Spring 2025 Undergraduate Courses

Department Policy on In-Person Attendance
All Spring 2025 History courses will be taught in-person.��By signing up for an class, you have agreed to attend and participate in the��class in-person. You should not expect to be able to attend class remotely or to access class recordings. Exceptions to this policy may be granted at the instructor’s discretion. If you are unwilling or unable to commit to attending and participating in person over the duration of the semester, you should seek alternative options for all-remote or online courses. (For assistance with finding alternative classes, please contact your advisor and/or the History Advisor, Hayes Moore,��hayes.moore@colorado.edu.)

Expanded course descriptions

This page does not list all Spring 2025 History courses, only those for which we have expanded descriptions. To see all courses, please use the Course Search button above. If you would like an expanded description of a course which is not on this list, please reach out to the instructor.

HIST 1800-001: Introduction to Global History: Global Environmental History – Paul Sutter

This course will examine one of the most important dimensions of the history of the world since 1500: the profound and rapid growth of the human presence upon the planet and the acceleration of human impacts, direct and indirect, upon environmental systems. We will focus on themes such as population growth and migration, natural resource use, industrialization, urbanization, energy systems, hunting and fishing, food and agricultural modes of production, disease, colonialism and imperialism, the rise of environmental thought and politics, disasters, and climate change. The guiding concept for the course will be the "Anthropocene": the notion that, over the last century or two, human activity on earth has become so dominant and pervasive that it ought to be recognized as the signature characteristic of our current geological epoch. The central purpose of the course will be to think critically about the historical dimensions of the Anthropocene concept.

HIST 1828-001: Jewish History Since 1492 - Hilary Kalisman

A survey of Jewish history from ��the Spanish Expulsion in 1492 up until the present day. We will study how Jews across the modern world engaged with the emerging notions of nationalism, equality, and citizenship, as well as with new ideologies such as liberalism, socialism, Zionism, imperialism and different types of antisemitisms. We will look at the diverse histories of Jews in the United States, the Middle East as well as Eastern and Western Europe. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: historical context.

HIST 1830-001: Global History of Holocaust and Genocide - Thomas Pegelow Kaplan

This course will examine the interplay of history, religion, politics, culture, and psychology to try to understand why the great philosopher Isaiah Berlin called the 20th century, "the most terrible century in Western History." Our focus will be on the Holocaust as the event that defined the concept of genocide, but we will locate this event that come to define the 20th century within concepts such as racism, imperialism, violence, and the dehumanization of individuals in the modern world. Topics covered include Native American and Indigenous genocide; HIV/AIDS; sexual violence; and the question of "just war."

HIST 2110-001: Living the Revolution: English & French Revolutions - David Paradis

In the first half of the course, we will explore how the English unwittingly slipped into a revolution during the 1640s and how their ideas affected later revolutions in the US and France. ��In the second half of the course, students will engage in a live action role playing game focused on the French Revolution c. 1790.

HIST 2220-001: History of War and Society: World War II in Asia/Pacific - William Wei

For Asia, World War II began with the Mukden Incident (1931), resulting in Japanese domination of Manchuria and leading to a full-scale war between China and Japan in 1937. Only after the Japanese attacked the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor four years later did the United States enter the war. This course discusses the various socio-economic and political factors leading to the war in Asia, examines the nature of the conflict in Asia and in the Pacific, and assesses the legacy of the war for all those involved.

HIST 2629-001: China in World History: China and the United States - Timothy Weston

China and the United States: Intertwined Histories: The relationship between China and the United States (aka Sino-American relations) is the single most important bilateral relationship in the world today. How China and the United States get along going forward will have an incomparable impact on geopolitics, the global economy, and the planetary environment. In this course we will study the dramatic, twisting and turning, history of Sino-American ties, which reach back to the middle of the eighteenth century. That history laid the foundations for the troubled nature of the Sino-American relationship today.

HIST 2718-001: History of Japan Through Cinema - Marcia Yonemoto

Over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Japan produced some of the world's most acclaimed films. Directors like Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Ichikawa and, of course, Miyazaki, created unforgettable portrayals of Japanese life across the ages. This rich corpus of dramatic films provides an opportunity for students of history to explore Japan's past through the medium of modern film. This course seeks to use careful and contextualized viewing of a selection of Japanese films as a way to understand key issues in the history of the late medieval, early modern, and modern periods in Japan, roughly covering the years 1500-1990. Among the issues we will explore: the changing role of the samurai in the late medieval and early modern periods, women and the "floating world" in early modern culture, the modernization of Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the devastation of war in the 1930s and early 1940s, the postwar recovery in the 1950s-60s, and the downside of prosperity in the 1980s. All the films we will watch were made by Japanese directors, in Japanese but subtitled in English.

HIST 3020 Historical Thinking & Writing��

(001) Indigenous Americans and Equestrian Revolutions, 1493-1800s - Thomas Andrews

��Scholars generally claim that European explorers and conquerors introduced horses to the Americas starting with Columbus's second expedition. ��Native Americans ��eventually embraced the animals with gusto. This was true not simply on the Great Plains, but also in the woodlands of the Southeast, the inland valleys of California, the high peaks of the Rockies, and even the emergent cattle-ranching districts of the Hawaiian Islands. This course will explore these equestrian revolutions and their monumental impacts on politics, ecology, culture, and identity, with a focus on Indigenous American agency and resistance to imperialism and settler colonialism.

(002) Democracy on the American World War II Home Front - Natalie Mendoza

This course introduces students to historical research methods through an examination of the popular belief that World War II was a democratizing and progressive moment for marginalized communities in American society. We will explore the tension between wartime democratic rhetoric and the various forms of discrimination Japanese Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and gays and lesbians experienced by considering events such as Japanese American removal and confinement, African American efforts to end discrimination in the wartime industry and military, Mexican American civil rights diplomacy, and the policing of gender norms and sexuality in the U.S. military. In particular, we will consider under what circumstances democracy did or did not work, the government's role in hindering or promoting a sense of belonging in the nation, the way marginalized communities fought for equality, and how broader society defined "American"--in terms of identity as well as the ideals and priorities of the era. Our inquiry over the course of the semester will be guided by questions we will answer through our close reading and analysis of primary and secondary sources, among other skills central to demonstrating fluency in historical literacy. To achieve this, students can expect to write every week, in an effort to gain a familiarity and comfort with using historical literacy in the research writing process. By the end of the semester, students will produce a research proposal (annotated bibliography + historiography + research question) that will draw upon both course materials and sources they locate through independent research on our common examination of World War II as a democratizing and progressive moment in American society.

HIST 3115-001: Seminar in Early American History - Andrew Detch

The Culture of Revolutionary America: Revolutions are bloody, divisive, chaotic affairs and the American Revolution was no different. From battlefields to living rooms, people on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean were forced to choose sides, craft new identities, and cope with the tremendous changes taking place all around them. This course will provide students with the opportunity to delve into the culture of Revolutionary America to consider the many ways in which the American Revolution affected the lived experiences of people throughout early America. Students will engage with both works by recent scholars that offer a variety of perspectives on critical issues and processes of the era and primary sources that illuminate the experiences and perspectives of those who lived through the American Revolution. The idea of "culture" is the unifying theme of the course because it provides a suitably broad organizing principle that will allow students to examine a wide range of topics. By the end of the course students will produce their own study of the material, political, social, and/or military culture of the era.

HIST 3800-001: Seminar in Global History: Maritime Asia - Sanjay Gautam

This course focuses on maritime Asia, centered on India and the Indian Ocean, between 1500 and 1850 from a global perspective. The course starts with the discovery of the sea route from Europe to Asia leading to the arrival of the Portuguese sailor, Vasco da Gama, in India in 1498 that changed the course of world history. It then moves to investigate the long struggle between Portugal, England/ Britain, the Netherlands, and France for maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean and Asia. The course ends with an exploration into the East India Company's colonization of India in the 18th century and how it laid the foundations for the British and European domination of the South and East China Seas as reflected in the Opium Wars.

HIST 4020-001: Topics in Comparative History: Modernity in China and Japan - Timothy Weston

This class will concentrate on the creation of "modernity" in China and Japan. It is organized around the proposition that "modernity" is an overarching historical idea, a state of consciousness, closely connected to, but also distinct from, "modernization." We will proceed from the premise that the Chinese and Japanese cases should be studied together, in relation to one another, rather than separately. We will consider the multiple ways that ideas, culture, and power formations operated outside of and crossed the political boundaries of the nation-states that arose in China and Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

HIST 4103-001: England from the Viking Age to the Tudors - David Paradis

Inspired by the culture of retribution so visibly on display in Game of Thrones, we will examine the culture of feuding and interfamilial vengeance that infused the life of Scandinavian warriors and English aristocrats in the centuries leading up to and including the Wars of the Roses.

HIST 4123-001: Kings & Commoners in an Age of Crisis: English History 1327-1487 - Paul Hammer

English history in the 14th and 15th centuries (1300s-1400s) can read like a catalog of catastrophe: climate change, the Black Death, peasant revolts, long periods of foreign and civil war and five kings forcibly removed from the throne. Yet this period is also saw renewed forms of religious devotion, famous military victories and the exaltation of kingship and. anew English national identity. At the same time, these centuries also witnessed the growing importance of the common people in English politics and forged the notion that English government should aspire to serve the common good of the realm.

HIST 4222-001: War and the European State, 1618-1793 - Matthew Gerber

Did gunpowder-based warfare produce modern democracy? ��This course examines the geographically diverse contributions of warfare to European state formation from the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War in 1618 through the advent of the French Revolution in 1789. ��Topics include the gendered nature of early modern violence; the rapid growth of professional standing armies; the gradual and contested bureaucratization of state administrations; popular and elite reactions to changing forms of warfare; domestic responses to international conflict; the role of culture in evolving modes of warfare; and the growing importance of overseas colonization, naval power, and imperial conquest.

HIST 4328-001: The Modern Middle East, 1600 to the Present - John Willis

This course is designed to introduce students to the histories, societies and cultures of the modern Middle East covering the period from late Ottoman Empire to Arab Uprisings of 2011. ��We will pay particular attention to the way people in the region experienced the profound transformations their societies underwent from the nineteenth century onward, especially the expansion of European economic, political, and cultural power, European colonialism, the rise of the nation-state, and forms of popular opposition. ��We will conclude by discussing the contemporary Middle East, some of the issues its peoples face, and how these can be understood historically.

HIST 4329-001: Islam in the Modern World: Revivalism, Modernism, and Fundamentalism, 1800-2001 - John Willis

This class will chart the emergence of distinct reformist movements within Islam in the period between the late 18th and 20th centuries. ��Looking at scholars in the Middle East and South Asia, we will consider how issues such as human reason, democracy, and gender have been considered within the Islamic tradition.

HIST 4338-001: History of Modern Israel/Palestine - Hilary Kalisman

How did we get to this point? What histories do we need to know to understand the situation of Israelis and Palestinians today? To answer these questions, this course traces the intertwined histories of Israel/Palestine, Israelis and Palestinians from the late Ottoman period to the present. Topics include: nationalism and colonialism, the development of Zionisms, Palestinian nationalism, the Jewish community (Yishuv) under British rule, the founding of the State of Israel, Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli relations, Israel's minorities, the role of religion in Israel today and changing relationships between the United States, Israel and Palestinians.

HIST 4623-001: History of Eastern Europe Since 1914 - John Hatch

How can a small nation-state survive? Why do people support communist or fascist regimes, and why do they then rebel? How does one build a democratic society? These questions have been central to the East European experience throughout the 20th Century. This course will examine the upheavals in the region from World War 1 through the revolutions of 1989-90 and the Yugoslav wars, the region's subsequent integration into the European Union, and 91��Ƭ��'s invasion of Ukraine, as a way to gaining a better understanding of historical processes of revolution and modernization and the ideologies of nationalism, populism, communism, and liberal democracy.

HIST 4713-001: History of 91��Ƭ�� through the 17th Century - John Hatch

This course covers 91��Ƭ��n history before 1700, from the founding of the first east Slavic state, Kievan Rus, in the 9th Century, to the advent of Peter the Great, in the late 17th Century. How do we account for rise of the 91��Ƭ��n Autocratic State, which first appeared in the era of Mongol domination (1240-1480)? This Muscovite state tradition has persisted to the present day in 91��Ƭ��. Why? (2) What is the phenomenon of Personal Autocracy? Vladimir Putin is only the latest in a line of Grand Princes, Tsars, and Commissars to attain or struggle to attain personal control over the autocratic state (e.g. Stalin, Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible). We will study the third of these: Ivan the Terrible. This study will include a viewing of Eisenstein’s film, Ivan the Terrible. (3) 91��Ƭ��n imperial expansion was an outgrowth of the expansion of Muscovy both during the Mongol era and after. Why did it expand? How did that expansion shape the geopolitical and imperial behavior of the Muscovite/91��Ƭ��n state? (3) In the Mongol era, ethno-linguistic divergence emerged among the east Slavic peoples. Muscovy’s heavy-handed incorporation, or perhaps conquest, in the mid-1600s, of the Cossack lands of present-day Ukraine plays a key role in modern, Ukrainian national identity. How and why did this conquest come about?��

HIST 4738-001: Japan's Great Peace, 1590-1868 - Marcia Yonemoto

When we think of early modern Japan we think first of samurai: swords flashing, blood spilling, heads rolling. Such images of samurai dominate our own popular culture, circulated through films, books, anime, manga, and video games. But samurai famously turned away from warfare in the early modern period, and the term "samurai" meant a status group that included not only male warriors but women, children, and families. Further, samurai were only one (relatively small) part of a complex society that included farmers, merchants, artisans, and others who comprised the majority of the population. In fact, it was the commoner class in the early modern period that developed much of what we now think of as "traditional" Japanese arts and culture: woodblock prints (ukiyoe), the kabuki and bunraku (puppet) theater, the sprawling urban entertainment and pleasure quarters. Through readings of primary and secondary sources as well as the viewing of visual art and films, this course will focus on several key processes that enabled Japan's "great peace": establishing political stability, growing the economy, managing the environment, restructuring gender and family roles, and fostering the growth of popular culture. We will pay particular attention to the way historians have written and are now writing the history of the early modern period, and how and why historians' views have changed over time.

HIST 4800: Special Topics in Global History

(001) A Global History of Yoga - Sanjay Gautam

This course focuses on the history of yoga from its origin in the spiritual traditions of India to its spread in the West and beyond. The worldwide spread of yoga, particularly in the last century, has made it a truly global phenomenon. In the process, it has not only transcended all ethnic, religious, and national boundaries, but has also undergone subtle and often unnoticed changes of immense significance. Given its near universal reach, only a global approach to its history can allow us to understand the real nature and significance of its presence in the world today. We will start off the course with a reading of some relevant parts of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras--the original book on yoga--and then closely follow its evolution as it expands throughout the world.

(002) Antisemitism: Global Histories - Thomas Pegelow Kaplan

This course explores global histories, concepts, and practices of antisemitism. It analyzes how they emerged (and continue to emerge) and what accounts for their striking persistence. Why are Jews targeted in the first place? Is there a "new antisemitism"--as we have been told since the 1970s--that differs significantly from older manifestations? How is antisemitism related to anti-Zionism? What is its relationship with racism? And how have political, social, and religious groups and organizations, including Jewish communities, responded to these threats and what challenges have they faced? In finding answers to these and other questions, this course combines conceptual and methodological discussions in the study of antisemitism with thorough historical analysis of vastly different forms of hatred of Jews from antiquity to the present day, paying specific attention to North America as well as parts of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

HIST 4830-001: Human Trafficking in Global Perspective - Henry Lovejoy

Slavery has always been a global, human problem. In 2016, an estimated 45.8 million people in 167 countries, including the United States of America, are in some form of modern slavery. This course will examine various forms of slavery and human trafficking from its legal practice the ancient world until after its abolition in the modern day. Various forms of slavery to be discussed in this class include: chattel slavery, debt bondage, pawnship, domestic servants, bonded labor, child soldiers, forced marriage, sex trafficking, serfdom, and meanings associated with "freedom."

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Spring 2025 Undergraduate Courses

Expanded course descriptions