employing the urban history approaches encountered in the course.

This seminar introduces topics in the history of slavery and Blackness in Latin America. Its focus is on the criminalization of mobility and the occupation of space by people described as Black and historically tied to enslavement. Blackness, a social condition associated with phenotype, emerged from the Atlantic slave trade, which brought enslaved laborers from Africa to European New World colonies. But slavery was not simply a labor or commodity relation, it became a way to explain the existence of social hierarchies that included free people of color and associated a variety of gendered physical characteristics with them. We will spend some time examining how law and social relations dealt with Atlantic slavery, and then move into the modern period to think about how these ideas and frameworks played out in a world of Latin American nations (and territories) without explicit African slavery.

This course examines the "Global Sixties" (c.1956-c.1976) with particular attention to politics, culture and religion in the United States, Western Europe, and Latin America. The emphasis will be placed primarily on the topics of youth activism and state repression from the perspective (and influence) of the "Global South." The main goal of the course is to provide an opportunity for extensive reading in the Global Sixties historiography. For this, it pays particular attention to influential primary texts, ideas, interpretations, ideological currents, and repercussions of the period with emphasis on the broader context of the Cold War. Additional and more specific goals include: (1) exploring the different approaches and methods that historians have used to interpret the history of the Global Sixties; and (2) providing methodological background and advice that will aid students to write original research papers.

Scholarly fields are like sustained conversations, and in this seminar we hope to help you enter the ongoing discussion about the historical study of modern religion. Considering both classic approaches and recent innovations, we discuss a wide range of books dealing with the history of modern religion, beginning with global histories and then focusing more on the United States. The instructors hope to encourage reflection about what different spatial scales-local, national, and transnational-obscure and illumine. Along the way, we engage multiple approaches, including social, environmental, cultural, political, and intellectual history. We end the course by returning to historiographical issues and invite seminar participants to summarize their own thinking and propose how they think we should change the scholarly conversation in the years ahead.

In this seminar course we will put our collective thinking-caps on and reflect on the discipline of history. We will read classic texts from philosophy on the uses and abuses of history as well as more modern historical theory. Central to our inquiry will be the question of how history can reflect what is true and how it can and should create knowledge (and therefore meaning). Topics include Nietzsche, the construction of narrative, the Holocaust, and History in non-print media like video games and film.

The French Revolution created a turning point in history by paving the way for modern politics and society. Napoleon's empire, on the other hand, toppled some of the oldest European monarchies and shook up the international status quo. During two and a half turbulent decades, the French destroyed feudalism, created a constitutional monarchy, founded a republic, and built an empire that stretched across the continent. Our course will focus on how the French reinvented the social, cultural, and political dimensions of their world from the 1780s to 1815. We will ask major questions such as: What were the origins of the French Revolution? How did the revolutionaries recreate political culture and social structures? Why did the Revolution radicalize at first but eventually slide into an empire? Was Napoleon the "son of the Revolution" or did he betray its major goals? Of special note, our course includes a 4-week "Reacting to the Past" game that allows you to engage in history from a completely new perspective. During this historical role-playing unit, you will become a specific member of the National Assembly or the Parisian crowd. To win, you must pass a constitution favorable to your position while wrestling "with the threat of foreign invasion, political and religious struggles, and questions of liberty and citizenship." Although we may change the course of history within the unit, you will root your arguments in resources available to your historical persona: primary documents, political treatises, inspiring speeches, secret collaborations, and "current" events.

Directed Readings in History facilitates a student's reading and analysis of a specialized set of texts under the guidance of an individual faculty member.

Directed Research in History facilitates a student's particularized research project on a historical topic under the guidance of an individual faculty member.