History Seminars 2025–26 (Note: List is subject to change)
Fall 2025
HIS 314 The U.S. Civil War in History and Memory
Students in this seminar will complete major research projects about the U.S. Civil War and/or its presence in public memory. The Civil War was a major watershed event, and students will study a number of important recent trends and debates in its historiography before defining their own topics of research. We will consider new approaches to analyzing the military, economic, social, gender, and racial dimensions of the war as well as topics such as popular culture, geography, immigration, and transnational history. In addition to studying the war itself, students will also consider how Civil War commemorations continued to shape U.S. history and culture during Reconstruction and beyond. Prerequisites: HIS 100 course and one 200-level U.S. History course. 4 credits. PURCELL
HIS 334 Decolonization
In the decades following the Second World War, more than a quarter of the world's land mass and population were converted from colonies into nation states with surprising speed. But did the end of empire constitute a meaningful transformation or merely the change of a flag? And was the transfer of power as orderly as the imperial powers liked to claim? In this seminar we will explore the timing, causality, character, experience, and impact of the postwar crumbling of the imperial world order. Common texts will investigate recent debates about the more violent clashes over British decolonization in South Asia, East Africa, and the British Isles; students will then develop research topics in these areas or (provided they have the appropriate academic background and language skills) in other national, colonial, or geographic contexts. Prerequisites: HIS-100 and either 235, 236, 237, 261, 262, 266, 295 (Israel & Palestine History), 295 (Reckoning with the Past in Modern Africa), or 295 (Gender in the Indian Subcontinent). PREVOST
History 336 The Metropolis
This seminar takes as its starting point the phenomenon of radical urbanization in the 19th and 20th centuries. Through the lens of comparative case studies in and beyond Europe, we consider the unintended consequences of these unprecedented and unpredictable growth spurts. How did life in cities upend traditional social roles and rules? What kinds of new possibilities — physical, psychological, imaginative — did previously isolated and often marginalized people explore? How did city dwellers build new communities and create new identities? Working collaboratively, students develop research projects centered in any urban context(s) since the 18th century. Prerequisites: HIS 100 course and one 200-level history course. 4 credits. MAYNARD
Spring 2026
History 324.01 Illicit Medicine
In the U.S., laws and licensing bodies have regulated medicine since the early nineteenth century. Looking at examples of medicinal practices and products that have been or currently are considered “illicit” permits us to see how this regulation has been shaped by broader cultural, social, and political factors. This seminar examines the histories of illicit medicines in the United States as windows into national–and sometimes global–history. Students will complete a substantial research project using a combination of primary and secondary sources. Prerequisites: at least one of the following: HIS 223; GWS/HIS 295: Museums, Medicine, Body; GWS/HIS 295: Gender, Race, and Medicine; ANT 210; ANT 212; SOC 265; ECN 366. 4 credits. LEWIS
History 342.01 Stalinism
This seminar will examine the political, social, and cultural history of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, with a particular focus on the 1930s. The first half of the course will feature a series of common readings on topics such as the rise of Stalin's dictatorship, the Great Terror of the 1930s, and the drive to collectivize Soviet agriculture and industrialize the economy; we'll discuss the nature of everyday life and social identity under Stalin, look at the impact of propaganda and revolutionary ideology on the values and mindset of the population, and debate whether Stalinism represented the continuation of the revolution or a divergence from its ideals. After looking at a set of representative primary sources (such as oral histories, memoirs, and diaries), students will then produce a research paper in the second half of the semester, delving into some aspect of Soviet society and politics under Stalin. Prerequisite: HIS-100 and HIS-242 or 244. 4 credits. COHN
History 35X History of a Book: Said’s Orientalism
This seminar posits Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) as historical text and historical phenomenon of enduring influence. What are the main precepts of Orientalism—the intellectual tradition, scholarly discipline, and cultural discourse “by which European culture was able to manage [the Middle East] politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively”? How did it collude with political and imperial power? Within and against which historical contexts did the book emerge—i.e., an America grappling with economic adversity and a rising tide of anti-liberal politics, and a Middle East increasingly embroiled in civil and international conflict? Where does it fall within the larger intellectual history of decolonization in the second half of the twentieth century? How and why did the book redefine the study of the Middle East in the United States, for better and for worse? How was the book critically received by different thinkers? These are some of the questions this seminar will explore, taking Said’s Orientalism as the centerpiece of a historical investigation spanning the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The aim is to encourage students to think critically about the exteriority and sociality of books and to appreciate them as products of history and catalysts for historical change.
Prerequisites: HIS 100 course and one 200-level history course (preference for HIS 266 or 200-level courses on any aspect or period of Islamic, Middle East, or global south history) 4 credits. ALMOHSEN