Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular term. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• CAS HI 568: The Modern Metropolis: Approaches to Urban History
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120) - Cities such as New York, Paris, London, and Shanghai captured the worst problems and most exciting possibilities of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This course investigates how urban spaces facilitated commerce, social life, and the forging of modern identities. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Historical Consciousness
  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS HI 569: Boston Architectural and Community History Workshop
  Focuses on class readings, lectures, and research on a single neighborhood or community in Boston (or Greater Boston). Greatest emphasis is on using primary sources-- land titles and deeds, building permits, fire insurance atlases and other maps. Topic for Fall 2020: Somerville Project. Explores the architectural and urban transformation of Somerville from agricultural fields, country estates, to an area of dense urban settlement and industrial development. Explores places and sources that help assess and narrate the rich history of architectural and urban development.
• CAS HI 574: Introduction to Critical University Studies: Space, Place, and BU
  This team-taught seminar uses the lens of "critical university studies" to consider the ways colonialism and white supremacy have shaped the history of American universities. Readings and archival research examine land appropriation, slavery and anti-slavery, segregation, and policing at Boston University. Effective Spring 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU HUB areas: Writing-Intensive, Historical Consciousness.
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  • Historical Consciousness
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS HI 575: The Birth of Modern America, 1896-1929
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing and consent of instructor. First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120) - The political, economic, social, and cultural history of the United States in the formative years of the early twentieth century. Topics include Progressivism, World War I, immigration, modernism, the Scopes Trial, suffrage, the Harlem Renaissance, and the emergence of modern business practices. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS HI 578: The United States as a Great Power
  The course material is organized along a debate format. Although the course is primarily concerned with twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy, attention is also given to eighteenth-and nineteenth-century issues. Effective Spring 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Historical Consciousness
  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS HI 580: White Supremacist Thought: Self, Culture and Society since the 18th Century
  Within a global and comparative context, this course explores the simultaneous, mutualistically symbiotic emergence and sustained codependent development of autonomous individuality and white supremacy in western Europe and the United States from the 18th century to the present day.
• CAS HI 584: Labor, Sexuality, and Resistance in the Afro-Atlantic World
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing. - The role of slavery in shaping the society and culture of the Afro-Atlantic world, highlighting the role of labor, the sexual economy of slave regimes, and the various strategies of resistance deployed by enslaved people. Also offered as CAS AA 514. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness.
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  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • Historical Consciousness
• CAS HI 588: Women, Power, and Culture in Africa
  Understanding the role of women in African history. Topics include the Atlantic slave trade, power, religion, the economy, resistance movements, health, the state, and kinship. Emphasis on the period before independence. Also offered as CAS AA 588.
• CAS HI 595: Morocco: History on the Cusp of Three Continents
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Explores the range and limits of social mixture -- cultural, political, economic -- as three civilizations met at the northwest corner of Africa and influenced one another from the 8th to the 21st centuries. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
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  • Critical Thinking
  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • Historical Consciousness
• CAS HI 698: African American Historiography
  Graduate seminar in African American history surveys shifts in historiography in the last 25 years in slavery studies, Black women's, Black youth history, Great Migration, the histories of racial justice and coalitional movements (CR, BP, BLM), and the recent turn in carceral studies.
• CAS HI 800: European Historiography
  Examines historical writing about Europe through changing trends in method and approach.
• CAS HI 801: The Historian's Craft
  Intensive training in the best practices of historical research, writing, publication, and oral presentation. Culminates in the production of a publishable journal article.
• CAS HI 802: Graduate Topics in History
  Modernism: This seminar explores the explosion of new forms of art and thought in late-19th and early 20th century European capitals -- including Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and London -- against the backdrop of political, social, and economic transformations.
• CAS HI 803: Pedagogy and Professionalization
  Offers graduate students the opportunity to think about issues of course design and classroom teaching, to practice the concrete steps of academic preparation, and to develop the skills for a professional identity.
• CAS HI 843: Problems in Twentieth-Century History
  An international and comparative approach to major problems of the twentieth century. Readings on such topics as modernization, urbanization, revolution, and war and its consequences. Topics change annually.
• CAS HI 849: Race, Region, & Reunion in US History, 1830-1920
  Historiographic investigation of various central themes in nineteenth century US history, covering the years 1830-1920. Introduces students to scholarship on such issues as plantation slavery; abolition; Civil War; Reconstruction; and race relations after the Civil War.
• CAS HI 850: American Historiography
  Examines the methodological and professional development of American historians since the 1880s, changes in the field since the founding period, and new directions in U.S. history.
• CAS HI 851: Recent American History
  Advanced graduate seminar that investigates significant problems in the history of the United States since 1900. The specific focus of the seminar changes from year-to-year. Topics have included "Politics and Popular Culture in Twentieth Century America" and "State and Society."
• CAS HI 856: Historical Methods
  This seminar explores the variety of methods historians employ to research and write their histories as well as influential theoretical approaches (including from other fields such as anthropology, geography, and sociology) and their practical applications for historians.
• CAS HI 870: African Historiography
  Examines historical writing about the African continent through key trends in the study of themes and regional historiographies. Also highlights recent works in the field.