What is disease? How have different cultures experienced and responded to it? Using case studies from Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, this course examines global ecological changes and global human exchanges as a key factor in the spread of epidemic disease. It also highlights the role of medical and scientific knowledge in the human responses to disease. We explore the changing notions of the body's anatomy and physiology; the role of the environment; the interaction between healers, doctors, and patients; the nature of different therapeutic approaches; and the structure of health care institutions. Contributes to Environmental Studies, Health Studies, and International Studies. (Annually) (H) (WA)

This course traces the evolution of a variety of empires (real or imagined), from the pre-Columbian indigenous, Iberian, French, British, and Dutch empires through the Age of Revolutions, the rise of industry, capitalism, nationalist movements, World Wars, and communism. We will conclude with the process of decolonization and the possible development of an American Empire and other new kinds of empires. Empires, very broadly construed, will be our lens to interpret world history. Contributes to Design Thinking and International Studies (Annually) (H)

This course investigates the development of national identities around the world and the nationalisms that describe or defend them. We explore how nations are defined, whether nations are natural expressions of human community, why nationalism has often led to violence, and what the future may be for the nation-state. Contributes to International Studies, and Race and Ethnicity Studies/Allied Course. (Annually) (H) (WA)

This course introduces the world of premodern Eurasia by tracing transregional connections from the domestication of the horse by Inner Asian nomads to the Eurasian conquest of the Mongol Empire. We discuss mass migrations, individual travels, military conquest and virus transmission, as well as arenas of interaction such as monasteries, courts, ships, and caravans. By tracing objects, stories, and ideas, this class explores the Silk Road, a pre-Columbus global network of exchange, and other Silk Roads, to uncover world history as a network of overlapping links rather than a collection of national narratives. Contributes to International Studies. (Annually) (H)

This course offers an alternative thematic approach to the study of societies, cultures, and civilizations around the world and their interactions. May be repeated with change in topic. Contributes to International Studies. (Biennially) (H) (WA)

This survey is an introduction to African cultures and history from pre-colonial times to the present, emphasizing Africa's variety and its connections to other parts of the world. Topics include: environmental challenges; pre-colonial social and political organization; the spread of Islam and Christianity; the impact of the Atlantic slave trade; conquest and resistance; social change under colonial rule; decolonization; neo-colonialism and postcolonial challenges. Contributes to International Studies, and Race and Ethnicity Studies. (Biennially) (H)

This course introduces the East Asian civilization from its diverse beginnings to the eve of the modern age. Covering histories of regions of current nation-states such as China, Korea, and Japan, this course explores transregional processes that help define East Asia as a unit of historical inquiry. Major themes include political history, ethnic discourses and practices, the localization of Buddhism, indigenous religions, inter-state relations, urban life, gender, family, and intellectual change. These themes allow us to deliberate the formation of the East Asian world and the exchanges of the premodern era. Contributes to Early Modern Studies, East Asian Studies and International Studies. (Biennially) (H)

This course introduces students to the inter-related histories of China, Japan, and Korea since 1800 until the present day. Major topics include cultural exchanges, revolutions, war, imperialism, colonialism, and Cold War geopolitics. While globalizing forces oversaw the convergence of East Asia and European imperialism, politicians, intellectuals, and even commoners began to imagine themselves as members of distinct nations. By placing the emergence of East Asian nation-states and the interactions among them within the context of an increasingly connected world, we explore the making of the modern East Asian world. Contributes to East Asian Studies and International Studies. (Biennially) (H)

A time of collisions, encounters, and rebellions, Colonial Latin America explores the individual, social, cultural, and political experiences of Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans between the apogee of the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas and the Creole wars of independence of the 19th century. By examining pre-Colombian states, early European explorations, la conquista, the settlement of mostly Spanish but also Portuguese and other European colonies, and the responses of a diverse group of local inhabitants, this course explores the complex societies that resulted from the growth and end of global empires and that shaped the future of this diverse region. Contributes to Early Modern Studies, Health Studies, International Studies, Latin American and Border Studies, and Race and Ethnicity Studies/Group-Theme Course. (Biennially) (H)

After their independence in the early 19th century, Latin American countries faced the challenge to become nations. This course surveys the many paths that these countries followed, including the rise of nationalism and its overcoming by the neocolonial order, the revolutionary option in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua during the 20th century, the authoritarian responses to national discontent, and the rise of neoliberalism. It also explores how these trends transformed the society, culture, economy, and policies at the local level in response to both national and international influences. Contributes to International Studies, Latin American and Border Studies, and Race and Ethnicity Studies/Group-Theme Course. (Biennially) (H)

This course explores and questions the concept of the early modern period of European history, from the close of the fifteenth to the dawn of the nineteenth century. Students will examine political, cultural, and intellectual developments from the period of feudalism to the modernity ushered in by Atlantic-wide revolutions. The course will examine Renaissance art and theory, Reformation and confessional tumult, sovereignty and expansion. Contributes to Early Modern Studies and International Studies (Biennially) (H)

This course surveys the history of Europe from the late eighteenth century revolutions through the creation and expansion of the European Union. We explore social, political, intellectual, and cultural developments, paying particular attention to reform movements and revolutions. The course tracks shifting ideas of gender, race, and class, as well as examining Europe's role in the world. Contributes to Data Analytics, Data Science, Feminist Studies, and International Studies. (Biennially) (H)

This course surveys the political, social, cultural and intellectual history of early America, from the beginnings of European settlement to the eve of the Civil War. It focuses on several central issues that emerged in early American society and that continue to affect the United States today. These include the meaning of equality and freedom, ideas redefined over time in relationship to changing ideas about slavery, political authority, and the creation of governments, conceptualizing American identity, and constructing political authority. Citizenship, revolution, popular sovereignty, and the role of minority opinions in a democracy are major topics explored. Contributes to Early Modern Studies. (Biennially) (H)

This course surveys major political, economic, social, cultural and diplomatic developments in the United States from the end of the Civil War to the present. Course topics include the role of the individual in the state and the state in society, the meaning of equality and freedom, and the United States' role in the world. (Biennially) (H)

This course explores major social, political, economic, and cultural developments in the history of Texas from contact through World War II. Focusing particular attention on the 19th century, it places the development of the borderlands region at the intersection of various European, North America, and Native American powers, emphasizing the continued importance of transnational currents in the making of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Texas into the twentieth century. Contributes to Latin American and Border Studies . (H)

Thematic courses with a focus on African history. May be repeated with change in topic. Contributes to International Studies. (H)

Thematic courses with a focus on Asian history. May be repeated with change in topic. Contributes to East Asian Studies and International Studies. (H)

Thematic courses with a focus on Latin American history. May be repeated with change in topic. (H)

Thematic courses with a focus on European history. May be repeated with change in topic. Contributes to International Studies. (H)

These courses investigate the historical relationship between humans and nature. Every version of the course will emphasize how broader historical contexts have shaped human knowledge of nature, exploring the changing interrelationship between scientific knowledge, society, and culture across time and space. May be repeated with change in topic. (Biennially) (H)

Thematic courses with a focus on U.S. history. May be repeated with change in topic. (H)

Thematic courses with a comparative or transregional theme (covering at least three different world regions). May be repeated with change in topic. Contributes to International Studies. (H)

Latin America is a complex territory and an idea suspended between the extremes of despair and hopefulness. Telling its history poses many challenges to the academic historian. Often the history of the land and its people is better expressed in the work of artists, writers and filmmakers. This course ventures into the magical relationships between the artist and that enigmatic territorial and spiritual landscape extending from the Rio Bravo to Tierra del Fuego. Contributes to International Studies, Latin American and Border Studies, and Race and Ethnicity Studies/Group-Theme Course. (Biennially) (H) (SJ)

The Mexican Revolution was a fiesta of bullets that transformed Mexico and launched the 20th century. Using the Mexican Revolution as the event that shaped Mexican history throughout the 20th century, this course examines the conditions that mobilized Mexican such as Madero, Zapata, and Villa into a civil war in 1910 and that ended up with a new Constitution in 1917, the challenges, successes, and failures to create institutions that implemented the revolutionary values during the 1920s and 30s, and the value of the Revolution to promote social and political change in the second half of the 20th century. Contributes to International Studies, and Latin American and Border Studies. (Biennially) (H) (SJ)

Branded as barbarians, nomadic groups across Eurasia (including the Mongols and Uyghurs) have often been cast as antagonists, minimized to the role of mere outsiders separated by the curtain of civilization, in the histories of their sedentary neighbors. This course puts the nomads of Eastern Eurasia on center stage in a multiethnic setting teeming with the exchange of sedentary and nomadic culture. By examining the nomadic way of life and mode of state building, we explore how nomads served as agents of change and influenced pre-modern Eastern Eurasia. Contributes to Early Modern Studies, East Asian Studies, International Studies, and Race and Ethnicity Studies. (Biennially) (H)

This course explores the history of the Black Freedom struggle in the twentieth century United States. Moving beyond the classic Heroic Era of the civil rights (from Brown v. Board of Education to the Voting Rights Act), it examines social, cultural, and political protests from the consolidation of Jim Crow through founding of Black Lives Matter. Contributes to Feminist Studies and Race and Ethnicity Studies/Group-Theme Course. (Biennially) (H) (SJ)

This course will examine the history of the conservative movement in the United States from the late 19th century through the election of Donald Trump. Blending chronological and thematic organization, it will examine topics that include Social Darwinism and anti-Progressive politics, business and the New Deal state and the emergence of libertarianism, McCarthyism and the Fourth Great Awakening after World War II, the Goldwater movement, racial backlash and the Silent Majority, the Tax Revolt of the 1970s, the Reagan years, the culture wars, before moving to more recent developments. (Biennially) (H)

This course uses the social, cultural, and political history of sport to examine American history from the 1830s to the present. It considers the emergence and development of modern athletics in connection to broader questions of gender and sexuality, masculinity and femininity, labor and politics, race and ethnicity, immigration and Americanization. Contributes to Applied Movement and Sport Studies, Exercise Sport Studies, Feminist Studies, Health Studies, and Race and Ethnicity Studies/Allied Course. (Biennially) (H)

This course focuses on the history of the U.S. West as both frontier and region, real and imagined, from the mid-19th century onward. It considers topics such as Indian Removal, wars of conquest, immigration and migration, urban frontiers, environmental change, and the myth of the frontier. It especially highlights the intersections of race, gender, class, nationality and the environment. Course objectives include learning to interpret varied forms of historical evidence and fostering analytical, reading, discussion and synthetic skills that will help students think and communicate critically about historical and contemporary society and politics. Contributes to Environmental Studies. (Biennially) (H)

This course examines the British Isles since the Glorious Revolution via political, social, cultural, and intellectual lenses, integrating imperial and oceanic perspectives. It explores how British inhabitants formed, developed, and governed four distinct nations (England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales) as part of a single kingdom, constructing one of the most powerful empires of the modern age, leaving a profound legacy in a globalized, post-colonial world. Contributes to International Studies. (Biennially) (H)

This course investigates French history from 1789 to the present, charting political, social, and cultural developments within France and determining the extent to which these altered, or were influenced by, events outside the borders of the hexagon-in the Empire or in foreign relations. The course pays particular attention to attempts to define French identity within a global context. Contributes to Design Thinking and International Studies. (Biennially) (H) (SJ)

This course will chart the development of European society, culture, and politics from ca. 1000 to 1500, from British, European, Atlantic and global perspectives. We will study the combination of legend and history manifest in contemporary and modern appraisals of an era when lines between reality and lore, truth and superstition, secular and spiritual were blurred. Contributes to Early Modern Studies and International Studies. (Biennially) (H)

This course examines the Tudor dynasty, an age of personal monarchy, tyranny, national consolidation, imperial expansion, patriarchy and the rule of wealthy courtiers. Students will explore how the Tudor-Stewart revolution in politics and culture fundamentally transformed Britain and Ireland, with great consequences for the world beyond its borders, between the accession of Henry VII and the death of Elizabeth I. Contributes to Early Modern Studies, Feminist Studies, and International Studies. (Biennially) (H)

This course places contemporary human rights debates within a long historical context, from Classical and religious traditions, through the Enlightenment, the abolition of slavery, and the growth of socialism, to the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the movements for decolonization, and the present day. We track the gradual expansion of notions of rights, as well as changing understandings of who counts as human. The course includes discussions of political rights, social and economic rights, women's rights, minority rights, cultural rights, and environmental rights (among many others). Contributes to Data Science, Feminist Studies, and International Studies. (Biennially) (H) (SJ)

This course traces the history of Muslim presence in Europe from the early Islamic empires in Andalusia, through European imperial experiences with Muslims in Africa and Asia, to the more recent reception of Muslim migrants on European soil. The course questions the intellectual and political utility of defining populations of such cultural, linguistic, and geographical breadth solely by their religion; discusses the development of a European Islam; and debates the existence of a clash of civilizations or a shared Mediterranean culture. Contributes to International Studies, and Race and Ethnicity Studies/Group-Theme Course. (Biennially) (H)

This course explores the relationship between science, technology, and medicine and their publics since the Early Modern period to our recent past. Drawing from case studies that examine the role of scientific societies, formal education, textbooks, popular literature, publicity, and other formal and informal means to disseminate knowledge, students will understand the changing relationship between science and the public sphere, the role that the popularization of science plays in democratic societies, and the impact of popular science and the public perception of science in the production of new scientific knowledge. Contributes to International Studies. (Biennially) (H)

This course explores the multifaceted experiences of women in the British World, from the medieval era to the present. We consider how gender and sexuality have been constructed differently over time and space; the role of churches, states, and empires in defining and proscribing sexual activity, masculinity, and femininity; the social and political expectations placed upon men and women; cultural representations and manifestations of gender and sexuality; the intersection of gender and other categories of difference; and how pivotal, transnational historical events like the Reformation and decolonization affected women and notions of gender. Contributes to Early Modern Studies, Feminist Studies, and International Studies. (Biennially) (H)

This course traces the development of Islamic societies and cultures throughout the world from Mohammad's seventh-century revelations to the present. Topics include Islamic empires, relations with other groups, art and architecture, science and philosophy, evolution and adaptation. Contributes to International Studies. (H)

A study of the concept of history, the history of historical writing, the major schools of historical interpretation today and the relation of history to the philosophy of history. Prerequisite: 16-014, 16-024, 16-034, 16-044, or 16-094; and must have junior status or permission of instructor. (Fall) (H) (WA)

Topics, which change from semester to semester, include: History and Memory, Transnational Histories, and Science, Society, and the State. Prerequisite: History 16-854. (Spring)(H)(WA)

By invitation only. Students will work closely with a faculty mentor to prepare a formal prospectus and annotated bibliography that outline the historical problem to be researched, offer a preliminary literature review of the subject, and suggest the methodology and organization for a full Honors project to be carried out the following year.