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CAS HI 500: Topics in History
May be repeated for credit as topics vary. Topics for Fall 2025-- Section A1: Global Philippines through Adobo. This seminar interrogates the limits and possibilities of telling the history of a place through food. How can reading about cooking and eating Philippine adobo reveal global histories of migration and colonialism from the early modern period through today? Section B1: The Photography of Persecution. Explores the use of photography by state and nonstate actors to criminalize, control, and crush vulnerable social groups. Examines claims of photographic objectivity, the circumstances of photographic production, and visual genres from mugshots to memes, memento mori to mass murder. -
CAS HI 504: The Civil War in American Memory
From the immediate post-war years through very recent political conflicts, Americans have vigorously contested the memory of their Civil War. This course considers this question by exploring literature, film, and historical documents. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS HI 505: The American South in History, Literature, and Film
Explores the American South through literature, film, and other sources. Considers what, if anything, has been distinctive about the Southern experience and how a variety of Americans have imagined the region over time. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS HI 462. Also offered as CAS AM 505. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. -
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. -
CAS HI 507: Three Revolutions
The course examines how the English civil wars, the Glorious Revolution, and the American Revolution altered Anglo-American political thought and encouraged the rise of a democratic order and changed the nature of governance. Writers from Hobbes and Milton to Burke and Jefferson grappled with these transformations that created political modernity. The course situates these changes within their broader social and spiritual contextes and explores the continuation of inequality within a democratic order. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II. -
CAS HI 514: Enlightenment and Its Critics
Undergraduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Explores how eighteenth-century criticisms of the Enlightenment have been taken up by twentieth-century thinkers such as Heidegger, Horkheimer, Adorno, Gadamer, and Foucault; discusses recent defenses of Enlightenment ideals of reason, critique and autonomy by Habermas and others. Also offered as CAS PO 592 and CAS PH 412. -
CAS HI 526: Poverty and Democracy: Modern India and the United States in Comparative Perspective
Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120). - Through an examination of historical, empirical, and journalistic evidence, students examine the peculiar and pernicious nature of modern and contemporary poverty in the context of two large democracies, India and the United States. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Ethical Reasoning, Social Inquiry II. -
CAS HI 527: Getting Around: Transportation, Cars, and Community in the Modern World
Undergraduate Prerequisites: "First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or 120)" - Explores the history of transportation and mobility and its impact on daily life, community, environment, and justice, examining automobiles, walking, biking, and mass transit in diverse global contexts from the nineteenth century to the present day. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, The Individual in Community, Social Inquiry II. -
CAS HI 528: Engineering Boston
Examines how governments, companies and residents have constructed Boston, its neighborhoods and its transportation systems. The class studies shifting immigration and development patterns, produce photographic essays, and construct maps analyzing urban renewal, while visiting neighborhoods every week. Effective Spring 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation, Digital/Multimedia Expression. -
CAS HI 529: History Media Lab: Producing Public-Facing History
Prerequisites: consent of instructor. Preference given to history majors and minors. - Advanced seminar exploring research and production of historical documentaries and podcasts. Students blend historical research with digital storytelling, developing skills in archival research, interviewing, and audio/video production while creating short-form media that bring critical historical narrative and debate to general audiences. Effective Fall 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Creativity/Innovation, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS HI 532: The Far Right in Europe
This seminar approaches the resurgence of the far right in Europe since 1945 historically, reconstructing the ideology through its major thinkers, texts, organizations, and turning points with attention to broader social and political-economic context. Effective Spring 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU HUB areas: Critical Thinking, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS HI 537: World War II: Causes, Course, Consequences
Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior and senior standing. - Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and 75 million ordinary and extraordinary dead. From 1939-1945, the whole world waged total war in cruel ways unknown to any history before or since. Explore the causes, course, and consequences of these events. -
CAS HI 539: Nazis on Film
Explores changing representations of Nazis on the silver screen, from celebrations of the "Third Reich" to post-1945 depictions of Nazis as evil. Focuses on the longing for strong leadership, pleasure at inflicting pain on enemies, fear of others, and racism. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS HI 543: The Prevention of Genocide
Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous course in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, or consent of i nstructor. - (Meets with CAS IR 437.) Examines various approaches to and challenges in prevention of genocide, including ability of existing international institutions to develop early warning systems. Evaluation of effectiveness of unilateral military action and multilateral options at the UN and regional levels to stop genocide. -
CAS HI 545: History of Inequality
Investigates the origins of present-day global inequality and asks how inequality has been understood differently over time through hierarchies of difference and categories of gender, race, class, time, land, population, capacity, geography, and biology. -
CAS HI 546: Places of Memory: Historic Preservation Theory and Practice
Covers key aspects of the history, theory, and practice of historic preservation. Preservation is discussed in the context of cultural history and the changing relationship between existing buildings and landscapes and attitudes toward history, memory, invented tradition, and place. Also offered as CAS AM 546 and CAS AH 546. -
CAS HI 549: Nationalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Undergraduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Explores the origins of modern nationalism as a major force, molding identity and motivating politics. Examines the relationship between nationalism, revolution, and war, as well as the challenges presented by ethnic revivalism, ethnonational conflicts, and globalization. -
CAS HI 553: Transnational Histories of Asia: How Homo Sapiens Changed the Largest Continent on Our Planet
From archaic humans roaming the woods of Siberia to the thunderous call of the modern revolutions, the story of the Asian continent is the story of our species and its aspirations. This course tells that story from a transnational perspective. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Oral and Signed Communication. -
CAS HI 559: Wars, Peace, and Diplomacy
Why do wars occur' What constitutes peace' How is peace maintained or lost' What are the virtues and deficiencies of diplomacy as practitioners have implemented it' How do memory, justice, and the requirements of security interact in the international arena' Effective Fall 2023 this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Ethical Reasoning. -
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.