Courses
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CAS HI 190: History of Boston: Community and Conflict
Explores the history of Boston and the city's changes over time. Students work with archival objects, maps, and manuscripts. Topics include Native American history, colonial settlement, revolution, immigration, urban development, and race. Students visit nearby historical sites and museums. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, The Individual in Community, Teamwork/Collaboration. -
CAS HI 203: Magic, Science, and Religion
Boundaries and relationships between magic, science, and religion in Europe from antiquity through the Enlightenment. Explores global cultural exchange, distinctions across social, educational, gender, and religious lines, the rise of modern science, and changing assumptions about God, Nature, and humanity. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Critical Thinking. -
CAS HI 221: Catastrophe & Memory
Examines the ways in which catastrophes, both natural and social, enter into cultural memory. Goal is to understand how events that seem to defy comprehension are represented in works of art and given a place in the memory of a culture. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS HI 227: Living in the City
Gateway to international urban history. Case studies of selected cities -- from ancient Uruk to modern Shanghai -- through scrutiny of histories and documents. Discussion of important themes for our urban future: justice, health, worship, entertainment, human rights, city planning, beauty. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration. -
CAS HI 231: Media and Politics in Modern America
Examines how mass media have shaped the modern American political landscape, including electoral campaigns, voter attitudes, social movements, and war mobilization, as well as the ways public policy has structured both the news and entertainment media. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS HI 234: Introduction to India and South Asia
A survey of South Asian history from antiquity to the present. Considers pre- modern empires, the rise of the British Empire in South Asia, and the struggle for independence. Explores the modern politics and culture of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS HI 247: The Making of Modern Britain
How did a small island nation develop into a global superpower, and at what costs? This course charts Britain's ascendancy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a focus on industrialization, colonial expansion, democratic institution building, and enlightenment thought. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking. -
CAS HI 248: Modern Britain, 1867 to Present
A political, social, and cultural history of England with emphasis on the impact of the two world wars, the emergence of the welfare state, the loss of empire, and Britain's relations with Europe. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking. -
CAS HI 272: The History of Imperial Russia
Focuses on the history of Russia under the Romanov Dynasty and its establishment as a Eurasian power and empire. Emphasizes issues of religious, ethnic, and cultural diversity, modernization, reform and revolt, and the vexed question of Russian identity. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course that was numbered CAS HI 272 and previously entitled "Russia and Its Empires until 1900. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Creativity/Innovation. -
CAS HI 273: The History of the Soviet Union
Examines the tumultuous history of Russia's revolutions and its 74-year experiment with socialism. Explores the new revolutionary state's attempt to create a utopia by re-engineering human bodies, behaviors, and beliefs, and the successes and failures of that project. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same number that was previously entitled "Russia and Its Empires Since 1900." -
CAS HI 277: War: Myths and Realities
The past may tell us about the future of war. Study the lessons of wars past to correct current falsehoods and persistent myths about war in the wider culture. Learn to separate popular myths from the realities of war. This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness. -
CAS HI 287: History of American Foreign Relations since 1898
Analysis of the history of American foreign policy from the perspective of the changing world and regional international systems; emphasis on the effect of these systems and the impact of America on the creation and operation of international systems. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II. -
CAS HI 301: Women and Gender in US History
Examines the ideas and experiences of women in the United States from the 1600s through the late twentieth century. Considers the common factors that shaped women's lives as well as women's diverse class, ethnic, and regional experiences. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking. -
CAS HI 306: American Thought and Culture, 1900 to the Present
History 306 examines American thought in the 20th century when thinkers anointed their times "modern" and themselves "modernists" in revolt against the moral certainties and progressivist faiths of the 19th century. Four discourses driving this turn are spotlighted in the course's first half: philosophical pragmatism, social science relativism, non-rational modern art, and debates over America's role in the world. In the second half we consider post-World II conservative, multicultural, and postmodernist challenges to modernist norms in science, religion, liberal politics, and popular culture. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking. -
CAS HI 308: Religious Thought in America
Surveys many of the strategies that American religious thinkers have adopted for interpreting the cosmos, the social order and human experience, and the interaction of those strategies with broader currents of American culture. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II. -
CAS HI 328: The Civil War Era
What led to the US Civil War and how did Americans, North and South, black and white, male and female, experience this central cataclysm? What were its consequences and what has been its legacy? This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness. -
CAS HI 332: History of International Relations, 1900-45
What were the causes and the consequences of the two World Wars? What was the nature of political, economic, and military relations among the major powers of the world from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of the Second World War? What was the effect of domestic factors (political, economic, religious, and ideological) on the foreign policies of individual states? Seeking to provide a genuinely multinational perspective on world affairs, this course will assess the ways in which powerful nation-states in this period competed and cooperated in the international system. Also offered as CAS IR 349. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS HI 334: History of International Relations since 1945
What are the causes and consequences of the global Cold War? How was the twentieth-century international system transformed by East-West conflict, North-South disparity and South-South cooperation and competition? What lessons can be drawn from this recent past? These are some of the questions that this course will examine. The course will contextualize present-day international and regional conflicts and cooperation in the recent past, collectively analyze primary source documents, and discuss policy implications. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Research and Information Literacy." -
CAS HI 341: Political and Cultural Revolution
Comparative historical analysis of modern and contemporary revolutionary upheavals and cultural change in Europe, the Americas, East Asia, Africa, Middle East, and the former Soviet republics. Examines the challenges posed by modernization, crisis of legitimacy, nationalism, imperial decline, and globalization. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS HI 215. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking. -
CAS HI 351: Environmental History of Africa
Focus on the African environment and ecological systems over the past 150 years. Topics include climate change, hydrography, agriculture, deforestation, soil erosion, disease, conservation, famine, and the role of colonialism and government policy in environmental change. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Scientific Inquiry II, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Research and Information Literacy.
