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Title Instructors Location Time Description Cross listings Fulfills Registration notes Major Concentrations Major/Minor Requirements Fulfilled
HIST 1360-405 Arab/Israeli Conflict in Literature and Film Eve M Troutt Powell COHN 493 W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM This course will explore the origins, the history and, most importantly, the literary and cinematic art of the struggle that has endured for a century over the region that some call the Holy Land, some call Eretz Israel and others call Palestine. We will also consider religious motivations and interpretations that have inspired many involved in this conflict as well as the political consequences of world wars that contributed so greatly to the reconfiguration of the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and after the revelations of the Holocaust in Western Europe. While we will rely on a textbook for historical grounding. the most significant material we will use to learn this history will be films, novels, and short stories. Can the arts lead us to a different understanding of the lives lived through what seems like unending crisis? CIMS1360405, NELC0675405 Intellectual, World Africa/Middle East, Research, Seminar
HIST 2000-301 History Workshop Sophia A Rosenfeld VANP 627 R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This course introduces newly declared History Majors to the History Department and lays the foundation for future coursework, including research seminars, in History. Students will be introduced to various methods used to reconstruct and explain the past in different eras and places. Drawing on the rich resources available at Penn and in the Philadelphia region, students will also learn how to research and write history themselves. Throughout the semester, small research and writing assignments will allow students to try out different approaches and hone their skills as both analysts and writers of history. https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST2000301 Seminar
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 2258-401 Existentialism, Structuralism, Poststructuralism: French Thought Since 1945 Warren G Breckman BENN 323 R 12:00 PM-2:59 PM In no other period, with the possible exception of the European Enlightenment, did French thought enjoy greater international influence than in the decades after the Second World War. From Existentialism, through Structuralism, Poststructuralism, and Postmodernism, French thinkers played a crucial role in shaping the intellectual history of the second half of the twentieth century. This seminar surveys the intellectual movements and some of the key figures of this period. While our discussion will touch on many themes, the core of our inquiry will be the status of the human subject. If late nineteenth and early twentieth-century thinkers were preoccupied by the question of the “death of God,” French philosophical discourse in the late twentieth century was famously obsessed by the death of “Man”. Jean-Paul Sartre opened the post-war era by declaring that the death of God heralded an unprecedented age of Man; soon that proclamation came under attack as rival thinkers of the post-war period subjected the idea of the human “subject” -- the “self” or “ego” -- to unprecedented criticism. With the waning of Sartrean Existentialism, the unfolding dynamics of that critique came to drive the most creative and influential figures in French intellectual life. COML2258401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST2258401 European, Intellectual Europe, Seminar
HIST 2350-401 Migration and Refugees in African History Cheikh Ante Mbacke Babou VANP 305 W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This seminar will examine the experiences of recent African emigrants and refugees within and from the continent Africa from a historical and comparative perspective. We will look at the relations of overseas Africans with both their home and host societies, drawing on some of the extensive comparative literature on immigration, ethnic diasporas, and transnationalism. Other topics include reasons for leaving Africa, patterns of economic and educational adaptation abroad, changes in gender and generational roles, issues of cultural, religious, and political identity, and the impact of international immigration policies. Students will have the opportunity to conduct focused research on specific African communities in Philadelphia or elsewhere in North America, Europe, or the Middle East. We will employ a variety of sources and methodologies from different disciplines--including newspapers, government and NGOs, literature and film, and diaspora internet sites--to explore the lives, aspirations, and perceptions of Africans abroad. History Majors may complete the research requirement if their paper is based on primary sources. Students not seeking credit for the research requirement may write papers drawing on secondary sources exclusively. Class will consist of a combination of lectures (including several by invited guests), discussions, video screenings, and presentations by students of their research in progress. AFRC2350401 Cross Cultural Analysis World Africa/Middle East, Seminar
HIST 2354-401 The Body in Middle Eastern History Secil Yilmaz WILL 219 TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM The body has long been the focus of social and scientific inquiry, as well as the foundation of religious, philosophical, and artistic thought. This seminar examines premodern and modern notions of the body in the Middle East as they intersect with colonialism, nationalism, religion, labor, law, military, gender, race, medicine, and art. Students use the notion of the body as a "useful" historical category to investigate the broader social, cultural, and political transformations occurring in the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran, followed by post-empire and colonial modern Middle Eastern contexts. The course addresses diverse views and theories as manifested in the constructions and practices over the body by using literary texts, primary sources, medical recipes, religious orders, and even public monuments to unearth the role of the body in the making of Middle Eastern history. GSWS2354401, NELC2354401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST2354401 Gender, World Africa/Middle East, 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 2700-301 Utopia Margo Todd VANP 627 W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM Western thinkers from the ancient Greeks to the present have speculated about what the ideal human society would look like. We can study the resultant utopias as works of literature, philosophy, religion, psychology or political science; we must understand them in their historical contexts. This seminar will take a multidisciplinary approach to utopian thought from Plato's Republic to the ecological utopias of the 1980s. Works to be examined include More's Utopia; seventeenth century scientific utopias like Bacon's New Atlantis; the political theory of Rousseau (Social Contract); essays of the French utopian socialists and Hawthorne's version of the Brook Farm experiment; Morris' News from Nowhere; its American counterpart, Bellamy's Looking Backward; Gilman's feminist blueprint, Herland; BF Skinner's psychological utopia, Walden Two; and the utopian science fiction of LeGuin. Huxley's dystopia, Brave New World, will be set against his later utopia, Island. https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST2700301 Intellectual Seminar
HIST 2709-401 Pan-Africanism in Global Perspective Roquinaldo Ferreira BENN 139 T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM This class covers the history of Pan-Africanism from its early inception in the nineteenth century to the present. Pan-Africanism has sparked political struggles and provided a powerful catalyst to artistic endeavors across the globe. The class focuses on the early critiques of the transatlantic slave trade, tracing the development of a unifying sociopolitical movement and the struggle for identity among Africans and African descendants in the diaspora. C. L. R. James posits that people of African descent, no matter where they might live, are linked through ancestral ties to Africa and as victims of structural and historical racism in the West. The class will not only engage with the classics of Pan-Africanism but also explore the movement’s influence through the arts (music, movies, and literature) and politics. To stress Pan-Africanism’s global ramifications, the class pays significant attention to the movement’s impact on Africa and Latin America. AFRC2709401, LALS2709401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST2709401 Intellectual, World Africa/Middle East, Latin America/Caribbean, Seminar
HIST 2710-401 Inflationary Times: Money, Currency, and Debt in History Melissa Teixeira BENN 141 T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM What is inflation? What are its causes and consequences? Inflation has become a pressing concern recently, as prices of fuel, food, and consumer goods have ticked upwards at alarming rates. From the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine, and climate disasters, current inflationary pressures are inseparable from the major events disrupting the global economy. This is as much the case today as it was following the discovery of silver mines in Potosí (Bolivia), the French Revolution, the breakdown of Bretton Woods, or the 1980s debt crises in Latin America. This course explores the economic and social consequences of inflation across history. It also considers the economic models used to explain the rise and fall of prices—and how economists and policy-makers experiment with new formulas when old ones appear obsolete. By exploring inflationary moments in historical perspective, this seminar explores topics like the political and social meanings of money, how to build trust in a new currency, and what governments can do (or tried to do) to correct financial crisis. Students will be asked to explore past moments of financial and economic crises on their own terms, but also to look for how the past can offer lessons for the present. LALS2710401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST2710401 Economic, World Global Issues, Seminar
HIST 2711-301 The Good Fight: Global Decolonization from Chile to China Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet WILL 321 T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM The conclusion of the Second World War precipitated independence movements that put an end to colonialism in many countries of the Global South, especially Asia and Africa. How did people with different political backgrounds ideologies, as well as divergent and historical experiences of imperialism, take part in shaping their communities after WWII? The rise of the Cold War and expressions of Third Worldism complicated the identities and alliances of many newly formed countries that were previously colonized or in relationships of political dependency with the West. This course will survey case studies that speak to issues of social inequality, in particular poverty, gender, and race. At the same time, the class will consider the role and impact of new international organizations and non-state actors in the struggle for decolonization. Special attention will be paid to civil rights movements and political resistance to new forms of state control. World Global Issues, Seminar
HIST 3150-401 Wartime Internment of Japanese-Americans Eiichiro Azuma WILL 202 T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This research seminar will consist of a review of representative studies on the Japanese American internment, and a discussion of how social scientists and historians have attempted to explain its complex backgrounds and causes. Through the careful reading of academic works, primary source materials, and visualized narratives (film productions), students will learn the basic historiography of internment studies, research methodologies, and the politics of interpretation pertaining to this particular historical subject. Students will also examine how Japanese Americans and others have attempted to reclaim a history of the wartime internment from the realm of “detached” academia in the interest of their lives in the “real” world, and for a goal of “social justice” in general. The class will critically probe the political use of history and memories of selected pasts in both Asian American community and contemporary American society through the controversial issue of the Japanese American internment. ASAM2100401 Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. American, Diplomatic Research, Seminar, US
HIST 3151-401 The Civil Rights Movement Mia E Bay BENN 20 W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM This course traces the history of the Civil Rights Movement from its earliest stirrings in the 1st half of the twentieth-century to the boycotts, sit-ins, school desegregation struggles, freedom rides and marches of the 1950s and 1960s, and beyond. Among the question we will consider are: What inspired the Civil Rights movement, when does it begin and end, and how did it change American life? Readings will include both historical works and first-hand accounts of the movement by participants. AFRC3151401 American Research, Seminar, US
HIST 3174-401 Free State Slavery and Bound Labor Research Seminar Kathleen M Brown
Sarah B Gordon 		VANP 627 R 10:15 AM-1:14 PM This seminar invites students to do original research into the stories of Black refugees – including escaped, kidnapped, sojourning, and other temporary or permanent residents of Pennsylvania. Their stories unfolded through contentious freedom suits, daring escapes on the Underground Railroad, newspaper wars, gun fights and thuggery, treason cases, and more. We have assembled an archive of statutes, legal cases, testimony, judicial and administrative decisions, newspaper stories, images, memoirs, maps, and more to help students get started with their research. In addition, students will have opportunities to pursue additional research at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, a co-sponsor of this course. Many of these materials have never been the subject of sustained study or placed in their historical context. Students will choose their topics in consultation with the professors and will produce research reports in written or digital or cinematic formats.
Students are expected to contribute to the course website, a platform that will be available to the public as well as to the Penn community, and we aim to provide new information and venues for research. The course therefore will involve considerations of how best to convey what we learn, as well as explorations of historical methods and collaborating archives. 		AFRC3174401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST3174401 American Research, 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 3552-401 Constitutionalism and Democracy in China: 1900-present Arthur Waldron PWH 108 T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM Research on constitutional thought in China from the late Qing to the present, as well as the political and practical aspects of attempts at implementation. A presentation and a research paper of moderate length are expected. Chinese language is not necessary, though if you have it, that will be useful. EALC3532401 World East/South Asia, 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
HIST 3710-401 Introduction to Business, Economic and Financial History Marc R Flandreau WILL 3 R 3:30 PM-6:29 PM Business, Economic and Financial History plays a crucial role today in informing the views of business leaders, policy makers, reformers and public intellectuals. This seminar provides students with the opportunity to acquire a command of the key elements of this important intellectual field. The seminar format enables us to do this engagingly through reading and discussion. Students acquire a knowledge of the fundamental texts and controversies. Each meeting focuses on one foundational debate and provides a means to be up to date with the insights gleaned from rigorous economic history. We will examine twelve important debates and students will be asked to write a paper. The debates will include such questions as: What is growth and how can it be measured? What caused the "great divergence" in long run development among countries? How can we "understand" the rise and fall of slavery and its long shadow today? What is globalization and when did it begin? Did the Gold Standard and interwar fiscal and monetary policy orthodoxy cause the great depression? How can we explain the evolution of inequality in the very long run? ECON0625401 Economic Research, Seminar
HIST 3711-301 Uses and Abuses of History Lee V Cassanelli WILL 6 W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM This course is designed for junior and senior history majors in any regional or thematic concentrations. Using case studies from around the world, it will explore the roles of history and historians in shaping national and ‘ethnic’ outlooks and identities; in offering ‘lessons’ to guide policy makers in a variety of diplomatic, political, and social contexts; and in contributing to the numerous controversies surrounding the most appropriate ways to remember and represent painful events in a society’s past.
Because nations, regimes, and interest groups invariably want to believe that ‘history is on their side,’ they typically produce partisan narratives which use historical evidence selectively and subjectively. How effective have historians been—or can they be—in countering egregious ‘myths’ about the past, in uncovering ‘silences’ in the historical record, and in acknowledging that the same ‘objective’ events can leave different memories and carry different meanings for the various parties involved. Does fuller knowledge of the past constrain or empower our capacities to deal with challenges in the present and future?
In examining these and other ‘meta-questions’ through a series of specific case studies, you will almost certainly learn something about contested histories in parts of the world you may not be familiar with, but which should help you situate your own regional interests in a wider comparative framework. During the last five weeks of the course, students will have an opportunity to research a topic of their choice and to present their findings to the class. 		https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST3711301 Research, Seminar
HIST 3713-401 Singer-songwriters in the Cold War Ann C Farnsworth MCES 105 R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This research seminar considers the overlapping political worlds of performers like Violeta Parra (b. Chile 1917), Pete Seeger (b. USA 1919), Miriam Makeba (b. South Africa 1932), Vladimir Vysotsky (b. USSR 1938), Gilberto Gil (b. Brazil 1942), Bob Marley (b. Jamaica 1945), Silvio Rodríguez (b. Cuba 1946), Waldemar Bastos (b. Angola 1954), and others. We will have shared readings about youth-identified musicians who brought Leftist politics on stage with them, as well as about the activism of anti-communists and anti-Stalinists in different geographic spaces. Each participant will produce a 15-20 page paper based on primary sources. Throughout the semester, in-class work will be designed to support the research process. Students will work through multiple drafts and share their writing with one another. Faculty members from Music, Comparative Literature, and other departments will be invited as guest speakers, as will folklorists, performers, and members of other Philadelphia-area communities. LALS3713401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202310&c=HIST3713401 World Research, Seminar
HIST 4997-301 Junior Honors in History Benjamin Nathans MCES 105 M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM Open to junior honors candidates in history. Introduction to the study and analysis of historical phenomena. Emphasis on theoretical approaches to historical knowledge, problems of methodology, and introduction to research design and strategy. Objective of this seminar is the development of honors thesis proposal. Perm Needed From Department Seminar