School of Humanities
History Undergraduate Course Descriptions
Page Content
Spring 2025
**This is not a complete list of course offerings. Please use the Course Catalog in SOAR for accurate advising.**
HIS 300
Research Seminar
M/W 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Dr. Max Grivno
This course is designed to teach you the basics of historical research and writing.
We will begin with discussion about what history is and how the discipline has evolved,
with a particular focus on the rise of academic history in European and American universities
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will examine some of the major schools
of historical thought and the controversies and debates that have gripped the field.
Over the course of the semester, you will also research and write a piece of original
historical research and present your findings to your colleagues.
HIS 307 introduces students to the broad history of Africa from the 1500s to the present. It utilizes several modes of instruction including film and documentary analysis, as well as a wide range of short and long texts to explore key themes in the making of Africa. It is designed with the assumption that most students know very little about the continent and to help them develop general and specific ideas, the course relies on lectures and open class discussions. Some of the key ideas the course explores include precolonial warfare and resistance to colonial conquest, African agency in the Atlantic Slave Trade, socio-economic changes in colonial Africa, and decolonization. The course also explores contemporary case studies around the continent including the histories of African women, the outbreak of conflicts and genocides in the post-independence period, as well as the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world. In the process of taking this class, students will hone their critical thinking and analytical skills as well as reading, comprehension and writing capabilities. Reading, watching, and analyzing the assigned material before class will be crucial to student success.
HIS 351
History of the National Guard
M/W 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
The History of the US National Guard. This course will be the first ever course taught
at the college level on the history of America's National Guard. The course will be
team-taught, featuring Dr. Zelner, Dr. Mammina, Dr. Mocheregwa, and Dr. Wiest from
51¶şÄĚ Miss. The course will also welcome Dr. Richard Clark (Chief Historian of
the National Guard Bureau) and Professor Gary Sheffield, one of Britain's leading
military historians. The course will explore the US militia system and its transformation
throughout US history to today. The course will feature several veteran presentations
and a trip to Camp Shelby for some hands-on work with the Guard.
HIS 375
Economic History of the United States
M/W 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
Dr. Max Grivno
This course offers a broad overview of American Economic History from the beginnings
of European conquest and expansion in the 15th and 16th centuries to the early decades
of the current millennium. Economic history is a broad, diverse, and vibrant field.
Its practitioners embrace political ideologies that range from socialist to libertarian,
and they employ methodologies that include statistical analysis, environmental and
social history, and cultural studies. This diversity makes the field exciting, but
it also means that no one course can cover the entire field. I have structured this
course to give you a sense—a taste—of the major changes that have occurred in the
American economy over the past 400 years and to show you how those profound, often
wrenching transformations changed the lives of American consumers and workers. Understanding
economic history allows you to understand the world around you. Political revolutions
and wars may capture the headlines, but the daily machinations of the economy are
the engines that drive much historical change.
You do not need to be steeped in economic theory or mathematics to succeed in this
course. A general knowledge of American History (equivalent to completing History
201 and 202) may be helpful, but there are no prerequisites for this course.
HIS 400
Senior Capstone Seminar: Communities in Crisis
Tu/Th 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM
Dr. Kyle Zelner
Communities throughout history have had to deal with different crises, be they natural
disasters, pandemics, crime waves, wars, civil unrest, or countless other catastrophes.
HIS 400 is the required senior capstone class for all history majors and as such,
the class will include a mixture of discussion seminars and considerable independent
research/writing time. Along with a refresher on primary document research and historical
writing, the first several weeks of the class will see students reading a number of
articles and/or books about communities in crisis and discussing them in a seminar
setting.
For the remainder of the semester, students will research and write an original history
of a community in crisis. The research paper (15-20 pages) must make extensive use
of primary documents (such as newspapers, oral histories, diaries, letters, and other
accounts) as well as the secondary sources written on their topic. The first draft
of the paper will be evaluated by the professor and then redrafted to create a final
manuscript. In addition to the major research paper, students will be required to
give two oral presentations in the class.
Some possible research paper topics might include:
•What happened to New York City during the American Revolutionary War?
•What happened to the community in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina?
•How did the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 change life in Chicago?
•What happened to London during the Blitz in World War II?
•How did the Civil War affect the town of Vicksburg?
•How did the community in Birmingham, Alabama experience the Civil Rights movement?
The possibilities are almost endless . . .
Required text: Kate L. Turabian, "A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses,
and Dissertations," 9th ed., Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2018.
Other readings as assigned.
HIS 402
Imperialism, Nationalism, Decolonization
M/W 4:00 PM – 5:15 PM
Dr. Joseph Peterson
Recent years have seen the concept of decolonization used ever more broadly, with
calls to decolonize not only territories and political structures that are under occupation,
but to decolonize everything from our minds and our language, to monuments, university
courses, art, music, religion, and food. In reaction, pundits and scholars worry that
activists have taken the concept of decolonization too far. Many on the Right fear
that decolonization undermines patriotism and faith in “western civilization.” Some
on the Left fear, quite otherwise, that decolonial language has been so watered down
as to no longer involve the genuine liberation of people’s land and resources.
Students in this course will examine the roots of modern colonization and decolonization
in the nineteenth century, as European states violently carved the world up into colonies,
protectorates, and markets for their industrial goods. From the beginning, indigenous
and colonized peoples adapted, survived, negotiated, and resisted, through cultural
and religious movements as well as through force. With the twentieth century came
the arrival of national decolonization movements, anticolonial leaders’ differing
perspectives on what liberation should look like, and the “neocolonial” economic structures
that are still used to oppress former colonies today. The course will be interdisciplinary
in its approach. We will not only read historical scholarship, but also classic and
contemporary anticolonial theorists (e.g., Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah,
Audre Lorde, Jamaica Kincaid) and celebrated works of anticolonial or postcolonial
literature (e.g., Chinua Achebe, Buchi Emecheta, Ousmane Sembène, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o).
This course will concentrate especially on spaces and peoples colonized by Europe
in the modern era, but will not shy away from other comparisons and debates—how has
settler colonialism made the United States what it is? Is Israel a settler colonial
state, and thus the Palestinian struggle a decolonization movement?
HIS 409/509
Special Topics in Asian History: A Supernatural History of Asia
Tu/Th 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Dr. Kenneth Swope
As a result of exposure to films, manga, anime, and video games among other mediums,
the entire world is becoming aware of the rich and varied history of monsters, ghosts,
and strange creatures populating the history and folklore of the countries of Asia.
This course will explore the historical context of some of these strange denizens,
tracing their cultural and historic significance, and examining their appearance in
folk tales, novels, films, and other mediums. Students will be asked to complete review/reaction
essays, in-class essay examinations, and a larger project on a topic of their choice.
HIS 423
Queer History
Tu/Th 9:30 AM - 10:45 PM
Dr. Katya Maslakowski
This course will introduce students to the historical study of LGBTQI* individuals
living in Europe and North America during the 19th and 20th centuries. During this
course we will read historical and interdisciplinary scholarship and analyze primary
sources that will help us better understand same-sex loving and gender transgressing
historical actors. We will pay close attention to historical actors’ self-conceptions
and self-identifications as we explore how queer people have been understood historically.
We will thus use personal stories to understand how certain identities, communities,
and practices came to be situated as “alternative,” “deviant,” or queer in comparison
with “normal.” What happens when queer identities demand inclusion into the normal?
Topics will include: queer archives and public history, queer urban communities, policing,
sex work, activism, family life, ball room life, the AIDs crisis and modern trans
panics
HIS 461
The American Revolution
Tu/Th 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Dr. Kyle Zelner
Just in time for the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution!
This course will examine the political, military, and social aspects of the Revolutionary
period, roughly from 1760 to 1800. We will focus on the imperial crisis that leads
to war; the politics of protest and nation-building; the military conflict from 1775-1783;
Loyalists, African-Americans, and women during the war; the post-war crisis in national
and state governments; the writing of and ratification fight over the new Constitution;
and the Federalist era. Ultimately, we will have to attempt to answer the crucial
question, “Just how revolutionary was the American Revolution?”
HIS 461 is a great class for Social Studies Licensure majors as it covers many highlights
of American Government classes (the Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc.), as well as
Early American History.
HUM 301 (H081)
The Light Ages: Medieval Science and the Birth of the Renaissance
Online
Dr. Courtney Luckhardt
While Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps best known as an artist in the popular imagination,
he was also scientist and engineer, and well-versed in the most up-to-date knowledge
of his day. Da Vinci’s expertise did not spring up from nothing, but instead built
upon the remarkable creativity of the previous thousand years of medieval art and
science. While the Middle Ages is at times dismissed as the “Dark Ages”, this class
will instead argue that the medieval period was in fact a “Light Ages” in which foundational
scientific, philosophical, and artistic ideas were invented and tested. This paved
the way for the remarkable transformations of modernity in the “Age of Discovery”,
in which people from across the globe encountered one another, in both positive and
negative ways, in a complex web of connection, contagion, and exchange.
This class is offered completely online and is open to all majors in the Humanities
and beyond! I particularly welcome STEM and health sciences majors, as this class
will explore the history of your future professions. Also, there are two Hum 301 classes
being offered in Spring 2025; make sure to sign up for Hum 301 H081.