Fall 2025 Curriculum

HIST 1120 – Public History, Public Memory

Introduces the role of law in shaping human society. Explores how laws have evolved over the past two millennia in different contexts under the influence of different religious systems and political, economic, and social theories. Studies key legal texts and analyzes legal traditions in several regions of the world. Considers how laws have affected the everyday lives of subjects, slaves, and citizens.

Professor Michael Thornton

MW, 2:50pm – 4:30pm

CRN: 17303

HIST 1130 – Introduction to the History of the United States

Engages with the major issues in U.S. history. Topics include the interaction of native populations with European settlers, the American Revolution and the Constitution, slavery, the Civil War, industrialization and migration, the growth of government and rise of the welfare state, media and mass culture, struggles for civil rights and liberation, and America’s role in the world from independence to the Iraq wars.

Professor Richard Freeland

MW, 2:50pm – 4:30pm

CRN: 12834

HIST/ASNS 1150 – East Asian Studies

Seeks to provide an understanding of the constituent characteristics that originally linked East Asia as a region and the nature of the transformations that have occurred in the region over the last two thousand years. Concentrates on China and Japan, and addresses Korea and Vietnam where possible. Also seeks to provide students with effective interdisciplinary analytical skills as well as historical, ethical, cultural diversity, and aesthetic perspectives. ASNS 1150 and HIST 1150 are cross-listed.

Professor Philip Thai

MWR, 9:15am – 10:30am

CRN: 11470

HIST 1170 – Europe: Empires, Revolutions, Wars, and Their Aftermath

Examines how empires, wars, and revolutions have influenced the development of the modern world, focusing on Europe and Europe’s connections with the non–European world. Explores how wars and revolutions led to the emergence of modern concepts of sovereignty, the state, and citizenship and how global competition between states led to the emergence of empires. Traces the promise of allegedly liberating ideologies and the political and economic revolutions they fostered, repeated wars and their aftermaths, and the challenges of recent world developments viewed from the perspective of history. Explores how human diversity and difference have shaped modern societies through history and how human difference and multiculturalism have both fostered and posed challenges to civic sustainability. Interrogates the meanings of “modernity,” democracy and totalitarianism, capitalism and socialism, and globalization.

Professor Erina Megowan

MWR, 10:30am – 11:35am

CRN: 17304

HIST 1185 – Introduction to Middle Eastern History

Relies on historical and literary sources, as well as such other cultural artifacts as architecture and photography, and focuses on interaction and changing relations and perceptions between Europe and the Middle East. Surveys the major political and economic events that have linked the trajectory of both civilizations, as well as broad patterns of human activity, such as migrations, conversions, and, cultural exchange. Emphasizes the commonality of encounters, and analyzes the construction of an “other” and its enduring legacy in modern times.

Professor Ilham Khuri-Makdisi

TF, 9:50am – 11:30am

CRN: 14404

HIST 1200 – Historical Research and Writing

Offered in conjunction with HIST 1201. Introduces incoming history freshmen to the history major in the context of other disciplines within the college and University. Offers students an opportunity to learn and to practice methods and conventions of research and historical writing.

Professor Victoria Cain

Does Not Meet

CRN: 17305

HIST 1201 – First Year Seminar

Provides an introduction to historical methods, research, writing, and argument in which all students produce a substantial research project that passes through at least two revisions, and that is presented publicly to other members of the colloquium.

Professor Victoria Cain

MR, 11:45am – 1:25pm

CRN: 13563

HIST 1219 – History of Global Pandemics

Explores epidemics and pandemics as a feature of human life for millennia. Charts the history of major pandemics, such as bubonic plague, smallpox, cholera, or the H1N1 influenza of 1918–19. Focuses on the causes and events of each pandemic and also how they shaped the future. Students read multiple primary sources documenting individuals’ experience of each pandemic and produce a research project on a pandemic of their choice.

Professor Heather Salter

TF, 3:25pm – 5:05pm

CRN: 17307

HIST 1232 – History of Boston

Explores the history of Boston from colonial times to the present, with attention to the topographical growth and the ethnic composition of the city. Includes visits to historical sites, museums, and archives in the area.

Professor Uta Poiger

T, 11:45am – 2:25pm
R, 2:50pm – 4:30pm

CRN: 17308

HIST 1252 – Japanese Literature and Culture

Explores major works of Japanese fiction and poetry in historical and cultural context. All readings are in English translation.

Professor Jennifer Cullen

T, 11:45am – 2:25pm
R, 2:50pm – 4:30pm

CRN: 15064

HIST/INSH 1300 – Intro to Health and Humanities

Explores the ways in which narrative and other forms of creative and cultural expression help shape conceptions of illness, healing, and the body. Offers students opportunities to consider the health and humanities through a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives and genres. Includes small-group and classwide experiential field outings. Culminates in the composition of reflective responses, a medical ethics/medical journalism piece, and a team-based experiential e-portfolio project. Course objectives include differentiating between healing and curing; knowing how to elicit, listen to, and analyze stories to determine how participants in the healthcare system experience illness and healing; being able to articulate the ways health is a cultural construct; and using this analysis to identify an empathic response as a future professional.

Professor Christopher Parsons

MW, 2:50pm – 4:30pm

CRN: 17295

HIST 1389 – History of Espionage 1: Antiquity to World War II

Explores the history of espionage through a series of case studies from ancient Rome, Greece, and China; the Reformation; the Age of Discovery; the French Revolution; the American Civil War; World War I and the Russian Revolution; and World War II. Commonly referred to as the world’s “second oldest profession,” espionage is an intrinsic part of the relationships between communities, institutions, and states. Draws from a wide variety of published and unpublished primary and secondary sources, supplemented by modern theoretical and social science perspectives, literature, and films.

Professor Erina Megowan

MWR, 4:35pm – 5:40pm

CRN: 17309

HIST 1575 – Natural Disasters in World History

Analyzes the history of natural disasters, focusing on the 1500s to the present. Offers training in methods of environmental, economic, political, and cultural history to address historical research questions about how people have tried to anticipate hazards, develop new tools for risk management, build infrastructures for relief, expand government capacity for disaster response, and remember victims.

Professor Louise Walker

MWR, 10:30am – 11:35am

CRN: 17310

HIST 2025 – Latin American History through Film

Uses films to analyze major questions in Latin American history. Topics include conquest, slavery, and revolution. The films are works of fiction, but most of them relate to real events. Course readings include “traditional” primary sources about the events (such as letters and espionage reports). Studies the history represented in the films and the assumptions and ideological perspectives and how these are conveyed through narrative and visual techniques. More broadly, considers how history is presented and represented by different sources. Offers students an opportunity to obtain a deeper appreciation for the complexity of Latin America.

Professor Louise Walker

MWR, 1:35pm – 2:40pm

CRN: 17312

HIST 2211 – The World Since 1945

Examines the political, economic, social, and cultural relationship between the developed and developing world since the end of World War II. Topics include the Cold War, independence and national movements in developing countries, the globalization of the world economy, scientific and technological innovations, wealth and poverty, the eradication of some diseases and the spread of others, the fall of the Soviet Union, Middle East turmoil, and the enduring conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Section 01 – Professor Malcolm Purinton

MWR, 1:35pm – 2:40pm

CRN: 11306

Section 06 – Professor Peter Fraunholtz

Does Not Meet – Asynchronous

CRN: 17313

HIST 2220 – History of Technology

Offers an interdisciplinary survey of the global history of science and technology. Explores how scientific and technical knowledge, processes, and innovations developed and circulated. Examines how science and technology both shaped and responded to society, culture, ethics, and thought.

Section 02 – Professor Malcolm Purinton

MWR, 4:35pm – 5:30pm

CRN: 12688

Section 03 – Professor Aaron Gluck-Thaler

TF, 9:50am – 11:30am

CRN: 17314

JWSS/HIST 2282 – The Holocaust and Comparative Genocide

Examines the origins of the Holocaust, perpetrators and victims, and changing efforts to come to terms with this genocide. The Holocaust, the murder of six million Jews by Germans in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II, is one of the crucial events of modern history. Investigates the uniqueness of the Holocaust relative to other acts of ethnic cleansing or genocide, including mass death in the New World and mass murder in Armenia, Bosnia, and Rwanda.

Professor Natalie Bormann

MR, 11:45am – 1:25pm

CRN: 14413

HIST 2301 – The History Seminar

Introduces history majors to advanced techniques of historical practice in research and writing. Offers students an opportunity to conduct original research and write an original research paper. Seminar themes vary; students should check with the Department of History for a list of each year’s seminar offerings. May be repeated without limit.

Professor Malcolm Purinton

MW, 2:50pm – 4:30pm

CRN: 10379

HIST 2302 – Historical Writing

Covers learning and practicing methods and conventions of historical writing for publication. Adjuncted to a Seminar in History, which fulfills the Advanced Writing in the Disciplines requirement.

Professor Malcolm Purinton

Does Not Meet

CRN: 10318

WMNS/HIST 2303 – Gender and Reproductive Justice

Introduces the social, legal, and economic barriers to accessing reproductive healthcare domestically and internationally. Draws on various theoretical and analytic tools including critical race theory, critical legal theory, sociology of science, human rights, feminist theory, and a range of public health methods. Access to reproductive health services, including abortion, is one of the most contested political, social, cultural, and religious issues today. Covers domestic, regional, and international legal and regulatory frameworks on sexual reproductive health. HIST 2303, SOCL 2303, and WMNS 2303 are cross-listed.

Professor Margot Abels

TF, 9:50am – 11:30am

CRN: 13637

HIST 2306 – The World in a Decade: The 1990s

Examines the political, economic, and social dynamics of the first post–cold war decade. Topics include the geopolitical aftermath of the cold war, democracy and development in developing countries, the globalization of the world economy and its impacts, the rise of nationalism, genocide, the rise of China as an economic power, and the varieties of Islamic movements.

Professor Peter Fraunholtz

Does Not Meet – Asynchronous

CRN: 17315

HIST 2311 – Colonialism/Imperialism

Examines the military, economic, political, and cultural expansion of world powers since the fifteenth century, and the ways in which colonized peoples were ruled. Why did colonialist countries feel the need to conquer and dominate, how did they do it, and why did they retreat on some fronts? How did people resist and cooperate with colonialism? How did colonialism affect national and cultural identities? Colonialism is examined as a global phenomenon and from a comparative perspective that looks at particular case studies. Also examines decolonization in the twentieth century.

Section 01 – Professor Heather Salter

TF, 1:35pm – 3:15pm

CRN: 11952

HIST 2351 – Modern Japan

Examines state formation, economic growth, imperialism and colonialism, war and defeat, and contemporary culture.

Professor Michael Thornton

MWR, 1:35pm – 2:40pm

CRN: 14416

HIST 2370 – Renaissance to Enlightenment

Covers the social, economic, political, and cultural transformations of Europe from the Renaissance to the French Revolution. Traces the rebirth of Catholic Europe from 1300; the Reformation; the religious wars; struggles over religious and scientific beliefs; advances in technology, science, and warfare; overseas expansion; the scientific revolution; and the Enlightenment.

Professor Robert Cross

MWR, 4:35pm – 5:40pm

CRN: 19587

HIST 2388 – World War II in Eastern Europe

Presents an overview of World War II in Eastern Europe using primary sources. Emphasizes how ideology, propaganda, and preexisting ethnic tensions shaped the war. Examines Nazi and Soviet war aims and the dramatic escalation in ferocity toward opposing armies and civilians after 1941. Considers the scale and nature of the Holocaust in the east; factors contributing to collaboration and resistance; and how gender, class, and ethnicity affected wartime experiences. Analyzes the contribution of World War II to the subsequent Cold War.

Professor Erina Megowan

MR, 11:45am – 1:25pm

CRN: 17319

HIST 2390 – Africa and the World in Early Times

Examines the place of Africa in the world from 1000 C.E. to the mid-19th century. Investigates the histories of ancient Egypt, the savannah and forest regions of West Africa, coastal and interior East Africa, and southern Africa. Explores the rise of medieval city-states and empires, the activities of the Atlantic slave trade and the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades, debates over mass migration and the spread of language groups, the rise of agriculture, the development of nonstate political structures, the growth of trading societies, and the development of new cultural forms. Links Africa’s early histories to current debates about the role of history in contemporary politics and to present understandings of Africa’s historical place in world affairs.

Professor Katherine Luongo

MWR, 9:15am – 10:20am

CRN: 17320

HIST/AFCS/WMNS 3305 – Beyond the Binary: Race, Sex, and Science

Considers how gender, race, and sexuality have been treated in science, focusing primarily on the 19th and 20th centuries. Examines the history of ideas about gender, race, and sexuality as reflected in fields such as biology, psychology, endocrinology, and neuroscience. Discusses contraceptive and reproductive technologies, pharmaceutical trials, the gendering of scientific professions, and recent studies that use algorithmic predictions of sex or sexual orientation. Uses close reading techniques and discussions to advance student expertise.

Professor Kathleen Creel

MWR, 9:15am – 10:20am

CRN: 17321

HIST 3330 – The Global Cold War

Examines the Cold War, emphasizing how the Soviet-American struggle for global preeminence intersected with decolonization and the rise of the “Third World.” Uses primary sources, monographs, and scholarly articles to trace the major events and developments of the Cold War—ideological differences between the capitalist and socialist systems, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Vietnam War—while also exploring how and why the Cold War came to pervade economic, cultural, and social relations globally. Examines how unexpected actors—Cuban doctors and Peace Corps volunteers—responded to and shaped superpower rivalry. Considers how the Cold War continues to shape the world today.

Professor Philip Thai

MWR, 10:30am – 11:35am

CRN: 19583

HIST 3340 – Technologies of Text

Examines innovations that have reshaped how humans share information, e.g., the alphabet, the book, the printing press, the postal system, the computer. Focuses on debates over privacy, memory, intellectual property, and textual authority that have historically accompanied the rise of new media forms and genres. Offers students an opportunity to gain skills for working with texts using the rapidly changing tools of the present, e.g., geographic information systems, data mining, textual analysis.

Professor Jessica Linker
Professor Erika Boeckeler

TF, 3:25pm – 5:05pm

CRN: 14401

HIST 3400 – The Making of the Modern City

Combines urban history, spatial history, environmental history, and cultural history. Focuses on cities and their inhabitants from the 18th century to the present. Covers topics such as modernization debates, globalization, national capitals and nation-states, women in the city and gendered uses of urban space, contested cities, cities at war, the city and its natural environment, and some of the main challenges facing cities today. Larger themes include urban design and ideology; resistance, rebellions, and social movements in the city; exclusion and inclusion and spatial segregation; violence and the city; the production and contestation of urban heritage; and the production of space.

Professor Michael Thornton

MR, 11:45am – 1:25pm

CRN: 14696

HIST 4701 – Capstone Seminar

Offers students an opportunity to make use of advanced techniques of historical methodology to conduct original research and write a major, original research paper as the culmination of their work toward the history degree. This is a capstone research and writing seminar for history majors.

Professor Ilham Khuri-Makdisi

TF, 1:35pm – 3:15pm

CRN: 10380

HIST 5101 – Theory and Methodology 1

Examines the following questions in the context of major issues in current historical research and debate. Where do historical questions come from, and how do we answer them? How do we produce knowledge about historical events and processes? What theoretical models guide historians work? Emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches as well as concrete techniques in historical research. Required of all first-year graduate students.

Professor Katherine Luongo

W, 4:35pm – 7:30pm

CRN: 17323

HIST 5237 – Issues and Methods in Public History

Examines and analyzes major issues and methods in public history in the United States and the world. Topics include the nature and meaning of national memory and myth, the theory and practice of historic preservation, rural and land preservation and the organizational structures and activities associated with those efforts, the interrelationship of historical museums and popular culture, the history and organization of historic house museums, historical documentary filmmaking, historical archaeology in world perspective, interpreting “ordinary” landscapes, and the impact of politics on public history.

Professor Jessica Parr

M, 4:35pm – 7:30pm

CRN: 17324

HIST 7221 – Topics in World History

This course is designed to help second- and third-year PhD students prepare for comprehensive exams and/or prospectus writing.  Second-year students will work on building reading lists, defining topics, and strategies for getting the work done. Third-year students will craft their dissertation proposals. Much of the course will involve independent and small group work, as well as presentations by students who have already completed their requirements. This class can be taken on top of an existing course load, as assigned readings are contained to reviewing proposals and the books on your own reading lists. 

Professor Aaron Gluck-Thaler

T, 4:35pm – 7:30pm

CRN: 17325

HIST 7370 – Texts, Maps, and Networks: Readings and Methods for Digital History

Introduces the methods and practice of history in a digital age. Offers students an opportunity to see the wide variety of work being done computationally by historians and other humanists today and to obtain the background to be creative producers of new work and critical consumers of existing projects. The rise of computing technology and the Internet has the potential to reshape all parts of historical practice, from curation to research to dissemination. Examines the historian’s craft in three primary domains: the creation of digital sources, the algorithmic transformations that computers can enact on cultural materials like texts, and the new ecologies of publishing and scholarly communication made possible by new media.

Professor Jessica Linker

R, 4:35pm – 7:30pm

CRN: 17327