Upper Division Courses – Spring 2021

Spring On Campus (Face to Face) Courses

* indicates honors seats available

HIST 3370 Medieval History– Dr. Benjamin Graham
TR 1:00pm - 2:25pm
Surveys the history of Europe and the Mediterranean from the collapse of the Roman Empire c. 500 to the Black Death and its aftermath. Traces the rise of Christianity and Islam, the development of post-classical states like those of Charlemagne and William the Conqueror, and the reorientation of the region's economic and cultural structures. This course will meet in-person with strict adherence to safety protocols regarding social distance and face coverings.

HIST 3840 Constitutional History - Dr. Scott Marler
TR 9:40am - 11:05am
In this asynchronous online course we examine the framing of the US Constitution and significant Supreme Court decisions from the Revolutionary period through the late twentieth century by placing them in social, political, and economic contexts. The constitutional history of slavery, emancipation, and its aftermath (Jim Crow through civil rights eras) is a foundational theme of the course. The course is divided into three units: 1) framing / ratification; 2) the pre-Civil War era; and 3) the post-Civil War era. All recorded lectures will be accompanied by Powerpoints. Grading will be based on some combination of quizzes, exams, short writing assignments, and a research paper about a significant US Supreme Court decision.

Spring Remote Courses

Remote classes will have some synchronous elements (discussion, lecture, etc.) Please read the course description carefully so you are prepared.

HIST 3001 Witchcraft, Magic, and Sorcery in Early America - Dr. Christine Eisel
REM MW 2:20pm - 3:45pm
Early Americans shared a pervasive belief in the supernatural. In this course, learn how cultural differences shaped views on the supernatural and affected outcomes for those accused of behavior outside the accepted community mores. While the Salem witchcraft crisis is a focal point of the course, we also will consider the traditions of supernatural belief, and concerns and accusations of occult behavior beyond Salem, to better explain the Salem crisis. Our investigation into belief systems will lead to a more complete understanding of competing ideologies and dynamics of power. This course is offered as a remote course with required twice-per-week synchronous meetings (M W, 2:20 - 3:45pm) using Virtual Classroom.

HIST 3881 African American History - Dr. Brian Kwoba
REM MWF 11:30am - 12:25pm
History and culture of African Americans in light of their experiences; aspects of African American life and attitudes of dominant society within which African Americans lived; ways African American men and women shaped and nurtured their own lives, culture and history in U.S. This class will be taught remotely, with synchronous elements that require streaming video (i.e. zoom).

HIST 3905 Memphis History -- Dr. Charles Crawford
REM W 2:30pm - 5:30pm
Political, social and economic aspects of development of Memphis from foundation to present.

HIST 3930 The US South, 1865 - Present – Dr. Michele Coffey
REM MWF 10:20am - 11:15am
This course is an introduction to the history of the US South from the Reconstruction period through the early twenty-first century. The purpose of the course is to familiarize students with the social, cultural, economic, and political circumstances and forces that have shaped the dynamic and varied populations of the southeastern United States. Throughout the semester, we also will assess and analyze the relationships between historical events and actors and ongoing political and social debates related to the region. Students in the course will develop and argue historical interpretations based on primary sources, secondary readings, and lecture materials.

All of the content and assignments in this course will be available online and accessible asynchronously to accommodate limitations in broadband access and the potential difficulties you may have with scheduling during a pandemic. Each week, we will meet via the virtual classroom in e-courseware on Friday from 10:20 to 11:15 am. Attendance and participation in these meetings are mandatory, but recordings of the meetings will be available for those who cannot attend.

HIST 4021 US Sport History – Dr. Aram Goudsouzian
REM TR 9:40am - 11:05am
This course examines the history of sports in the United States. It seeks to connect how Americans played and consumed sports to larger themes that define the nation's experience. Topics will include the role of the sporting landscape upon the emergence of the United States as an international power; profound transformations in race, class, gender, and sexuality; economic and corporate growth; and regional variations and traditions. This is a remote course; we will meet via Zoom during our regularly scheduled class sessions.

HIST 4050 Archaeology and History – Dr. Suzanne Onstine
REM TR 2:40pm - 4:05pm
History and Archaeology in general ask the same kinds of questions about humanity but use different methods to answer those questions. This class will introduce students of history to the practice of archaeology and the importance of material culture as primary sources. Additionally, archaeology is one of the primary ways textual source material is discovered and brought to the attention of historians, yet the study of the material culture context of texts is often lacking. An interdisciplinary approach, or at the very least an awareness of material culture investigations and its possibilities will help students find new ways to approach historical issues. This course will require streaming internet (i.e. zoom) for course discussions.

HIST 4051 The Global Early Modern Coffee Trade: Research Methods -- Dr. Tyler Kynn
REM TR 11:20am - 12:45pm
This upper level research seminar (4000/6000 level) teaches students the skills needed to research early modern English archival documents, form research questions from primary sources, and present their research dataset through data visualization and/or through ArcGIS mapping. Students do not need a background in the discipline of History, digital humanities, or Islamic World history to take this course. This course is meant to introduce students to all these topics and no prior background knowledge is required. The research skills and methods introduced to students in this course will be grounded in the history of the coffee trade in the early modern Red Sea and Indian Ocean world. Students will work with 17th and 18th-century archival records from the East India Company's trading post in the Yemeni port city of Mocha, paired with English narrative sources and select records from the East India Company's major port of Surat. While working to read these primary sources together as a class, students will be reading published primary and secondary material related to the early modern coffee trade in the Ottoman Empire, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean World. During the second half of the course, students will work in groups to produce a excel database of historical information collected from the archival material and turn that into either an ArcGIS map of the coffee trade [6000 level] or work towards visualizing the data (graphs, tables, or charts) collected from the documents [4000 level]. Students need to be able to stream lectures as this course will be provided synchronous over Zoom.

HIST 4680: Emergence of Modern America, 1877-1914 – Dr. Caroline Peyton
REM MW 12:40pm - 2:05pm
This course examines two periods of immense importance in American history: the Gilded Age and the Progressive era. In less than forty years, American society, culture, and its economy experienced changes that were nothing short of revolutionary. With great rapidity, American society from the 1870s to the 1910s featured an epic clash between Victorian ideals and modern culture. Electrification, wireless communication, and the dawn of the automobile age created new possibilities and new problems. Americans sought relief from the pressures and constraints of modern life with an array of leisure activities—professional sports, cycling, motion pictures, and amusement parks. Even as modern technology transformed American lives, this same period galvanized an emerging environmental movement, who sought to preserve and conserve the nation's natural resources and its wilderness spaces. The debates from this period continue to resonate even today. Ranging from the distribution of wealth; to labor, civil rights, and immigration; to the many reform movements of the time, Americans viewed these issues from many different perspective, which this course explores. To understand contemporary American society, the emergence of the modern United States is an essential starting point.

The course will meet in-person, with a hybrid format if needed, but I will also offer a remote option for students who would like to take the class remotely.

HIST 4880 Slavery, Freedom, and Segregation - Dr. Beverly Bond
REM TR 11:20am - 12:45pm
African Americans from 1820s to early 1900s; social, political, economic developments; antebellum slavery and freedom; impact of westward expansion; Civil War emancipation and post-war construction of freedom; development and impact of legal and extra-legal segregation; black nationalism and PanAmericanism; Progressivism through beginnings of Great Migration. This class is a remote course. We will meet (on ZOOM) during our regularly scheduled class sessions.

Spring Online Courses

Online courses are fully online and completely asynchronous.

HIST 3212 Latin American History since 1808 - Dr. Guiomar Duenas Vargas
WEB-Online Asynchronous
This course surveys the history of Latin America since 1820, when most countries of the region obtained the political independence from Spain and Portugal and became a tortuous route towards state formation and economic independence. The course will examine the historical roots of economic development and social inequality in the region, as a whole. Through historic texts, the course explores the promises and shortcomings of nation-building in Latin America; the contradictions of liberalism; the increasing gap between the elites and the subaltern groups; the integration of the economy into the global system centered in Europe and the United States; urbanization and urban poverty; regional disparities and rural poverty; populism and popular culture; military dictatorship and repression; and contemporary prospects. We will concentrate on the historical trends of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as they have evolved in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil the Andean Countries and Cuba, although other countries will not be excluded in the readings and lecture.

HIST 3290 Traditional East Asia - Dr. Molly Giblin
WEB-Online Asynchronous
Comparative survey of civilizations in India, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, from their beginnings.

HIST 3302 Modern Europe -- TBA
WEB-Online Asynchronous
Surveys the major political, social, economic, and cultural forces that have shaped Modern Europe. Topics include the French, Agricultural, and Industrial Revolutions, imperialism, the Russian Revolution, communism, and fascism, the two world wars, the Holocaust, and the rise and fall of the Cold War.

HIST 3320 Ancient World - TBA
WEB-Online Asynchronous
Survey of civilizations of ancient Egypt and the Near East, Greece, and Rome.

HIST 3863 American Ideas and Culture - Dr. Christine Eisel
WEB-Online Asynchronous
Ideas have a history, too! In this course, we will investigate the ways Americans have thought about essential features of social, economic, and political order. We will pay particular attention to the development of and debate over central ideas of equality, freedom, and individualism that have defined the order of the common life, and how they contributed the notion of an "American" identity.

HIST 3881 African American History – Dr. Beverly Bond
WEB-Online Asynchronous
This course examines African American history from the 17th century (early 1600s) through the first two decades of the 21st century. We will focus on the complex nature of race relations, on the development of African American culture, and on themes, issues, events, and personalities that have contributed to shaping the experiences of African Americans over the past 400 years.

HIST 4020 Internship in History – Dr. Chrystal Goudsouzian
WEB-Online Asynchronous
Check website for information on how to arrange credit-bearing internships; students must be approved and permitted into this course prior to registration.
History Internships

HIST 4321 Greek Experience – Dr. Chrystal Goudsouzian
WEB-Online Asynchronous
This course surveys the history of the Greek peninsula and the greater Aegean from the Bronze Age c. 3000 BCE to the death of Alexander the Great 323 BCE. It traces the political, social, and intellectual developments of the ancient Greeks through literature, art, architecture, philosophy, and material culture. This course pays special attention to Greek daily life and social dynamics. The course will be online and asynchronous; students will need to be able to stream video lectures and/or documentaries each week to complete course requirements.

HIST 4361 Byzantine Empire - Dr. Whitney Kennon
WEB-Online Asynchronous
Byzantine or East Roman Empire from 330 to 1453 and its influence on Slavic, Turkic, and Islamic peoples.

HIST 4461 Europe in the Age of Total War, 1914-1945 -- Dr. Dan Unowsky
WEB-Online Asynchronous
These volatile and violent decades transformed Europe and the world. The Great War, unprecedented in its brutality, swept away the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg empires and gave rise to new (and reborn) "nation-states". The interwar years witnessed some diplomatic, economic, and political successes; however, these short-lived triumphs did not prevent the outbreak of war in 1939. The horrors of World War II and the population transfers and massacres that followed set the stage for the Cold War.

We begin by exploring the causes of the First World War, the experience of war on the battlefield and at the home front, and the Bolshevik Revolution. We will then turn to consider interwar Europe: the Stalinization of the Soviet Union; the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany; economic and political crisis in East Central Europe; politics and society in Great Britain and France; European imperialism; art and culture. The final section of the course focuses on World War II and the Holocaust.

HIST 4831 US Family History – Dr. Sarah Potter
WEB-Online Asynchronous
This course will interrogate the history of diverse American families from the Colonial era to the present, paying particular attention to the roles of gender, race, and class in shaping family life. We will examine changing structures of power and authority within families, and the changing relationship between the family and the state. We will also consider how the emotional meaning ascribed to family relationships has changed over the course of American history. The course will involve reading primary and secondary historical sources, viewing a variety of documentaries and other streaming media, weekly quizzes on the course materials, and weekly class discussions. For undergraduates, there will also be a midterm paper, a final paper, and a final exam. Graduate students will read 3 additional books and write book reviews, and they will write a final paper.

HIST 4851 US Women's History - Dr. Christine Eisel
WEB-Online Asynchronous
This course presents women's experiences throughout American history, from the colonial period to modern times, with an emphasis on women's working, family, sexual, and political lives. In this course, you will explore the ways in which women's public and private lives intersected with, and were often defined by, changing ideals of gender, sexuality, race, and class. Your work in this course, will enhance your ability recognize and develop connections between historical issues and life outside the classroom; improve your ability to think critically and argue effectively; and enhance your ability to examine current issues from a historical perspective. This is an online, asynchronous course.