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History Current Courses

Spring 2024

Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
HIST 117-01 American History 1607 to 1877
Instructor: Emily Pawley
Course Description:
This course covers colonial, revolutionary, and national America through Reconstruction. Include attention to historical interpretation. Multiple sections offered.
10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 311
HIST 118-01 American History 1877 to Present
Instructor: Cooper Wingert
Course Description:
This course covers aspects of political evolution, foreign policy development, industrialization, urbanization, and the expanding roles of 20th century central government. Includes attention to historical interpretation. Multiple sections offered.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 203
HIST 122-01 Middle East since 1750
Instructor: David Commins
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MEST 122-01. Bureaucratic-military reforms of the 19th century in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, European imperialism, regional nationalisms, contemporary autocratic regimes, and the politicization of religion. This course is cross-listed as MEST 122.
11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
DENNY 304
HIST 131-01 Modern Latin American History since 1800
Instructor: Marcelo Borges
Course Description:
Cross-listed with LALC 231-01. Introduction to Latin American history since independence and the consolidation of national states to the recent past. Students explore social, economic, and political developments from a regional perspective as well as specific national examples. This course is cross-listed as LALC 231.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 313
HIST 171-01 African History since 1800
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 171-01. In this course we will study the political, social, economic and ecological forces that have shaped African societies since 1800. We will examine in depth the Asante kingdom in West Africa, the Kongo kingdom in Central Africa, and the Zulu kingdom in Southern Africa. European's colonization of Africa and Africans' responses will be a major focus of the course.This course is cross-listed as AFST 171.
09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 103
HIST 204-01 Introduction to Historical Methodology
Instructor: Evan Young
Course Description:
Local archives and libraries serve as laboratories for this project-oriented seminar that introduces beginning majors to the nature of history as a discipline, historical research techniques, varied forms of historical evidence and the ways in which historians interpret them, and the conventions of historical writing. Prerequisite: one previous course in history.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
LIBRY ARCHCLS
HIST 204-02 Introduction to Historical Methodology
Instructor: Marcelo Borges
Course Description:
Local archives and libraries serve as laboratories for this project-oriented seminar that introduces beginning majors to the nature of history as a discipline, historical research techniques, varied forms of historical evidence and the ways in which historians interpret them, and the conventions of historical writing. Prerequisite: one previous course in history.
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
LIBRY ARCHCLS
HIST 206-01 American Environmental History
Instructor: Emily Pawley
Course Description:
Examines the interaction between humans and the natural environment in the history of North America. Explores the problem of sustainable human uses of the North America environment form the pre-colonial period to the present. Also serves as an introduction to the subfield of environmental history, which integrates evidence from various scientific disciplines with traditional documentary and oral sources. Topics include: American Indian uses of the environment, colonial frontiers, agricultural change, industrialization, urbanization, westward expansion, the Progressive-Era conservation movement, changes in lifestyle and consumption including their increasingly global impact, shifts in environmental policy, and the rise of the post-World War II environmental movement.
11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
DENNY 311
HIST 211-01 US Elections
Instructor: Matthew Pinsker
Course Description:
This upper-level survey course will examine how American campaigns and elections have evolved since the colonial era. Students will learn about revolutionary changes in voting eligibility, major shifts in campaigning practices, including fundraising and advertising, and will study certain pivotal elections and their consequences for American democracy. Course assignments will include exams, multi-media blog posts and traditional research papers.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 211
HIST 211-02 Race and Second Wave Feminism the U.S.
Instructor: Say Burgin
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 202-06.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 304
HIST 213-01 Fashion-Backward: Clothed Bodies since the Renaissance
Instructor: Regina Sweeney
Course Description:
Part of the Fashioning the Body, Shaping the Nation Mosaic. This course will investigate the history of clothing and the development of fashion from the Renaissance into the twentieth century, looking mainly at Europe. Clothing has been intertwined with vital elements of society including definitions of class, gender, race, and national identities. We will explore the role apparel played in courtly consumption, how industrialization transformed how garments were produced, and the rise of fashion houses. The class will also look at representations of clothing and the body - whether in art, advertising or propaganda posters - keeping in mind that the body itself has a history of important changes, for example, in average heights and a dramatic increase in life expectancy and well-being. We will also examine what views of the ideal body were in different historical periods. This course can be taken on its own or as part of the spring 2024 mosaic, "Fashioning the Body, Shaping the Nation: Fashion through the lens of History, Culture, Gender, and Race."
10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 303
HIST 215-01 History of Madness
Instructor: Kendall Thompson
Course Description:
This course will explore the history of madness and the scientific disciplines of psychology and psychiatry. We will explore madness chronologically, beginning in the eighteenth century and ending in the present. But we will also take time to examine madness thematically, examining how race, gender, sexuality, and other factors impacted who was deemed mad and sane. How has the treatment of the mad changed in history? Who defined psychiatric illnesses and how were these definitions shaped? How have social and scientific approaches to the study of madness shaped the treatment and perception of the mad?
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
LIBRY E. ASIAN
HIST 217-01 History of Medicine and the Body in East Asia
Instructor: Evan Young
Course Description:
Cross-listed with EASN 206-01. This course is an introduction to the history of medicine in East Asia. We will begin by exploring the theoretical and practical underpinnings of classical Chinese medicine, which was the foundation of healing practices in premodern China, Korea, and Japan. We will then move on to trace the introduction of modern bio-medicine and the eventual reemergence of "Traditional Chinese Medicine" as an alternative style of therapy in the 20th century. We will also consider a wide range of topics that have generated compelling intellectual dialogue, including the relationship between doctors and patients and between medicine and the state.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 103
HIST 248-01 The American Revolution
Instructor: Christopher Bilodeau
Course Description:
This course will focus on the period between 1763 and the first decade of the 1800s in North America, a time of tumultuous upheaval, intellectual ferment, and sporadic but intense violence which culminated in the creation of the United States. It will cover topics such as the expulsion of the French from North America, the rise of the a bourgeois public sphere, colonial contestation over sovereignty with Great Britain, the role of the military and violence in the new nation, republicanism, and the immediate ramifications of independence on a wide variety of groups within North America, such as women, American Indians, and free and slave African Americans.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 313
HIST 272-01 The Atlantic Slave Trade and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1850
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-04 and LALC 272-01. During several centuries of European colonization in the New World, a thriving slave trade forced the emigration of millions of Africans across the Atlantic-an immigration far larger than the simultaneous immigration of Europeans to the same regions. We will address not only the workings of the slave trade on both sides (and in the middle) of the Atlantic, but also the cultural communities of West and West-Central Africa and encounters and exchanges in the new slave societies of North and South America. Through examination of work processes, social orders, cultural strategies and influences, and ideas about race and geography, across time and in several regions, we will explore the crucial roles of Africans in the making of the Atlantic world. This course is cross-listed as LALC 272. Offered every two years.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 103
HIST 284-01 Ecological History of Africa
Instructor: Robin Crigler
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-05. This course provides an introduction to the ecological history of Africa. We will focus in some detail on demography, the domestication of crops and animals, climate, the spread of New World crops (maize, cassava, cocoa), and disease environments from the earliest times to the present. Central to our study will be the idea that Africa's landscapes are the product of human action. Therefore, we will examine case studies of how people have interacted with their environments. African ecology has long been affected indirectly by decisions made at a global scale. Thus we will explore Africa's engagement with imperialism and colonization and the global economy in the twentieth century. The course ends with an examination of contemporary tensions between conservation and economic development. Offered every two years.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 103
HIST 288-01 Civil War - Reconstruction
Instructor: Matthew Pinsker
Course Description:
A study of the political, economic, social, and intellectual aspects of 19th century America from 1848 to 1877. Attention is given to the causes and course of the Civil War and evaluates the results of Reconstruction.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TR
DENNY 112
HIST 311-01 Natives and Boarding Schools in North America
Instructor: Christopher Bilodeau
Course Description:
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, native populations were subjected to numerous tactics that attempted to eradicate native society and culture out of existence. Indian boarding schoolsstarting with the flagship Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879were formed throughout the United States and Canada as an educational arm of this cultural eradication. This upper-level course will examine both the history of the boarding school project in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and reflect on its impact on native peoples today. We will look extensively at the historiography of the boarding schoolswhat historians have written about the topicas well as primary materials from Dickinson Colleges Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center to both familiarize ourselves with the subject and write our own research works on this fascinating and disturbing moment in American history.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
DENNY 204
HIST 311-02 Cold War America
Instructor: Matthew Pinsker
Course Description:
This advanced history topics course will examine how US national security policy evolved during the Cold War from 1945 to 1991, exploring how fears of the Soviets and global communism shaped American attitudes at home and abroad. Students will also focus on some key interpretative debates regarding the legacy of the Cold War era.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 211
HIST 317-01 Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japanese History
Instructor: Evan Young
Course Description:
Cross-listed with EASN 306-01 and WGSS 302-03. This course is an exploration of how sexuality and gender have been continually redefined and experienced throughout modern Japanese history. We will analyze the changes Japanese society underwent from the 19th century to the present, paying particular attention to transformations as well as continuities in eroticism, same-sex love, family structure, and gender roles. A key theme of the course is the socially-constructed nature of gender norms and how women and men frequently transgressed feminine and masculine ideals, a theme that we will explore through both primary sources in translation and secondary scholarship. Building upon in-class workshops and a series of short-essay assignments, the final goal of the course will be to produce a paper that analyzes the development of this new and exciting field of history.
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, R
LIBRY ALDEN
HIST 371-01 The Arab-Israeli Conflict
Instructor: David Commins
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MEST 231-01. Part of the Globally Integrated Program in Israel and Palestine. A study of conflict through four phases: the early stages of the Zionist movement and its impact in Ottoman Palestine to 1917; Zionist immigration and settlement and Arab reaction during the Mandate period; the creation of Israel and its wars with the Arab states to 1973; and the rise of a Palestinian Arab nationalist movement and the challenges it poses to Arab states and Israel. This course is cross-listed as MEST 231.
12:30 PM-01:20 PM, MWF
DENNY 203
HIST 404-01 Solidarity
Instructor: Say Burgin
Course Description:
An examination of the historiography of a major topic, culminating in a substantial research paper based in significant part on the interpretation of primary sources. Prerequisite: 204 and 304 (or its equivalent), or permission of instructor.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 303
HIST 500-01 Fashioning the Body, Shaping the Nation Mosaic
Instructor: Amy Farrell, Regina Sweeney, Nicoletta Marini Maio
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 500-01, FMST 500-01, AMST 500-01 and ITAL 500-01. Permission of Instructor Required. Part of the Fashioning the Body, Shaping the Nation Mosaic.
03:00 PM-04:30 PM, M
BOSLER 222
HIST 500-02 Legal Archival Research: Dred Scott
Instructor: Say Burgin
Course Description:

HIST 500-03 Youth Mobilization and Politics in Latin America
Instructor: Marcelo Borges
Course Description:

HIST 550-01 Music & History: Japanese-American Women Performers in the Music & Entertainment Industry Post-WWII
Instructor: Regina Sweeney
Course Description:

HIST 550-02 Ritual Clothing and Artifacts in the Renaissance
Instructor: Regina Sweeney
Course Description: