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 0001-001 Making of the Modern World: A History of Garbage Anne K Berg ARCH 208 MW 12:00 PM-12:59 PM This course examines the political, economic, social, cultural and intellectual foundations of the world in which we live. We will cover the full scope of the human experience—empire, war, religion, revolution, industrialization, climate, globalization—over a vast geographic range, exploring key parallels and contrasts: in power and access to resources; modes of production and value systems; religious and ethnic traditions; identities and cultural practice, and in political systems and social formations. We will examine both human and non-human actors and personal and systemic changes and explore trajectories that are never predetermined.
This course serves as a gateway to the discipline of History and to the Department of History at Penn. It fulfills both the Sector II (History and Tradition) and Cross-Cultural Analysis requirement and, depending on the faculty member in charge, may examine the world through ONE specific theme or highlight developments over two hundred or over two thousand years. 		History & Tradition Sector
Cross Cultural Analysis 		https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST0001001 World Global Issues
HIST 0100-001 Deciphering America Nicole M Adrian
Julia Marie Bouwkamp
Kathleen M Brown
Amy C Offner 		COHN 402 MW 12:00 PM-12:59 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 several telling moments in this history. The course treats thirteen of these moments and each unit begins with a specific primary document, historical figure, image, 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 for two in-person lectures each week and a required recitation. Course requirements include: student’s choice of ten “before” journal entries (1-2 sentences) and ten end of the week “after” journal entries (300-word maximum per entry); a take home mid-term exam; a part take home and part in-class final exam; and recitation attendance and participation. All course readings can be accessed on-line on the course’s CANVAS website; no books have been ordered or placed on reserve. Instructions for the journal entry exercise are posted on the course’s CANVAS website as “Protocol for Journal Entries.” Students should post all journal entries on CANVAS Assignments. 		History & Tradition Sector
Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. 		https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST0100001 American pre-1800, US
HIST 0200-601 The Emergence of Modern Europe Edward M Chappell COHN 392 M 5:15 PM-8:14 PM This course examines the period in European history from the Black Death until the French Revolution (roughly 1348 to 1789). During this period of Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment, early modern Europe experienced a series of crises in authority that ushered in the modern world. The course will explore how new discoveries (both geographical and intellectual) challenged existing worldviews; movements of religious reform challenged the authority of the Church and the unity of Europe; and new political doctrines, accompanied by a series of striking rebellions, challenged the foundations of traditional rule.
Our aim will be to excavate the changing social, political, intellectual, and cultural experiences of men and women during this time of renaissance, reformation, enlightenment, and revolution. We will follow the encounter between Europeans and the peoples of the Americas, Africa, and Asia, as well as the “discovery” of new ways to read old books, the “discovery” of new technologies in communications and combat, and the “discovery” of new sciences, arts, and philosophies as they impacted the way Europeans related to the wider world and their place within it. 		History & Tradition Sector
Cross Cultural Analysis 		https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST0200601 European Europe, pre-1800
HIST 0250-001 The Ascent of Europe Walter A Mcdougall
Matthew David Schoenfeld
Eleanor Webb 		ANNS 111 TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM This course will trace the dramatic rise and fall of Europe's global hegemony during the period roughly from 1450 to 1950. Among the major themes we will examine are: states and power, borders and resistance, race and genocide, economies and oppression, ideas and revolution, the building and change of hierarchies of gender and power. Truly, a dramatic story. The objectives of the course are: 1) To serve as an introduction to the study of history for majors and non-majors alike, and to teach the critical analysis of historical sources; 2) to teach substantive knowledge of European history; 3) to provide a foundation for further study of the European past. No previous background in European or World history is required. History & Tradition Sector
Cross Cultural Analysis 		https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST0250001 European Europe
HIST 0350-401 Africa Since 1800 Lee V Cassanelli COLL 200 MW 1:45 PM-2:44 PM Survey of major themes, events, and personalities in African history from the early nineteenth century through the 1960s. Topics include abolition of the slave trade, European imperialism, impact of colonial rule, African resistance, religious and cultural movements, rise of naturalism and pan-Africanism, issues of ethnicity and "tribalism" in modern Africa. AFRC0350401 Cross Cultural Analysis
History & Tradition Sector 		https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST0350401 World Africa/Middle East
HIST 0450-401 Modern Latin America 1808-Present Javier R. Ardila
Zoe Fallon
Melissa Teixeira 		MOOR 216 TR 10:15 AM-11:14 AM This course examines central themes of Latin American history, from independence to the present. It engages a hemispheric and global approach to understand the economic and social transformations of the region. We will explore the anti-imperial struggles, revolutions, social movements, and global economic crises that have given rise to new national projects for development, or have frustrated the realization of such goals. Taking a historical perspective, we will ask: What triggers imperial breakdown? How did slaves navigate the boundary between freedom and bondage? Was the Mexican Revolution revolutionary? How did the Great Depression lead to the rise of state-led development? In what ways have citizens mobilized for equality, a decent standard of living, and cultural inclusion? And what future paths will the region take given uneasy export markets and current political uncertainty? LALS0450401 History & Tradition Sector
Cross Cultural Analysis 		https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST0450401 World Latin America/Caribbean
HIST 0610-001 How We and Others Think: A Global Approach to Intellectual History Oscar Aguirre Mandujano CANCELED Just over a century ago, a woman raised her eyebrows in disgust and disbelief when she learned her neighbors were sleeping with their pet cat in the same room. She even took her neighbors to court for immoral behavior. A couple of centuries before that, most people were unsure whether coffee was a pernicious substance and therefore debated the merits of coffee. People have not always thought the way we do. For every idea that seems natural today, many hours of discussion, both oral and written, were spent in universities, academies, civil associations, taverns, public houses, and coffeehouses.
This class explores how others used to think about things we now consider natural. Becoming natural, however, necessitated debate, discussion, and compromise. The class focuses on examples from around the world, including Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Arab, Persian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese contexts to consider how we can study ideas from the past. The course will also explore the different methods, archives, and sources used by intellectual historians to explore two core questions. First, how can we understand our and others’ intellectual traditions from the vantage of shared assumptions and practices originating in the present? Second, how were ideas in the past interconnected through exchange, travel, or parallels? By the end of the course, students will be able to identify significant currents of change in intellectual history written in local and global contexts. 		Intellectual, World Global Issues, pre-1800
HIST 0721-401 Ancient Rome Campbell A. Grey BENN 419 MW 12:00 PM-12:59 PM At its furthest extent during the second century CE, the Roman Empire was truly a "world empire", stretching from northern Britain to North Africa and Egypt, encompassing the whole of Asia Minor, and bordering the Danube in its route from the Black Forest region of Germany to the Black Sea. But in its earliest history it comprised a few small hamlets on a collection of hills adjacent to the Tiber river in central Italy. Over a period of nearly 1500 years, the Roman state transformed from a mythical Kingdom to a Republic dominated by a heterogeneous, competitive aristocracy to an Empire ruled, at least notionally, by one man. It developed complex legal and administrative structures, supported a sophisticated and highly successful military machine, and sustained elaborate systems of economic production and exchange. It was, above all, a society characterized both by a willingness to include newly conquered peoples in the project of empire, and by fundamental, deep-seated practices of social exclusion and domination. This course focuses in particular upon the history of the Roman state between the fifth century BCE and the third century CE, exploring its religious and cultural practices, political, social and economic structures. It also scrutinizes the fundamental tensions and enduring conflicts that characterized this society throughout this 800-year period. ANCH0102401, CLST0102401 History & Tradition Sector
Cross Cultural Analysis 		European Europe
HIST 0725-401 National Antiquities: Genealogies, Hagiographies, Holy Objects Julia Verkholantsev VANP 626 MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM Human societies have always wanted to know about their origins, the reasons for their customs, the foundations of their social institutions and religious beliefs, and the justification of their power structures. They have conceived of creation myths and of origins stories for their communities in order to position themselves within the past and present of the natural and human worlds. The newly Christianized kingdoms of Medieval Europe faced the challenge of securing a place in the new vision of universal Providential history, and they inscribed their own histories into the narratives they knew from the authoritative sources of the time - biblical genealogies and heroic stories inherited from the poets of classical antiquity. The deeds and virtues of saintly kings and church hierarchs provided a continuity of historical narrative on the sacred map of time and space. In the 19th century, while interest in medieval antiquity as a source of inspiration for political and cultural renewal brought about a critical study of evidence, it also effected reinterpretation and repurposing of this evidence vis-a-vis a new political concept - that of a nation. This seminar will focus on central, eastern and southeast European nations and explore three categories of "national antiquities" that have been prominent in the workings of their modern nationalisms: (1) stories of ethnogenesis (so-called, origo gentis) that narrate and explain the beginnings and genealogy of peoples and states, as they are recorded in medieval and early modern chronicles, (2) narratives about holy people, who are seen as national patron-saints, and (3) material objects of sacred significance (manuscripts, religious ceremony objects, crowns, icons) that act as symbols of political, cultural and national identities. Our approach will be two-fold: On the one hand, we will read medieval sources and ask the question of what they tell us about the mindset of the authors and societies that created them. We will think about how the knowledge of the past helped medieval societies legitimize the present and provide a model for the future. On the other hand, we will observe how medieval narratives and artifacts have been interpreted in modern times and how they became repurposed - first, during the "Romantic" stage of national awakening, then in the post-imperial era of independent nation-states, and, finally, in the post-Soviet context of reimagined Europe. We will observe how the study of nationalistic mentality enhances our understanding of how the past is represented and repurposed in scholarship and politics. REES1174401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST0725401 European Europe
HIST 0755-401 History, Culture, and Religion in Early India CANCELED This course surveys the culture, religion and history of India from 2500 BCE to 1200 CE. The course examines the major cultural, religious and social factors that shaped the course of early Indian history. The following themes will be covered: the rise and fall of Harappan civilization, the "Aryan Invasion" and Vedic India, the rise of cities, states and the religions of Buddhism and Jainism, the historical context of the growth of classical Hinduism, including the Mahabharata, Ramayana and the development of the theistic temple cults of Saivism and Vaisnavism, processes of medieval agrarian expansion and cultic incorporation as well as the spread of early Indian cultural ideas in Southeast Asia. In addition to assigned secondary readings students will read select primary sources on the history of religion and culture of early India, including Vedic and Buddhist texts, Puranas and medieval temple inscriptions. Major objectives of the course will be to draw attention to India's early cultural and religious past and to assess contemporary concerns and ideologies in influencing our understanding and representation of that past. RELS0003401, SAST0003401 History & Tradition Sector
Cross Cultural Analysis 		World East/South Asia
HIST 0756-401 Gender and Sexuality in Chinese History Hsiao-Wen Cheng CANCELED This course examines gender and sexuality in Chinese history from ancient to contemporary times. It focuses on historiographical developments and methods of studying gender and sexuality in history as well as in Chinese history. The readings will include, but not be limited to, works by Robin Wang, Paul Goldin, Jen-der Lee, Patricia Ebrey, Beverly Bossler, Charlotte Furth, Susan Mann, Dorothy Ko, Francesca Bray, Yi-Li Wu, Matthew Sommer, Janet Theiss, Siyen Fei, Judith Zeitlin, Keith McMahon, Nicole Barnes, Gail Hershatter, Tani Barlow, and Lisa Rofel. EALC3424401, EALC7424401 Gender, World East/South Asia
HIST 0810-402 The City Nina A Johnson
Michael P Nairn 		EDUC 114 M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM Course will focus on Baltimore using The Wire and its sequel, We Own This City, as core texts. Following the trajectory of The Wire, the course will explore the history and development of the city and its institutions with a thematic focus on the impacts of the War on Drugs and policing on Baltimore’s African American community, urban revitalization, violence and community trauma, and the role of the carceral state in American cities. URBS0210401 Humanties & Social Science Sector American US
HIST 0811-401 Faculty-Student Collaborative Action Seminar in Urban University-Community Rltn Ira Harkavy
Theresa E Simmonds 		This seminar helps students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real-world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom, on campus, and in the West Philadelphia community. Students develop proposals that demonstrate how a Penn undergraduate education might better empower students to produce, not simply "consume," societally-useful knowledge, as well as to function as caring, contributing citizens of a democratic society. Their proposals help contribute to the improvement of education on campus and in the community, as well as to the improvement of university-community relations. Additionally, students provide college access support at Paul Robeson High School for one hour each week. AFRC1780401, URBS1780401 Cultural Diviserity in the U.S.
HIST 0814-401 American Slavery and the Law Heather A Williams CANCELED In this course, we will work both chronologically and thematically to examine laws, constitutional provisions, and local and federal court decisions that established, regulated, and perpetuated slavery in the American colonies and states. We will concern ourselves both with change over time in the construction and application of the law, and the persistence of the desire to control and sublimate enslaved people. Our work will include engagement with secondary sources as well as immersion in the actual legal documents. Students will spend some time working with Mississippi murder cases from the 19th century. They will decipher and transcribe handwritten trial transcripts, and will historicize and analyze the cases with attention to procedural due process as well as what the testimony can tell us about the social history of the counties in which the murders occurred. The course will end with an examination of Black Codes that southern states enacted when slavery ended. AFRC3500401 Cultural Diviserity in the U.S.
HIST 0823-401 Portraits of Russian Society: Art, Fiction, Drama Siarhei Biareishyk WILL 301 TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM This course covers 19C Russian cultural and social history. Each week-long unit is organized around a single medium-length text (novella, play, memoir) which opens up a single scene of social history birth, death, duel, courtship, tsar, and so on. Each of these main texts is accompanied by a set of supplementary materials paintings, historical readings, cultural-analytical readings, excerpts from other literary works, etc. The object of the course is to understand the social codes and rituals that informed nineteenth-century Russian life, and to apply this knowledge in interpreting literary texts, other cultural objects, and even historical and social documents (letters, memoranda, etc.). We will attempt to understand social history and literary interpretation as separate disciplines yet also as disciplines that can inform one another. In short: we will read the social history through the text, and read the text against the social history. REES0110401 Humanties & Social Science Sector European, Intellectual Europe
HIST 0830-401 Making of the Middle East Paul M. Cobb COLL 200 TR 8:30 AM-9:59 AM This is the second half of the Near East sequence. This course surveys Islamic civilization from circa 600 (the rise of Islam) to the start of the modern era and concentrates on political, social, and cultural trends. Although the emphasis will be on Middle Eastern societies, we will occasionally consider developments in other parts of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and Spain, where Islamic civilization was or has been influential. Our goal is to understand the shared features that have distinguished Islamic civilization as well as the varieties of experience that have endowed it with so much diversity. NELC0002401 Cross Cultural Analysis
History & Tradition Sector 		World Africa/Middle East
HIST 0837-401 Religion and Society in Africa David K. Amponsah
Senit Negassi Kidane 		BENN 141 MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM In recent decades, many African countries have perennially ranked very high among the most religious. This course serves as an introduction to major forms of religiosity in sub-Saharan Africa. Emphasis will be devoted to the indigenous religious traditions, Christianity and Islam, as they are practiced on the continent. We will examine how these religious traditions intersect with various aspects of life on the continent. The aim of this class is to help students to better understand various aspects of African cultures by dismantling stereotypes and assumptions that have long characterized the study of religions in Africa. The readings and lectures are will be drawn from historical and a few anthropological, and literary sources. AFRC2870401, RELS2870401 Cultural Diviserity in the U.S.
History & Tradition Sector 		World Africa/Middle East
HIST 0860-401 Introduction to Korean Civilization So-Rim Lee ANNS 111 MW 1:45 PM-2:44 PM What is Korean civilization—is it a singular notion, or are there many that became what we know as South and North Korea today? How have Koreans interpreted and represented their own cultures, traditions, and history through the years? This introductory course offers a broad chronological survey of Korean history, arts, and culture from its early days to the present moment. Our readings will include a selection of literature—from foundation myths, poetry, to modern fiction—as well as royal edicts and political manifestoes and op-eds. Alongside the readings, we will also engage with multimedia resources including various artwork, film, and music. Through these cultural texts, we will explore the political, economic, and social order of different historical eras and identify major currents and events on the Korean peninsula such as shifting political climates, class struggles, gender dynamics, and complex relations with its East Asian neighbors and the West. We will also be treated to guest lectures from the interdisciplinary Korean studies scholars affiliated with the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies at Penn. By the end of the semester, students will become familiar with the many continuities and breaks that constitute Korean culture from ancient to modern times and gain good insight into where it might be headed in the future. No prior knowledge of Korea or the Korean language is required. EALC0060401 History & Tradition Sector
Cross Cultural Analysis 		World East/South Asia
HIST 0873-401 Existence in Black David K. Amponsah CHEM 119 T 12:00 PM-2:59 PM Racial, colonial, and other political formations have encumbered Black existence since at least the fifteenth-century. Black experiences of and reflections on these matters have been the subject of existential writings and artistic expressions ranging from the blues to reggae, fiction and non-fiction. Reading some of these texts alongside canonical texts in European existential philosophy, this class will examine how issues of freedom self, alienation, finitude, absurdity, race, and gender shape and are shaped by the global Black experience. Since Black aliveness is literally critical to Black existential philosophy, we shall also engage questions of Black flourishing amidst the potential for pessimism and nihilism. AFRC4406401, AFRC5060401, PHIL4515401, PHIL6515401 Intellectual
HIST 0877-401 Modern Biology and Social Implications John Ceccatti COHN 337 TR 7:00 PM-8:29 PM This course covers the history of biology in the 19th and 20th centuries, giving equal consideration to three dominant themes: evolutionary biology, classical genetics, and molecular biology. The course is intended for students with some background in the history of science as well as in biology, although no specific knowledge of either subject in required. We will have three main goals: first, to delineate the content of the leading biological theories and experimental practices of the past two centuries; second, to situate these theories and practices in their historical context, noting the complex interplay between them and the dominant social, political, and economic trends; and, third, to critically evaluate various methodological approaches to the history of science. STSC1151401 Natural Sciences & Mathematics Sector https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST0877401 Intellectual
HIST 0878-401 Science, Labor and Capital Bekir H Kucuk BENN 406 W 12:00 PM-2:59 PM This course looks at the intertwined history of science, labor and capital since the fifteenth century. Starting with the surge of patents for labor-saving devices in fifteenth century Italy and coming all the way down to the contemporary neoliberal university, the culture of science and the cultures of labor and capital have always remained in intense conversation. The first half of the course will focus on the early relations between science, labor and capital. We will discuss patterns of employment for scientists, the relationship between manual work and intellectual work, the scientific aspects of commercial capitalism as well as the debates on the transition to capitalism. The second half of the course will focus on the period from the nineteenth century to the present. We will talk about colonialism and science, the social ascendance of the scientist in relation to the technician, as well as the political economy of contemporary science and of the contemporary university. This is a seminar course and will require regular participation. Some knowledge of the existing literature on capitalism, especially the writings of Ellen Wood and E.P Thompson, are recommended but not required. STSC3088401 Global Issues
HIST 0879-401 Global Queer History Javier Samper Vendrell CANCELED Sexuality has a history that is both geographically and culturally specific. For this reason, this course aims to destabilize familiar sexual categories and identities by exploring how it was (and is) to be queer in different parts of the world. We will historicize sexual orientation as a category anchored in Western medical and legal discourses; we will link the history of sexuality with that of capitalism, colonialism, and racism; and we will evaluate the idea of “Gay Imperialism” and how it is resisted around the world. The course is not comprehensive either chronologically or geographically. Instead, it considers some key topics in the history of queer sexualities; it provides a general historiographical background; and it introduces a toolbox for doing critical queer history with a global perspective. Finally, we will address how contemporary LBGTQ+ issues around the world can be put into historical perspective, and why queer history is essential for achieving the goals of social justice. GSWS2879401 Gender Global Issues
HIST 1151-401 Race, Space and Place in American History Mia E Bay MCNB 395 TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM This course provides with a historical introduction to America's racial and ethnic groupings by examining the social, spatial and historical forces that have defined these groups. Weekly lectures and readings trace American racial formations, identities and experiences from the age of Columbus to the present day. Following the work of historians and geographers who emphasize the importance of space and place in constructions of racial and ethnic identity, most of the class readings chart the evolution of such identities within specific regions or communities. Early readings illuminate the origins of categories such as "white," black, "Native American" and "Asian" by exploring the colonial encounters in which these identities first took shape; while later readings trace how these identities have been maintained and/or changed over time. Less a product of racial attitudes than of economic and political interests, early American conceptions of race first took shape amidst contests over land and labor that pitted European immigrants against the indigenous peoples of North America, and ultimately led to the development of racial slavery. Colonial legal distinctions between Christians and Heathens were supplanted by legislation that defined people by race and ethnicity. Over time these distinctions were reinforced by a variety of other forces. Distinctive from place to place, America's racial and ethnic groupings have been shaped and reshaped by regional economies such as the slave South, political initiatives such as Indian Removal and Chinese Exclusion Acts, a changing national immigration policy, and sexual and social intermixture and assimilation. Course readings will examine the links between race, region, labor, law, immigration, politics, sexuality and the construction and character of racialized spaces and places in America. AFRC1151401 Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. American US
HIST 1165-401 History of American Education Jonathan L Zimmerman EDUC 427 MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM This course will examine the growth and development of American schools, from the birth of the republic into the present. By 1850, the United States sent a greater fraction of its children to school than any other nation on earth. Why? What did young people learn there? And, most of all, how did these institutions both reflect and shape our evolving conceptions of "America" itself? In an irreducibly diverse society, the answers were never simple. Americans have always defined their nation in a myriad of contrasting and often contradictory ways. So they have also clashed vehemently over their schools, which remain our central public vehicle for deliberating and disseminating the values that we wish to transmit to our young. Our course will pay close attention to these education-related debates, especially in the realms of race, class, and religion. When immigrants came here from other shores, would they have to relinquish their old cultures and languages? When African-Americans won their freedom from bondage, what status would they assume? And as different religious denominations fanned out across the country, how would they balance the uncompromising demands of faith with the pluralistic imperatives of democracy? All of these questions came into relief at school, where the answers changed dramatically over time. Early American teachers blithely assumed that newcomers would abandon their old-world habits and tongues; today, "multicultural education" seeks to preserve or even to celebrate these distinctive patterns. Post-emancipation white philanthropists designed vocational curricula for freed African-Americans, imagining blacks as loyal serfs; but blacks themselves demanded a more academic education, which would set them on the road to equality. Protestants and Catholics both used the public schools to teach their faith systems until the early 1960s, when the courts barred them from doing so; but religious controversies continue to hound the schools, especially on matters like evolution and sex education. How should our public schools address such dilemmas? How can the schools provide a "common" educaiton, as Horace Mann called it, melding us into an integrated whole while still respecting our inevitable differences? EDUC5453401 Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST1165401 American US
HIST 1166-401 A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered Hardeep Dhillon COHN 402 MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM Many Americans widely accept the notion that the United States is a nation of immigrants despite the fact that immigration and border control has been a central feature of this nation’s past. This course explores the United States’ development of immigration and border enforcement during the twentieth century through an intersectional lens. It roots the structures of modern immigration and border enforcement in Native dispossession and histories of slavery, and interrogates how Asian, Black, and Latinx immigration has shaped and expanded immigration controls on, within, and beyond US territorial borders. In addition to historicizing the rise and expansion of major institutions of immigration control such as the US Border Patrol and Bureau of Naturalization, we explore how immigration controls were enforced on the ground and impacted the lives of everyday people. ASAM1166401, LALS1166401 American US
HIST 1169-401 History of American Law Since 1877 Karen Tani ARCH 208 MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM This course introduces students to major themes in U.S. legal history from 1877 to the present. Topics include (but are not limited to) citizenship and immigration, federalism, public regulation of economic activity, lawyers and the legal profession, criminalization, social welfare provision, and rights-claiming. Prominent through-lines include the relationship between law and politics; the struggles of marginalized groups for recognition and inclusion; and shifting, competing understandings of liberty, equality, and justice. Judicial decisions figure prominently in this course, but so, too, do other sources of law, including statutes, administrative decisions, and provisions of the U.S. Constitution. Students will leave this course with a better grasp of how the U.S. legal system operates and how it has channeled power, resources, and opportunity over time. *This course fulfills a core requirement for the Legal Studies and History Minor.* AFRC1169401 Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST1169401 American, Intellectual US
HIST 1177-401 African American History 1876 to Present Vaughn A Booker
Gabriela Irem Noles Cotito 		PSYL A30 MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM A study of the major events, issues, and personalities in Afro-American history from Reconstruction to the present. The course will also examine the different slave experiences and the methods of black resistance and rebellion in the various slave systems. AFRC1177401 History & Tradition Sector
Cultural Diviserity in the U.S.
HIST 1180-001 U.S. Politics and Society since the 1960s: From Civil Rights to the Trump Right Randall B Cebul VANP 402 MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM This course explores significant political and social developments that shaped the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in the United States, an era of declining faith in political institutions, ideological and partisan polarization, and accelerating inequality. The course will consider a variety of perspectives, developments, and movements across the political spectrum as well as others that defy easy ideological or partisan categorization. Topics will include the evolution of the post-1960s civil rights movement and the rise of mass incarceration; the rise and transformation of the religious right and the emergence of the populist right from the 1970s through the Tea Party and MAGA movements; the evolution of liberalism and the Democratic Party and its relationship to the left; the AIDS crisis and the LGBTQ movement; 9/11 and the war on terror; the financialization of the global economy and the causes and effects of the mortgage crisis of 2008; and bipartisan paths toward the emergence of “neoliberalism” and the concept of the "free market" as ways of reordering not just social and political commitments but perhaps even society itself. https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST1180001 American US
HIST 1201-001 Foundations of Law Christen Hammock Jones
Ada M Kuskowski 		BENN 231 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. https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST1201001 European, Intellectual Europe, pre-1800
HIST 1260-401 Tolstoy’s War and Peace and the Age of Napoleon Peter I. Holquist
Akhil Puthiyadath Veetil 		STNH AUD MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM In this course we will read what many consider to be the greatest book in world literature. This work, Tolstoy's War and Peace, is devoted to one of the most momentous periods in world history, the Napoleonic Era (1789-1815). We will study both the book and the era of the Napoleonic Wars: the military campaigns of Napoleon and his opponents, the grand strategies of the age, political intrigues and diplomatic betrayals, the ideologies and human dramas, the relationship between art and history. How does literature help us to understand this era? How does history help us to understand this great book? Because we will read War and Peace over the course of the entire semester, readings will be manageable and very enjoyable. COML1262401, REES1380401 Cross Cultural Analysis https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST1260401 Diplomatic, European, Intellectual Europe
HIST 1275-302 Spain: From Civil War to Post-Francoism, 1930-2020 Antonio Feros VANP 625 T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This course will focus on three moments in the history of Spain that are fundamental to understanding the constant political debates in our current societies about how a country should remember and commemorate its history. The reality is that we live in a moment in which the past is more present than ever. The debates, sometimes violent, in the USA about Confederate monuments and symbols; the publication of critical comparative studies, such as the extraordinary work of Susan Neiman Learning from the Germans; or the considerable number, every day larger, of works on historical memory in many countries and regions, from Germany to Argentina, the former Yugoslavia, Japan, to the United States and Spain. In Spain, debates about the past and how the country remembers and celebrates have become central to struggles about government and the future of democracy. This course is structured into three parts. Part I centers on the Spanish CIVIL WAR, 1936-1939. Part II will focus on the consequences of the Civil War (1939-1975), both from internal and international perspectives. Part III will pay attention to the period 1975-2022, paying particular attention to debates about how the country should remember the Civil War, what type of sites of memory to conserve and build, and the importance and political and social effects of several essential laws - the 1977 Amnesty Law and the 2007 and 2022 Historical Memory Laws.
HIST 1300-401 Gunpowder, Art and Diplomacy: Islamic Empires in the Early Modern World Oscar Aguirre Mandujano CANCELED 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 Diplomatic, World Africa/Middle East, pre-1800
HIST 1310-401 Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade Roquinaldo Ferreira WILL 421 MW 5:15 PM-6:44 PM This course focuses on the history of selected African societies from the sixteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. The primary goal is to study the political, economic, social, and cultural history of a number of peoples who participated in the Atlantic slave trade or were touched by it during the era of their involvement. The course is designed to serve as an introduction to the history and culture of African peoples who entered the diaspora during the era of the slave trade. Its audience is students interested in the history of Africa, the African diaspora, and the Atlantic world, as well as those who want to learn about the history of the slave trade. Case studies will include the Yoruba, Akan, and Fon, as well as Senegambian and West-central African peoples. AFRC1310401, LALS1310401 Cross Cultural Analysis World Africa/Middle East, pre-1800
HIST 1350-401 Faces of Jihad in African Islam Cheikh Ante Mbacke Babou WILL 1 MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM This course is designed to provide the students with a broad understanding of the history of Islam in Africa. The focus will be mostly on West Africa, but we will also look at developments in other regions of the continent. We will explore Islam not only as religious practice but also as ideology and an instrument of social change. We will examine the process of islamization in Africa and the different uses of Jihad. Topics include prophetic jihad, jihad of the pen and the different varieties of jihad of the sword throughout the history in Islam in sub-Saharan Africa. AFRC1350401 Cross Cultural Analysis Intellectual, World Africa/Middle East, pre-1800
HIST 1540-401 Religion and Politics in South Asia, c. 1000-2000 Ramya Sreenivasan EDUC 201 MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM This lecture course will examine the relationship between religion and politics in a region which has seen renewed conflicts in the name of religious communities over the past thirty years: South Asia. The course will cover the history of such conflicts between 1000 and 2000 C.E., and the genealogy of present-day conflicts, whether rooted in the recent past or in the distant past. The emphasis will be on political patronage of religious shrines and its converse, iconoclasm; on religious conversions; on clashes that were perceived as clashes between religious communities; on doctrinal and legal reforms of religious traditions and on popular religious movements and their appeal at particular historical moments. We will explore the politics of religion and of religious affiliation from the eleventh to the twentieth centuries by reading primary sources and reviewing the rich historiography. No prior knowledge of South Asia is expected. SAST1540401 Cross Cultural Analysis World East/South Asia, pre-1800
HIST 1551-401 History of US-China Relations Neysun A. Mahboubi MCNB 285 TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM The list of issues shaping the US-China relationship is extensive. Trade and investment, the status and future of Taiwan, China’s expansion into the South China Sea and its relationships with East and Southeast Asian neighbors, the Belt and Road Initiative and China’s expanding influence in the United Nations and other multilateral institutions, human rights, the status of Hong Kong, concerns about Xinjiang, technology transfer, intellectual property and cyberespionage, the status of people-to-people engagement in fields like education, health and cultural exchange and many others are all ongoing points of discussion between the two great powers. Understanding these issues in the present day requires exploring how these issues evolved over the decades and even centuries of engagement between the United States and China. Are there similarities between America’s Open-Door policy of the late 19th century and its position on trade with China today? What are the prospects for Taiwan policy given the complicated diplomatic history surrounding the recognition of the People’s Republic in the 1970s? When and why did human rights come to be a defining issue in the US-China relationship and how has it evolved over time? How have people-to-people exchanges been understood to undergird the relationship? How are 21st c. flashpoints, such as technology competition and cyberespionage, impacting the traditional list of tensions, such as Taiwan, maritime conflicts, and geopolitics in East Asia? What are the consistent through lines in America’s policies toward China and what has changed?
This course will look at a series of issues that are at the center of the US-China relationship through an historical lens, providing students with insight into the forces that have shaped positions on both sides. Students will develop an understanding of key issues in the diplomatic relationship the United States and China today and their deep historical roots. No previous study of Chinese history is required for this course, but students will be expected to engage enthusiastically with the course material. 		EALC1734401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST1551401 Diplomatic, World East/South Asia
HIST 1610-401 Medieval and Early Modern Jewry Joshua Teplitsky PCPE 200 TR 5:15 PM-6:44 PM 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 History & Tradition Sector
Cross Cultural Analysis
HIST 1635-301 Histories of Religion and Violence (SNF Paideia Program Course) Daniel J.M. Cheely WILL 305 TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM Is there any historical basis for thinking that religion and good citizenship can coincide? The American political project was designed, according to many of its original activists as well as contemporary theorists across the political spectrum, both to establish a safe haven for free religious practice *and* to protect the public from religious violence. That second concern may have been waning as the 21st century ushered in what was famously described as "A Secular Age", but in the following decade some sociologists observed a new surge in Global Religion. With religion hardly on the brink of extinction, it is worthwhile for modern citizens to re-examine the diverse narratives about religion and violence that have structured modern politics. While this class will prioritize the exploration of accounts of medieval and early modern religious violence that were pivotal to highly influential theories of American democratic government, it will also consider both more ancient and more contemporary histories, such as religious origin stories, 19th century histories of "the warfare between religion and science”, and 20th century accounts of totalitarian violence against religious communities, among other narratives. It will also lead students to reflect both critically and constructively about fundamental theories of religion and violence as they engage in an interdisciplinary and collaborative investigation of primary sources, sacred texts, local sites of contestation, and contemporary controversies. In the process, students will develop vital capacities for civic engagement within our religiously (and non-religiously) pluralistic polity, especially as religious and political identity become increasingly intertwined and follow alarming trends of polarization. https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST1635301 World Global Issues, pre-1800
HIST 1702-401 Introduction to Latin American and Latino Studies Ann C. Farnsworth EDUC 007 MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM Designed to introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of Latin American and Latino Studies, this is a seminar oriented toward first and second year students. Readings will range widely, from scholarly work on the colonial world that followed from and pushed back against the "conquest"; to literary and artistic explorations of Latin American identities; to social scientists' explorations of how Latinos are changing the United States in the current generation. LALS0720401 Cross Cultural Analysis American, World Latin America/Caribbean, US
HIST 1711-401 Remembering the Holocaust Beth S. Wenger VANP 302 M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This course explores how the Holocaust has been constructed as an event in popular memory. Beginning in the mid-1940s, with the first attempts to narrate what had transpired during the Nazi era, this seminar traces the ways that the Holocaust became codified as a distinct episode in history. Taking a chronological approach, the course follows the evolution of historical and popular ideas about the Holocaust. We will examine works produced in the United States, Europe, and Israel, and explore an array of forms, including documentary and fictional film, radio and television broadcasting, museum displays, tourist practices, and monuments. Students will be introduced to unfamiliar sources and also asked to reconsider some well-known Holocaust documents and institutions. JWST1711401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST1711401 Jewish Global Issues
HIST 1735-401 Cold War: Global History Suyoung Kim
Benjamin Nathans
Julian Noah Tash 		COHN 402 MW 10:15 AM-11:14 AM The Cold War was more than simply a military confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union; it was the frame within which the entire world developed (for better or worse) for nearly five decades. This course will examine the cold War as a global phenomenon, covering not only the military and diplomatic history of the period, but also examining the social and cultural impact of the superpower confrontation. We will cover the origins of the conflict, the interplay between periods of tension and detente, the relative significance of disagreements within the opposing blocs, and the relationship between the "center" of the conflict in the North Atlantic/European area and the global "periphery". REES1370401 Humanties & Social Science Sector
Cross Cultural Analysis 		https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST1735401 Diplomatic, European, World Europe, Global Issues
HIST 1761-401 Sex and Empire Secil Yilmaz EDUC 121 MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM This course explores the historical narratives surrounding modern empires and colonialism, with a specific focus on the role of sex and gender. Modern empires as complex political and social structures built upon and operated on the basis of difference—racial, religious, sexual. Colonial encounters not only produced unequal and uneven conditions for the colonized, but also in the construction of racialized and gendered structures in the formation of modern capitalism, market economies, political regimes, citizenship, everyday violence and so on. This course examines the historical literature on the intersections of power and historical experience in the framework of a variety of themes including modern family, marriage, slavery, property, labor, incarceration, sex trafficking, science of sex, displacement, and reproduction as they relate to sexuality, race, and religion categories in imperial contexts. The course spans the early nineteenth century to the present and is framed around global and cross-cultural perspective to analyze how scholars have engaged with sexuality and gender to explore broader themes pertaining to formation of modern empires and colonialism. GSWS1761401 Cross Cultural Analysis https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST1761401
HIST 1785-401 American Expansion in the Pacific Eiichiro Azuma MEYH B13 MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM This course examines America's expansion into the Pacific with a focus on the colonization of Hawai'i and the Philippines. The class deals with various issues, including the meaning of "frontier," imperialism, development of capitalist economies and trade relations in the region, diplomacy and militarism, migration and racism, and colonial histories of the US West, the Pacific Islands, and East Asia. ASAM3100401 American, Diplomatic, World East/South Asia, US
HIST 1788-401 Civilizations at Odds? The United States and the Middle East Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet MCNB 285 TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM America has often been depicted in the Middle East either as a benevolent superpower or an ill-meaning enemy – in other words, foe or friend, Satan or saint. In America, too, stereotypes of the Middle East abound as home to the uber-wealthy, tyrants, and fanatics. This course will explore the relationship between the United States and the Middle East by moving beyond such facile depictions. We will read works of history and political analysis to shape our understanding of this relationship and to explore cross-cultural perspectives. Our goal is to understand why a century of interaction has sometimes done little to bring peace and greater understanding between these two intertwined communities. By reading a range of historical accounts, we will consider the origins of this cultural and diplomatic encounter. The readings will shed light on the extent of America’s involvement in the Middle East in the twentieth century. We will consider the impact of oil diplomacy on U.S.-Middle East relations, as well as the role of ideology and culture, in an effort to comprehend the antagonism that exists on a state-to-state level in some contexts. Most importantly, we will grapple with the ways in which international politics disrupts the lives of citizens trapped in the throes of political turmoil. NELC0680401 World Africa/Middle East, Global Issues
HIST 2000-301 History Workshop Anne K Berg VANP 626 W 3:30 PM-6:29 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=202410&c=HIST2000301 Seminar
HIST 2151-301 History of Baseball, 1840 to the present Sarah L. H. Gronningsater VANP 242 T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This course explores the history of baseball in the United States. It covers, among other topics, the first amateur clubs in the urban North, the professionalization and nationalization of the sport during and after the Civil War era, the rise of fandom, baseball’s relationship to anxieties about manhood and democracy, tensions between labor and management, the Negro Leagues, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, Nisei baseball during World War Two, Jackie Robinson and desegregation, and the Latinization of baseball. The history of baseball is, in many respects, the history of the United States writ large as well as the history of the myths that Americans tell about themselves. American Seminar, US
HIST 2158-301 News, Media and American Democracy Bruce K Lenthall WILL 318 T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM At separate moments, Thomas Jefferson famously declared both that newspapers were crucial to sustain a nation and that a person who never looked at a newspaper was better informed than a regular reader of the press. The ideal of an informed citizenry occupies a central spot in our understanding of the democratic project in the United States, and, consequently, the news and the media play a vital role. But the news can manipulate and distort as well as inform. As Americans on both the Left and Right wonder today, how does media support or imperil our democratic prospects?
In this course we will consider how the changing ways Americans have learned about the world have shaped how they have engaged with it. We will explore the shape, role and impact of media in the United States from the 18th to the 21st centuries. As we examine evolving forms of print, film, radio, television and internet we will consider how Americans have integrated media into their lives, and the contested nature of news, citizenship and democracy. Throughout, we will explore the importance of the different media that conveyed news in the past – and think about what that means for us in the present moment as news travels through new channels. 		American Seminar, US
HIST 2161-401 The Civil Rights Movement Mia E Bay BENN 24 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. AFRC2161401 American Seminar, US
HIST 2202-301 Taking Things: A History of Property and Law Ada M Kuskowski MCES 105 T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This class looks at the history of the idea of property from antiquity to contemporary society though various specific themes and problems. We will begin with early development of the idea of property in Roman law. How was the idea of property explained, and what were the basic legal concepts associated with taking, using and owning? How did people lay claim to things wild or unowned? We will then move through medieval, early modern and modern periods to examine specific questions. How were people made into things? How do we create rights in intangibles? What are the limits of rights in property? Property is in many ways a central concept in relations between people in their everyday life. It is also a cornerstone of political ideology. This class will explore the history behind how we make and distinguish between ‘mine’ and ‘yours.’ https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST2202301 Economic, European, Intellectual Europe, pre-1800
HIST 2290-301 The Great War in Memoir and Memory (Penn Global Seminar) Warren G. Breckman VANP 625 R 10:15 AM-1:14 PM World War One was the primordial catastrophe of twentieth-century history. For all who passed through it, the Great War was transformative, presenting a profound rupture in personal experience. It was a war that unleashed an unprecedented outpouring of memoirs and poetic and fictional accounts written by participants. In its wake, it also produced new forms of public commemoration and memorialization - tombs to the unknown soldier, great monuments, soldiers' cemeteries, solemn days of remembrance, and the like. One hundred years after World War One, this course will explore the war through the intersection of these processes of personal and public memory. (Please note: This is not a seminar in military or diplomatic history, but rather an exploration of personal experiences of the War, representations of experience, and the cultural and political dimensions of memory.) The course will end with a one week visit to the Western Front region of northern France. Travel to sites in northern France will allow us to consider the scale and topography of some of the major battles, visit cemeteries and ossuaries and reflect on their various forms of secular and sacred organization, various national war monuments, and WWI museums, including the pathbreaking museum in Peronne and the national WWI museum in Meaux. https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST2290301 European, Intellectual Europe, Seminar
HIST 2350-401 Migration and Refugees in African History Cheikh Ante Mbacke Babou WILL 201 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 2353-401 Sex and Power in the Middle East: Unveiling Women's Lives Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet MCNB 410 T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM How did Middle Eastern women and men really live? What impact did tradition have on practices of veiling, seclusion, and politics? How did attitudes toward intimacy and sexuality change over time? This course strives to answer these questions by offering a comparative perspective on people's lives in the modern Middle East (Southwest Asia) and North Africa. We begin in the 19th century and move quickly to the twentieth century when social policies and politics shaped gender relations. We will consider the birth and popularity of fashion industries, beauty contests, journalism, the visual arts, television, and challenges to norms of sexuality. Part of the class will also engage with traditionalist rejection of such new social and cultural trends. From Iran to Algeria, women and men grappled with culture wars that centered on gender, sexuality, and power. To make the learning process interactive, we will watch video clips, documentaries, and interviews as we delve into this ongoing tug-of-war. GSWS2353401, NELC2567401, SOCI2947401 Cross Cultural Analysis Gender, World Africa/Middle East
HIST 2365-401 Bacteria, Bodies, and Empires: Medicine and Healing in the Eastern Mediterranean (15th-21st c.) Secil Yilmaz BENN 25 MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM Bacteria, Bodies, and Empires is a course about the history of medicine in the Eastern Mediterranean from the 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. HSOC2362401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST2365401 World Africa/Middle East, Seminar
HIST 2602-401 The Mediterranean World in the Age of Don Quixote Roger Chartier
Antonio Feros 		VANP 627 M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM Using as our guides the works of Miguel de Cervantes, Michel de Montaigne, William Shakespeare, Baldassare Castiglione, Antonio de Sosa, Elias al-Musili, and many others, this seminar will analyze the social mutations, religious confrontations, political conflicts, cultural productions and circulation of books, ideas and goods that characterized the Mediterranean world during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Based on close readings of primary and secondary sources, this seminar will focus on the study of the main transformations—political, economic, religious, cultural, and literary—in the early modern Mediterranean world. Students will also be introduced to and learn to analyze original materials from the Library’s Kislak Center, where the class will meet, including early modern editions of books we will discuss, maps, ephemera, and manuscript documents. *History Majors will have the opportunity to write a 15-page paper to fulfill the Major research requirement* ENGL2605401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST2602401 European, Intellectual Europe, Seminar
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. European, Intellectual Europe, Seminar
HIST 2712-301 Public History: Doing History Beyond the Classroom Phillip Emanuel MCES 105 M 10:15 AM-1:14 PM As recent public debates have indicated, the historical interpretation of archives, objects, monuments, and sites is not fixed or static but the result of social, political, and cultural contexts and decisions about what to communicate to a variety of audiences. Throughout this course we will be thinking about history as a collection of stories about the past. These stories require narrative choices by their tellers, and they are connected to a range of sites, practices, and scholars beyond the confines of university history departments. Our big questions will include: Who is history for/who is excluded? Which stories are being told? Why is the past of interest to the ‘public’? While many class sessions will focus on discussion of these concepts, the course will also involve learning about methods and practices in different fields of public history and will include visits to museums, libraries, and other historical sites. These visits will take place at Penn, wider Philadelphia, and (virtually) across the Atlantic (e.g. Kislak Center for Special Collections, Independence National Historical Park, Ghana Museums and Monuments Board). All will involve interactions with public history professionals whose insights into the field will contribute to students’ understanding of the many ways in which people can ‘do history’. https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST2712301 World Global Issues, Seminar
HIST 3120-301 Revolutionary Stories: Philadelphians and the American Revolution Emma Hart VANP 625 W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches in 2026, the question of how we commemorate it seems a whole lot more complex than it did in 1976, when the nation celebrated its 200th birthday. Partly, this complexity lies in the very different views of the American Revolution held by academic historians and the wider public. While most scholars have spent the last forty years researching the Revolution through the eyes of ordinary people, the public’s appetite is often for stories about America’s great heroes and Founding Fathers. This research seminar will introduce you to these competing viewpoints, giving you the opportunity to conduct original research into Revolutionary-era Philadelphians, whose lives are documented in the rich collections of manuscripts held at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. At the end of semester you will have written an original research paper, grounded in primary sources you have unearthed at the Historical Society. In doing so you will confront some of the most important questions preoccupying Revolutionary historians today: What can these individual stories tell us about the American Revolution? How can we reconcile their very different narratives? And how can we interpret them for those Americans who haven’t had the opportunity to read them first-hand? https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST3120301 American pre-1800, Research, Seminar, US
HIST 3160-301 The Vietnam War Amy C Offner EDUC 120 T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This intensive research seminar explores the US war in Vietnam, its contestation, and its afterlives. Students will conduct independent archival research to produce an original essay on a topic of their choice. Papers might explore the political origins and consequences of the war; the catastrophic destruction that the war wrought in Vietnam; the relationship of the war to race, class, and gender inequalities in the trans-Pacific and the United States; the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s; the war’s devastating health and environmental consequences in the US and Vietnam; the experiences of Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, and US soldiers who fought in Vietnam; US-sponsored programs for capitalist development that formed part of the war; the role of Vietnamese and US religious communities in the war; the GI movement that resisted both the war and racism in the military; the role of US scientists, social scientists and corporations in facilitating the war effort, and the reckoning they faced; the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees across the Pacific and the United States after 1975; postwar initiatives for restitution, justice, and reconciliation; and disability politics that emerged from the war.
History majors may use this course to fulfill requirements for the Diplomatic, Intellectual, or Political History concentration, depending on the topic of the research paper. 		American, Diplomatic, Intellectual Research, Seminar, US
HIST 3173-401 Penn Slavery Project Research Seminar Kathleen M Brown VANP 305 R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This research seminar provides students with instruction in basic historical methods and an opportunity to conduct collaborative primary source research into the University of Pennsylvania's historic connections to slavery. After an initial orientation to archival research, students will plunge in to doing actual research at the Kislak Center, the University Archives, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the American Philosophical Society, the Library Company, and various online sources. During the final month of the semester, students will begin drafting research reports and preparing for a public presentation of the work. During the semester, there will be opportunities to collaborate with a certified genealogist, a data management and website expert, a consultant on public programming, and a Penn graduate whose research has been integral to the Penn Slavery Project. AFRC3173401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST3173401 American Research, Seminar, US
HIST 3700-401 Abolitionism: A Global History Roquinaldo Ferreira VANP 305 T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM This class develops a transnational and global approach to the rise of abolitionism in the nineteenth century. In a comparative framework, the class traces the rise of abolitionism in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia, examining the suppression of the transatlantic slave trade, the rise of colonialism in Africa, and the growth of forced labor in the wake of transatlantic slave trade. We will deal with key debates in the literature of African, Atlantic and Global histories, including the causes and motivations of abolitionism, the relationship between the suppression of the slave trade and the growth of forced labor in Africa, the historical ties between abolitionism and the early stages of colonialism in Africa, the flow of indentured laborers from Asia to the Americas in the wake of the slave trade. This class is primarily geared towards the production of a research paper. *Depending on the research paper topic, History Majors and Minors can use this course to fulfill the US, Europe, Latin America or Africa requirement.* AFRC3700401, LALS3700401 American, European, World Africa/Middle East, Europe, Latin America/Caribbean, Research, Seminar, US
HIST 3710-401 Introduction to Business, Economic and Financial History Marc R Flandreau DRLB 3N6 TR 5:15 PM-6:44 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 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST3710401 Economic Global Issues, Research, Seminar
HIST 3711-301 Uses and Abuses of History Lee V Cassanelli DRLB 2N36 M 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=202410&c=HIST3711301 American, Diplomatic, Economic, European, Gender, Intellectual, Jewish, World Africa/Middle East, East/South Asia, Europe, Latin America/Caribbean, Research, Seminar, US
HIST 3820-401 Renaissance Europe Ann Elizabeth Moyer JAFF B17 TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM The Renaissance was a defining era in European history, the age of Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci, crucial in the formation of Europe’s culture and identity. In this course we will examine the philosophers, writers, artists, and scientists of this era, as well as the political and social climate in which they lived and worked. We will give particular attention to the humanist movement, university culture, revolutionary changes in the visual arts, science, and religion. Readings will include key primary sources from the Renaissance era as well as the writings of modern historians. ITAL3820401 Cross Cultural Analysis https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST3820401 European, Intellectual Europe, pre-1800
HIST 3849-401 Fertile Bodies: A Cultural History of Reproduction from Antiquity to the Enlightenment Melissa Reynolds COHN 204 MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM The ancient Greeks imagined a woman’s body ruled by her uterus, while medieval Christians believed in a womb touched by God. Renaissance anatomists hoped to uncover the ‘secrets’ of human generation through dissection, while nascent European states wrote new laws to encourage procreation and manage ‘illegitimate’ offspring. From ancient Greece to enlightenment France, a woman’s womb served as a site for the production of medical knowledge, the focus of religious practice, and the articulation of state power. This course will trace the evolution of medical and cultural theories about women’s reproductive bodies from ca. 450 BCE to 1700, linking these theories to the development of structures of power, notions of difference, and concepts of purity that proved foundational to ‘western’ culture.
Each week we will read a primary source (in translation, if necessary) alongside excerpts from scholarly books and articles. We will begin in classical Greece with Hippocratic writings on women’s diseases, move through the origins of Christian celibacy and female asceticism in late antique and medieval Europe, follow early anatomists as they dissected women’s bodies in Renaissance Italy, explore the origins of state regulation of women’s fertility in early modern England, Germany, and France, and finally, learn how Enlightenment ideals were undergirded by new “scientific” models of anatomical sexual and racial difference. 		HSOC3549401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST3849401 European, Gender Europe
HIST 3965-401 The International Monetary System from Sterling to Cryptocurrency (1720-2020) Maylis Avaro
Arshdeep Singh Brar
Marc R Flandreau
Benjamin Alexander Wightman 		MCNB 150 TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM The course will cover the modern evolution of the international monetary system going all the way back to the era when sterling became the leading international currencies. It is arranged thematically and chronologically both. The lessons and readings will introduce students to the principal evolutions of the international monetary system and at the same time, it will give them an understanding of regimes, their mechanics and the geopolitical economies behind systemic shifts. Students need not have an economic background but must be prepared to read about exchange rates (and world politics). Special focus on: The early modern international monetary system. How Amsterdam and London captured the Spanish treasure. Beyond the West (Ottoman Empire, India, China). The Napoleonic wars and the rise of sterling. Hong-Kong: Silver, Opium, and the Recycling of Surpluses. The emergence of the Gold Standard. Bimetallism: The US election of 1796. Sterling and Key Currencies before WWI. The First World War and the origins of dollar supremacy. When the dollar displaced sterling (1920s). The collapse of the international gold standard (1930s). The Bretton Woods System. The rise and rise of the US dollar. Currency competition (Dollar, Euro, Yuan Renminbi). The meaning of cryptocurrencies. ECON0615401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HIST3965401 Economic, World Global Issues
HIST 4997-301 Junior Honors in History Warren G. Breckman VANP 625 R 3:30 PM-6:29 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. Seminar
HIST 4997-302 Junior Honors in History Oscar Aguirre Mandujano VANP 626 R 3:30 PM-6:29 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.
HIST 6100-301 American Democracy Randall B Cebul
Sarah L. H. Gronningsater 		VANP 302 W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM Democracy in America

In this graduate seminar, we will examine the development of formal structures of democratic participation in the United States from the founding of the nation into the contemporary moment. By formal structures of democratic participation, we mean those institutions where citizens, non-citizens, and state meet: elections, party systems, the courts and criminal justice system, but also evolving ideas and practices of constitutionalism, regulation and the administrative state, public policy, and “common people’s” political practices separate from the ballot box. We also mean to think about institutions and practices that exist alongside and within formal structures of democracy, such as associations, conventions, churches, and print culture. The course covers a long chronology in order to expose students to both stark continuities and crucial ruptures across time. We pay close attention to local, state, and national arenas and sovereignties; to contingent moments of democratic reform and rupture; to conflict and contestation over democratic citizenship and the electorate; tools of democratic politics; and to debates among historical actors, democratic theorists, and historians.
HIST 6220-301 How to Read a Text Roger Chartier VANP 605 T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM For all Humanities or Social Sciences, reading is a fundamental issue either because historians or literary critics can generally only listen to the dead with the eyes or because anthropologists decipher practices and rituals as “texts” that must be “read”. Whence the necessity to analyze what does it mean go read a text. This Graduate seminar would like to discuss the different theories of reading and to characterize the reading practices in relation with discursive genres and their material embodiment. Focused on early modern period (but not exclusively), associating conceptual analysis and specific textual studies, the seminar will make a large use of the primary materials present in the collections of our library.

The topics of the classes will be (not necessarily in this order) “Poetics of Reception and Reader-Response Theory”; “From New Criticism to New Historicism”; “Bibliography and the Materiality of Texts”, “Textual Mobilities: Attribution, Variants, Migrations” “Scribal Publication and Print Culture”; “Intellectual Techniques of the Renaissance: Arts of Memory and Commonplaces”; “The Stage and the Page: England, Spain, France”; “The Reading Revolution of the Eighteenth-Century: Do Books Make Revolution?”; “Practices as Texts”; “Voices and the Written Word: Transcription and Transmission”; “Texts and Images: Equivalence, Supplement, Substitute?”; “Translations between Hospitality and Violence”, “Is a Score a Text”.

HIST 6300-301 Migrations and Diasporas in the Asia-Pacific Eiichiro Azuma WILL 4 T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM This graduate seminar is designed to address individual interests of students in the histories of migrations and diasporas in the Asia-Pacific.
Students will read representative historical studies to establish a historiographical foundation for their future dissertation research.
Please contact the instructor before registration.
HIST 6330-301 Late Imperial and Modern Chinese historiography Si-Yen Fei VANP 526 W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM Topics on Late Imperial and Modern Chinese History

This graduate seminar will introduce the central issues in the fields of late imperial and modern Chinese history ranging from governance, ethnicity, gender, religion, development, revolution, sovereignty, citizenship, and public politics. It also introduces historiographical debates around controversial milestones such as revolution and modernization. Centering on the transition from empire to nation, the seminar aims to prepare students to engage critically and productively with historiography in order to advance their individual research and teaching agendas. To achieve this goal, a series of writing exercises will be assigned throughout the semester. Students are also expected to participate actively during class discussion.
HIST 6710-301 Global History of Capitalism Melissa Teixeira DRLB 2N36 T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM Reading and discussion course on selected topics in Transregional Economic History
HIST 6730-301 Transatlantic Enlightenment Sophia A Rosenfeld VANP 625 M 3:30 PM-6:29 PM The Trans-Atlantic Enlightenment: Approaches to the Intellectual and Cultural History of the Eighteenth Century

The purpose of this seminar is to introduce graduate students to the key topics, issues, and debates in the 20th- and 21st-century historiography of the Enlightenment in Europe and the Americas. We will do so primarily through extensive reading and discussion of landmark secondary work in this field. We will also pay close attention to the varied approaches and methods by which the history of eighteenth-century thought and culture have been reconstructed and consider the ways these different methods might be put to new uses in future research. No previous knowledge of the period or key texts is assumed, and brief primary sources will also be assigned most weeks in order to make the textual foundations of the secondary literature clearer. Topics for discussion will include, among others, the birth of the intellectual; the idea of the public sphere and commercial development; the history of reading and reception; religious enlightenment and secularism; race, slavery and colonialism; gender politics; the history of the prison and state power; Enlightenment and revolution; and the modern legacy of the Enlightenment project.
HIST 7000-301 Proseminar in History Eve M. Troutt Powell WILL 304 R 3:30 PM-6:29 PM Weekly readings, discussions, and writing assignments to develop a global perspective within which to study human events in various regional/cultural milieus, c. 1400 to the present. This course is required for all PhD students, and is taken in the first year of study.
HIST 7100-301 Research in American and Afro-American Hist William Sturkey VANP 305 M 3:30 PM-6:29 PM Research seminar on selected topics in US history.
Students in this course will enhance their research and writing skills while working on an article or chapter-length research paper in consultation with the instructor and their primary advisor. Course readings will be selected from the fields of United States and African American History, but students are not limited to these fields for their research projects.