Spring 2026 History Courses

Jon Balserak

MWF 9-9:50 am

Lecture: 32900

Discussions: 33485, 34821, 44322, or 44327

This course provides a broad survey of western civilization up to 1648. We will cover events, movements, individuals, and discoveries in Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, up through medieval Europe, the rise of Islam, the Carolingian era, the Crusades, European exploration, the Renaissance, and the Reformation.  Coverage will be chronological and will examine political, social, economic and technological developments as well as considering the literature, religious beliefs, military campaigns, intellectual ideas, and cultural changes of these centuries. This is a fascinating period of history which lays the foundations for western thought and culture today.

Understanding the Past course and World Cultures course

John Abbot

Online Asynchronous

Lecture: 15358

Discussions: 15352, 15353, 15354, 15355, 15348, or 34155

History 101 offers a broad survey of Western (mostly European) history, from the Wars of Religion of the seventeenth century to the Cold War of the twentieth. We focus on the social trends, political conflicts and intellectual quarrels across these years, placing special emphasis on the scientific, political and industrial revolutions that helped forge and define European civilization and, by extension, much of our modern world (as you will see, Western imperialism and economic globalization are central course themes). Lectures and our class textbook will provide the overall storyline and contexts to this journey; the heart of this course lies in our critical engagement with the documentary record left by the historical actors themselves, as they acted and commented upon their times.

Understanding the Past course and World Cultures course

Hayley Negrin

MWF 12-12:50 pm

Lecture: 15371

Discussions: 15359, 15360, 31112, or 31113

A survey of early American history from pre-contact Indigenous societies in North America to reconstruction.

Understanding the Past course and US Society course

Jeffrey Sklansky

TRF 12:30-1:20 pm

Lecture: 15390

Discussions: 15374, 15375, 15376, or 15377

This course is an introductory survey of the history of the United States since the late 1800s. The class is partly about how American society and politics have dramatically changed over the past 150 years, why those changes have happened, and how that history can help us to understand where we are today. The class is also partly about history itself as a subject of study and a way of thinking. Designed especially for students with little background in history, the course considers how history is researched and written, the kinds of sources and evidence on which history is based, the kinds of questions historians ask, the kinds of analysis and argument they make, and how non-historians make use of history in various ways.

Understanding the Past course and World Cultures course

Jonathan Daly

Online Asynchronous

HIST Lecture: 42406 Discussion: 42407

INST Lecture: 48657 Discussion: 48657

The West’s history is one of extraordinary success; no other region, empire, culture, or civilization has left so powerful a mark upon the world. This course charts the West’s achievements―representative government, the free enterprise system, modern science, and the rule of law―as well as its misdeeds―two frighteningly destructive World Wars, the Holocaust, imperialistic domination, and the Atlantic slave trade.

Adopting a global perspective, the course explores the contributions of other cultures and civilizations to the West’s emergence. It also traces the rise of Western power through a series of revolutions, including social, political, technological, military, commercial, and industrial. The course is fully online—students follow a defined schedule but have no classes to attend. See course Blackboard page for details. Same as INST 105.

Understanding the Past course and World Cultures course

Nick Doumanis

Online Asynchronous

HIST Lecture: 27594 Discussion: 28285

INST Lecture: 27781 Discussion: 28286

This course deals with the making of the modern world and stresses the roles played by intercontinental and global interactions. It begins with a survey of the globe around the time of the Black Death, when most humans were village-dwelling peasants devoted to local traditions, and when wealth was concentrated in China, India and the Islamic Middle East. The course ends in the post-Covid present, when most humans are now urbanized consumers that subscribe to global cultures, and when US political and economic power is being challenged by a resurgent China. Themes include global trade, capitalism, imperialism, war, disease, migration and climate events. Same as INST 106.

Past course, and World Cultures course.

Laura Hostetler

MWF 1-1:50

HIST Lecture: 30077 Discussion: 30078 or 31999

GLAS Lecture: 39451 Discssion: 39452 or 39453

An introduction to Chinese civilization, including history, philosophy, and religions from earliest times to 1500. This introduction to Chinese History is designed for students who have an interest in China, but who do not have much, if any, previous background knowledge on the subject.  The class is broadly geared to introduce various aspects of Chinese culture and civilization such as  philosophy, literature, and art, as well as institutional and political history.

Course Information: Same as GLAS 109. Class Schedule Information: To be properly registered, students must enroll in one Discussion/Recitation and one Lecture-Discussion.

Past course, and World Cultures course

Junaid Quadri

Hybrid (Online lectures with on campus Friday discussions)

HIST Lecture: 41945 Discussion: 41946, 41947, 41948, or 41949

RELS Lecture: 42050 Discussion: 42054, 42052, 42051, 42053

This course surveys the history of the Middle East from the pre-Islamic era to recent events and debates. You will study the culture and milieu in which Islam emerged, its remarkably quick expansion, the new cultural syntheses these early conquests produced, and the political and religious forms they engendered. As we move into the more stable middle period, you will learn about the similarities and differences between the various empires that ruled the areas now known as the Middle East, and how they produced distinctive identities while drawing on a common religious heritage. Towards the end of the semester, we will examine the impact of European colonialism, attempts at modernization in the turbulent nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the particular challenges that face the Middle East today. Throughout, we pay attention to the various political, religious, economic and social components of the historical moments we study, as well as the various sectors of Middle Eastern society. Same as RELS 177.

Past course, and World Cultures course.

Karen Ros

MWF 12-12:50

HIST: 15445

CL: 14308

AH: 13870

Contributions of archaeological excavations to the study of ancient Rome and her empire 1000 BC-400 AD. Architecture, sculpture and painting in their social and historical contexts. Course Information: Same as AH 205, and CL 205.

Creative Arts course, and Past course

Clare Kim

MWF 10-10:50

Lecture/Discussion: 48664

What have people come to know about the world and how have they come to know it? This lecture course provides a survey of the history of science from the 16th century to the present, paying attention to how science has been related to other enterprises such art, religion, literature, commerce, and politics. From astronomical lore and colonial medicine to atomic diplomacy and entrepreneurial science, we will learn to place contemporary issues and debates about science in global and historical context. We will also consider how and why certain kinds of questions, spaces, practices, and people—but not others—came to be called scientific.

Understanding the Past course

Young Kim

TR 9:30-10:45

HIST: 32927

GKM: 33399

After the establishment of “New Rome”—Constantinople—in the fourth century CE, Roman identity, culture, and politics began a long, steady transition and transformation into what some scholars call the Byzantine empire. All this time, the people who lived in this polity understood themselves to be Romans. Of course, Christianity was a central feature of these developments, but equally important were interactions and conflicts with the peoples of Near and Middle East, north Africa, western Asia, medieval Europe, the Balkans, and the Islamic Caliphates. This course will explore these complex and fascinating processes, with a focus on how the developing institutions of the Byzantine empire exhibited both continuity with and change from the ancient Mediterranean world. Same as GKM 209.

Michael Jin

MW 3-4:15

HIST: 41221

GLAS: 39124

Introduction to the main historical events that define the Asian experience in the United States, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Course Information: Same as GLAS 210.

Individual and Society course, and US Society course

John Abbott

MWF 1-1:50

Lecture/Discussion: 32928

History 214 tracks European developments from the First World War through the conclusion of World War II, and considers the worlds undone and remade by these epochal conflicts. Historians sometimes refer to the traumatic years from 1914-45 as Europe’s “Second Thirty Years War,” a phrase that underscores the continuities between the two world wars, as well as the tumultuous times between. Yet alongside their awful catastrophes, these years also saw remarkable innovation and departure in European culture, politics and social relations, and our approach emphasizes this bracing modernity alongside the era’s iconic disasters and atrocities. At semester’s end, we will briefly survey European developments after 1945 – the remaking and resettling of postwar Europe, the dynamics of conflict between East and West, and the forging of new European relations in the shadows of Cold War. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 161.

Individual and Society course, and Past course

Karen Ros

MWF 12-12:50 pm

HIST: 35881

CL: 35425

AH:35880

Examination of the Roman town of Pompeii, including its history, society, politics, economy, religion, art, architecture, and entertainments. Same as AH 218 and CL 218.

Past course

Neal McCrillis

MWF 2-2:50

Lecture/Discussion: 32929

This course is a survey of British history from the Glorious Revolution (1688) to Brexit.  Substantial attention will be paid to transformational episodes and individuals which/who shaped today’s Britain and the world.  Primary themes include the growth of the modern state; the advance of democracy; the industrial revolution, urbanization, and social change; empire and globalization; the global wars of the twentieth century; and the roles of class, gender, and race in shaping historical developments in Britain and the rest of the world.  The course will meet three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Classes will be a mixture of lecture and class discussions on the assigned readings and exploring topics that resonate with contemporary questions and concerns.  Prerequisite(s): ENGL 161; or consent of the instructor.

Past course

Laura Dingeldein

TR 3:30-4:45 pm

HIST: 47502

RELS: 47500

CL: 47501

Explores the religious world of the earliest Christians, focusing on the ways in which early Christian ideas and practices arose out of the cultures, religions, and philosophies of the ancient Mediterranean basin. Course Information: Same as CL 232 and RELS 232.

Past course

Malgorzata Fidelis

Online Asynchronous

Lecture/Discussion: 41062

This class will provide an overview of lands, peoples, and states of East Central Europe (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary) and Southeastern Europe (Bulgaria, Romania, former Yugoslavia, and Albania) from medieval times to the present. It will explore medieval kingdoms; the gradual domination of the region by four powerful empires (Austrian, German, Ottoman, and Russian); everyday life in multinational communities and the rise of national ideologies; World War I and the challenges of creating independent nation states; World War II, Nazi and Soviet occupations, national conflicts, and the destruction of the Jewish community; political, social, and economic developments under communism; the revolutions of 1989; the tragic break-up of Yugoslavia; and the region’s transition to liberal democracy.

Class readings will include historical accounts as well as memoirs and novels. Rather than presenting fixed narratives or models, this class aims to inspire students to think about the contingent and ambiguous nature of historical developments as they were experienced by people of diverse interests and backgrounds. Alongside the account of Eastern European history, we will ask questions such as “What is Eastern Europe?” “Who has defined the region and what have been the stakes and implications in doing so?” Prerequisite(s): ENGL 161.

Individual and Society course, and Past course

Keely Stauter-Halsted

TR 12:30-1:45 pm

HIST: 30599

POL: 30602

This class explores the antecedents of contemporary problems in Poland. It examines the social, political, and cultural history of the Polish lands from the earliest written record in the 10th century to the present day. The course considers the consolidation and expansion of the Polish state in the medieval and early modern periods, the evolution (and decline) of “noble democracy,” repeated foreign incursions and Poland’s changing place in the world. Emphasizing the variable meanings of Polishness over time, we look at the fluctuating boundaries of Polish territory, the shifting membership in the Polish national community, and the diverse population that has comprised this heterogeneous state. Along the way, we consider the role of religious dissenters, the meanings of Sarmatism, and the position of witches, Roma (gypsies), Jews, and other “outsiders” in Polish culture. In the modern period, the course examines Polish refugees and migrants, peasants and workers. Topics also include the construction of democracy during the interwar Second Republic, the impact of the dual Nazi and Soviet occupations during World War II, the Nazi Holocaust; Communism and the rise of political dissidence, Solidarity and the collapse of the communist system, and the transition to liberal democracy after 1989.

3 hours. Same as POL 234. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 160 or completion of any 100-level history course.

Individual and Society, and Past course

Jeffrey Sklansky

TR 3:30-4:45

Lecture: 40466

Discussion: 40467

This course offers a survey of radical social movements in the United States from the American Revolution to the present. We’ll consider what “radicalism” means, the different forms of radicalism that have challenged the structures and boundaries of American society in different periods, and the relation between radicalism, reaction, and reform. For the purposes of this course, radicalism refers to ideas, campaigns, and movements aimed at fundamental transformation of the American social order. Radicalism can arise from widely divergent and opposing political perspectives, and it can be driven by grassroots popular dissent or by elite efforts. Through most of American history, however, the most influential and sustained radical movements have arisen in opposition to the power of entrenched wealth and privilege. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 161.

Past course, and US Society course

Barbara Ransby

MW 3-4:15

HIST: 35123

BLST: 44986

Survey of major social, economic, and political developments in African American history since Reconstruction. Topics include Jim Crow, black leadership, migration, civil rights and nationalism. Course Information: Same as BLST 248. Prerequisite(s): One course in Black Studies or History, or consent of the instructor.

Past course, and US Society course

L. Bao Bui

Online Asynchronous

Lecture: 26081

Discussions: 36177, 36178, 36179, 36180, 44719, 44720, 48528, or 48529

The development of Chicago from frontier outpost to post-industrial metropolis; economic, social, political, and cultural changes and institutions; suburbanization and deindustrialization. Course Information: Course is offered in both face-to-face and hybrid/ online formats. Check the class schedule for details. When taught online or hybrid, students will be required to have reliable internet access and a means for accessing it (computer preferable). Prerequisite(s): ENGL 161; or consent of the instructor.

Past course, and US Society course

Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez

TR 9:30-10:45

Lecture/Discussion: 47143

History of European, African, Asian and Latin American immigration to the U.S. from the colonial era to the present. Examines how ethnicity, race, gender, and age shaped immigrants’ experiences and U.S. immigration law and policy.

Past course

Lynn Hudson

MWF 11-11:50

HIST: Lecture: 32933 and Discussion: 33091 or 33092

GWS: Lecture: 32984 and Discussion: 33093 or 33094

This course examines the history of women in the United States from the colonial era to the present. We will study the ways women have shaped political, cultural, and social development in the US.  In addition to learning about what women did, we will also study the ways ideas about women, sex, and gender have shaped U.S. history as a whole. An important part of the course is an examination of the differences among and between women; we will focus on the role race, class, gender, and ethnicity have played in shaping women’s experiences.

Cultural, social, economic developments of gender relationships and women’s lives from the seventeenth century to the present; political and ideological responses; feminism. Course Information: Same as GWS 259. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 161; or consent of the instructor.

Past course, and US Society course

Celso Mendoza

TR 2-3:15

HIST Lecture: 48665 and Discussion: 48666

LALS Lecture: 48667 and Discussion: 48668

Provides a survey of the pre-Columbian and early national periods in Latin America. Course Information: Same as LALS 261. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 161; or consent of the instructor. Class Schedule Information: To be properly registered, students must enroll in one Discussion/Recitation and one Lecture-Discussion.

Past course, and World Cultures course

Lynette Jackson

TR 2-3:15

HIST: 30188

BLST: 44368

Key debates and contributions of black thought to national and global politics and culture since the 19th century. Course Information: Same as BLST 263. Prerequisite(s): BLST 100.

Individual and Society course, and Past course

Fredy Gonzalez

MW 930-10:45

HIST: Lecture 34123 and Discussion 34122

GLAS: Lecture 39459 and Discussion 39460

Twentieth-century China from 1911 to the present, including warfare; areas of intellectual inquiry; changes in government, family, and the role of women. Same as GLAS 272. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 161; or consent of the instructor.

Past course, and World Cultures course

Rama Mantena

TR 11-12:15

HIST: 46250 and 46255

GLAS: 46254 and 46257

Where did the philosophy of “nonviolence” originate from? Were there any empires in India before the British? You will find answers to these questions and more in this course on the history of South Asia before 1857. This course will introduce you to the diverse civilizations and overlapping histories of the modern nation states of South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.) We will explore the cultural, social, and political developments in the region from the Indus Valley period to the rise of the British Empire.

To be properly registered, students must enroll in one Lecture-Discussion and one Discussion. Same as GLAS 275

Past course, and World Cultures course

Sunil Agnani

TR 2-3:15 PM

Lecture/Discussion: 41191

The Enlightenment in Europe (roughly 1700-1800) aimed “to gather all the knowledge that now lies scattered around the globe” (Denis Diderot) or to observe “with extensive view… from China to Peru” (Samuel Johnson). This course takes seriously that global idea by introducing critical thinkers while examining emerging notions of cultural difference and race. We explore the idea of progress (of humankind, language, society, and the arts) and its critique. We also consider the concept of empire—territorial empire, maritime empire, etc.—in these texts. In authors like the anti-slavery or abolitionists Cugoano and Equiano, or the Haitian revolution, the question of race overlaps with that of empire through the “triangular trade”—the transatlantic structure of slavery.

The course begins with the broad debates on Enlightenment as a process through brief essays by Kant. We then turn to two texts by Voltaire. “Candide” gives us a sense of how Enlightenment thinkers viewed the New World. In contrast, his “Letters on England” reveals the mixture of admiration and envy expressed by pre-revolutionary French writers when looking at England. With a contrast in temperament, Rousseau’s scathing critique of the idea of property is the topic of the “Discourse on Inequality,” which is part mythical history and anthropology. We return to the idea of political progress with Mary Wollstonecraft, who makes a case for female equality. The course concludes with Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” an influential critique juxtaposed with his writings on India—he was prescient about the British empire in India overstepping its limits. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 160 or completion of any 100-level history course.

Individual and Society course, and Past course

Lilia Fernandez

TR 12:30-1:45

HIST: 40474 and 42814

LALS: 47253 and 47354

Who are U.S. Latinos/as/x/e? As of 2025, they number 68 million people, making up over 20% of the nation’s population. While some are recent arrivals, many more trace their ancestry in this country back generations. Yet as a group, they are frequently cast as newcomers, “guests,” or not truly Americans or part of the nation’s past.   How long have they existed in North America?  What is the historical relationship between the U.S. and the rest of the hemisphere? Why does it matter to include Latinos as part of US history?

We will explore these & other questions, beginning with Spanish colonization in the 1500s and the encounters between Europeans, Africans & indigenous peoples in the Americas up through the northward migration of millions of Latin Americans over the twentieth century.  We will consider the contributions U.S. Latinos have made in labor, politics, education, popular culture, & much more.

Fulfills LAS General Education Past Course requirement. Students can register through HIST 289 or LALS 289. Students must enroll in one Lecture and one Discussion section. Prerequisite: ENGL 161.

Past course

Jennie Brier

MW 3-4:15

HIST: 24686

GWS: 35653

An introduction to feminist theory and practice throughout the world from the 19th century to the present. 3 hours. Course Information: Same as GWS 292. Recommended background: GWS 101 or GWS 102.

Rama Mantena

TR 2-3:15

Lecture/Discussion: 15413

What is history?

How do we understand the past? Why do we as a society memorialize the past? How does the past relate to the present? These are some of the questions we will collectively consider in this course on historical methods. The primary goal of the course will be to develop our comprehension of history as a form of inquiry and understanding. We will do this through an engagement with questions historians have asked about the diverse methods of assessing the past. What do we consider primary sources? How do we assess archives and sources when writing about the past? The course will consist of collectively reading books and articles by historians reflecting on the practice of history, the place of the past in the present and historical methods of inquiry. The course will also introduce students to the library and its many resources to conduct historical research. Students will be given time to work independently on a research topic for their final paper.

Research methodology and analytical writing in the field of history. Students will write and revise at least 3 papers over the course of the semester. Required of all history majors. Course Information: May not be repeated for credit. Prerequisite(s): History major with 9 hours of history credit. Majors are encouraged to take this course as soon as they become eligible.

Jonathan Connolly

MW 9:30-10:45am

Lecture/Discussion: 15412

Research methodology and analytical writing in the field of history. What is history? How have historians analyzed change and meaning in the past? How have historians drawn on other disciplines, from literature to economics? In this course, we will study a range of influential approaches to history, with emphasis on the meanings and legacies of “social history.” Building on these discussions, students will develop independent research projects in the final third of the course.

Research methodology and analytical writing in the field of history. Students will write and revise at least 3 papers over the course of the semester. Required of all history majors. Course Information: May not be repeated for credit. Prerequisite(s): History major with 9 hours of history credit. Majors are encouraged to take this course as soon as they become eligible.

Monica Swope

TR 2-3:15pm (Meet online at set times)

CRN: Discussion 15415 and Practice 15416

Methods and materials for teaching history and the related disciplines in the secondary schools. Includes field experiences in the learning and teaching of history. Course Information: Prerequisite(s): Consent of the instructor. Class Schedule Information: To be properly registered, students must enroll in one Discussion/Recitation and one Practice.

Julie Peters

Online with deadlines

CRN: 44581

Teaching Civics Literacy is a methods course open to anyone who would like to learn how to teach the mandatory civics requirement for middle and high school students in Illinois.  Modules will explore how to teach topics like government and the Constitution, voting, civil discourse and controversial issues, news literacy, and action civics.  We will meet weekly online to debrief the modules and to discuss teaching ideas.

Malgorzata Fidelis

T 3:30-6:00 pm

HIST Undergraduate: 32935

CEES Undergraduate: 32986

The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 gave rise to global shifts that continue to shape our world today. Heralded as “the end of history” and “The Year of Truth,” 1989 generated an enormous international attention, widespread euphoria, and a belief in an inevitable triumph of liberal democracy. How did the events of 1989 and their aftermath affect people in the region? In what ways have the interpretations of 1989 changed over time? This class will explore the nature of 1989 revolutions, and the challenges of the transition from communism to liberal democracy as experienced by a variety of social and political actors in the region. Topics will include the dismantling of the command economy and the rapid transition to neoliberal capitalism; political democratization and the rise of nationalism; consumer culture and mobility across borders; the impact of the European Union; the politics of gender and sexuality; the global economic crises and migration; the rise of authoritarian populism and the war in Ukraine. Finally, we will examine the ways in which communism (and its collapse) has been remembered and utilized to serve a variety of new political agendas. Same as CEES 433. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours.

Julia Vaingurt

M 3:30-5:00 pm

HIST Undergraduate: 35831

RUSS Undergraduate: 37860

This course explores the central and most controversial issue of Russian literary and philosophical tradition: Russia’s relationship to the West.  Various events and aspects of Western political and social life, from revolutions to resorts, will be examined through the lens of Russian fiction, travelogues and diaries, philosophy and historiography. We will examine how the images of the West reflect Russia’s own cultural biases, national concerns, and aesthetic preoccupations.  Central to this issue is Russia’s own conceptualization of its identity: is it a part of Europe (the West) or Asia (the East), or a unique hybrid of the two with its own distinct destiny?  The course unfolds chronologically, covering three centuries of Russian history from Peter the Great’s Westernizing reforms to Putin’s all-out war.  Readings will include works by Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Mayakovsky, Solzhenitsyn, Pelevin, and Limonov.
Same as RUSS 440

Lynn Hudson

MW 3-4:15

CRN: 36660

This course is intended to guide students through writing the senior research paper, a requirement for all UIC history majors. Research papers will focus on the history of any social movement in nineteenth- or twentieth-century America. Papers must be based on primary sources, must make an original argument about a social movement, and must reflect a solid grasp of secondary literature about the chosen topic. The first half of the semester will be spent familiarizing ourselves with primary source collections and with the ways historians have analyzed U.S. social movements. The second half of the class will be devoted to researching and writing the final paper.

HIST 440 is a requirement for History majors. Its goal is to help students to develop research and writing skills and help them to produce an original paper based on primary sources. The class ponders conceptual and methodological aspects involved in the production of a research paper such as historiographical analysis, social theory, research questions, argumentation, historical evidence, and academic writing.

Prerequisite(s): HIST 300. Recommended background: At least one 400-level history course.

Neal McCrillis

MWF 11-11:50

CRN: 36659

This course is intended to guide students through researching and writing the senior research paper based on primary sources, a requirement for all UIC history majors.  The first half of the semester will be spent learning the background history to the period, familiarizing ourselves with key primary source collections, and advancing our skills in analyzing primary sources.  The second half of the class will be devoted to researching and writing the final paper.  Research papers will focus on any aspect of World War I or World War II which were “total wars” that transformed societies, cultures, and polities in Europe and the rest of the world.

HIST 440 is a requirement for History majors. Its goal is to help students to develop research and writing skills and help them to produce an original paper based on primary sources. The class ponders conceptual and methodological aspects involved in the production of a research paper such as historiographical analysis, social theory, research questions, argumentation, historical evidence, and academic writing.

Prerequisite(s): HIST 300. Recommended background: At least one 400-level history course.

Hayley Negrin

M 3-5:30

Undergraduate: 48687

This course will explore the relationship between Black and Indigenous people in early America. Topics will include slavery, ecology, kinship, and forms of resistance deployed by these diverse populations of people to colonial oppression.

Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of U.S. history or consent of the instructor.

Celso Mendoza

TR 11-12:15 PM

Undergraduate: 32965

For centuries, the so-called “Spanish Conquest” of Mexico has been seen as the quick, relatively easy triumph of cunning (but cruel) Spaniards over superstitious noble savage Aztecs, due mostly to European technological superiority. While such beliefs persist in popular thought, historians, largely thanks to new studies of Indigenous historical accounts, have dramatically overturned this view. In this course, we will examine historians’ new, more accurate understanding of Hernando Cortés’ war against the Aztec Empire from 1519 – 21. Using the latest books and articles by historians of early colonial Latin America, as well as primary sources (especially Indigenous writings from that era), we will first look at the rise of the Aztec Empire and Iberian colonialism, and how the pre-colonial histories of Mexico and Iberia shaped their eventual encounter. Then we will trace step-by-step how exactly Cortés overthrew the Aztec Empire not through cunning and absolute cultural or technological superiority, but rather through alliances with Natives and by taking advantage of epidemic disease. We will then look at new understandings and historical analyses of the aftermath of the Spanish-Aztec War, which have exposed Spanish colonization as a much more fragile and incomplete process than has been previously assumed. As a class, we will debunk and deflate many widespread myths about early Spanish colonialism and look at the paths that historians are taking towards further correcting the record of this extremely misunderstood historical moment.

Laura Hostetler

MW 9:30-10:45

HIST Undergraduate: 31132

GLAS Undergraduate: 39463

The transition from empire to nation as an organizational structure and ideology of governance occurred world-wide between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. How did polities begin to think of and define themselves in national rather than imperial terms? This course focuses on the exchange of geographical knowledge between Europe and China, and the subsequent spread of global mapping based on latitude and longitude throughout Asia. Built around the scholarly papers presented at a conference on “Reimagining the Globe and Cultural Exchange: From the World Maps of Ricci and Verbiest to Google Earth,” held in San Francisco in 2016, this course examines the nuts and bolts of how an edited volume emerges from a scholarly conference, and how in the process the individual scholarship of specialists comes together to form a larger conceptual whole.

Same as GLAS 473. May be repeated. Students may register in more than one section per term. Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of East Asian history or consent of the instructor. 4 graduate hours.

Julie Peters

W 4-5:50pm

Lecture/Discussion 15422 and Practice 15423

The first half of a two-segment sequence of practice teaching, including seminar, to meet certification requirements for teaching in grades six through twelve. Course Information: Graduate credit only with approval of the department. Prerequisite(s): Good academic standing in a teacher education program, completion of 100 clock hours of pre-student-teaching field experiences, and approval of the department. Class Schedule Information: To be properly registered, students must enroll in one Lecture-Discussion and one Practice.

Julie Peters

Meet online at set times

Conference 15424 and Practice 15425

The second half of a two-segment sequence of practice teaching, including seminar, to meet certification requirements for teaching in grades six through twelve. Course Information: Graduate credit only with approval of the department. Prerequisite(s): Good academic standing in a teacher education program, completion of 100 clock hours of pre-student-teaching field experiences, credit or concurrent registration in HIST 475, and approval of the department. Class Schedule Information: To be properly registered, students must enroll in one Conference and one Practice.

Jonathan Connolly

R 3:30-6 PM

Undergraduate: 44090

This seminar will engage critically with different approaches to the history of migration, placing significant emphasis on method, perspective, and voice. Instead of a comprehensive history of migration across time and space, the course will consider different ways of conceptualizing migration—as the movement of people, plants, diseases, ideas, and cultural practices. We will attain to the micro and the macro; to experience and identity; to labor and empire; to political and artistic traditions; and to migration and the environment. In the process, the course will serve as an opportunity for reflection on history’s interaction with other disciplines, including economics, literature, and anthropology.

3 OR 4 hours. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. May be repeated. Students may register in more than one section per term. Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of history.

John Abbott

MWF 10:00-10:50am

Undergraduate: 34176

To be human is to speculate on the whys and wherefores of our existence. What does it mean to live in this world? How best to reconcile our individuality with the collective imperatives of human survival? What constitutes a good life, and how might society be organized to realize this aim? To these questions, Europe’s thinking classes have generated a great plurality of answers over the centuries, answers that inform our intellectual speculations to this day.

This course offers an introductory survey of this legacy, beginning with the French Revolution and concluding with the age of decolonization. Along the way, we examine some of the figures who initiated or enriched these conversations, including Burke, (Mary) Shelley, Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Darwin, Weber and de Beauvoir. And, because ideas are not bound by country or even continents, we conclude with Hannah Arendt, a Jewish German refugee from Nazi Germany who became a prominent public intellectual in Cold War America, and Franz Fanon, whose Wretched of the Earth became a powerful manifesto of anticolonial emancipation in the 1960s.

Intensive reading and classroom discussion, drawn from texts by these and other authors, provide the lifeblood of this course. (Lectures will be kept at a minimum!). Several (mostly short) writing assignments, coupled with an end-of-semester paper, make up the remainder of course requirements.

Specific topics are announced each term. Course Information: 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. May be repeated. Students may register in more than one section per term. Prerequisite(s): 3 Hours of history.

Elizabeth Todd-Breland

T 3:30-6:00 pm

CRN: 41125

Internships are a great way for History majors to gain on the job skills and experience toward potential career paths. HIST 499 is designed for students to earn credit while pursuing their interests in hands-on internship experiences. Students must commit to at least 10 hours of work per week (for 15 weeks) to an internship institution to earn 3 credit hours. The course requires that you keep an internship journal, attend 2-3 professional/career development workshops, meet five times as a class group and with the professor throughout the semester, and create a brief presentation about your internship and the skills and work experience that you gained at the end of the semester. It is the student’s responsibility to search for internships, apply for internships, and secure an internship before class starts. But, the instructor will provide guidance and support throughout this process. Group class meetings will be held synchronously through Zoom.

Prerequisite(s): Approval of the instructor.

Malgorzata Fidelis

T 3:30-6:00 pm

HIST Graduate: 32936

CEES Graduate: 32987

The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 gave rise to global shifts that continue to shape our world today. Heralded as “the end of history” and “The Year of Truth,” 1989 generated an enormous international attention, widespread euphoria, and a belief in an inevitable triumph of liberal democracy. How did the events of 1989 and their aftermath affect people in the region? In what ways have the interpretations of 1989 changed over time? This class will explore the nature of 1989 revolutions, and the challenges of the transition from communism to liberal democracy as experienced by a variety of social and political actors in the region. Topics will include the dismantling of the command economy and the rapid transition to neoliberal capitalism; political democratization and the rise of nationalism; consumer culture and mobility across borders; the impact of the European Union; the politics of gender and sexuality; the global economic crises and migration; the rise of authoritarian populism and the war in Ukraine. Finally, we will examine the ways in which communism (and its collapse) has been remembered and utilized to serve a variety of new political agendas. Same as CEES 433. 4 graduate hours.

Julia Vaingurt

M 3:30-5:00 pm

HIST Graduate: 35847

RUSS Graduate: 38038

This course explores the central and most controversial issue of Russian literary and philosophical tradition: Russia’s relationship to the West.  Various events and aspects of Western political and social life, from revolutions to resorts, will be examined through the lens of Russian fiction, travelogues and diaries, philosophy and historiography. We will examine how the images of the West reflect Russia’s own cultural biases, national concerns, and aesthetic preoccupations.  Central to this issue is Russia’s own conceptualization of its identity: is it a part of Europe (the West) or Asia (the East), or a unique hybrid of the two with its own distinct destiny?  The course unfolds chronologically, covering three centuries of Russian history from Peter the Great’s Westernizing reforms to Putin’s all-out war.  Readings will include works by Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Mayakovsky, Solzhenitsyn, Pelevin, and Limonov.
Same as RUSS 440

Hayley Negrin

M 3-5:30

Graduate: 48688

This course will explore the relationship between Black and Indigenous people in early America. Topics will include slavery, ecology, kinship, and forms of resistance deployed by these diverse populations of people to colonial oppression. Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of U.S. history or consent of the instructor.

Celso Mendoza

TR 11-12:15 PM

Graduate: 32966

For centuries, the so-called “Spanish Conquest” of Mexico has been seen as the quick, relatively easy triumph of cunning (but cruel) Spaniards over superstitious noble savage Aztecs, due mostly to European technological superiority. While such beliefs persist in popular thought, historians, largely thanks to new studies of Indigenous historical accounts, have dramatically overturned this view. In this course, we will examine historians’ new, more accurate understanding of Hernando Cortés’ war against the Aztec Empire from 1519 – 21. Using the latest books and articles by historians of early colonial Latin America, as well as primary sources (especially Indigenous writings from that era), we will first look at the rise of the Aztec Empire and Iberian colonialism, and how the pre-colonial histories of Mexico and Iberia shaped their eventual encounter. Then we will trace step-by-step how exactly Cortés overthrew the Aztec Empire not through cunning and absolute cultural or technological superiority, but rather through alliances with Natives and by taking advantage of epidemic disease. We will then look at new understandings and historical analyses of the aftermath of the Spanish-Aztec War, which have exposed Spanish colonization as a much more fragile and incomplete process than has been previously assumed. As a class, we will debunk and deflate many widespread myths about early Spanish colonialism and look at the paths that historians are taking towards further correcting the record of this extremely misunderstood historical moment.

Laura Hostetler

MW 9:30-10:45

HIST Graduate: 31133

GLAS Graduate: 39464

The transition from empire to nation as an organizational structure and ideology of governance occurred world-wide between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. How did polities begin to think of and define themselves in national rather than imperial terms? This course focuses on the exchange of geographical knowledge between Europe and China, and the subsequent spread of global mapping based on latitude and longitude throughout Asia. Built around the scholarly papers presented at a conference on “Reimagining the Globe and Cultural Exchange: From the World Maps of Ricci and Verbiest to Google Earth,” held in San Francisco in 2016, this course examines the nuts and bolts of how an edited volume emerges from a scholarly conference, and how in the process the individual scholarship of specialists comes together to form a larger conceptual whole.

Same as GLAS 473. May be repeated. Students may register in more than one section per term. Prerequisite(s): 3 hours of East Asian history or consent of the instructor. 4 graduate hours.

Jonathan Connolly

R 3:30-6 PM

Graduate: 44419

This seminar will engage critically with different approaches to the history of migration, placing significant emphasis on method, perspective, and voice. Instead of a comprehensive history of migration across time and space, the course will consider different ways of conceptualizing migration—as the movement of people, plants, diseases, ideas, and cultural practices. We will attain to the micro and the macro; to experience and identity; to labor and empire; to political and artistic traditions; and to migration and the environment. In the process, the course will serve as an opportunity for reflection on history’s interaction with other disciplines, including economics, literature, and anthropology.

John Abbott

MWF 10:00-10:50am

Graduate: 34177

To be human is to speculate on the whys and wherefores of our existence. What does it mean to live in this world? How best to reconcile our individuality with the collective imperatives of human survival? What constitutes a good life, and how might society be organized to realize this aim? To these questions, Europe’s thinking classes have generated a great plurality of answers over the centuries, answers that inform our intellectual speculations to this day.

This course offers an introductory survey of this legacy, beginning with the French Revolution and concluding with the age of decolonization. Along the way, we examine some of the figures who initiated or enriched these conversations, including Burke, (Mary) Shelley, Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Darwin, Weber and de Beauvoir. And, because ideas are not bound by country or even continents, we conclude with Hannah Arendt, a Jewish German refugee from Nazi Germany who became a prominent public intellectual in Cold War America, and Franz Fanon, whose Wretched of the Earth became a powerful manifesto of anticolonial emancipation in the 1960s.

Intensive reading and classroom discussion, drawn from texts by these and other authors, provide the lifeblood of this course. (Lectures will be kept at a minimum!). Several (mostly short) writing assignments, coupled with an end-of-semester paper, make up the remainder of course requirements.

Specific topics are announced each term. Course Information: 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. May be repeated. Students may register in more than one section per term. Prerequisite(s): 3 Hours of history.

Marina Mogilner

CRN: 24609

This graduate colloquium addresses world history, which is taken to mean works that adopt large temporal or spatial scales. Some narrate the story of humankind since the last Ice Age, while others consider the unity of seas, oceans, and ecological zones. Alongside specific historical studies that advance a world history perspective, we will explore debates about what is global, transnational, and world histories, and why they are worth pursuing. We will critically assess the merits of classic texts and the directions taken by the most recent historiography.

Michael Jin

M 6-8:30 pm

CRN: 24683

This course will review key texts (monographs and journal articles) in U.S. History from the late 19th through 20th centuries. The course will help students prepare for their preliminary exams.

Keely Stauter-Halsted

T 6-8:30 pm

CRN: 47166

This course provides graduate students in all subfields of history with training and practice in producing an article-length research paper based on primary sources. We will explore the basic tasks of choosing a topic, framing a central question, identifying and interpreting primary and secondary sources, reading and note-taking, developing an argument, outlining, drafting, and revising a paper. We will analyze several exemplary articles by graduate students as models for students’ own work. The course is designed to help students progress through the various stages of research and writing by setting up a series of procedural deadlines and reading and responding to each other’s work at several steps along the way. 4 hours. May be repeated. Students may register in more than one section per term. Prerequisite(s): Consent of the instructor. Departmental Approval Required.

Jennie Brier

T 3-5:30

CRN: 30123

This course is connected to a large, grant-funded history project called, “The Near West Side Renewal Project.” The project team, with faculty from History, Global Asian Studies, Education, and Urban Planning aim to document the building of the University of Illinois Chicago campus as an urban renewal project of the 1960s, and the related histories and legacies of displacement and organizing on the Near West Side and West Side of Chicago. Our community partners include the North Lawndale Historical and Cultural Society, which chronicles the history of the North Lawndale community and educates the community about North Lawndale’s cultural assets, people, and architecture; the National Public Housing Museum, located in the last remaining building of the 1930s WPA-era Jane Addams Homes; the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, which itself was partly destroyed to make UIC. This course will begin with exploring the history of Chicago’s westside and will then turn to historical research (which could potentially include oral histories, archival work, storytelling, community workshops, community tours, and other reciprocal public humanities practices) to document the history and legacies of urban renewal in the wake of UIC’s building and expansion since the 1960s.

4 hours. May be repeated. Students may register in more than one section per term. Prerequisite(s): Graduate standing and consent of the instructor.

Ivón Padilla Rodríguez

R 3-530

CRN: 30124

The course will introduce graduate students to the history of childhood from a global perspective. We will read key texts in the field in order to gain exposure to the diverse experiences of young people, as well as the varied understandings of childhood, across different temporal, cultural, and geographic contexts. By examining the experiences, reception, and treatment of children in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, the course will encourage students to critically analyze and reappraise the following major themes: enslavement, migration, family life, labor, education, criminalization, incarceration, advocacy, civil rights, and citizenship.

Prerequisite(s): Graduate standing and consent of the instructor.

Nick Doumanis

CRN: 48689

This course will consider the nature of empire as a state form. How did the empires work? Why were some more durable than others? Were colonial empires distinctive? The course will also consider how empire was experienced by subjects, and especially how imperial rulers dealt with cultural difference. Students will read through a selection of seminal works that speak to various aspects of empire, and which consider a range of case studies from the early modern and modern periods.

4 hours. May be repeated. Students may register in more than one section per term. Prerequisite(s): Graduate standing and consent of the instructor.