G – Global Perspectives PE – Perspectives/European PN – Perspectives/Non European PCI – Perspectives/Comp, Intl R – Race & Inclusion TH – Textual & Historical Perspectives WT – Western Traditions T1 – Writing Tier-1 T2 – Writing Intensive SLA Tier -2
1000 LEVEL COURSES
HISA 1030 Medieval Europe 1100-1450 (Luongo) G, TH, WT, T1
A survey of the period in which Western Europe became the center of medieval civilization.
HISE 1510 Napoleon in Russia 1812 (Ramer) G, TH, T1
This seminar is a close study of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812, the impact it had upon the Russian empire, and the place that it came to occupy in Russia's historical memory. The seminar, which meets twice per week, emphasizes the timely reading of assigned readings and active participation in class discussions.
HIST 1500 Eating and Drinking in History (Moore) TH, T1
This course will take an overarching approach to eating and drinking, including modules on cultural relationships with alcohol; labor and food production; and commodity chains and trade. Students will help develop the topics for the second half of the course, allowing them to be involved in the direction and focus of the course itself.
HIST 1910 Money as Meaning (Moore) PCI, TH, T1
The course features examples and scholarship about a broad a long history of money. After the initial modules on topics like Counterfeiting, Money Laundering, Money as Art, and Islamic Lending, students’ historiography projects will help frame topics and readings for the second half of the course.
HISU 1500 Why Taylor Swift Matters (Fertel) R, TH, T1
She sells millions of records, garners innumerable YouTube streams and major awards, and makes the world care about her dating history, but why does Taylor Swift matter? This seminar’s readings and discussions will trace the last century of popular music, culture, and history to come up with an answer. We will study the history of love and dating, dig deep into the history of several pop music genres, and ask what it means to be a true fan. We will discuss themes of race, sex, and gender, class and the construction of identities, American history and Americana. Though this is not a course specifically about Taylor Swift, she will be our guiding light in this exploration of American culture and history.
HISU 1800 Early New Orleans (Clark) PCI, R, TH, T1
This course explores the history of New Orleans during the colonial and early national periods, when the city was a crossroads of the Atlantic World that linked Africa, the Americas, and Europe. It locates the city's past in a transnational Atlantic context that reaches back to the fifteenth century and concludes with the emergence of New Orleans as a major American city in the early nineteenth century.
HISU 1910 American History through Art (Parker) TH, T1
This course offers a survey of American history through the nation's visual arts. Whether paintings, drawings, photography, or sculpture, works will elucidate the principal events, developments, ideas, and politics in the United States from its beginnings to the present.
HISU 1910 The History of Mardi Gras (Fertel) R, TH, T1
Through serious examination of the mirth and madness that is Mardi Gras, we will reimagine our understandings of local, national, and global histories. Topics will include race and class, gender and sexual politics, tourism and economic inequity, inclusion and gentrification, religion and hedonism, resilience and revolution.
2000 LEVEL COURSES
HISC 2020 History of China since 1800 (DeMare) G, PN, TH, T1
This survey course introduces the main themes in Chinese history from the height of the Qing dynasty to the end of the twentieth century. The first half of the course explores the political, social, economic, and cultural trends of the late imperial era. The second half of the course examines twentieth-century China, from the turbulent years of the Republican period to the traumatic events of the Cultural Revolution and beyond. This course is intended for those with little or no prior study of Chinese history.
HISE 2240 Rus Rulers & Tyrants, 900-1825 (Ramer) G, PN, TH, WT, T1
Political, social, and economic developments in Russia from the earliest times to the mid-19th century. Kievan and Muscovite background, reforms of Peter the Great, and the effects of westernization.
HISE 2320 Early Modern England (Pollock) G, TH, WT, T1
A survey of the political, social, economic, and cultural development of England from the founding of the Tudor dynasty to the rebellion of the American colonies (1485-1776). Topics include the Reformation, the civil war, relations with Scotland and Ireland, political thought, crime and riot, education, and domestic industry.
HISE 2410 Spain, 1369-1716 (Boyden) G, TH, T1
Surveys the course of Spanish history from the completion of the medieval Reconquest and the rise of the Trastamara dynasty in the fourteenth century until the end of Habsburg Spain in the early eighteenth century, with particular attention to state formation and the role of Spain as a great European power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Besides politics, the course examines central topics in the social, religious and cultural history of late medieval and early modern Spain.
HISL 2911 Piracy in the Americas (Lane) G, TH, T1
This course examines the phenomenon of sea raiding in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from the time of Columbus to the great anti-piracy campaigns of the early eighteenth century. Using a blend of primary and secondary sources, we will explore piracy as a legal, economic, and social phenomenon with global implications that persist today.
HISL 2912 Latin Amer History in Cinema (Cruz) G, TH, T1
This course explores major themes in Latin American history by understanding how they have been portrayed in cinema. We will examine popular historical memory through these films, getting to know the history behind them, and analyzing how and why major historical moments are remembered in a certain way. The themes covered in the class include revolutions, race, gender, the Cold War, urban life and colonialism.
HISU 2605 Twentieth Century America (Porter) R, TH, T1
A survey of twentieth century U.S. history, focused on politics, culture, and the environment. Topics include immigration, imperialism, suffrage, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, the New Deal, world wars, the Civil Rights Movement, conservatism, the War on Terror, climate change, and America's future.
HISU 2610 The Old South (Sparks) R, TH, T1
Economic, cultural and political history of the South from the settlement of Jamestown through the Civil War. Emphasis is on those factors that made the South a unique section of the nation. Service Learning
HISU 2680 Working in America (Lipman) R, TH, T1
Students will gain a solid foundation in mid-19th and 20th century labor history and analyze the following themes: the rise of corporate capitalism, the development of a labor movement, agricultural, industrial, and service economies, the interplay between immigration and American labor, the decline of labor protections, and the emergence of the ‘gig’ economy. The course will also ask that students grapple with contemporary problems and recognize the historic antecedents and struggles behind today’s current events.
HISU 2700 Modern African-American (Adderley) R, TH, T1
This course surveys the history of people of African descent in the United States from the end of the Civil War until the late twentieth century. A central theme of the course will be the varying ways in which African-Americans sought, both successfully and unsuccessfully, to achieve political, social, and economic freedom in the wake of emancipation. Service Learning
HISU 2910 Law and U.S. History (Isaacson, Haugeberg) TH, T1
This course surveys the history of the United States through legal cases from the Revolutionary era to the present day. From sensational murder trials to major Supreme Court precedents, students will explore the intersections of history and law.
3000 LEVEL COURSES
HISB 3910 Exhibiting the Past (McMahon) G, TH
This public history course examines the creation of exhibitions in museums, archives, and online to think about the ways historians condense information into usable formats for public consumption. Students will learn about the history and mechanics of building historical exhibitions and meet with exhibition professionals in the city. Service Learning
HISE 3311 Gardens Parks and Green Spaces (Pollock) G, TH, T2
This course examines the creation of gardens, parks and public space in Europe and the Americas from 1500 to the present day. We will study the historical evolution, technology and art form of gardens and public parks as well as their social significance, taking into account issues of race, ethnicity, gender and class. Service Learning
HISU 3910 Visiting New Orleans 1687-2022 (Clark) R, TH, T2
People have been visiting New Orleans for more than 300 years. Today's visitors usually leave thinking that the first inhabitants were criminals and prostitutes, that ghosts haunt the French Quarter, that vampires lie in coffins in the attic of the old Ursuline convent and that New Orleanians have always been more interested in recreation, music and sin than in economic success. Ironically, these ideas originate not from the historical documents written by the people who lived and worked in the city, but from what visitors themselves wrote home about their trips to the city. Sometimes, the trip never actually happened, except in their imagination. Visitors' impressions and the accounts that they wrote formed the image that most non-New Orleanians have of the city and supply the foundation for what tour guides and marketing materials say about it today. In this course, students will read and analyze travel accounts and literature produced by visitors to New Orleans and become familiar with the main elements of the mythic city they imagined.
HISU 3911 Art & War in Antebellum South (Parker) TH, T2
This course will deploy works of visual art to study the American South from the early nineteenth century through the end of the Civil War. We will examine how period artists documented, supported, and critiqued the charged events and politics of the antebellum era and consider how their creative expressions framed regional debates on race-based chattel bondage and the war that brought its demise.
HISU 3912 Am Families-Hist Perspective (Howard) R, TH, T2
This course examines how American understandings of family have changed from colonial times through the present. This course will explore the family as a political, economic, social, and cultural institution and question how shifting conceptions of the role of the state has affected family life in America. Readings, discussions, and writing assignments will focus on the purposes that different types of families served in U.S. history and the way family formation and ideas of the family have been shaped by ideas connected to citizenship and belonging; race and ethnicity; masculinity and work; slavery and labor; consumer culture and technology; sexuality, childrearing and childlessness/freeness. Students will also analyze primary sources and historical debates to explore these histories using frameworks of race, gender, and sexuality. This course can be used to fulfill the Tier II writing requirement.
4000 LEVEL COURSES
HISA 4200 Dante's Worlds (Luongo) G, TH, T2
This mixed lecture/seminar will explore the world Dante created in his masterwork, the Comedy. and the world that created Dante: the vibrant intellectual. political. and religious culture of medieval Italy. The course will combine a close reading of the Comedy with exploration of important issues engaged by Dante in politics and government; religion and morality; economic theory and social order; gender and social relations; and creativity and the arts.
HISL 4630 Sex/Gender Colonial Latin Amer (García) G, TH
This course examines conquest and colonialism through the lens of gender and sexuality. It looks at the relationships that emerged among indigenous, African, and mestizo populations and how systems of beliefs about sex, gender, and sexuality facilitated the practice of empire.
6000 LEVEL COURSES
HISB 6910 Exhibiting the Past (McMahon) G, TH
This public history course examines the creation of exhibitions in museums, archives, and online to think about the ways historians condense information into usable formats for public consumption. Students will learn about the history and mechanics of building historical exhibitions and meet with exhibition professionals in the city. Service Learning
HISE 6430 Relig & Soc-Golden Age Spain (Boyden) G, TH, T2
Examines Spanish religious history from the late fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Among other topics, readings and discussions will focus on: the collapse of religious pluralism and the end of convivencia (the coexistence of Christians, Jews, and Muslims); the Spanish Inquisition (its purposes, process, personnel, and consequences); varieties of religious practice in early modern Spain; and the characteristics of Spanish Catholicism in the Counter-Reformation.
HISL 6780 Caribbean Hist: Major Themes (Adderley) G, TH, T2
A historiographical course focusing on major texts, major themes, and major trends in the historical literature of the Caribbean, including the island territories along with Belize and the Guianas.
HISL 6910 Medicine, Sci & Tech in Lat Am (Cruz) G, TH
In this seminar we will explore the intertwined histories of medi- cine, public health, science, and technology in Latin America. Covering the 19th and 20th centuries, the readings will be focused on understanding how elite and state ideologies, expressed through science and technocratic governance, have impacted daily life in Latin America. The readings will largely be on histories that move us away from a traditional model that portrays science in Latin America through a north-south axis, that is, as strictly a diffusion of knowledge from the United States and Europe to the southern hemisphere.
HISU 6560 Rise and Fall Plantation South (Sparks) R, TH, T2
This reading and research seminar will explore major topics in the social, cultural, economic, and political history of the plantation South. The course will begin with the origins of the plantation system in the colonial era to its eventual decline in the 20th century. We will consider regional variations tied to the production of export crops including tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar. Major themes will include issues of race and class, changing labor systems, comparative history, and the impact of the planting system on the region's history.
HISU 6840 United States Empire (Lipman) R, TH, T2
What is an empire, who defines it, and does the United States have one? This class will begin by studying sites of formal US control of overseas territories, namely Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. It will then consider definitions of economic and cultural empire, particularly after the end of World War II. The course aims to provide students with several case studies in the early twentieth century and to ask students to ponder their legacies in the present.
G – Global Perspectives PE – Perspectives/European PN – Perspectives/Non European PCI – Perspectives/Comp, Intl R – Race & Inclusion TH – Textual & Historical Perspectives WT – Western Traditions T1 – Writing Tier-1 T2 – Writing Intensive SLA Tier -2