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History Current Courses

Spring 2025

Course Code Title/Instructor Meets
HIST 107-01 Revolutions Political, Artistic, Economic, Social, and Scientific: Europe in the Last 250 Years
Instructor: Karl Qualls
Course Description:
Europe in the last few centuries has experienced developments that have transformed the entire globe, for better and worse. Political, technological, economic, and ideological innovations have led to imperialism, two world wars, and the Cold War that stretched far beyond Europe. European innovations like the Industrial Revolution created new work methods and goods that made lives easier while at the same time creating classes and class divides, booms and busts, cruel child labor, and of course the fossil fuel pollution that has led to climate change. New classes led to new political philosophies (e.g. liberalism, socialism, anarchism, fascism, feminism, etc.) that found resonance around the globe. Museums and concert halls around the world feature Picasso and Stravinsky, Van Gogh and Chopin, Banksy and Black Sabbath. Evolution, psychoanalysis, and quantum physics have spread far beyond the continent, but so too has scientific racism and eugenics and the modern genocides that they have catalyzed. This course will study European innovations that have had profound effects far beyond the continents borders.
08:30 AM-09:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 203
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 313
HIST 118-01 American History 1877 to Present
Instructor: Matthew Pinsker
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 317
HIST 120-01 History of East Asia from Ancient Times to the Present
Instructor: Evan Young
Course Description:
Cross-listed with EASN 120-01. This course explores the diverse and interrelated histories of the region currently composed of China, Korea, and Japan, over the past two thousand years. We begin by studying the technologies and systems of thought that came to be shared across East Asia, including written languages, philosophies of rule, and religions. Next, we examine periods of major upheaval and change, such as the rise of warrior governments, the Mongol conquests, and engagement with the West. The course concludes by tracing the rise and fall of the Japanese empire and the development of the modern nation states that we see today.This course is cross-listed as EASN 120.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 104
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 203
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 204-01 Introduction to Historical Methodology
Instructor: Matthew Pinsker
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-02:45 PM, MR
STERN 12
HIST 204-02 Introduction to Historical Methodology
Instructor: David Commins
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
DENNY 203
HIST 205-01 Public History
Instructor: Marcelo Borges
Course Description:
Public history explores the ways history is put to work in the world. Public historianswho work in a range of institutionsshare a commitment to making history relevant and useful in the public sphere beyond the walls of the traditional classroom. Sites of public history include educational spaces, archives, and, at times, contested places: battlefields, museums, documentaries, historical societies, national and state parks, local oral history projects, and sites of historic preservation. Public history is firmly rooted in the methods of the discipline of history, but with an added emphasis on the skills and perspectives useful in public history practice and on the ethics of listening to multiple publics. The term public history emerged in the 1970s in the United States with an emphasis on ideals of social justice, political activism, and community engagement. In other parts of the world, public history is often known as Heritage Studies. In this course, students will learn about the evolution of the field of public history, discuss best practices and practical challenges within the field, and will culminate the learning process through work on a public history project in conjunction with the Cumberland County Historical Society.
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DENNY 212
HIST 211-02 Food and American Environment
Instructor: Emily Pawley
Course Description:
This class examines the ways that the culture and politics of food have reshaped North American landscapes and social relations from colonial to modern times. We will explore, for example, how the new taste for sweetness fueled the creation of plantations worked by enslaved, the ways that the distribution of frozen meat helped build cities and clear rangeland, and the ways that the eating of fresh fruit came to depend on both a new population of migrant laborers and a new regime of toxic chemicals. Other topics will include catastrophes such as the Dustbowl, the controversial transformations of the Green Revolution, and the modern debates about the obesity epidemic.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 303
HIST 211-03 The Civil Rights Movement: North and South
Instructor: Say Burgin
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-02. The post-World War II movement for African Americans' civil rights is often considered solely in terms of Southern-based groups and events. This class will explode the myth that the civil rights movement was confined to the South by exploring the national character of inequalities, segregation and the movement for Black freedom. With special attention to the years 1945-1975, this class will consider how segregation formed differently in Birmingham versus Alabama, how the fight for school de-segregation included battles in both Little Rock and New York, and how gender shaped protest politics and tactics of the movement across the nation. Key topics will include Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and ideas of leadership; key campaigns in Birmingham, New York, Detroit and elsewhere; important groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and how ideas about masculinity and femininity shaped the movement. An important thread throughout the class will be understanding how racial inequalities came to be "baked into" the structures and systems that shape life in the United States - from housing to education to employment. We'll learn about structural racism through the prism of Black resistance to it.
10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
ALTHSE 109
HIST 211-04 Federal Indian Law and Policy
Instructor: John Truden
Course Description:
Cross-listed with LAWP 290-01. A historical survey of United States policies and laws directed at Indigenous communities from 1776 to the present. Students should come away from this course with a basic literacy in foundational concepts, treaties, laws, litigation, major policy periods, and federal government entities that shape Native American and Alaska Native communities. Simultaneously, this course will explore how Indigenous peoples have engaged with, countered, and adapted to federal initiatives and institutions since the inception of the United States.
12:30 PM-01:20 PM, MWF
DENNY 311
HIST 211-05 Latinx Political Histories
Instructor: Andy Aguilera
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AMST 200-04, LALC 200-02 and POSC 290-03. Since the 2016 election, the Latine/x voting base for Donald J. Trump has been a prominent discussion within the U.S. media. Such coverage broadly tackles the supposed rise of the conservative Latine/x or Hispanic vote with surprise. Their liberal or conservative politics, however, are a product of history, not nature as a leading historian has recently asserted. This course traces this trajectory to examine Latine/x political histories since the nineteenth century to the present. Beginning with Mexican politics in Texas and California during and after conquest, this course aims to highlight the diverse political activities and coalitions of Latine/xs in United States history. Likewise, the course will raise questions on how politics informs notions of identity and sense-of-belonging in the United States. Moreover, we will also examine the transnational and transhemispheric elements that help shape their politics. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the diverse politics that unite and divide Latine/xs across time and space.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 303
HIST 211-06 Atomic Peril: The Manhattan Project and the Atomic Bomb
Instructor: Kendall Thompson
Course Description:
This class will explore the science and the history of the atomic bomb and examine the earliest tensions and fears surrounding its use. This includes studying and understanding the science behind fission and fusion bombs alongside how the scientists developing these weapons grappled with the consequences. Beginning with the Manhattan Project, we will use magazines, films, newspapers, books, and more to explore how scientists, politicians, and the public understood and feared nuclear weapons. How did every day actions and habits change to reflect the anxiety during the Cold War? How has that history shaped how we treat nuclear science and nuclear weapons?
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
LIBRY ALDEN
HIST 213-01 Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe
Instructor: Regina Sweeney
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MEMS 200-02. This course will explore the everyday culture of early modern Europe including careful consideration of how people made sense of their world. It will range from examining religious rituals and objects such as relics to natural magic and the popular science that came with the Scientific Revolution. We will also examine the relationship between commoners and the elites while looking at how ideas spread whether by oral culture, images or the new technology of printing.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 311
HIST 215-01 Fortress Conservation: National Parks and Indigenous Displacement in the US and Global South
Instructor: Tom Robertson
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ENST 303-03. Scholars have labelled conservation parks that involve the displacement of native peoples and the use of the military to patrol park boundaries "fortress conservation." Examples of fortress conservation can be found in U.S. history as well as in contemporary conservation activities, particularly in the Global South. The first part of this course will focus on examples of fortress conservation in the US and in Africa and Asia. But a key focus of the course will be a class project working with Nepal's Chitwan Tharu Culture Museum (at their request) to make a display on "parks and people" for their museum, which borders Chitwan National Park. Part of the exhibit will focus on parks/people around the world and in South Asia, but part would focus on park/people issues specific to Nepal, particularly Chitwan National Park, which borders the museum. Students will work in groups. They will examine primary materials from interviews and historical documents but also will be able to do Zoom interviews with community members and NGO workers in Nepal.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
KAUF 187
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
EASTC 301
HIST 247-01 Early American History
Instructor: Christopher Bilodeau
Course Description:
An examination of North American history from the earliest contacts between European and American peoples to the eve of the American Revolution. Particular attention is devoted to the interplay of Indian, French, Spanish, and English cultures, to the rise of the British to a position of dominance by 1763, and to the internal social and political development of the Anglo-American colonies.
01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 203
HIST 254-01 Revolution, War, and Daily Life in Modern Russia
Instructor: Karl Qualls
Course Description:
Cross-listed with RUSS 254-01. Taught in English. This course explores Russia's attempts to forge modernity since the late 19th century. Students will explore the rise of socialism and communism, centralization of nearly all aspects of life (arts, politics, economics, and even sexual relations), and opposition to the terror regime's attempts to remake life and the post-Soviet state's attempts to overcome Russia's past.This course is cross-listed as RUSS 254.
11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
DENNY 211
HIST 284-01 Ecological History of Africa
Instructor: Jeremy Ball
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 220-03. 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.
09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 203
HIST 311-01 Violence and Colonialism
Instructor: Christopher Bilodeau
Course Description:
This course will place, in a comparative perspective, the key role of violence in European colonization of numerous parts of the world. Three geographical locations will be analyzed (North America, South America, and Africa) and four imperial powers (English, French, Spanish and German) over the period of the 16th through 20th centuries. The goal is not a comprehensive look at the roles of violence in colonialism, but an episodic analysis of the ways in which violence manifests itself in colonial situations across time and space. Topics will include (among others) theories of violence, the origins of colonial violence, the roles of violence in colonizing versus colonized societies, overt resistance to colonial domination, and the power and persistence of symbolic violence.
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
DENNY 303
HIST 311-02 Incarceration, Policing and "Crime" in Modern US History
Instructor: Say Burgin
Course Description:
Cross-listed with AFST 320-05. The United States of America imprisons more of its residents than almost any other country in the world. How did mass incarceration come to define this country? In this class, we will explore this question by looking at the multiple ways that the US policed and incarcerated various groups throughout the 20th century. We will pay special attention to the ways that lawmakers, police and the courts have historically targeted African Americans, but we will also study how other people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants, and workers were criminalized. A major learning goal for this class will be understanding that "deviance" and "crime" were constructed categories. We will consider how the meaning of these categories shifted over time and why. Major topics will include chain gang prisoner exploitation; eugenics, the psychiatric creation of "feeble-mindedness," and asylum incarceration; the criminalization of sex work, interracial relationships, labor organizing, and political dissent; jingoism, a "new" Yellow Peril, and Japanese internment; and outlawing drug use and mass incarceration. To gain a deeper understanding of how the criminal courts actually work, students on this class will participate in a court-watching program, for which everyone will receive training.
09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
ALTHSE 109
HIST 317-01 Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japanese History
Instructor: Evan Young
Course Description:
Cross-listed with EASN 306-01 and WGSS 302-02. 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, W
DENNY 303
HIST 377-01 Consumerism, Nationalism and Gender
Instructor: Regina Sweeney
Course Description:
Cross-listed with WGSS 302-03. This reading seminar examines the development of consumerism and nationalism in Europe and America beginning in the late 18th century and continuing on into the post-WWII era - from American Revolutionary boycotts to French fast food establishments. We will look for overlaps or polarities between the movements and the way gender interacted with both of them. Students may be surprised at the gendered aspects of both movements. We will consider, for example, the historical development of the image of women loving to shop, and we will study propaganda from the two world wars with men in uniform and women on the "home front." Our readings will include both promoters and critics of each movement. Offered every two or three years.
09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 311
HIST 404-01 Nationalism
Instructor: Jeremy Ball
Course Description:
What is nationalism? Is there something innate about the nation, or is it an idea constructed by politicians? What is the role of culture? And what about the rise of the subnational-the claims of local, regional, and ethnic minorities? This seminar will examine theory and case studies, including the Palestinian, U.S., African, and Afrikaner examples, to reach a conclusion.
01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DENNY 203
HIST 500-01 Advanced Studies in Modern Japanese Military History
Instructor: Evan Young
Course Description:

HIST 500-02 Topics in Medieval History: Women, Religion, and their Convergence
Instructor: Regina Sweeney
Course Description:

HIST 500-03 The Whiskey Rebellion and Carlisle
Instructor: Christopher Bilodeau
Course Description:

HIST 500-04 Moral Reform and the Second Great Awakening
Instructor: Christopher Bilodeau
Course Description:

HIST 500-05 Dickinson Tree Histories
Instructor: Emily Pawley
Course Description:

HIST 550-01 Carlisle and Residential Segregation in the Early 20th Century
Instructor: Say Burgin
Course Description:

HIST 550-02 Haunting Liberdade: Japanese Discrimination During WWII
Instructor: Marcelo Borges
Course Description:

HIST 550-03 The Pennsylvania-Maryland Border Conflict
Instructor: Christopher Bilodeau
Course Description:

HIST 550-04 Studies in Native Peoples, 18th and 19th Centuries
Instructor: Christopher Bilodeau
Course Description: