Current Undergraduate Courses

HIST 111 - World History to 1450

Taught by Dr. David Graff

This course provides an overview of major developments in the history of the world from the appearance of the earliest civilizations some five thousand years ago to the eve of European expansion in the fifteenth century. Major topics include the origins of civilization in different parts of the world, the emergence of foundational philosophies and belief systems, the rise and fall of empires, and the increasing contact and integration between world regions as a result of trade, conquest, pilgrimage, and exploration. Particular attention will be devoted to comparison of key developments, conditions, and trends across continents and civilizations.

HIST 112 A - World History to 1450

Taught by Dr. Eric Brandom

HIST 112 B - World History to 1450

Taught by Dr. Nadia Oweidat

HIST 151 B - History of the United States to 1877

Taught by Damon Penner, GTA

HIST 151 ZA - History of the United States to 1877

Taught by Dr. Ginette Aley

HIST 152 A - History of the United States Since 1877

Taught by Dr. Michael Krysko

This course is an introductory survey to American history since 1877. Beginning with the end of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, we will examine an array of historical events, developments, issues, and trends that continue to influence the world we live in today and the individuals we have become. We will devote considerable attention to numerous historical subjects following the difficult reunification of the U.S. after the Civil War, including: the rise of the modern Democratic and Republican parties, segregation, the economic transformation of the 19th century, the rise of mass consumption and consumerism, education, the Depression, foreign relations (esp. late 19th century imperialism and the wars of the 20th century), the Civil Rights movement, and modern feminism. In the process, I hope you will begin to see how a world we often take for granted is a product of countless decisions made by others who came before us, and that the relationships between peoples, cultures, and nations in this historical past have exerted a tremendous influence over the lives we are able to lead in the 21st century.

HIST 155 - Introduction to U.S. Military History

Taught by Dr. Marjorie Galelli

The United States is a nation forged in war, which makes it critical for students to engage with military history in order to gain an understanding of their country’s history. In this class, we will look at American military history since 1775 and ask two overarching questions: What role has the United States played in war? And, conversely, how has conflict shaped the United States?

Military history is a vibrant field that has been evolving to encompass an ever-growing range of studies tied to the armed forces, conflict, and wartime. In addition to operational warfare, military history looks at the ways that nations, institutions, societies, and people prepare for, wage, or recover from war. This class will thus integrate both traditional operational history and larger questions connecting war and society.

HIST 300 A - Introduction to Historical Thinking

Taught by Dr. David Defries

This is a course on the historiography of history. Historiography is the study of the philosophy and history of history. Essentially, we study how ideas about how to write history have changed from the ancient Greeks until the present, with a strong emphasis on how the dominant trends in philosophy in the West have influenced historiography. All majors are welcome!

HIST 300 B - Introduction to Historical Thinking

Taught by Dr. Nadia Oweidat

HIST 301 ZA - Topics in History: U.S. Civil War Perspectives:

Soldiers, Civilians, and Policies

Taught by Dr. Ginette Aley

This course focuses on uncovering the experiences of soldiers and civilians during America’s Civil War. We will also probe the policies that shaped their circumstances and the war’s ultimate outcome. We will do this through weekly online discussions, review of primary and secondary sources, and several writing opportunities.

HIST 301 E - Topics in History: History of the Modern Middle East (Part I)

Taught by Dr. Nadia Oweidat

This course introduces students to the general history of the modern Middle East and the different factors, external and internal, that shaped its creation. The course also offers students a deep grounding in the intellectual history of the region and the major ideas that have shaped its polities and identity, especially political Islam. Various trends in Islamic thought accompanied the tumultuous political, legal and social developments that ensued, bringing forth diverse and at times conflicting theories of religio-political engagement. Many of these ideas are still battling for dominance. By the end of the class, students will become well versed in a spectrum of Islamist trends from the moderate to the violent extremist.

While the course covers the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Iranian revolution, it will focus primarily on the Arabic-speaking world and will make use of both primary sources in translation and secondary sources.

HIST 352 A - Cold War Cultures

Taught by Dr. Phil Tiemeyer

The Cold War wasn't just a diplomatic and military conflict. It also influenced U.S. culture and other societies' cultures in profound ways. This class examines Cold War life for citizens of all corners of the globe: on both sides of the Iron Curtain and in the Global South. This class is designed for freshman and upperclassmen of any major; no prerequisites.

HIST 365 - Bloody Battlefields: WWII in Europe

Taught by Dr. Marjorie Galelli

World War II, as its name rightfully indicates, was a global conflict that left almost no corner of the world untouched. It was so monumental that even a lifetime of study would not be enough to uncover every aspect of the war. In order to go beyond a superficial overview of the conflict, this class will focus only on one of the war’s main theaters: Europe. From Hitler’s rise to power, to the siege of Stalingrad, to the Normandy landings, we will follow the war’s unfolding on both eastern and western fronts until the meeting of Soviet and American troops on the Elbe River in 1945. We will end the semester analyzing the way the war has been memorialized over the last eighty years.

Military history is a vibrant field that has been evolving to encompass an ever-growing range of studies tied to the armed forces, conflict, and wartime. In addition to the belligerents’ grand strategies and the unfolding of specific battles, this class will look at the ways the war affected people and societies.

HIST 370 - Pirates and Piracy in Global History

Taught by Dr. Eric Brandom

Pirates have long been both a real practical danger and objects of fantasy. This class takes a historical view of maritime predation, attending both to the realities and popular imaginings of piracy through time. Why do people turn pirate? Is piracy simply unchained criminality? Or is it the expression of a desire for freedom? Do certain political forms generate piracy at their edges? Why do we use the word “piracy” to describe illegally copying things? Is, indeed, "pirate" a term that only makes sense alongside and against certain kinds of political authority? Can the same be said about certain relations between political authority and property rights? Such questions will drive our inquiry over the course of the semester. Our perspective will be global, starting with piracy in the Roman Mediterranean and passing selectively through other major fields of piratical activity, such as the South China Sea and, especially, the special case of the so-called Golden Age of Caribbean piracy. Finally, we will consider the different forms, including digital, that piracy has taken more recently. This is an introductory and discussion-based course, no prior experience with history classes is required.

HIST 501 A - Japan's Samurai Age

Taught by Dr. David Graff

This course explores the history of Japan from the origins of Japanese civilization to the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868. It touches on many different aspects of Japanese history and culture, but the focus throughout will be on the warrior class, the bushi or samurai, who dominated Japanese society and government from the late twelfth century to the late nineteenth century. What was the origin of the samurai? How did they gain and hold political power? How did they interact with other classes of society, including farmers, townspeople, and the court nobles in Kyoto? What were their beliefs, values, and religious commitments? How did they respond to foreign influences? What were their methods of waging war? And what legacy did they bequeath to modern Japan? These are some of the major questions we will be trying to answer as we trace the rise and fall of Japan’s warrior class.

HIST 524 A - The History of Baseball in American Culture

Taught by Dr. Michael Krysko

The history of baseball is the lens through which this course will explore American history. The history of baseball parallels many of the developments and issues that American society has faced throughout its history. Through this course, we will engage with historically significant issues and topics that include westward expansion, economic transformation technological development, globalization, mass media, professionalization, labor/management relations, race, and gender. In this way, the history of baseball is, in fact, a history of the American nation.

HIST 526 A - The American Revolution

Taught by Dr. Louise Breen

Learn about the multifaceted protest movements against the British Empire, and the long war for independence, that led to the creation of the United States.

In the eighteenth-century colonies of British North America, colonists from all walks of life knew that they wanted liberty, but they didn’t all agree on what “liberty” meant, or how to achieve it. Covering the period from 1763 to 1787, this course will examine the rise of protests against British policies, the colonists’ waging of a war for independence on the battle front and the home front, and their highly contested struggle to establish a government for the new nation in the framing and ratification of a federal Constitution. At every stage, disagreements were rife, and ideas of liberty were debated, not just in the colonial legislatures and the Continental Congresses, but in taverns, over dinner tables, in local town meetings, in churches, and on battlefields. Elites, ordinary people, women, enslaved people, religious people from a variety of faiths, and indigenous peoples, all had different ideas on what constituted freedom, and the Revolution provided an opportunity in which those contrasting ideas could be expressed and fought for, though not all quests for liberty were fulfilled.

HIST 558 A - History of Kansas

Taught by Dr. Kristen Epps

HIST 586 A - Advanced Seminar in History

Taught by Dr. Kristen Epps (enrollment limited to History majors)

HIST 152 ZA - History of the United States Since 1877

Taught by Dr. Ginette Aley

HIST 350 ZA - Hollywood an the Military

Taught by Dr. Marjorie Galelli

In this course, we will cover key themes about the US military in the late 20^th century and use popular movies as a guiding thread. The movies will not simply be an illustration of the themes that we will address. Rather, we will use them as primary sources to better understand the historical context in which they were created.

We will mainly focus on the military as an institution and its interactions with the civilian world. War will be in the background. Through the lens of movie representations, we will be addressing questions such as: How do civilians become soldiers? What does it mean to be part of the US military? How do civilians and military personnel interact? How do movies influence civilians’ perspective of the military? How does the military use Hollywood and what for? How do these popular representations evolve over time?

HIST 544 ZA - U.S. and World Affairs Since 1920

Taught by Dr. Michael Krysko

• How does the US exercise its global power and what forms has this power taken?
• Under what circumstances are Americans likely to increase their international engagement and activities?
• How effectively has the United States exercised this power in the pursuit of its foreign policy goals?
• How have the short-term (and at times short-sighted) pressures of the domestic political context influenced the pursuit of US foreign policy?

This course will explore these questions through the study of U.S engagement in world affairs as the United States emerged from World War I with domestic political opinion wary of diplomatic and military entanglements. Since that time, the United States nonetheless increased its international power, its global commitments, and its ability (and willingness) to exercise its influence over world affairs. Why? How?

We will explore the answers to these questions through a mixture of recorded lectures, assigned readings, and real-time discussions. Readings are designed to appeal to majors and non-majors alike. They include book-length assignments that explore pivotal events in the history US foreign relations such as World War 2, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War. These books will be read alongside a handful of short (typically 10-pages or less) articles commenting on current events. Each Friday at 10:30am, the class will meet via Zoom to discuss the course’s subject matter as part of our semester-long effort to use our knowledge American foreign relations history to understand the foreign policy challenges of the present.

HIST 559 ZA - History of Aztecs, Inca, and Maya

Taught by Dr. Heather McCrea

This asynchronous online course will explore the dynamic and extraordinary conquests of Spanish America. How did just a few hundred Spaniards topple the expansive Aztec empire? What are the legacies and myths of conquest that persist today? We will examine relations between indigenous inhabitants of the Americas and European conquistadors and explore the nature of religious conversion through historical texts, artwork, and literature.

HIST 222 - Western Warfare since 1618

Learn the evolution of modern warfare from the wars of religion through the World Wars and the Ukraine War. Explore how ideologies, technologies, and leaders have shaped and reshaped the continent through 400 years of war.

HIST 300 - Introduction to Historical Thinking

This class offers students a discussion-driven introduction to historical thinking and methods. Readings highlight the diversity of approaches and aims that exist within scholarly history and equip students to explore historical topics in an independent way.

HIST 301 (ZA) - The American West (online)

In this course we consider the American West—the mythical landscape of adventure, freedom, and individual opportunity—as a region of unusual violence, intercultural conflicts over land and resources, environmental challenges, and political ferment.

HIST 301 (ZB) - The Salem Witch Trials (online)

People experiencing misfortune or tragedy in colonial New England often feared they might be bewitched; others, disproportionately women, feared being accused of witchcraft. This course examines the theological beliefs, socio-political conditions, and assumptions about gender that brought forth and sustained witchcraft prosecutions in seventeenth-century New England, especially at Salem.

HIST 301 - The Pacific War

World War II began and ended in East Asia! Learn how and why, and do so through a participatory war game simulation that is part of this course.

HIST 301 - Medieval Warfare

This course will cover the basics of medieval warfare. It will focus on how people made war between roughly 500 and 1500 AD. Topics will include crusading, strategies, logistics and infrastructure. More importantly, the course will delve into the meaning of warfare in medieval society and how to move beyond the popular – and mostly erroneous – modern notions of it.

HIST 301 - U.S. Immigration History

What does it mean to be an American? This class examines the history of inclusion and exclusion in American society from the colonial period to the present.

HIST 340 - The Middle Ages

This course is an introduction for all students. It covers not only how professional historians discuss the Middle Ages but also images of the medieval period in popular culture and how they contribute to our sense of the present.

HIST 388 - Nazi Germany and the Holocaust

Do you want to go beyond the sensationalized story and truly understand how a whole nation succumbed to an evil dictatorship? This class will follow the development of Nazism from its origins during the Weimar Republic to its defeat in WWII.

HIST 516 - The Modern Middle East

This course will present a wealth of information about politics, society, and culture in a region that may be unfamiliar to you. It'll help you assess one of the most important themes in world history--the interplay between domestic developments and the power of globalization. Finally, it'll give you a deeper understanding of world events by providing critical background to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Palestine-Israel conflict, as well as to movements for change, including the Arab Spring and human rights protests in Iran.

HIST 529 - Civil War and Reconstruction

This course will address the causes and consequences of the sectional conflict between the North and the South. Special attention will be given to the institution of slavery, the rise of sectional politics and the struggle over slavery's expansion into the West, the secession crisis, the military campaigns of the Union and Confederate forces, daily life on the home front, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the varied plans for postwar reconstruction. Our task this semester is to understand all facets of this conflict--not just military strategy, tactics, and battles--including how the Civil War affected African Americans, women, and Indigenous nations, making this a course devoted to social and political history as much as military history. We will be examining this history through an academic lens, not the lens of a hobbyist or enthusiast.

HIST 534 - Social History of Medicine

HIST 544 - U.S. and World Affairs since 1920

This course covers the U.S. military base network from its inception to the present. In doing so we’ll address a wide range of topics, from the relationship between U.S. troops and populations of host nations, to imperialism, to the environmental impact of U.S. installations. Students will develop an understanding of the U.S. military presence around the globe through several lenses such as imperialism, environment, and gender. They will become familiar with different theories of empire, contextualize the United States’ current global presence, and form an opinion about the appropriate terminology to describe it.

HIST 559 - History of the Aztecs, Inca and Maya

HIST 572 - 19th Century Europe

What does it mean to be free? What does it mean for a society to be wealthy? Is democracy a sham? These are the kinds of questions that Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill disagreed about strenuously. This class will investigate major issues in the history of 19th century through their arguments over such central questions as individual and political freedom, women’s rights, economics, poverty, revolution, and colonialism.

HIST 597 - Ancient Identities: Race and Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean

How often do you think about the Roman Empire? What does this (now ancient) viral trend reveal to us about our relationship to antiquity today? In this class, we will undertake a critical exploration of literary and artistic representations of identity and otherness in the ancient Mediterranean and investigate how the study of antiquity has shaped—and continues to shape—discourses on identity, race, and ethnicity today.