Graduate Course Descriptions
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 2027 - On Campus Course Descriptions
HIST 6900 001
Topics in Women's/Gender History: Gender and Popular Culture
Dr. Cookie Woolner
TR, 2:40-4:05 pm, TBA
In this course, students will develop critical thinking skills by reading, writing, and participating in class discussions to understand the various ways that gender is produced by and depicted in American popular culture. Questions we will ask include, does popular culture reflect the values of its consumers—or does it shape them? What can pop culture tell us about conflicts over not just gender but also race, class, sexuality, and national identity? By exploring these questions across a range of texts, this class will develop the tools for integrating cultural and gender-based analysis into an understanding of history. We will examine topics in 19th and 20th century popular culture and their intersection with gender from blackface minstrelsy to burlesque and drag, bodybuilding/athletics, recorded music, amusement parks, vaudeville, film, advertising, popular literature, television, music videos, fandom, and social media, among other topics. Graduate students will read, write about, and discuss four additional historical monographs and will write final historiographical papers on a related topic. - Back.
HIST 6074 001 (CRN 29451)
Morning in America: U.S. History in the 1980s
Dr. Aram Goudsouzian
MW, 12:40-14:05 pm, JN 105
“It’s morning again in America,” proclaimed a famous television ad for Ronald Reagan’s presidential re-election campaign in 1984. If the message captured a sense of national renewal, it also smoothed over the convulsive debates that shaped the United States in that decade and beyond. In this class, we will take a kaleidoscopic look at the 1980s. We will examine how Reagan forged a “New Right” coalition that defined the future of American politics, while simultaneously escalating and defusing the Cold War, but also trace the evolution of liberalism and the emergence of grassroots movements to combat nuclear weapons and AIDS funding. We will delve deep into the popular culture of the era, tackling topics such as musical icons Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen; Hollywood blockbusters and teen movies; and the 1984 Olympics and the rise of the NBA. Finally, we will consider how ordinary Americans, from Yuppies to hip-hop artists. Be prepared to read, watch, listen, discuss, and conduct independent research! - Back.
HIST 6801 001 (CRN 29453)
Black Memphis
Dr. Beverly Bond
TR, 11:20 am - 12:45 pm, JN 105
This course focuses on the social and cultural, political, and economic roles of African Americans in Memphis over the past 200+ years. We will place Memphis in the context of state, regional and national events, and explore intersections of race, class and gender both within African American communities and between African Americans and other populations in the city. Course evaluation includes quizzes and reflection papers on the assigned readings (Memphis in Black and White; Remembering the Memphis Massacre, An American Story; and An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee) and a research project that will allow you to delve deeply into some aspect of Black Memphis history and culture. I can suggest possible research topics, or you may choose your own topic. In addition to the requirements for undergraduate students, graduate students will complete at least three (3) additional readings and produce a historiography which may be included in your research paper/project. - Back.
HIST 6863 001 (CRN 26851)
History of Childhood in America
Dr. Sarah Potter
TR, 13:00-14:25 pm, PT 213
This course examines the history of children and youth from the colonial period to the present. In this course, we will outline changing ideas about children and childhood: who is a child? What role do children play in society? We will also consider this history from children’s point of view: how have children’s lives, experiences, games, and expectations changed? Finally, we will explore the changing politics of childhood: who speaks for children and has authority over them? What is the relationship between children/childhood and citizenship? - Back.
HIST 7100/8100 001 (CRN 31549 / 10555)
Global Historiography
Dr. Andrew Daily
R, 2:30-5:30 pm, PT 129
Introduction to the major schools of global historiography and to some of the concepts, issues, and methods that historians have employed to write global history including World-Systems Theory, Atlantic studies, transnational history, ecological history, and postcolonial studies, among others. - Back.
HIST 7320/8320 001 (CRN 10544 / 10557)
Studies in Ancient History: Military and Diplomatic Sources for Egyptian-Hittite Relations in the Late 18th and
Early 19th Dynasties
Dr. Peter Brand
M, 2:30-5:30 pm, PT 129
This course will examine war and diplomacy in the late 18th Dynasty (Amarna Period) through the 19th Dynasty, centering on Egypt’s relations with the Hittite empire. We will ponder topics including: The origins of the Egyptian-Hittite conflict in the Amarna Period; the wars in Syria from Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, and Horemheb down to Sety I and Ramesses II; the military technology, strategy and tactics of the Egyptian army; the peace treaty Ramesses II signed with the Hittite and his diplomatic relations with the Hittites after the peace. We will examine primary sources like the Amarna Letters, Ramesses II’s diplomatic correspondence with the Hittite court, and military and diplomatic sources from Egypt, both texts and monumental imagery. All sources will be in English translation. We will also study a broad range of secondary sources, including the latest studies on these subjects. During the course, students will prepare for weekly roundtable discussions, one in-class presentation, and a term essay focused on historiography of scholarly debate on one of these topics. - Back.
HIST 7882/8882 001 (CRN 18122 / 18123)
African American Historiography, 20th century
Dr. Brian Kwoba
W, 14:30-17:30 pm, PT 129
This seminar will explore the growth and maturation of scholarship in the field of 20th century African American history. We will interrogate some of the field’s most important methodologies, turning points, controversies, texts, and scholars. We will also investigate the dynamism of contributions from key subfields such as Black women’s history, Black radicalism, and Black histories of the South and mid‐South. - Back.
Spring 2027 - Online Course Descriptions
Online courses are fully online and completely asynchronous unless otherwise specified.
HIST 6162 M50 (CRN 30327)
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 6260 M50 (CRN 24309)
World since 1945
Dr. Beverly Tsacoyianis
WEB – Online
This course examines the recent history of the world through lectures, presentations, and discussions of topics including the end of WWII, the Cold War, decolonization, and globalization. We will consider conceptual problems of dealing with such a recent period as well as historiographic debates about historical narrative, perspective, and access to sources. In addition to a textbook, historical fiction, and academic articles in the field of history, the class has interdisciplinary components including analysis of film and social science research. This course does not include material on US history other than as necessary for understanding world history, since the History Department’s curriculum includes a separate course on the subject post-1945. - Back.
HIST 6701 M50 (CRN 20495)
US: 1914 to World War II
Dr. Caroline Peyton
WEB – Online
From the outbreak of World War I to World War II, this course examines one of the most turbulent, dynamic periods in American history. The class will consider America’s role in WWI, a fractious postwar period, the roaring 1920s, the Great Depression and New Deal, and the rich cultural and social history of the 1930s. Finally, we will devote considerable time to thinking about America’s interaction with the world as it descended, yet again, into another global conflagration: World War II. - Back.
HIST 6851 M50 (CRN 18364)
US Women's History
Dr. Cookie Woolner
WEB – Online
In this course, we consider women’s experiences throughout American history, from the colonial period to modern times, with an emphasis on changes in women’s working, family, personal, and political lives. We will re-imagine US history by centering women’s stories, not as merely contributors to big events, but as historical agents whose fears, concerns, and desires shaped the past and how we understand it as scholars. Using a variety of selected primary and secondary sources, including monographs, essays, literature, and film, you will explore the ways in which women’s public and private lives intersected with, and were often defined by, changing ideals of gender, race, and class. - Back.
HIST 7070 M50 (CRN 26142)
Research Seminar
Dr. Daniel Unowsky
WEB – Online
Each student in this research seminar will write a scholarly paper in their chosen field based on primary and secondary materials. The goal is to produce a substantial paper (25-30 pages) of near publishable quality. Students will develop a thesis and research plan, perform substantial primary source research, develop a prospectus, peer review rough drafts, and produce a polished essay. - Back.
HIST 7101 M50 (CRN 23753)
Studies Global History: The Ancient Economy
Dr. James Macksoud
WEB – Online
In this course we will take a thematic and comparative approach to studying the economy of ancient societies around the globe (from ~ 3,000 BCE to 500 CE), though with particular attention given to the ancient Near East and Mediterranean (including Egypt, Greece, and Rome). We will examine both broad commonalities among premodern economies as well as the idiosyncratic economic institutions and systems which differentiated one society (or period) from another. We will begin the course by familiarizing ourselves with a set of theoretical models and key academic debates concerning how to conceptualize ancient economies (e.g., regarding the prevalence of markets or the degree to which economic action was embedded in other domains). We will then conduct a series of case studies in select subject matters including agriculture and land tenure, labor (including slavery and other forms of unfree labor), industry and craft production, transportation and trade, monetization, banking and credit, urban economies, as well as taxation and public finance. - Back.
HIST 7650 M50 (CRN 15924)
Studies in US History to 1877
Dr. Bradley Dixon
WEB – Online
Thousands of Indigenous people circulated throughout North America and the wider Atlantic World as diplomats, political leaders, religious prophets, priests, petitioners, travelers, entertainers, sailors, soldiers, spies, and enslaved captives. Indigenous people were fixtures of early American urban life, molding the character of cities from San Agustín to Boston. Many of them journeyed to the very “heart of empire,” residing in places like Seville or London and some corresponded with monarchs and wrote books. This course will examine the lives of these Indigenous cosmopolitans and evaluate the techniques historians have developed to write their biographies using an archive where often only enigmatic traces remain. - Back.