Spring 2025
The History Department will offer the following 6000 and 7000/8000-level courses. The attached descriptions are designed to provide a clear conception of course content. It should be noted that while 6000 courses also include undergraduate students (4000 level), a distinct set of reading, writing, and grading expectations is maintained for graduate students.
Spring 2025 - On Campus Course Descriptions
HIST 4299/6299
Topics in Global History: Slave Societies in the Americas – Dr. Eron Ackerman
TR 11:20 am - 12:45 pm MI 209
This course surveys the development of race-based slavery in Spanish America, Brazil, the Caribbean, and the U.S. South from a comparative perspective. Topics include the Atlantic Slave Trade, plantation life, religion, resistance, the Haitian Revolution, the abolition movement, and emancipation. Using a variety of sources, from slave narratives and planter journals to court transcripts and abolitionist broadsides, we will examine how the slave-based colonial plantation economy developed and how enslaved people persevered, resisted, and fought to liberate themselves with or without the help of white abolitionists. Class meetings will include a blend of lecture, discussion, and primary source analysis. Assignments include quizzes, two papers, and a midterm and final exam. - Back.
HIST 4620/6620
Empires of Early North America – Dr. Bradley Dixon
TR 9:40-11:05 am MI 203
In this course, you'll experience the vastness of early America and its history from
1054-1754 by studying the growth and decay of the continents' Indigenous and European
empires. Four great early North American empires stood out above the rest—Aztec, Spanish,
English, Iroquois—and their societies and cultures will be the focus of this course.
You'll learn how each empire grew, ruled its territory and peoples, and what led to
its demise. We'll debate the very nature of empires and whether the concept is appropriate
to describe Indigenous powers like the Aztecs or Iroquois in the first place. Graduate
students will delve into the vibrant historiography of both imperialism and early
America with a focus on the recent trend toward larger, comparative history exemplified
by the term "Vast Early America."
Home to millions of Indigenous people, large cities, far-flung empires, vast trade
networks, and thousands of earthen and stone pyramids, North America was no barren
wilderness but a vibrant world of its own with mighty rulers and brilliant cultures.
Into this world came European invaders from overseas, bent on forging empires of their
own. For centuries, Indigenous peoples and colonizers vied for control of the continent.
Some waged war with weapons of stone and steel. Others were diplomats who wielded
words as skillfully as an assassin handles a blade.
While the names of the Aztecs, Spanish, British, and Iroquois have resounded through
the ages, other powers who played the imperial game in America were utterly forgotten.
We’ll explore, too, the lost American empires that barely left a trace—Vikings in
Vinland, Swedes and Finns on the Delaware River—and the empires of the imagination,
flights of fancy inspired by the Americas, fictional places like Francis Bacon’s mysterious
Island of Bensalem and the utopian Margravate of Azilia. And we’ll visit the places
like Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, a town of free Black soldiers and their
families in Florida, that arose on the edges of empires as refuges for the oppressed.
Experience a truly “New World” this fall. Uncover the secrets of early North America’s
empires. - Back.
HIST 7320/8320
Studies in Ancient History – Dr. Suzanne Onstine
T 2:30-5:30 pm MI 223
This class will focus on gendered experiences in ancient Egypt, with some comparative material from the Near Eastern and Classical worlds. The study of gender is the study of the lived experience of people viewed through the lens of their gender. Much of this will focus on women’s experiences, but I also hope to engage you in discussions of masculinity and ways in which all people's lives were circumscribed by experiences of sex and gender. Through readings and seminar presentations, students will explore various aspects of ancient Egyptian life, from the home to politics, and what role sex/gender played in the experience of Egyptians from all social groups. -Back.
HIST 7882/8882
African American Historiography: 20th century – Dr. Aram Goudsouzian
M 2:30-5:30 pm MI 223
This course introduces some of the recent and established scholarship in the field of twentieth-century African American History. Classes will focus on discussion of the assigned core readings and supplemental books. Students will give presentations, write reviews, and compose longer historiographical essays. - Back.
Spring 2025 - Online Course Descriptions
Online courses are fully online and completely asynchronous unless otherwise specified
HIST 4162/6162 M50
Russia After 1917 – Dr. Andrei Znamenski
WEB – Online
This course will explore the history of Russia from the 1917 revolution to the present day, including the formation of the Soviet Union, its development, dissolution in 1991, and the current state of Russia. The major themes of the course include World War I and the ascent of Soviet communism in the 1920s, Stalin's rule (1930s-1950s), Cold War, Putin's regime policies, culture and everyday life in the Soviet Union and present-day Russia. Since the Soviet Union/Russia is a multiethnic society, we will also approach its history as the interaction of vastly different Eurasian nationalities and cultures. - Back.
HIST 7070 M50
Research Seminar – Dr. Benjamin Graham
WEB - Online
The image above reflects a medieval architectural building style that reused old pieces of stone and brick to construct somethnig new; a phenomenon called spoliation. This seminar is meant to help you do something similar. You will bring what you have learned in graduate school so far and we will try to build something new that is greater than its component parts. Working within your own fields of study, this research seminar is meant to give you the structure, tools, and feedback necessary to launch a research agenda that will produce a long essay that reflects a meanngful contribution to existing scholarship. This seminar focuses on how to build. - Back.
HIST 7100 M50
Global Historiography – Dr. Beverly Tsacoyianis
WEB - Online
This online course introduces students to major schools of global historiography and to some of the concepts, issues, and methods that historians have used to write global history. We will discuss early pioneers in theory, significant contributions from recent decades, and newer directions in empirical and theoretical analyses. Students will familiarize themselves with major methodologies and theories of global historiography as well as some of the issues and questions that have driven research in global history. Students will also critically interrogate the assumptions and blind spots of global historiographic approaches. - Back.
HIST 7280 M50
Studies in African History – Dr. Selina Makana
WEB – Online
This seminar provides graduate students with an introduction to key themes, methods, sources, and debates in the historiography of Africa. The approach will be that of a reading seminar with an emphasis on analysis of method and the distinctive character of historical writing on Africa. Some of key thematic foci of the course include Methods and Sources for African history; Religion in precolonial and colonial contexts; Visual Culture; Gender and Sexuality in African history; State-building; Africa in/and the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds; Imperialism and the Scramble for Africa; Wars and militarism; The Politics of Under/Development; Africa and Environmental History. Students in the seminar will receive guidance and peer support in writing a bibliographic paper, book reviews, as well as assessing primary sources in the field. - Back.
HIST 7980 M50
Thematic Studies in American History: Popular Music – Dr. Cookie Woolner
WEB – Online
This asynchronous M.A. level course explores the emergence of a variety of musical genres in the 19th and 20th centuries. Drawing on cultural studies and theory along with the histories of music, theater, and popular culture, this course will begin with learning about the high/low culture divide and blackface minstrelsy, situating issues of race, gender, and class as central throughout the semester’s readings. Blues, jazz, country, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, disco, punk, hip hop, alternative, and dance music will be some of the genres covered as we seek to understand how issues from power and politics to economics and sexuality have influenced music and popular culture and vice versa. Students will usually read one monograph a week, write weekly reading responses, participate in weekly online discussions, and write a 15-page final historiographical paper based on their own interests in pop music history and culture. - Back.