Fall 2021 Undergraduate Courses

Please note: Course offerings subject to change.

HIST 11100: World History to 1500 
Instructor: Melson (Asynchronous)
This is a survey of the history of human civilization from the end of the Stone Age to 1500 CE. The course examines the concept of civilization, the emergence of the earliest civilizations, and the distinctive features of ancient cultures, societies and governments. Other topics include the expansion of contacts among the early centers of urban society, and the emergence of civilizations in what had originally been peripheral regions. Particular attention is paid to the development of the religious and intellectual traditions of several classical civilizations, and the influence these traditions have had on later societies. The course ends roughly around 1500, on the eve of the tremendous changes that came about in the relationship between Europe and the rest of the world as a result of the European explorations and conquests that began with the voyages of Columbus. 
Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group A).

HIST 11300 (W): 20th Century World History
Instructor: Bhagavan (Hybrid/In-Person)
This course is designed to introduce students to major themes in the world’s history during the twentieth century. Some of the questions explored during the term include: What are the drivers of integration and unification? What forces have been divisive? What have been major fault lines of conflict? What visions have advocated peace and justice, and in what way?
No prerequisites.
Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 12100: Early Modern Europe 1500-1815
Instructor: Melson (Hybrid/In-Person)
The early modern period saw the Renaissance, the Reformations, the Age of Discoveries, the invention of print, the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Contemporary observers interpreted these events as harbingers of new times, and speculated how society should or will be organized in the future. This course reads the major transformations of early modern Europe through the lens of these utopian visions. As we will see, the expectations of contemporaries were often not realized. Yet their writings reveal how scholars, priests, newswriters and ordinary people experienced and hoped to shape the world they were living in.
Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group D).

HIST 12200: 19th and 20th Century Europe (W)
Instructors: Mehilli (Hybrid/In-person); Spritzer (Synchronous); Spritzer (Hybrid/In Person)
History of modern Europe between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, covering Western, Eastern Europe, and Russia. The focus of this course is upon political history but topics related to economy, culture and the arts are included as well. We start with the French Revolution of 1789 and complete the course with the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union in 1991. We will analyze how the concept of Europe changed over time; how colonies turned into nation states, and how these nations transformed during the modern era; why, how, and when some states adopted totalitarian models; and how colonialism and totalitarianism came to an end in Europe after WWII. Themes include: the French Revolution and Revolutionary Wars, romanticism, liberalism, socialism and Marxism, 1848, empire and nation states, European imperialism, WWI, interwar radicalism, Nazism, fascism, and Stalinism, WWII, the Holocaust, cold war, European Union, the collapse of communism, and the creation of a new Europe. Lectures will be supplemented by weekly readings from the textbook and primary sources. Students will learn to work with primary sources and incorporate them into historical analysis.
Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group D).
Writing intensive course (W)

HIST 15100: United States from the Colonial Era to the Civil War (W)
Instructor: Reynolds (Asynchronous); Woltering (Asynchronous) Gelfand (Hybrid/In-Person); Dresser (In-Person); Tantirungkij (Synchronous)
This course will cover U.S. History broadly from the early period of European settlement to the conclusion of the Civil War. The course will include at least one focused study of a particular topic or event from this period.
Writing Intensive Course (W)
Fullfills Hunter Core Requirement: US Experience in its Diversity

HIST 15200: United States from the Civil War to the Present (W)
Instructors: Hurewitz (Hybrid/In-Person); Woltering (Synchronous); Rosenberg (Asynchronous); Woltering (Asynchronous); Welt (Synchronous); Kocurek (Synchronous); Ranlet (Synchronous); Bellows (Synchronous)
This course surveys some of the major developments in United States history from 1865 to the 1970s. Among the subjects covered are the struggles for justice of African Americans and women; the expanding scope and power of the federal government; and the increasing engagement of the United States with the world.
Writing intensive course (W)
Fullfills Hunter Core Requirement: US Experience in its Diversity

HIST 20800: History of the Jews
Instructor: Ruben (In Person)
The History of the Jews surveys almost 4000 years in one semester. Beginning with the origins of the Jewish people in the biblical period, it will look at Jewish identity as it evolved over time. We will examine Jewish life in the Greco-Roman world, the Medieval diaspora communities of Babylonia, Spain and Northern Europe. After the expulsions from much of Christian Europe by the end of the 15th century, Jews made new homes in the Ottoman Empire, Eastern Europe and eventually in Amsterdam and the New World. We will examine the gradual secularization of European society that allowed for a partial reintegration of Jews into Western Europe and the radical impact this process had on Judaism itself.Finally earning emancipation, thoroughly acculturated Western Jews faced new challenges with the rise of Modern anti-Semitism. These virulent new trend culminated in the Holocaust. In its aftermath came the rise of the State of Israel and the remarkable growth of the American Jewish community.What were the key beliefs and practices that defined the Jewish people in each period? What did Jews share or learn from their neighbors during periods of cultural openness? How did they contrast their identity with those of their neighbors?This overview offers an opportunity to understand the continuities and discontinuities that characterized the Jewish people over this long history.

HIST 25013 (W): History of Humanitarian Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa
Instructor: Rosenthal (Synchronous)
What does it mean to give ‘humanitarian aid’? Who receives aid and why? This course is designed to offer students a historical understanding of humanitarian action that, while centered geographically in sub-Saharan Africa, is applicable in a global framework. Beginning with the evolution of the concepts of ‘humanitarian’ as well as ‘aid,’ we will explore the motivations behind humanitarian endeavors through the era of the slave trade, colonialism and the present. We will also examine how terms such as ‘refugees,’ ‘peacekeeping,’ ‘famine,’ and ‘gender,’ have evolved in humanitarian discourse, and the consequences of these processes for aid endeavors. Throughout, questions will be posed regarding the interactions between humanitarian aid, international relations, exploitation, and violence. The focus of this course is both local and global—we will analyze international humanitarian policy as well as the effects and perceptions of humanitarian aid within different African localities. We will consider how notions of power and objectivity affect both the site of aid inception as well as implementation. Students having completed the course will acquire the skills to think critically about humanitarian aid and its role in local, regional and global contexts
Writing intensive course (W).

Hist 25015  Rabbis, Radicals, and Racketeers: Jewish New York, 1695 to the present
Instructor: Welt (In-Person)
How have Jews shaped the history of New York? As we will see in this course, New York’s Jews profoundly shaped the city’s experience during the American Revolution, the debate over slavery and the Civil War, large-scale immigration and machine politics during the Gilded Age, New Deal governance during the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement and today’s modern urban social debates. This course will survey the Jewish history of New York City with a particular emphasis on their political and cultural impact while tracing the rise of America’s largest metropolis over three centuries.

HIST 25018 (W): History of Cuba
Instructor: John (In-Person)
In this course we will study key aspects of Cuba's history, culture and politics. From pre-Conquest times to Columbus' "discovery," the development of a slave society on the basis of plantation agriculture, and the island's increasing centrality to the world sugar trade in the wake of the Haitian Revolution, the story of Cuba was a vital part of the development of colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. Yet Cuba was also an exception to the pattern of Latin American independence, remaining within Spain's empire three quarters of a century longer than other colonies. Convulsive independence and anti-slavery struggles gave way to new patterns of domination, again with a wide-ranging regional impact, with the Spanish-American War. The mass labor and student upsurge of the 1930s and consolidation of the Batista regime prepared the scene for the Cuban Revolution, which profoundly affected all of Latin America as well as U.S. approaches to the hemisphere. The course will end with a look at ongoing shifts in U.S.-Cuba relations.
Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 25021 –Tradition and Transformation: Russian and East European Jewry, 1825-1991
Instructor: Casper (Hybrid/In Person)
From the mid-19th century through the end of the Second World War the majority of the world's Jewish population lived in the contested borderlands that encompass much of today's Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states. Though many key aspects of Jewish life remained constant during this period, it was also marked by a degree of dynamism previously unseen as Jews living in the Romanov and Habsburg empires and their successor states responded in multifarious ways to the challenges facing and developments within their communities. This course will trace the socio-economic, political, and cultural trajectories of a people whose past has often been obscured by the penumbra of Nazi genocide. Topics to be addressed will include, but are not limited to, the decline in religious authorities' influence; economic niches; anti-Jewish policies and pogroms under the tsars; emigration; the rise of political movements (including socialism, communism, diaspora nationalism, and Zionism); linguistic controversies; the effects of the First World War; minority status in newly-independent interwar states; communal responses to the Holocaust; Soviet state antisemitism; and the refusenik movement of the 1970s-90s.

HIST 25022 Gender in Modern Jewish History, 1492 to the present; 
Instructor: Welt (In Person)
Gender has a played a pivotal role in the major turning points of modern Jewish history. This course will explore how Jewish men and women, informed by intra-Jewish debates and interactions with the empires in which they lived, constructed the gendered norms of the larger Jewish world. This course will pay particular attention to the ways in which Jewish women carved out spaces in politics, economic activity, and religious life across the Jewish diaspora in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Students will also grapple with how Jewish masculinity has been conceived and performed during different moments of modern Jewish history. As the course probes Jewish encounters with the rise of global capitalism, the forging of imperial networks and nation-states, mass migrations, and Zionist state-building, students will learn how gender integrally shaped the modern Jewish experience.

HIST 25081 (W): American Indian History
Instructor: Gelfand (Hybrid/In-Person)
This course examines Native American history in what is now the United States from pre-Columbian times through the end of the nineteenth century. Topics include cultural diversity in North America prior to European colonization; the dynamics of early Indian-European encounters; accommodation and resistance to Euro-American expansion in the eighteenth century; forced Indian Removal by the United States; and nineteenth-century struggles for the Great Plains and American West. Native American agency, cultural persistence and change, survival strategies, and perseverance of tribal identities are key themes of the course.
Writing Intensive Course. (W)
For History Majors: Counts as US

HIST 27100: Early History of Latin America
Instructor: John (In-Person)
This course provides an overview of the early political, economic, cultural and social history of Latin America (1490s to 1820s). The course encompasses the history of Spanish America as well as Portuguese Brazil, but emphasis will be on the former. Among the topics covered are pre-Columbian indigenous societies in the Americas; the personal, regional and transnational impact of the encounter between European, African and Native peoples; evolving land, labor and production arrangements; Christian evangelization and the role of the Catholic Church in colonial society; the character and reach of imperial authority; racial, ethnic, caste and gender relations; popular resistance and protest; and the ideological and material underpinnings of emergent independence movements in the early 19th century.

HIST 28900: Africa in the 19th & 20th Centuries
Instructor: Rosenthal (Synchronous)
This course focuses on major debates in African history and studies.  We will examine the nature of pre-colonial state formation and the role of African polities within the trans-Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades.  We will explore the paradoxical role of colonizers, who ruled efficiently, haphazardly, with greed and brutality, and sometimes with compassionate neglect-frequently exhibiting all of the above within different regions of the same colony or within the same colony at different times.  Throughout we will seek to explore how different African people imagined the changes their societies experienced, how they perceived of their options and constraints and the processes through which they imagined alternate futures.

HIST 29000: History Practicum
Instructors: Hett (In-Person); Belsky (Hybrid/In-Person)
A writing intensive seminar intended to help history majors develop their skills as historians. Each section of this course may focus on a different historical theme and so students will encounter different readings and topics. But in all sections of this course students will learn to locate, critically assess, and interpret primary sources, both textual and non-textual; analyze and critique a range of secondary sources for both methodological and historiographical purposes; and develop, draft, and revise a strong and effective research paper by learning how to construct a thesis, organize a paper, devise a bibliography, and cite sources following the Chicago Manual of Style. 
Writing Intensive Course. (W) 
Prereq: ENGL 12000; 6 cr in history, and must have declared a History Major.

HIST 31700: History of the American City
Instructor: Haverty-Stacke (Synchronous)
In this course, we will explore the relationship between the growth, use, and regulation of urban spaces, and the creation and transformation of gendered, class-based, ethnic, racial, religious, and civic identities in the United States from the colonial period to the present. By understanding the city as both a physical landscape and a human community we will be able to examine the process of the social and historical construction of identity there, something perhaps less easily visible than the construction of tenements, parks, and opera houses. Over the course of the semester we will address a series of related questions. How did these cities take shape, in terms of their infrastructure and their diverse subcultures? What did the development of these cities mean to those who built them, those who were drawn to them, and those who fled from them? What were the social, cultural, and political possibilities of the new modern city, and what were its problems? How did urban middle-class, elite, and working-class dwellers define those hopes and anxieties? How and why did these aspirations and fears change over time?
Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group D).

HIST 32000 (W): Jewish History in the Modern World
Instructor: Ruben (In Person)
From the 18th century to the present: Enlightenment, Jewish emancipation and nationalism, a Jewish state; anti-Semitism and the Holocaust; recent trends. 
Writing intensive course (W)
For College: Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group D).
For History Majors: Counts as European

HIST 33000: Social & Economic History of Modern Europe
Instructor: Mehilli (Hybrid/In-Person)
A survey of the social and economic history of modern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics include: economic thought, capitalism, globalization, anti-capitalism, state planning, decolonization, the social history of the Cold War, and the historical origins of theories of development.

HIST 33500: Modern France
Instructor: Spritzer (Hybrid/In Person)
This course will explore central issues in the history of France and the French empire from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century.  We will use primary sources to explore the emergence of anti-Semitism, and the social changes wrought by the First World War and the expansion of colonialism. We will study conflicting interpretations of the extremes of France’s 1930s politics and the experience of occupation, resistance, and liberation during World War II. After analyzing the Franco-Algerian war and its legacies for French republicanism, racial divides, and the political football of immigration, we will finish the term by discussing attempts in France to legislate interpretations of the past and to regulate the wearing of religious symbols.

HIST 34103 (W): Berlin: Capital of the 20th Century
Instructor: Hett (In-Person)
This class explores the central importance of the city of Berlin to the course of German, European, and world history in the twentieth century. The local and national politics of Berlin will be traced through the five different German regimes of the twentieth century: Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic, and the Federal Republic of Germany. Additionally the course will examine the distinct local culture of the city of Berlin, and Berlin’s role as a center of artistic, scientific, and social innovation in the twentieth century. Themes of the course will include the tensions between the local, national and world dimensions of Berlin’s story, and the various questions of identity – urban, Prussian, west versus east German, “red” versus “national” – which Berlin’s history raises. By the end of the course, students should understand the periodization of Berlin’s 20th century history and the key facts, themes, issues and individuals and groups involved; they should be familiar with the use and analysis of primary sources such as those listed on this syllabus; and they should be able to formulate and sustain an argument on the basis of such sources.
Writing Intensive Course (W)

HIST 3411A (W): Women & French Revolutions
Instructor: Schor (In-Person)
This is a course in French history and in Women’s History that focuses on three periods of revolutionary fervor that led to changes in the way people lived, worked, and thought in France. The course will cover the major events of each of the three revolutionary periods, but will focus on women’s activities to remove the monarchy, to establish a constitutional republic, to expand the electorate, to improve conditions for workers, and to establish an egalitarian society. Why is it important to study women’s participation in past events? Because, as John Hope Franklin noted, “good history is a foundation for a better present and future.” We will see that the actions of women revolutionaries were frequently met with vitriolic caricature and satire. Revolutionaries and reactionaries both felt threatened by the demands and actions of women. Studying the way individuals and groups responded to these personal and painful attacks will shed light on how to combat misogyny in the present. In this class you will learn to use a variety of primary and secondary sources to develop your own ideas about the history of women in this turbulent period.
Writing Intensive Course (W)

HIST 3411X (W): Violence & Healing in African History
Instructor: Rosenthal (Synchronous)
This course examines different forms of violence and healing within sub-Saharan African history.  We will examine the subtleties of different types of violence (psychological, physical, economic, and ecological), as well as the varied and rich forms of healing that African communities deploy(ed) to aid themselves, their families, and their communities.  We begin with studying themes of violence and justice during the pre-colonial period, while the majority of the class then explores these topics during the colonial and post-colonial periods. Topics include ideas around medicine, gender, conflict, justice, corruption, and (neo)colonialism (among others) with case studies on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and international and local attempts to enact justice following the Rwandan genocide.
Writing Intensive Course (W)

HIST 3411Z (W): Philosophy of History
Instructor: Dahbour (In Person)

HIST 34120 (W): Women & Gender in Islam
Instructor: Kern (Synchronous)
For centuries the position of women in the Middle East has aroused much interest in the West. In today’s world, the most common media-generated view in the West has claimed that Muslim women are victims of a medieval, unchanging, religious-based construction of male-female relationships. In recent decades, in response to this negative stereotyping, academics in the West and in the Muslim world have attempted to present a more balanced, better-informed view of this issue. Nevertheless, the question of women’s status remains ideologically charged. History 341.20 examines through translated works the various roles that women have assumed since the beginning of Islam in the seventh century by looking at biographies of women warriors, religious scholars, political leaders and Sufi mystics. We will also analyze Muslim legal texts to ascertain the ideal role of women in society as well as legal prescriptions on their rights and responsibilities and attitudes towards the body that involve questions of sexuality, purity, fertility and seclusion. We investigate the wide variety of experience of Muslim women today, in particular those who are full participants in political and social life, and women who are finding identity through participation in modern revivalist movements.
Writing Intensive Course (W)

HIST 34162 (W): 20th Century Latin American Revolutions
Instructor: John (In-Person)
This course introduces students to some of the crucial ideas, processes and events related to revolutions in 20th-century Latin America. As it is not possible to analyze every revolutionary situation or movement in 20th-century Latin America, we will concentrate on some of those with the widest impact. Thus, particular emphasis is given to studying the Mexican, Bolivian and Cuban revolutions, while touching on some other upheavals and attempted revolutions for geographic and conceptual balance. In addition, we will discuss a number of key concepts on the nature of revolution, as well as some of the most important Latin American revolutionary ideologies. Students will evaluate differing views on these historical events and trends, learning to analyze them in historical perspective.
Writing Intensive Course (W)

HIST 35500 (W): American Colonies in the 18th Century
Instructor: Contreras (Hybrid/In-Person)
This course will expose students to a range of historical experiences and encounters in the colonies established by Spain, France, and Britain. Students will learn about the centrality of violence and religion in these colonies, ongoing conflicts over land, multiple forms of slavery and unfree labor, and the evolution of anti-colonial sentiment.
Writing Intensive Course (W)

HIST 37500: Late Imperial Russia & the Soviet Union
Instructor: Casper (Hybrid/In-Person)
History of late imperial Russia and the Soviet Union from the nineteenth century to 1991. The course is organized around the concept of Russian special path: by analyzing Russian imperial and Soviet history, we will seek an answer to the question of why and when (if ever) Russia took a path, different from the rest of Europe. The focus of this class is upon the Empire: we will approach Russian history in its complexity and discuss the ethnic, religious and cultural heterogeneity of the Russian and Soviet Empires. This course combines aspects of political, cultural, intellectual and economic history: we will analyze how politics became reflected – or negated – in literature and the arts, and how it affected everyday life of citizens of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
For College: Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group D). 
For History Majors: Counts as European

HIST 38233: History of World War II, 1937-1949
Instructor: Hett (In-Person)