History

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  • CAS HI 424: Communism, 1789-1989
    To some, communism posed a threat to freedom; to others, it promised social justice and rights for women and minorities. This course investigates communism's ideological origins, triumph in Russian and Eastern Europe, influence on Western European politics, and ultimate collapse.
  • CAS HI 426: Music and Ideas from Mozart to the Jazz Age
    This senior-level seminar considers music in its historical and cultural contexts. Masterworks from the eighteenth century to jazz are its subject. Topics include political and intellectual climates, evolving views of the artist, audiences, social criticism, and race. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Aesthetic Exploration.
  • CAS HI 434: Monarchy in Modern Britain
    A seminar probing seminal moments in the history of modern British sovereignty, when the politics of the court intersected with the politics of the people. Particular consideration is given to how monarchy has survived as an institution. Also offered as CAS WS 434. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
    • Historical Consciousness
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Critical Thinking
  • CAS HI 440: Refugee Hollywood (1933-1950)
    Examines the flight of artists, writers, and intellectuals from Germany to Los Angeles in the wake of Hitler's rise to power with a focus on accounts by the emigres themselves, their works, and their influence on American culture.
  • CAS HI 449: The History of Soviet Terror
    Examines how terror became a tool of revolutionary transformation in the USSR, one which first strengthened, then unseated Soviet state power. Explores how Soviet people experienced and participated in such violence as a part of their everyday lives. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation.
    • Historical Consciousness
    • Ethical Reasoning
    • Creativity/Innovation
  • CAS HI 450: Topics in the History of Popular Culture
    May be repeated for credit if topic is different. Two topics are offered Fall 2019. Section A1: Blood Libel. Explores accusations of Jewish plotting, ritual murder, and other malfeasance from 12th-century England to the present day. Looks at how myths and conspiracies--however implausible--gain traction and the origins, manifestations, and persistence of anti-Judaism over the past millennium. Section B1: Race, Gender, and Representation. From abolitionism and women's suffrage to workers' rights and the Movement for Black Lives, this seminar examines marginalized and minoritized peoples' mobilization of visual and print media to clapback and correct pervasive stereotypes and misrepresentations in popular culture.
  • CAS HI 451: Fashion as History
    This seminar treats clothing and other products of material culture as historical documents. Explores what clothing can tell us about key developments in the modern period relating to trade and commerce, empire, gender, class, industry, revolution, nation-building, identity politics, and globalization. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
    • Historical Consciousness
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Critical Thinking
  • CAS HI 454: War and American Society, 1607-2001
    Although committed to democracy, individual liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Americans have frequently found themselves waging war. This course examines how war mobilization and the experience of combat since the settling of Jamestown have fundamentally changed American society.
  • CAS HI 465: The United States and the Cold War
    Examination of U.S. Cold War foreign policy from its origins at the end of World War II to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and of the Soviet Union. Also offered as CAS IR 465.
  • CAS HI 467: Postwar America: Issues in Political, Cultural, and Social History, 1945-69
    Explores how, after the upheavals of World War II, American fought over and refashioned new norms and ideals in politics, daily life, and the home, Topics include youth rebellion, the African American freedom movement, antiwar activism, and the sexual revolution.
  • CAS HI 475: American Consumer History
    The history of consumerism in modern America. Topics include origins and critiques of the culture of consumption; the development of national markets; advertising and commercial amusements; and the relationship of consumer society to religion, gender, ethnicity, and class.
  • CAS HI 480: The Theater of History
    A practical workshop in the uses of history as source for theatrical productions including narrative films, television and other forms of performance arts, including dance, and the uses of such creative engagement as modes of historical imagination.
  • CAS HI 482: Merchants, Pirates, Missionaries, and the State in Maritime Asia, 600-2000
    Oceans connected the peoples of coastal Asia, Africa, and Oceania long before the arrival of Europeans in the 1500s. This course examines how commerce, piracy, religious contact, and imperialisms shaped maritime Asia, and how oceans facilitated our own era's global connections. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
    • Historical Consciousness
    • Digital/Multimedia Expression
    • Research and Information Literacy
  • CAS HI 487: The Making of Modern China, 1600 to the present
    Explores continuity and change between later imperial China and the Republican and Communist eras. Examines family and gender structures, ethnic classifications, and military traditions in late dynastic times and how revolution brought change from within and abroad.
  • CAS HI 489: The African Diaspora in the Americas
    History of peoples of African descent in the Americas after end of slavery from an international framework. Examines development of racial categories, emergence of national identities in wake of the wars of independence, diverse Black communities in the twentieth century. Also offered as CAS AA 489.
  • CAS HI 490: Blacks and Asians: Encounters Through Time and Space
    Exploration of historical encounters between Africans and people of African descent, and Asians and people of Asian descent. How such people imagined themselves, interacted with each other, viewed each other, influenced each other, and borrowed from each other. Also offered as CAS AA 490.
  • CAS HI 500: Topics in History
    May be repeated for credit as topic varies.Topic for Spring 2021: History of the Self and Selfhood. Considers the changing experience and description of the self and selfhood from Antiquity to the present. Readings include biography, autobiography, and works of scholarship in history and philosophy. Appropriate for graduate students and advanced undergraduates.
  • CAS HI 502: Drafts of History: Journalism and Historical Revisionism
    Considers episodes from U.S. history, comparing the "draft" of journalists to subsequent historical accounts. Analyzes how new evidence alters understanding of events, but also how different eras ask questions about the past, interrogate different sources, and appeal to different audiences. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry II, Oral and/or Signed Communication.
    • Oral and/or Signed Communication
    • Social Inquiry II
  • CAS HI 506: The Transformation of Early New England: Witches, Whalers and Warfare
    Explores how religious schisms and revival, warfare with native Americans, political revolution, and commercial development transformed New England from a Puritanical agricultural society into an urbanized, industrial society by the outbreak of the American Civil War. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
    • Historical Consciousness
    • Social Inquiry I
  • CAS HI 507: Three Revolutions
    Examines how the English Civil Wars, the Glorious Revolution, and the American Revolution altered Anglo-American political thought and changed governance practices. Writers from Milton to Hamilton and Jefferson grappled with these transformations that created modern understandings of government. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS HI 453.

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