This page allows you to search a particular semester's course offerings in History and filter them by Major/Minor requirement. We also invite you to explore Penn History courses on the Pathways App. This fun, game-like platform allows you to see connections between History courses, so that you can better sequence them. It also encourages you to ask “how can History help us answer big questions?” Give it a try!

Title Instructors Location Time Description Cross listings Fulfills Registration notes Major Concentrations Major/Minor Requirements Fulfilled
HIST 0100-001 Deciphering America Kathleen M Brown
Emma Hart
BENN 419 TR 1:45 PM-2:44 PM This course examines American history from the first contacts of the indigenous peoples of North America with European settlers to our own times by focusing on a few telling moments in this history. The course treats twelve of these moments. Each unit begins with a specific primary document, historical figure, image, location, year, or cultural artifact to commence the delving into the American past. Some of these icons are familiar, but the ensuing deciphering will render them as more complicated; some are unfamiliar, but they will emerge as absolutely telling. The course meets each week for two 50-minute team-taught lectures and once recitation session. Course requirements include: in-class midterm and final exams; three short paper assignments; and punctual attendance and participation in recitations. Cultural Diviserity in the U.S.
History & Tradition Sector
https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST0100001 American pre-1800, US
HIST 0200-001 The Emergence of Modern Europe Joshua Teplitsky FAGN 114 TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM This course traces the formation of European society, politics and culture from its earliest days through the era of the Reformation, ca. 1000-1600 CE. Major themes will include: politics and power; law and the state; economics and trade; religion; learning and the rise of universities; social organization; everyday life. The reading and analysis of primary sources from each era will be important in understanding Europe's key features and development. History & Tradition Sector
Cross Cultural Analysis
https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST0200001 European Europe, pre-1800
HIST 0300-401 Africa Before 1800 Cheikh Ante Mbacke Babou
Taylor Prescott
MCNB 286-7 MW 10:15 AM-11:14 AM Survey of major themes and issues in African history before 1800. Topics include: early civilizations, African kingdoms and empires, population movements, the spread of Islam, and the slave trade. Also, emphasis on how historians use archaeology, linguistics, and oral traditions to reconstruct Africa's early history. AFRC0300401 Cross Cultural Analysis
History & Tradition Sector
World Africa/Middle East, pre-1800
HIST 1119-401 History of American Law to 1877 Emma C Curry-Stodder
Sarah L H Gronningsater
Lauren Meyer
Francis A Russo
ANNS 110 TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM The course surveys the development of law in the U.S. to 1877, including such subjects as: the evolution of the legal profession, the transformation of English law during the American Revolution, the making and implementation of the Constitution, and issues concerning business and economic development, the law of slavery, the status of women, and civil rights. AFRC1119401 Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST1119401 American, Intellectual pre-1800, US
HIST 1201-001 Foundations of Law Ada M Kuskowski
Eleanor Webb
COHN 402 MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM This course explores the history and conceptual underpinnings of modern law in the West. What exactly is law? What is its relationship with politics and religion? Where do our notions of constitutionalism come from? How have we come to think in terms of rights? Using a historical and comparative approach, we will examine legal thought and culture in the European West from the Greek concept of nomos to the main categories of law developed in Roman antiquity, concepts of constitutionalism and rights crafted in medieval Europe, the development of the two main legal traditions of Europe (Common Law and Civil Law), and the emergence of intellectual property, human rights discourse and modern international law. The course will blend intellectual, political and social history. We will study concepts and intellectual categories such as crime, proof, punishment and the public/private distinction alongside illustrative cases that either exemplified the law or pushed it forward, foundational documents such as Magna Carta, and political developments such as the Peace of Westphalia, credited with the birth of modern state sovereignty and modern international law. Together, these subjects form core foundations of how we think and do law today. European, Intellectual Europe, pre-1800
HIST 1203-001 Economic History of Europe I Thomas M Safley PCPE 200 TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM This course concentrates on the economy of Europe in the Early Modern Period, 1450-1750. It was a time of great transition. Europe developed from an agriculturally-based to an industrially-based economy, with attendant changes in society and culture. From subsistence-level productivity, the European economy expanded to create great surfeits of goods, with attendant changes in consumption and expectation. Europe grew from a regional economic system to become part--some would say the heart--of a global economy, with attendant changes in worldview and identity. Economic intensification, expansion, globalization, and industrialization are our topics, therefore. Beginning with economic organizations and practices, we will consider how these changed over time and influenced society and culture. The course takes as its point of departure the experience of individual, working men and women: peasants and artisans, merchants and landlords, entrepeneurs and financiers. Yet, it argues outward: from the particular to the general, from the individual to the social, from the local to the global. It will suggest ways in which the economy influenced developments or changes that were not in themselves economic, shaped, and deflected economic life and practice. Humanties & Social Science Sector https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST1203001 Economic, European Europe, pre-1800
HIST 1300-401 Gunpowder, Art and Diplomacy: Islamic Empires in the Early Modern World Oscar Aguirre Mandujano WILL 421 MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM In the sixteenth century, the political landscape of the Middle East, Central Asia, and India changed with the expansion and consolidation of new Islamic empires. Gunpowder had transformed the modes of warfare. Diplomacy followed new rules and forms of legitimation. The widespread use of Persian, Arabic and Turkish languages across the region allowed for an interconnected world of scholars, merchants, and diplomats. And each imperial court, those of the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals, found innovative and original forms of expression in art and literature. The expansion of these Islamic empires, each of them military giants and behemoths of bureaucracy, marked a new phase in world history. The course is divided in four sections. The first section introduces the student to major debates about the so-called gunpowder empires of the Islamic world as well as to comparative approaches to study them. The second section focuses on the transformations of modes of warfare and military organization. The third section considers the cultural history and artistic production of the imperial courts of the Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Safavids. The fourth and final section investigates the social histories of these empires, their subjects, and the configuration of a world both connected and divided by commerce, expansion, and diplomacy. NELC3560401 Cross Cultural Analysis https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST1300401 Diplomatic, World Africa/Middle East, East/South Asia, pre-1800
HIST 1365-401 Bacteria, Bodies, and Empires: Medicine and Healing in the Eastern Mediterranean (15th-21st c.) Secil Yilmaz TOWN 311 TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM Bacteria, Bodies, and Empires is a survey course about the history of medicine in the Eastern Mediterranean from early modern period to the present. It addresses the major issues and questions concerning bodies, diseases, and medical institutions within the context of major historical developments in the world and region’s history. The course looks at how medicine, knowledge, and practices about diseases and bodies changed political and social conditions, as well as how socio-political changes defined and transformed people's perceptions of health, life, and the environment. Scholars have frequently examined the history of medicine in Eastern Mediterranean societies, either in relation to Islamic culture in the early modern period or, more recently, in relation to Westernization and modernization. By situating the history of medical knowledge and practices in the Eastern Mediterranean within global history, this course seeks to challenge these fixed paradigms and shed light on questions and research agendas that will unearth the encounters, connections, and mobility of bacteria, bodies, and medical methods among various communities. HSOC1362401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST1365401 World Africa/Middle East, pre-1800
HIST 1405-401 Indigenous Latin America 1400-1800 Marcia Susan Norton MCNB 410 MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM In 1492 Europeans began to colonize the Americas. Many colonizers sought to dispossess Indigenous people of their labor, land, and, sometimes, their lives, and often tried to impose their religion and cultural practices. Nonetheless, throughout Latin America Indigenous communities not only survived but adapted in creative, vigorous ways to the new social and ecological circumstances. In this course we will look at the diverse ways that Indigenous individuals and collectives avoided or adapted to colonial rule in Latin America between 1492 and 1800. We will particularly focus on Arawakan, Carib, Tupinamba, Nahua, and Andean histories. Readings will include both primary and secondary sources. LALS1405401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST1405401 World Latin America/Caribbean, pre-1800
HIST 1610-401 Medieval and Early Modern Jewry Anne O Albert MCNB 286-7 TR 8:30 AM-9:59 AM Exploration of intellectual, social, and cultural developments in Jewish civilization from the rise of Islam in the seventh century to the assault on established conceptions of faith and religious authority in 17th century Europe, that is, from the age of Mohammed to that of Spinoza. Particular attention will be paid to the interaction of Jewish culture with those of Christianity and Islam. JWST1610401, NELC0355401, RELS1610401 Cross Cultural Analysis
History & Tradition Sector
https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST1610401 Jewish, World Africa/Middle East, Europe, pre-1800
HIST 1625-401 Era of Revolutions in the Atlantic World Roquinaldo Ferreira FAGN 110 MW 5:15 PM-6:44 PM This class examines the global ramifications of the era of Atlantic revolutions from the 1770s through the 1820s. With a particular focus on French Saint Domingue and Latin America, it provides an overview of key events and individuals from the period. Along the way, it assesses the impact of the American and French revolutions on the breakdown of colonial regimes across the Americas. Students will learn how to think critically about citizenship, constitutional power, and independence movements throughout the Atlantic world. Slavery and the transatlantic slave trade were seriously challenged in places such as Haiti, and the class investigates the appropriation and circulation of revolutionary ideas by enslaved people and other subaltern groups. AFRC1625401, LALS1625401 Diplomatic, World Latin America/Caribbean, pre-1800
HIST 2204-401 Food and Diet in Early Europe: Farm to Table in the Renaissance Ann Elizabeth Moyer COHN 237 TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM What did medieval and Renaissance Europeans choose to eat? What did they have to eat? Before the age of mass transportation, was all food locally sourced? In an era when most medicines were plant based, what did it mean to eat a balanced diet? “Feed a cold, starve a fever.” Why?
In this course we will examine food, foodways, and diet in European culture, thought, and society with a focus on the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, and with a mix of primary sources and modern scholarship on food, cuisine, religion, and diet.
ITAL2204401 Cross Cultural Analysis https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST2204401 European, Intellectual Europe, pre-1800, Seminar
HIST 2205-401 Religious Conflict and Coexistence in Early Modern Europe Joshua Teplitsky WILL 741 TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM Europe’s early modern period (roughly 1450-1750) has been described an “age of religious wars,” with the Reformation and contact with the New World prompting the formation of new fault lines, new collectives, and the reshaping of old animosities in new expressions. It was a period of bloody riots between Catholics and Protestants, expulsions of Jews and Muslims, prosecution of heretics, martyrdoms of saints, and inquisitions of witches. But it was also an age of living together, of pragmatism, and of coexistence. This seminar explores the complexities and curiosities of religious intellectual, political, social, and daily life as people across religious lines clashed, cooperated, communicated, and carried-on. We will explore the experiences both of influential thinkers but also ordinary people, and ask how and why people were willing, in the name of religion, to persecute, prosecute, fight, kill, and die, and how others traded and traveled together, defended each other, and even married across religious lines. JWST2225401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST2205401 European, Jewish Europe, pre-1800, Seminar
HIST 2403-401 Animal,Vegetable,Mineral:Culture, Tech, & the Columbian Exchange, 1450-1750 Marcia Susan Norton CANCELED In this course we will explore how Native American technologies shaped the early modern Atlantic World in order to understand the role of culture in what is often called the "Columbian Exchange.” Technologies, for the purpose of this course, include animal practices (such as hunting and taming techniques), foraged and domesticated plants (such as maize, potatoes, and annatto), foods (such as cassava and chocolate), drugs (such as tobacco, quinine and coca), textiles (such as hammocks and featherworks), and precious metals and gemstones (such as pearls, emeralds and gold). We will explore technologies' relationships to other aspects of art and culture, and focus particularly on how and why certain technologies - and not others - moved beyond colonial Latin America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We will read intensively in both primary and secondary sources. LALS2403401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST2403401 World Latin America/Caribbean, pre-1800, Seminar
HIST 2601-301 Islam in Early America Arianne Sedef Urus WILL 320 R 3:30 PM-6:29 PM Muslims first arrived on the shores of the Americas at the turn of the sixteenth century, yet their long history in the western hemisphere has been largely forgotten. For centuries Islam was the second-most widely practiced monotheistic religion in the Americas, after Catholicism; some Muslims came from Spain to escape persecution at the hands of the Inquisition for continuing to practice their religion, while others were taken captive and forcibly crammed into the hulls of ships on the West African coast and transported across the Atlantic, where, in 1522, they participated in the first uprising of enslaved men and women in the Americas on a sugar plantation on the island of Hispaniola (the site of present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic). From the very beginning of European imperialism in the Atlantic World, Muslims were integral to the history of what scholars call “Vast Early America.” Their stories are entwined with the larger threads of early American history including those of missionary work, European interimperial conflict, slavery, the genocide of Native peoples, and capitalism. This course unfolds in four units that will take us from the first early modern European encounters with Islam to the stories of Muslim agents of European conquest and Muslim resistance to enslavement in the Caribbean and US South, to how the Founding Fathers thought about Islam and the status of Muslims in the Antebellum US. We will work with sources ranging from Laila Lalami’s 2014 novel, The Moor’s Account, to Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Qur’an, as well as the autobiography of Omar Ibn Said written in Arabic from a jail cell in South Carolina and Rhiannon Gidden’s new opera based on Omar’s story. https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST2601301 American, World pre-1800, Seminar, US
HIST 3200-301 War and Conquest in Medieval Europe Ada M Kuskowski MCES 105 T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This course will focus on wars of conquest in the medieval period. The code of chivalry demanded that knights not only display great prowess in battle, but also adhere to Christian virtue. How did these square in practice? What constitutes acceptable violence and military intervention? We will seek to understand the medieval mentality of warfare in order to think about the place of war in society, how war was justified, why war was fought, and how it was fought. War, however, cannot be separated from its goals. We will thus go beyond the battlefield to look at how conquest of territories was cemented with the establishment and enforcement of a new order. Themes will include the rise of knighthood, ideas of just war, crusade, laws of war, territorial control and colonization. The course will also include two fabulous field trips to visit Penn’s manuscript collection and the arms and armor collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Cross Cultural Analysis European Europe, pre-1800, Research, Seminar
HIST 3405-401 The Conquest of Mexico Peter Sorensen WILL 306 R 3:30 PM-6:29 PM The Conquest of Mexico is one of the most famous episodes of global history. Often told as a story of European technological and military superiority, scholarship of the last thirty years has started to change our understanding of what really happened. In the first half of this course we will examine the history of both Spain and Mesoamerica from approximately 1300 to the fateful meeting of the two civilizations in 1519 that led to war in 1520-21. We will ask questions about sources, actors, and intentions such as, should we even call the events “The Conquest of Mexico”?
The second half of the course will focus on the first century of Spanish colonial control of what was now called New Spain to roughly 1650. We will ask questions like, how much control did the Spanish have over their Mesoamerican colonies? What role did the Catholic Church play? How did Indigenous people and Africans adapt to living under colonialism? In what ways did the lives of women change? How was the environment impacted? How did epidemic disease alter daily life and communities? And, finally, what role did China and the Philippines play in the maintenance of a Spanish colony in the Americas?
Throughout the course we will read translated primary sources produced by both Spaniards and Indigenous people, as well as selections from recently published scholarship. By the end of the course, each student will have written an original historical analysis based on a theme or event discussed with and approved by the instructor.
LALS3405401 Diplomatic, World Latin America/Caribbean, pre-1800, Research, Seminar
HIST 3603-401 Writing, Publishing, and Reading in Early Modern Europe and the Americas Roger Chartier
John Pollack
VANP 605 M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM In this course we will consider the writing, publication, and reading of texts created on both sides of the Atlantic in early modern times, from the era of Gutenberg to that of Franklin, and in many languages. The seminar will be held in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts in Van Pelt Library and make substantial use of its exceptional, multilingual collections, including early manuscripts, illustrated books, plays marked for performance, and censored books. Any written or printed object can be said to have a double nature: both textual and material. We will introduce this approach and related methodologies: the history of the book; the history of reading; connected history; bibliography; and textual criticism. We will focus on particular case studies and also think broadly about the global history of written culture, and about relations between scribal and print culture, between writing and reading, between national traditions, and between what is and what is not “literature.” We encourage students with diverse linguistic backgrounds to enroll. As part of the seminar, students will engage in a research project which can be based in the primary source collections of the Kislak Center. History Majors or Minors may use this course to fulfill the US, Europe, or Latin America geographic requirement if that region is the focus of their research paper. COML3603401, ENGL2603401 American, European, World Europe, Latin America/Caribbean, pre-1800, Research, Seminar, US