Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
HI 215 – The European Enlightenment
How Europe became modern. The rise of science, critique of religion, and struggle for rights. The public sphere emerges: newspapers, Freemasons, coffee, salons, smut. The invention of a cosmopolitan republic of letters; Voltaire, Diderot, Kant, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings.
HI 515 – Meaning, Memory, and History
Explores central issues in the philosophy of history, from Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche to Collingwood, Popper, and Danto. Topics include: is history a science? If so, what kind? How does it differ from tradition and memory? Does it have a meaning? Effective Spring 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings.
Aesthetic Exploration
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 250 – British Youth Culture from 1950 to the Present
How is generational identity created and maintained? Through the prism of youth movements in the United Kingdom, you will investigate how underground cults become mainstream culture in the context of changing attitudes to nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Social Inquiry I.
HI 279 – Experiencing Total War
Analyzes how soldiers and civilians experienced WWI and WWII, which brutally penetrated their everyday lives and affected their bodies, vocabularies, and world-views. Major sources include combat accounts, diaries, letters, songs, material culture, food, and more. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course entitled “Intimate Histories of War” that was previously numbered CAS HI 279. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation.
HI 300 – American Popular Culture
Examines how Americans have changed (and haven’t) since the nineteenth century by exploring their curious beliefs, social and sexual practices, and changing understandings of selfhood. Topics include Victorian etiquette, modern city pleasures, racial stereotyping, dating rituals, family dynamics, and more. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
Topics include: capitalism and inequality; racism in scientific theory, law, and cultural practice; immigration and restriction; cultural rebellions and counterculture; labor and civil rights activism; modern sexuality, gender roles, and women’s liberation, contemporary culture wars
Readings include: Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery; Edith Wharton, House of Mirth; Nella Larsen, Passing; Arthur Miller, Focus; Richard Wright, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow”; Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique; and Malcolm X, “My First Conk.”
HI 390 – Mecca to Dubai: Cities in the Middle East
Examines Middle Eastern history through the lens of its cities because cities have always been pivotal sites of governance, religious life, cultural development, architectural legacies, and political protest. Today, they are the epicenter of neoliberal globalization. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
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.
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. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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.
Topics and themes include: slavery and emancipation; Jim Crow; Civil Rights
Readings include: Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi; William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
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.
Historical Consciousness
HI 112 – Black Power in the Classroom: The History of Black Studies
Centers Black experiences, cultures, knowledge production and identity formation in the United States and in the African Diaspora across time and space. Examines and traces the genealogies of Black Studies as a discipline: its political, ideological, and practical foundations on college campuses and in communities. Also explores earlier traditions and contemporary work in Black radical thought and activism that lay the groundwork for and build on the founding principles of Black Studies by mobilizing an intersectional and diasporic lens. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 113 – Introduction to Antiracism
Introduces students to the concept of antiracism, particularly its historical contours in the United States. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
HI 151 – The Emerging United States to 1865
Explores how the United States, at first only a series of borderland outposts, became a sprawling national republic. Investigates factors that brought Americans together and those that tore them apart, as they struggled passionately over racial, religious, and sectional values. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 152 – The Emerging United States Since 1865
After the Civil War, Americans created a new urbanizing and industrializing landscape, flush with immigrants, growing class conflict, and racial divisions. This course explores how, through times of prosperity, depression, and war, Americans transformed the United States into one of the world’s leading nations. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 175 – World History to 1500
Explores historical and environmental factors influencing how cultures take shape and impact each other. Examines early global connections and conflicts between people of different continents as well as between humans, other species, the natural environment, and the planet as a whole. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
HI 176 – World History 1500-Present
Examines the religious encounters, economic rivalries, and military battles produced by European imperialism in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia since 1500. Analyzes how European colonialism came to dominate the world and nationalist movements succeeded in gaining independence. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, The Individual in Community, Teamwork/Collaboration.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
HI 205 – Gender and Sexuality in Judaism
Explores the role of gender and sexuality in Judaism and Jewish experience, historically and in the present. Subjects include constructions of masculinity and femininity, attitudes toward (and uses of) the body and sexuality, gendered nature of religious practice and authority. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 215 – The European Enlightenment
How Europe became modern. The rise of science, critique of religion, and struggle for rights. The public sphere emerges: newspapers, Freemasons, coffee, salons, smut. The invention of a cosmopolitan republic of letters; Voltaire, Diderot, Kant, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings.
HI 218 – Power and Authority in Europe since World War I
Explores the breakdown of traditional authority, the rise of authoritarianism, and the triumph of democracy in twentieth-century Europe. Examines changing notions of power and legitimacy through major events, including communist revolutions, fascist takeovers, wartime occupations, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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. Effective Fall 2018, 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.
Topics and themes include: colonialism, imperialism, and anti-colonial movements; caste, religion, and ethnicity; poverty and development; migration and the South Asian diaspora
Readings include: Joe Sacco, “Kushinagar” [short graphic novel]; Mohandas Gandhi, Hind Swaraj; Muhammad Iqbal, “A Separate State for Muslims Within India;” Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s “Hindus and Muslims: Two Separate Nations”; Willem van Schendel, A History of Bangladesh; Arundhati Roy “The Doctor and the Saint”; Subhas Vyam and Durgabai Vyam’s Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability
HI 237 – Reconstructing the African Past
Explores the richness and diversity of a continent where oral histories and environmental settings have shaped society as much as written records. Considers Africa’s critical place in the world from ancient Egypt and Ghana to the Asante and Ethiopian empires. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness.
HI 243 – Crises and Readjustments in Post-War British Foreign Policy, 1945-1990
Investigates Britain’s relative decline as a world power, focusing on a succession of crises, small wars, and policy readjustments in the context of end of empire, the Cold War, and European integration. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 246 – London: Imperial City to World City
Social, economic, and cultural history of London since 1666. How London developed from the modest- sized capital of England to the capital of the British Empire and the world’s largest city, to the modern multicultural city of today’s European Union and globalizing world. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS HI 303 E. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
Topics and themes include: imperialism and decolonization, the construction of race, race relations in 20th and 21st-century contexts, multiculturalism
Readings include: M.K. Gandhi, George Orwell, Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi
HI 249 – London Women’s Social History from Aphra Behn to The Blitz
Examines the lives of women in London over the past three centuries from a social history perspective. Students work with primary source materials. Also offered as CAS WS 310 E. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 251 – Cultural Capital: The History of Popular Culture in London
Traces the historical development of popular culture in London from the late seventeenth century to the present day. Concerned with texts (visual, aural, written) and sites. Organised chronologically and thematically, engages with theoretical perspectives. Engages with wider history of Britain. 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.
HI 252 – Class, Power, and the Making of British Identity
This course explores shifts in power over a 500-year period, and considers the cultural effects of these changes. The impact of empire is also assessed. An understanding of the ‘invented’ and contested nature of British identity is the outcome. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy.
HI 253 – London at War: From the Home Front to the Frontline
This chronologically structured course draws on theoretical understanding of historical development to inspire and enhance students’ critical engagement with ways in which the two world wars historically refashioned notions about gender, race/ethnicity, class and social identity, thereby transforming London. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 254 – The History of Ireland
This course provides an introduction to the major themes, individuals and events that have shaped modern Irish history. Each lecture focuses on a seminal period or event in the history of modern Ireland, examines its background and assesses its impact. Effective Summer I 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 256 – History of Spain, 711-1898
A survey of Spanish history from 711 to 1898, examining the political, social, economic, and cultural events that shaped Spain in its modern form. Places Spain in a European context. Includes field trips around Madrid. Taught in English. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness.
HI 260 – The Venetian Republic
Founded around the 5th-6th century by former Roman fleeing the barbarian invasions, Venice has been for centuries one of the strongest and most powerful political entities. Venice was for centuries one of the most powerful political global powers until its fall in 1797. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 266 – French Revolution and Napoleon
The French Revolution began with high ideals of liberty and equality but quickly dissolved into civil war, the Terror, and Napoleon’s expansionist ambitions. From the fall of the Bastille to Waterloo, this course traces the revolution’s successes, failures, and legacy. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness.
HI 268 – Postcolonial Paris
Study of Paris’s contemporary history as the center of French colonialism and immigration. Emphasis on the representation of colonial and postcolonial memory in French cinema. Includes guided visits to important sites around the city. Also offered as CAS LF 344 E. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 271 – The Nazis
Explores the rise and fall of Europe’s most notorious mass movement through film, diaries, party documents, and other sources. Considers the impact of Nazi rule on art, finance, politics, and family life. Analyzes the mass murder and destruction caused by Nazi rule. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Creativity/Innovation.
Topics and themes include: revolution, workers’ rights, class warfare, ethnic diversity and conflict, sexual discrimination, religious conflict and warfare, colonization and decolonization, socialism, anarchism, and terrorism, everyday life
Readings include:
Nadezhda Durova, The Calvary Maiden: Journals of a Female Russian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars
Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat
Sergei Nechaev, “Catechism of a Revolutionist”
S.D. Urusov Explains Russian Anti-Semitism
V.I. Lenin, “What is to be Done?”
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. Effective Fall 2018, 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.” Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
Topics and themes include: revolution, socialism, class warfare, terrorism, sexual liberation and experimentation, gender equality and discrimination, antiracism, ethnoterritorial federalism (assigning ethnic groups their own country), interethnic conflict, antisemitism, wrongful incarceration, female soldiers in combat, everyday life
Readings include:
V.I. Lenin, “On the Inevitability of Civil War”
Letters from Stalingrad
Women Soldiers in the Air War
Voices from Chernobyl
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness.
HI 279 – Experiencing Total War
Analyzes how soldiers and civilians experienced WWI and WWII, which brutally penetrated their everyday lives and affected their bodies, vocabularies, and world-views. Major sources include combat accounts, diaries, letters, songs, material culture, food, and more. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course entitled “Intimate Histories of War” that was previously numbered CAS HI 279. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II.
HI 298 – African American History
Surveys the history of African Americans from their African origins to the present, investigating their critical role in shaping the meaning of race, rights, freedom, and democracy during slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the civil rights era. Also offered as CAS AA 371. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Historical Consciousness, Teamwork/Collaboration.
HI 299 – Civil Rights History
This course examines the U.S. Civil Rights and the struggle for black freedom movements. From the late nineteenth century through the twenty-first century, we consider events, organizations, “leaders” and organizers, legal campaigns, and political protests to answer the questions: What were the race, class, and gender dynamics within the movements? What were the changing definitions of freedom? The course treats the movement’s roots, goals, ideologies, and cultures, and includes a comparison of the struggles for equal rights of Mexican Americans, Native Americans, LGBT folks, and other groups. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Historical Consciousness, Teamwork/Collaboration.
HI 300 – American Popular Culture
Examines how Americans have changed (and haven’t) since the nineteenth century by exploring their curious beliefs, social and sexual practices, and changing understandings of selfhood. Topics include Victorian etiquette, modern city pleasures, racial stereotyping, dating rituals, family dynamics, and more. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
Topics include: capitalism and inequality; racism in scientific theory, law, and cultural practice; immigration and restriction; cultural rebellions and counterculture; labor and civil rights activism; modern sexuality, gender roles, and women’s liberation, contemporary culture wars
Readings include: Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery; Edith Wharton, House of Mirth; Nella Larsen, Passing; Arthur Miller, Focus; Richard Wright, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow”; Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique; and Malcolm X, “My First Conk.”
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
Topics and themes include: women’s activism; exploitation and discrimination of women; distinct experiences of Native and Black women in US history
Readings include: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Anzia Yezerskia, Bread Givers; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland
HI 302 – Science and American Culture
Examines the rise of the natural and human sciences as influential forces in American society. Considers why they gained considerable authority in realms of medicine and technology but have proven far more limited in their impact on morality and religion Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 303 – Sex, Love, Family: Relationships in Recent American History and Pop Culture
Explores modern American romance and family dynamics, especially since the 1970s. Follows the life cycle from birth to death, surveying common milestones and rituals such as coming of age, coming out, getting married, or having a midlife crisis, and more. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Digital/Multimedia Expression.
Topics include: pregnancy and childbirth, including different practices according to time, class, and race; slavery’s impact on Black health and families; changing ways of gendering children; racism, faith, and sexuality among teens and young adults; sexual orientation in historic context; disparities in courtship and dating; marital politics; and inequalities in aging and death
Readings include: childcare manuals, teen movies, stand-up comedy and sitcoms, memoirs, short stories
HI 304 – Science and Religion: Dialogue and Debate
Challenges conventional wisdom that science and religion have always been at war in Europe and North America. Explores their interactions, mutual existence, and conflict from Copernicus’ claim that the earth revolved around the sun to contemporary debates about evolution. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 305 – American Thought and Culture, 1776-1900
History 305 examines how major American thinkers and intellectual movements of the “long nineteenth century” constructed an “exceptional” national identity by adjusting their culture’s provincial Protestant and Enlightenment traditions to the challenges of transnational democratic, Romantic, and secular modes of thinking. Specific topics include Transcendentalism, evangelical and liberal Protestantism, pro- and anti- slavery arguments about “freedom,” race and gender theory, philosophical idealism, literary realism, scientific Darwinism, and evolutionary social science. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II.
HI 315 – The American West
We examine the American West—the mythical landscape of freedom and adventure—as a region of violence, empire, and exclusion. Exploring three hundred years of Western history, we focus in particular on Indigenous conquest and the continuities of colonialism. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II.
Topics and themes include: Native Americans; Mexico and Mexican Americans; Asian Americans; Wars of Conquest; Indian Reservations; American Borderlands; Migration and Immigration Restriction
Readings include: Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go; Louis Warren, God’s Red Son; Natalia Molina, How Race is Made in America; Brianna Theobold, Reproduction on the Reservation; Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
HI 316 – American Urban History
Examines cities in America, from colonial era forward, focusing on Boston, New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit, and San Francisco in national and transnational context. Focus on social, political, and environmental change to understand present and past urban landscapes. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 317 – Nineteenth-Century European Thought and Culture
This is the century of “system-builders” who aspired to encompass politics, society, and history in their creations. Discuss the ideas of Marx, Mill, and Nietzsche; study the music of Berlioz, the art of Delacroix, and the fiction of Goethe. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course entitled “Intellectual History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century” that was previously numbered CAS HI 315 or the course entitled “Nineteenth-Century European Thought and Culture” previously numbered CAS HI 223. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness.
HI 320 – Understanding Revolution: France and Algeria
Freedom! Liberty, equality, fraternity! National liberation! These slogans have inspired violent revolutions around the world. What do they really mean, and what have they really led to? We will investigate these questions by role-playing and historical analysis of two case studies: the French Revolution (1789-1794) and the Algerian Revolution (1954-62). Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Writing-Intensive Course.
HI 321 – The American Revolution, 1750-1800
The course examines the American Revolution and America’s dramatic war for independence, situating these struggles within broader changes in the society and the Atlantic world. The course also shows how Americans struggled, often violently, to create a stable republic in the aftermath of these truly revolutionary upheavals. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness.
HI 322 – The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire
Examines early modern Britain’s global expansion, with a focus on the British isles and the American colonies. Explains how economic growth and imperial warfare shaped Britain and her colonies, and probes the causes of the empire’s collapse in 1776. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course titled “Colonial British America from Settlement to Revolution” that was previously numbered CAS HI 322. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
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? Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness.
Topics and themes include: slavery and the coming of the US Civil War; slave emancipation and the post-emancipation experience
Readings include: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of a Slave; Louisa May Alcott, Hospital Sketches
HI 331 – Drugs and Security in the Americas
(Meets with CAS IR 290). Drug trafficking is one of the greatest threats to security and stability in the Americas. In this class, we study how drug trafficking became such an immense problem and why it has been so difficult to solve. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning.
HI 335 – International Nuclear Politics
This course examines politics, history, and technologies surrounding nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. It foregrounds the “global atomic marketplace” with emphasis on the challenges and opportunities for nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation. Also offered as CAS IR 315 and CAS PO 358. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Writing- Intensive Course.
HI 338 – REPRESSION, REVOLUTION, ROCK N’ ROLL: US in 1950s & 1960s
Repression, Revolution, Rock n’ Roll: few periods shaped American society, culture and politics as dramatically and enduringly as the 1950s and 1960s, transforming institutions, life experiences, the nation’s rile in the world, and the ways Americans thought about social problems and political activism. Topics include: Cold War, McCarthyism, Civil Rights, Vietnam, Campus Protest, Counterculture Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 339 – A History of the Present: The United States since 1968
Analyzing the recent experience of the United States and its people in historical perspective, the course allows students to explore important developments in US politics, race relations, economy, and popular culture, investigate diverse social science approaches to contemporary problems, and develop an independent research project. Topics include war, politics, religion, and popular culture as well as changing notions about race, gender, and selfhood. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
HI 343 – Taste, Culture, and Power: The Global History of Food
An exploration of the global history of food from prehistory to the present, considering the birth of agriculture, food in nations and empires, hunger and nutrition, and the future of eating, including examples from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation.
Topics and themes include: colonialism and colonial foodways; religion, race, and ethnicity; migration and ethnicity in foodways
Readings include: Donna R. Gabaccia, “Immigration, Isolation, and Industry”; Krishnendu Ray, “Hierarchy of Taste and Ethnic Difference”; Nick Cullather, “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie”; Marcy Norton, “Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics”; Maurice M. Manring, “Aunt Jemima Explained: The Old South, the Absent Mistress, and the Slave in a Box”; Michael W. Twitty, “I Had Never Eaten in Ghana Before. But My Ancestors Had”
HI 347 – Bodies, Drugs, and Healing: A Global History of Medicine
An introduction to the history of medicine in global contexts, offering a broad perspective on the ways that bodies, healers, drugs, and health have been conceptualized, from antiquity to the present day, in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning.
HI 349 – History of Religion in Precolonial Africa
The study of the development of religious traditions in Africa during the period prior to European colonialism. An emphasis on both indigenous religions and the growth and spread of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the continent as a whole. Also offered as CAS AA 382 and CAS RN 382. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness.
HI 358 – Twentieth-Century European Thought and Culture
This course treats artistic, musical, literary, political, and philosophical works historically. Among its large themes are modernism and the discovery of the unconscious, the cultural effects of both World Wars, democracy and its critics, totalitarian culture, existentialism, and postmodernism. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness.
HI 363 – Early Chinese History
From the Bronze Age to the seventeenth century, China changed dramatically yet maintained political and cultural cohesion, unlike any other civilization. This course explores both diversity and unity in early Chinese society as well as their historical legacies. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
HI 364 – Modern Chinese History
Since 1600, China experienced Manchu imperial expansion, conflict with the West, two revolutions, and the construction of a socialist society now dominated by authoritarian capitalism. Explores the interplay between enduring traditions, upheaval and modernity, and their consequences for our world. Effective Fall 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
HI 367 – The Odd Couple: China and the USA, 1776 to the present
The USA, a bastion of capitalism, and China, the largest communist state on earth, are the two major global powers today. It was not always this way, and the course will map three centuries of this complex historical relationship, filled with mutual admiration and misunderstanding. Effective Spring 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Creativity/Innovation.
HI 389 – Americans and the Middle East
Examines the intersecting histories of America and the Middle East from the late eighteenth century to the present, focusing first on American missionary and educational efforts in the region and then on American political and military involvement after World War II. 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.
HI 390 – Mecca to Dubai: Cities in the Middle East
Examines Middle Eastern history through the lens of its cities because cities have always been pivotal sites of governance, religious life, cultural development, architectural legacies, and political protest. Today, they are the epicenter of neoliberal globalization. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
HI 391 – Media Revolutions in the Modern Middle East
Revolutions in the modern Middle East have helped to garner state support and foment rebellions. Sources range widely from Lebanese civil war posters and state radio broadcasts to tourist campaigns, Turkish soap operas, and reality television competitions. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Critical Thinking.
HI 393 – Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, analysis of conflicting narratives through primary sources and film. Students present their own reflections on the conflict and debate possibilities of resolution. Counts toward majors and minors in History, International Relations, Middle East & North Africa Studies, and Jewish Studies. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy.
HI 399 – Introduction to Latin American Politics and International Relations
(Meets with CAS IR 367 and CAS PO 360.) Introduction to the patterns and complexities of Latin American politics and foreign policies. Focuses on the distinctive Latin American political experience and alternative explanation for it, including colonization, the international economy, and human and material resource capacity and utilization. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness.
HI 401 – Senior Honors Seminar 1
The first of a two-semester seminar that guides students through the research and writing of an honors thesis grounded in primary historical research. Students participate in a workshop environment and are matched with an additional faculty advisor. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing- Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 407 – Topics in Medieval Religious Culture
Topic for Spring 2021: Magic, Witchcraft, and the Demonic in Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. Magic, witchcraft, and the demonic as understood, employed, and feared in medieval Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities. Exploration of religious world views; visual culture; healing and medical practices; matters of gender, power, and social control, including counter- magic, legal prohibitions, and inquisition. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing- Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 410 – Religion, Community, and Culture in Medieval Spain
Interactions between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in medieval Europe’s most religiously diverse region — from the establishment of an Islamic al-Andalus in 711 CE to the final Christian “reconquest” of the peninsula and expulsion of the Jews in 1492 CE. Also offered as CAS RN 410. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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.
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. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 447 – Born under a Red Star: Soviet Children at Home, School, & Play
In the USSR, children were the revolution’s lifeblood. They were politically privileged, but also regular victims of poverty and political turmoil. Using schoolbooks, fairy tales, diaries, toys, and fashion, this seminar examines children’s lives and childhood as a historically constructed phenomenon. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation.
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.
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.
Topics and themes include: empire, race, fast fashion, gender relations, LGBTQ communities, subcultures
HI 458 – American Migrations
Mass migrations have been central to American history from the colonial era to the present. This course investigates why people pick up their lives to travel vast distances, often at great risk, and how such journeys have changed over time. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation.
HI 460 – Animals in America
Examines the place of animals in North American culture and society from pre- colonial times to the twentieth century, to shed light on popular beliefs, social relationships, environmental change, and politics. From hunting to husbandry, pet keeping to popular entertainment, we will look at animals to understand larger trends in American history. Topics include pigs in New York City, Jumbo the Elephant, and Bambi. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Ethical Reasoning, Historical Consciousness.
HI 461 – The Civil War in American Memory
Examines the ways in which Americans have thought about the experiences of the Civil War, from the immediate postwar period through the later years of the twentieth century. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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.
HI 503 – Race, Ethnicity, and Childhood in US History
The history of childhood in US History intersects with the interdisciplinary area of childhood studies. Within that, the histories of Black children and children of ethnic minorities and historically marginalized young people is a burgeoning subfield. This course examines how identities inclusive of (and structural inequities associated with) race, ethnicity, gender, social class, and sexuality have differently affected the lives and experiences of young people in the United States from the colonial period through to the 21st century. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness (HCO), Creativity/Innovation.
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.
Topics and themes include: how race has shaped Civil War memory; African American memories of the US Civil War; current battles over Confederate monuments; Civil War cinema
Readings include: Tony Horowitz, Confederates in the Attic; Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery; Slave Narratives from the 1930s
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.
Topics and themes include: slavery and emancipation; Jim Crow; Civil Rights
Readings include: Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi; William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
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.
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.
HI 508 – The Age of Hamilton
The course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the world in the aftermath of the War of the American Revolution, through the lens of one of its most iconic figures. Effective Spring 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
HI 515 – Meaning, Memory, and History
Explores central issues in the philosophy of history, from Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche to Collingwood, Popper, and Danto. Topics include: is history a science? If so, what kind? How does it differ from tradition and memory? Does it have a meaning? Effective Spring 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings.
HI 523 – U.S.-Latin American Relations
Explores both sides of the U.S.-Latin American relationship, tracing its development over time and analyzing its current challenges. Each week focuses on a different theme–including imperialism, intervention, hemispheric security, trade, immigration, and drug trafficking–within a roughly chronological framework. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
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.
HI 568 – The Modern Metropolis: Approaches to Urban History
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.
Topics include: theories and practices of democracy; environmental inequalities in the city; crime, policing, corruption, and police brutality; race, class, gender, and ethnicity in geographic imaginaries and the built environment
Readings include: Catherine McNeur, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City; Ari Kelman, “New Orleans’ Phantom Slave Insurrection”; Eric Avila, The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City; Eric Klinenberg, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago
HI 584 – Labor, Sexuality, and Resistance in the Afro-Atlantic World
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.
HI 595 – Morocco: History on the Cusp of Three Continents
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.
Scientific Inquiry II
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. Effective Fall 2018, 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.
Social Inquiry I
HI 112 – Black Power in the Classroom: The History of Black Studies
Centers Black experiences, cultures, knowledge production and identity formation in the United States and in the African Diaspora across time and space. Examines and traces the genealogies of Black Studies as a discipline: its political, ideological, and practical foundations on college campuses and in communities. Also explores earlier traditions and contemporary work in Black radical thought and activism that lay the groundwork for and build on the founding principles of Black Studies by mobilizing an intersectional and diasporic lens. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 151 – The Emerging United States to 1865
Explores how the United States, at first only a series of borderland outposts, became a sprawling national republic. Investigates factors that brought Americans together and those that tore them apart, as they struggled passionately over racial, religious, and sectional values. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 209 – The Reformation: Religious Conflict in Early Modern Europe
Examines religious change in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, particularly the origins and causes of the Protestant Reformation, the parallel Catholic Reformation, and the consequent military conflicts in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Also offered as CAS RN 310. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Social Inquiry I.
HI 243 – Crises and Readjustments in Post-War British Foreign Policy, 1945-1990
Investigates Britain’s relative decline as a world power, focusing on a succession of crises, small wars, and policy readjustments in the context of end of empire, the Cold War, and European integration. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 250 – British Youth Culture from 1950 to the Present
How is generational identity created and maintained? Through the prism of youth movements in the United Kingdom, you will investigate how underground cults become mainstream culture in the context of changing attitudes to nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Social Inquiry I.
HI 253 – London at War: From the Home Front to the Frontline
This chronologically structured course draws on theoretical understanding of historical development to inspire and enhance students’ critical engagement with ways in which the two world wars historically refashioned notions about gender, race/ethnicity, class and social identity, thereby transforming London. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 254 – The History of Ireland
This course provides an introduction to the major themes, individuals and events that have shaped modern Irish history. Each lecture focuses on a seminal period or event in the history of modern Ireland, examines its background and assesses its impact. Effective Summer I 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 268 – Postcolonial Paris
Study of Paris’s contemporary history as the center of French colonialism and immigration. Emphasis on the representation of colonial and postcolonial memory in French cinema. Includes guided visits to important sites around the city. Also offered as CAS LF 344 E. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 291 – Politics of the American Environment
When have Americans addressed declining resources and ecological deterioration? Why did demands for environmental justice develop? We explore how the United States has distributed environmental risks and rewards from the country’s beginning to the present. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry I, The Individual in Community.
Topics and themes include: Native Americans; slavery and African Americans; environmental racism; environmental justice
Readings include: William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England; Jim Downs: Sick From Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction; Markowitz and Rosner: Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution; Andrew Kirk, Doom Towns: The People and Landscapes of Atomic Testing
HI 302 – Science and American Culture
Examines the rise of the natural and human sciences as influential forces in American society. Considers why they gained considerable authority in realms of medicine and technology but have proven far more limited in their impact on morality and religion Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 304 – Science and Religion: Dialogue and Debate
Challenges conventional wisdom that science and religion have always been at war in Europe and North America. Explores their interactions, mutual existence, and conflict from Copernicus’ claim that the earth revolved around the sun to contemporary debates about evolution. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 316 – American Urban History
Examines cities in America, from colonial era forward, focusing on Boston, New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit, and San Francisco in national and transnational context. Focus on social, political, and environmental change to understand present and past urban landscapes. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 335 – International Nuclear Politics
This course examines politics, history, and technologies surrounding nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. It foregrounds the “global atomic marketplace” with emphasis on the challenges and opportunities for nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation. Also offered as CAS IR 315 and CAS PO 358. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Writing- Intensive Course.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
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.
Social Inquiry II
HI 283 – The Twentieth-Century American Presidency
Examines the shifting role of the presidency in American politics, especially over the course of the twentieth century. Considers not only the accomplishments of individual presidents and institutional changes in the executive branch but also the evolving place of the presidency in American popular culture. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Social Inquiry II.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II.
HI 315 – The American West
We examine the American West—the mythical landscape of freedom and adventure—as a region of violence, empire, and exclusion. Exploring three hundred years of Western history, we focus in particular on Indigenous conquest and the continuities of colonialism. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II.
Topics and themes include: Native Americans; Mexico and Mexican Americans; Asian Americans; Wars of Conquest; Indian Reservations; American Borderlands; Migration and Immigration Restriction
Readings include: Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go; Louis Warren, God’s Red Son; Natalia Molina, How Race is Made in America; Brianna Theobold, Reproduction on the Reservation; Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
HI 338 – REPRESSION, REVOLUTION, ROCK N’ ROLL: US in 1950s & 1960s
Repression, Revolution, Rock n’ Roll: few periods shaped American society, culture and politics as dramatically and enduringly as the 1950s and 1960s, transforming institutions, life experiences, the nation’s rile in the world, and the ways Americans thought about social problems and political activism. Topics include: Cold War, McCarthyism, Civil Rights, Vietnam, Campus Protest, Counterculture Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 339 – A History of the Present: The United States since 1968
Analyzing the recent experience of the United States and its people in historical perspective, the course allows students to explore important developments in US politics, race relations, economy, and popular culture, investigate diverse social science approaches to contemporary problems, and develop an independent research project. Topics include war, politics, religion, and popular culture as well as changing notions about race, gender, and selfhood. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy.
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.
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.
HI 525 – Development in Historical Perspective
A critical investigation of modern “development” practices and projects in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Explores the rise of development paradigms in the nineteenth century and key twentieth-century transformations; interrogates challenges to, critiques of, and reaffirmations of global development schemes. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Social Inquiry II.
Topics and themes include: colonialism, imperialism, and anti-colonial movements; development and underdevelopment, inequality and structural violence; race and ethnicity
Readings include: Helen Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950; James Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho; Alyshia Gálvez, Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico; Julie Livingston, Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa;
Christy Thornton, Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy
HI 526 – Poverty and Democracy: Modern India and the United States in Comparative Perspective
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.
Topics and themes include: questions of caste and race; housing and wealth inequality; structural violence and racism; age and youth; popular politics and disenfranchisement.
Readings include: Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Keith Payne, The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die; Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City; Jill Filipovic, OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind
The Individual in Community
HI 113 – Introduction to Antiracism
This course introduces students to the concept of antiracism, particularly its historical contours in the United States. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, The Individual in Community, Teamwork/Collaboration.
HI 291 – Politics of the American Environment
When have Americans addressed declining resources and ecological deterioration? Why did demands for environmental justice develop? We explore how the United States has distributed environmental risks and rewards from the country’s beginning to the present. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry I, The Individual in Community.
Topics and themes include: Native Americans; slavery and African Americans; environmental racism; environmental justice
Readings include: William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England; Jim Downs: Sick From Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction; Markowitz and Rosner: Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution; Andrew Kirk, Doom Towns: The People and Landscapes of Atomic Testing
HI 299 – Civil Rights History
This course examines the U.S. Civil Rights and the struggle for black freedom movements. From the late nineteenth century through the twenty-first century, we consider events, organizations, “leaders” and organizers, legal campaigns, and political protests to answer the questions: What were the race, class, and gender dynamics within the movements? What were the changing definitions of freedom? The course treats the movement’s roots, goals, ideologies, and cultures, and includes a comparison of the struggles for equal rights of Mexican Americans, Native Americans, LGBT folks, and other groups. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Historical Consciousness, Teamwork/Collaboration.
HI 386 – Aotearoa New Zealand: History, Culture, Society, and Politics
An introduction to the understanding of the history, culture, society, & politics of Aotearoa New Zealand. This course provides a basic knowledge of history & the way European colonization & indigenous Maori resistance shapes contemporary society & politics. Unique perspectives on Maori cultural practices, mythology, & spiritual beliefs are provided through experiential learning & cross-cultural comparisons with global diversity. Field trips to Maori cultural centers, beautiful nature reserves, & walking tours of public art provide an essential background in cultural awareness to this course. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, The Individual in Community.
HI 392 – Israel: History, Politics, Culture, Identity
Using a broad array of readings, popular music, documentaries, film and art, this course explores Israel’s political system, culture, and society, including the status of minorities in the Jewish state; post-1967 Israeli settlement projects; and the struggle for Israel’s identity. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing- Intensive Course, The Individual in Community, Critical Thinking.
HI 458 – American Migrations
Mass migrations have been central to American history from the colonial era to the present. This course investigates why people pick up their lives to travel vast distances, often at great risk, and how such journeys have changed over time. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation.
Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
HI 175 – World History to 1500
Explores historical and environmental factors influencing how cultures take shape and impact each other. Examines early global connections and conflicts between people of different continents as well as between humans, other species, the natural environment, and the planet as a whole. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
HI 176 – World History 1500-Present
Examines the religious encounters, economic rivalries, and military battles produced by European imperialism in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia since 1500. Analyzes how European colonialism came to dominate the world and nationalist movements succeeded in gaining independence. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy.
HI 191 – What Is Europe?
Explores key moments in history when cultural contact prompted Europeans to reconsider how they defined themselves culturally and geographically. Lectures and discussions are combined with trips to local museums/archives to analyze the material remains of this process of self-definition. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration.
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. Effective Fall 2018, 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.
Topics and themes include: colonialism, imperialism, and anti-colonial movements; caste, religion, and ethnicity; poverty and development; migration and the South Asian diaspora
Readings include: Joe Sacco, “Kushinagar” [short graphic novel]; Mohandas Gandhi, Hind Swaraj; Muhammad Iqbal, “A Separate State for Muslims Within India;” Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s “Hindus and Muslims: Two Separate Nations”; Willem van Schendel, A History of Bangladesh; Arundhati Roy “The Doctor and the Saint”; Subhas Vyam and Durgabai Vyam’s Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability
HI 237 – Reconstructing the African Past
Explores the richness and diversity of a continent where oral histories and environmental settings have shaped society as much as written records. Considers Africa’s critical place in the world from ancient Egypt and Ghana to the Asante and Ethiopian empires. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness.
HI 246 – London: Imperial City to World City
Social, economic, and cultural history of London since 1666. How London developed from the modest- sized capital of England to the capital of the British Empire and the world’s largest city, to the modern multicultural city of today’s European Union and globalizing world. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS HI 303 E. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
Topics and themes include: imperialism and decolonization, the construction of race, race relations in 20th and 21st-century contexts, multiculturalism
Readings include: M.K. Gandhi, George Orwell, Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi
HI 251 – Cultural Capital: The History of Popular Culture in London
Traces the historical development of popular culture in London from the late seventeenth century to the present day. Concerned with texts (visual, aural, written) and sites. Organised chronologically and thematically, engages with theoretical perspectives. Engages with wider history of Britain. 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.
HI 252 – Class, Power, and the Making of British Identity
This course explores shifts in power over a 500-year period, and considers the cultural effects of these changes. The impact of empire is also assessed. An understanding of the ‘invented’ and contested nature of British identity is the outcome. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy.
HI 256 – History of Spain, 711-1898
A survey of Spanish history from 711 to 1898, examining the political, social, economic, and cultural events that shaped Spain in its modern form. Places Spain in a European context. Includes field trips around Madrid. Taught in English. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness.
HI 260 – The Venetian Republic
Founded around the 5th-6th century by former Roman fleeing the barbarian invasions, Venice has been for centuries one of the strongest and most powerful political entities. Venice was for centuries one of the most powerful political global powers until its fall in 1797. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Creativity/Innovation.
Topics and themes include: revolution, workers’ rights, class warfare, ethnic diversity and conflict, sexual discrimination, religious conflict and warfare, colonization and decolonization, socialism, anarchism, and terrorism, everyday life
Readings include:
Nadezhda Durova, The Calvary Maiden: Journals of a Female Russian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars
Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat
Sergei Nechaev, “Catechism of a Revolutionist”
S.D. Urusov Explains Russian Anti-Semitism
V.I. Lenin, “What is to be Done?”
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. Effective Fall 2018, 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.” Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
Topics and themes include: revolution, socialism, class warfare, terrorism, sexual liberation and experimentation, gender equality and discrimination, antiracism, ethnoterritorial federalism (assigning ethnic groups their own country), interethnic conflict, antisemitism, wrongful incarceration, female soldiers in combat, everyday life
Readings include:
V.I. Lenin, “On the Inevitability of Civil War”
Letters from Stalingrad
Women Soldiers in the Air War
Voices from Chernobyl
HI 320 – Understanding Revolution: France and Algeria
Freedom! Liberty, equality, fraternity! National liberation! These slogans have inspired violent revolutions around the world. What do they really mean, and what have they really led to? We will investigate these questions by role-playing and historical analysis of two case studies: the French Revolution (1789-1794) and the Algerian Revolution (1954-62). Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Writing-Intensive Course.
HI 349 – History of Religion in Precolonial Africa
The study of the development of religious traditions in Africa during the period prior to European colonialism. An emphasis on both indigenous religions and the growth and spread of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the continent as a whole. Also offered as CAS AA 382 and CAS RN 382. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness.
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. Effective Fall 2018, 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.
HI 356 – Empires and Soft Power: A History of International Relations and Sport in the Pacific Rim
Explores the role of soft power and sport in the growth and maintenance of Empires and conduct of international relations in the Pacific Rim since the 1850s, providing broader understandings of its geopolitical importance to Australia and the USA. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy.
HI 363 – Early Chinese History
From the Bronze Age to the seventeenth century, China changed dramatically yet maintained political and cultural cohesion, unlike any other civilization. This course explores both diversity and unity in early Chinese society as well as their historical legacies. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
HI 364 – Modern Chinese History
Since 1600, China experienced Manchu imperial expansion, conflict with the West, two revolutions, and the construction of a socialist society now dominated by authoritarian capitalism. Explores the interplay between enduring traditions, upheaval and modernity, and their consequences for our world. Effective Fall 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
HI 367 – The Odd Couple: China and the USA, 1776 to the present
The USA, a bastion of capitalism, and China, the largest communist state on earth, are the two major global powers today. It was not always this way, and the course will map three centuries of this complex historical relationship, filled with mutual admiration and misunderstanding. Effective Spring 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Creativity/Innovation.
HI 386 – Aotearoa New Zealand: History, Culture, Society, and Politics
An introduction to the understanding of the history, culture, society, & politics of Aotearoa New Zealand. This course provides a basic knowledge of history & the way European colonization & indigenous Maori resistance shapes contemporary society & politics. Unique perspectives on Maori cultural practices, mythology, & spiritual beliefs are provided through experiential learning & cross-cultural comparisons with global diversity. Field trips to Maori cultural centers, beautiful nature reserves, & walking tours of public art provide an essential background in cultural awareness to this course. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, The Individual in Community.
HI 389 – Americans and the Middle East
Examines the intersecting histories of America and the Middle East from the late eighteenth century to the present, focusing first on American missionary and educational efforts in the region and then on American political and military involvement after World War II. 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.
HI 393 – Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, analysis of conflicting narratives through primary sources and film. Students present their own reflections on the conflict and debate possibilities of resolution. Counts toward majors and minors in History, International Relations, Middle East & North Africa Studies, and Jewish Studies. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy.
HI 399 – Introduction to Latin American Politics and International Relations
(Meets with CAS IR 367 and CAS PO 360.) Introduction to the patterns and complexities of Latin American politics and foreign policies. Focuses on the distinctive Latin American political experience and alternative explanation for it, including colonization, the international economy, and human and material resource capacity and utilization. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness.
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.
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.
Topics and themes include: empire, race, fast fashion, gender relations, LGBTQ communities, subcultures
HI 584 – Labor, Sexuality, and Resistance in the Afro-Atlantic World
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.
HI 595 – Morocco: History on the Cusp of Three Continents
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.
Ethical Reasoning
HI 209 – The Reformation: Religious Conflict in Early Modern Europe
Examines religious change in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, particularly the origins and causes of the Protestant Reformation, the parallel Catholic Reformation, and the consequent military conflicts in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Also offered as CAS RN 310. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Social Inquiry I.
HI 271 – The Nazis
Explores the rise and fall of Europe’s most notorious mass movement through film, diaries, party documents, and other sources. Considers the impact of Nazi rule on art, finance, politics, and family life. Analyzes the mass murder and destruction caused by Nazi rule. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
HI 305 – American Thought and Culture, 1776-1900
History 305 examines how major American thinkers and intellectual movements of the “long nineteenth century” constructed an “exceptional” national identity by adjusting their culture’s provincial Protestant and Enlightenment traditions to the challenges of transnational democratic, Romantic, and secular modes of thinking. Specific topics include Transcendentalism, evangelical and liberal Protestantism, pro- and anti- slavery arguments about “freedom,” race and gender theory, philosophical idealism, literary realism, scientific Darwinism, and evolutionary social science. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
HI 331 – Drugs and Security in the Americas
(Meets with CAS IR 290). Drug trafficking is one of the greatest threats to security and stability in the Americas. In this class, we study how drug trafficking became such an immense problem and why it has been so difficult to solve. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning.
HI 347 – Bodies, Drugs, and Healing: A Global History of Medicine
An introduction to the history of medicine in global contexts, offering a broad perspective on the ways that bodies, healers, drugs, and health have been conceptualized, from antiquity to the present day, in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning.
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.
HI 460 – Animals in America
Examines the place of animals in North American culture and society from pre- colonial times to the twentieth century, to shed light on popular beliefs, social relationships, environmental change, and politics. From hunting to husbandry, pet keeping to popular entertainment, we will look at animals to understand larger trends in American history. Topics include pigs in New York City, Jumbo the Elephant, and Bambi. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Ethical Reasoning, Historical Consciousness.
HI 526 – Poverty and Democracy: Modern India and the United States in Comparative Perspective
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.
Topics and themes include: questions of caste and race; housing and wealth inequality; structural violence and racism; age and youth; popular politics and disenfranchisement.
Readings include: Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Keith Payne, The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die; Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City; Jill Filipovic, OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind
Writing-Intensive Course
HI 205 – Gender and Sexuality in Judaism
Explores the role of gender and sexuality in Judaism and Jewish experience, historically and in the present. Subjects include constructions of masculinity and femininity, attitudes toward (and uses of) the body and sexuality, gendered nature of religious practice and authority. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 316 – American Urban History
Examines cities in America, from colonial era forward, focusing on Boston, New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit, and San Francisco in national and transnational context. Focus on social, political, and environmental change to understand present and past urban landscapes. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I.
HI 320 – Understanding Revolution: France and Algeria
Freedom! Liberty, equality, fraternity! National liberation! These slogans have inspired violent revolutions around the world. What do they really mean, and what have they really led to? We will investigate these questions by role-playing and historical analysis of two case studies: the French Revolution (1789-1794) and the Algerian Revolution (1954-62). Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Writing-Intensive Course.
HI 335 – International Nuclear Politics
This course examines politics, history, and technologies surrounding nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. It foregrounds the “global atomic marketplace” with emphasis on the challenges and opportunities for nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation. Also offered as CAS IR 315 and CAS PO 358. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Writing- Intensive Course.
HI 392 – Israel: History, Politics, Culture, Identity
Using a broad array of readings, popular music, documentaries, film and art, this course explores Israel’s political system, culture, and society, including the status of minorities in the Jewish state; post-1967 Israeli settlement projects; and the struggle for Israel’s identity. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing- Intensive Course, The Individual in Community, Critical Thinking.
HI 401 – Senior Honors Seminar 1
The first of a two-semester seminar that guides students through the research and writing of an honors thesis grounded in primary historical research. Students participate in a workshop environment and are matched with an additional faculty advisor. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing- Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 407 – Topics in Medieval Religious Culture
Topic for Spring 2021: Magic, Witchcraft, and the Demonic in Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. Magic, witchcraft, and the demonic as understood, employed, and feared in medieval Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities. Exploration of religious world views; visual culture; healing and medical practices; matters of gender, power, and social control, including counter- magic, legal prohibitions, and inquisition. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing- Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 410 – Religion, Community, and Culture in Medieval Spain
Interactions between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in medieval Europe’s most religiously diverse region — from the establishment of an Islamic al-Andalus in 711 CE to the final Christian “reconquest” of the peninsula and expulsion of the Jews in 1492 CE. Also offered as CAS RN 410. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 432 – Research Seminar and Tutorial in English History
Learn how to research and interrogate primary and secondary sources while attending small seminars and personalised, specialist meetings with your instructor. You will research and write a 5,000 word British history paper on a topic of your own choosing. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Critical Thinking.
HI 447 – Born under a Red Star: Soviet Children at Home, School, & Play
In the USSR, children were the revolution’s lifeblood. They were politically privileged, but also regular victims of poverty and political turmoil. Using schoolbooks, fairy tales, diaries, toys, and fashion, this seminar examines children’s lives and childhood as a historically constructed phenomenon. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation.
HI 460 – Animals in America
Examines the place of animals in North American culture and society from pre- colonial times to the twentieth century, to shed light on popular beliefs, social relationships, environmental change, and politics. From hunting to husbandry, pet keeping to popular entertainment, we will look at animals to understand larger trends in American history. Topics include pigs in New York City, Jumbo the Elephant, and Bambi. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Ethical Reasoning, Historical Consciousness.
HI 467 – Postwar America: Issues in Political, Cultural, and Social History, 1945-69
Exploring a variety of source materials, analytic methods, and modes of writing, students investigate 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 Cold War culture, youth rebellion, the African American freedom movement, liberalism, the Vietnam war, and the counterculture. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 503 – Race, Ethnicity, and Childhood in US History
The history of childhood in US History intersects with the interdisciplinary area of childhood studies. Within that, the histories of Black children and children of ethnic minorities and historically marginalized young people is a burgeoning subfield. This course examines how identities inclusive of (and structural inequities associated with) race, ethnicity, gender, social class, and sexuality have differently affected the lives and experiences of young people in the United States from the colonial period through to the 21st century. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness (HCO), Creativity/Innovation.
HI 523 – U.S.-Latin American Relations
Explores both sides of the U.S.-Latin American relationship, tracing its development over time and analyzing its current challenges. Each week focuses on a different theme–including imperialism, intervention, hemispheric security, trade, immigration, and drug trafficking–within a roughly chronological framework. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
HI 525 – Development in Historical Perspective
A critical investigation of modern “development” practices and projects in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Explores the rise of development paradigms in the nineteenth century and key twentieth-century transformations; interrogates challenges to, critiques of, and reaffirmations of global development schemes. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Social Inquiry II.
Topics and themes include: colonialism, imperialism, and anti-colonial movements; development and underdevelopment, inequality and structural violence; race and ethnicity
Readings include: Helen Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950; James Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho; Alyshia Gálvez, Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico; Julie Livingston, Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa;
Christy Thornton, Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy
HI 526 – Poverty and Democracy: Modern India and the United States in Comparative Perspective
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.
Topics and themes include: questions of caste and race; housing and wealth inequality; structural violence and racism; age and youth; popular politics and disenfranchisement.
Readings include: Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Keith Payne, The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die; Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City; Jill Filipovic, OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind
HI 568 – The Modern Metropolis: Approaches to Urban History
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.
Topics include: theories and practices of democracy; environmental inequalities in the city; crime, policing, corruption, and police brutality; race, class, gender, and ethnicity in geographic imaginaries and the built environment
Readings include: Catherine McNeur, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City; Ari Kelman, “New Orleans’ Phantom Slave Insurrection”; Eric Avila, The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City; Eric Klinenberg, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago
HI 575 – The Birth of Modern America, 1896-1929
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.
XCC 410 C1 – Back to the Past
This course, “Back to the Past,” uniquely engages students with the past through a game-based approach where they not only play but also design immersive role-playing games as part of the “Reacting to the Past” (RTTP) consortium. RTTP’s methodology emphasizes experiential learning, encouraging students to dive deep into critical historical, social, political, and cultural debates by adopting roles from the past. Effective Fall 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Creativity/Innovation, Teamwork/Collaboration, Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
Oral and/or Signed Communication
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.
Digital/Multimedia Expression
HI 191 – What Is Europe?
Explores key moments in history when cultural contact prompted Europeans to reconsider how they defined themselves culturally and geographically. Lectures and discussions are combined with trips to local museums/archives to analyze the material remains of this process of self-definition. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration.
HI 283 – The Twentieth-Century American Presidency
Examines the shifting role of the presidency in American politics, especially over the course of the twentieth century. Considers not only the accomplishments of individual presidents and institutional changes in the executive branch but also the evolving place of the presidency in American popular culture. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Social Inquiry II.
HI 298 – African American History
Surveys the history of African Americans from their African origins to the present, investigating their critical role in shaping the meaning of race, rights, freedom, and democracy during slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the civil rights era. Also offered as CAS AA 371. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Historical Consciousness, Teamwork/Collaboration.
HI 303 – Sex, Love, Family: Relationships in Recent American History and Pop Culture
Explores modern American romance and family dynamics, especially since the 1970s. Follows the life cycle from birth to death, surveying common milestones and rituals such as coming of age, coming out, getting married, or having a midlife crisis, and more. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Digital/Multimedia Expression.
Topics include: pregnancy and childbirth, including different practices according to time, class, and race; slavery’s impact on Black health and families; changing ways of gendering children; racism, faith, and sexuality among teens and young adults; sexual orientation in historic context; disparities in courtship and dating; marital politics; and inequalities in aging and death
Readings include: childcare manuals, teen movies, stand-up comedy and sitcoms, memoirs, short stories
HI 343 – Taste, Culture, and Power: The Global History of Food
An exploration of the global history of food from prehistory to the present, considering the birth of agriculture, food in nations and empires, hunger and nutrition, and the future of eating, including examples from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation.
Topics and themes include: colonialism and colonial foodways; religion, race, and ethnicity; migration and ethnicity in foodways
Readings include: Donna R. Gabaccia, “Immigration, Isolation, and Industry”; Krishnendu Ray, “Hierarchy of Taste and Ethnic Difference”; Nick Cullather, “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie”; Marcy Norton, “Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics”; Maurice M. Manring, “Aunt Jemima Explained: The Old South, the Absent Mistress, and the Slave in a Box”; Michael W. Twitty, “I Had Never Eaten in Ghana Before. But My Ancestors Had”
HI 391 – Media Revolutions in the Modern Middle East
Examines how media revolutions in the modern Middle East have helped to garner state support and foment rebellions. Sources range widely from Lebanese civil war posters and state radio broadcasts to tourist campaigns, Turkish soap operas, and reality television competitions. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Critical Thinking.
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.
Critical Thinking
HI 113 – Introduction to Antiracism
This course introduces students to the concept of antiracism, particularly its historical contours in the United States. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
HI 175 – World History to 1500
Explores historical and environmental factors influencing how cultures take shape and impact each other. Examines early global connections and conflicts between people of different continents as well as between humans, other species, the natural environment, and the planet as a whole. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
Topics and themes include: imperialism and decolonization, the construction of race, race relations in 20th and 21st-century contexts, multiculturalism
Readings include: M.K. Gandhi, George Orwell, Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi
HI 251 – Cultural Capital: The History of Popular Culture in London
Traces the historical development of popular culture in London from the late seventeenth century to the present day. Concerned with texts (visual, aural, written) and sites. Organised chronologically and thematically, engages with theoretical perspectives. Engages with wider history of Britain. 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.
HI 271 – The Nazis
Explores the rise and fall of Europe’s most notorious mass movement through film, diaries, party documents, and other sources. Considers the impact of Nazi rule on art, finance, politics, and family life. Analyzes the mass murder and destruction caused by Nazi rule. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, 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.” Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
Topics and themes include: revolution, socialism, class warfare, terrorism, sexual liberation and experimentation, gender equality and discrimination, antiracism, ethnoterritorial federalism (assigning ethnic groups their own country), interethnic conflict, antisemitism, wrongful incarceration, female soldiers in combat, everyday life
Readings include:
V.I. Lenin, “On the Inevitability of Civil War”
Letters from Stalingrad
Women Soldiers in the Air War
Voices from Chernobyl
HI 300 – American Popular Culture
Examines how Americans have changed (and haven’t) since the nineteenth century by exploring their curious beliefs, social and sexual practices, and changing understandings of selfhood. Topics include Victorian etiquette, modern city pleasures, racial stereotyping, dating rituals, family dynamics, and more. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
Topics include: capitalism and inequality; racism in scientific theory, law, and cultural practice; immigration and restriction; cultural rebellions and counterculture; labor and civil rights activism; modern sexuality, gender roles, and women’s liberation, contemporary culture wars
Readings include: Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery; Edith Wharton, House of Mirth; Nella Larsen, Passing; Arthur Miller, Focus; Richard Wright, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow”; Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique; and Malcolm X, “My First Conk.”
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
Topics and themes include: women’s activism; exploitation and discrimination of women; distinct experiences of Native and Black women in US history
Readings include: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Anzia Yezerskia, Bread Givers; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland
HI 305 – American Thought and Culture, 1776-1900
History 305 examines how major American thinkers and intellectual movements of the “long nineteenth century” constructed an “exceptional” national identity by adjusting their culture’s provincial Protestant and Enlightenment traditions to the challenges of transnational democratic, Romantic, and secular modes of thinking. Specific topics include Transcendentalism, evangelical and liberal Protestantism, pro- and anti- slavery arguments about “freedom,” race and gender theory, philosophical idealism, literary realism, scientific Darwinism, and evolutionary social science. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
HI 322 – The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire
Examines early modern Britain’s global expansion, with a focus on the British isles and the American colonies. Explains how economic growth and imperial warfare shaped Britain and her colonies, and probes the causes of the empire’s collapse in 1776. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course titled “Colonial British America from Settlement to Revolution” that was previously numbered CAS HI 322. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
HI 363 – Early Chinese History
From the Bronze Age to the seventeenth century, China changed dramatically yet maintained political and cultural cohesion, unlike any other civilization. This course explores both diversity and unity in early Chinese society as well as their historical legacies. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
HI 364 – Modern Chinese History
Since 1600, China experienced Manchu imperial expansion, conflict with the West, two revolutions, and the construction of a socialist society now dominated by authoritarian capitalism. Explores the interplay between enduring traditions, upheaval and modernity, and their consequences for our world. Effective Fall 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
HI 389 – Americans and the Middle East
Examines the intersecting histories of America and the Middle East from the late eighteenth century to the present, focusing first on American missionary and educational efforts in the region and then on American political and military involvement after World War II. 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.
HI 390 – Mecca to Dubai: Cities in the Middle East
Examines Middle Eastern history through the lens of its cities because cities have always been pivotal sites of governance, religious life, cultural development, architectural legacies, and political protest. Today, they are the epicenter of neoliberal globalization. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
HI 391 – Media Revolutions in the Modern Middle East
Examines how media revolutions in the modern Middle East have helped to garner state support and foment rebellions. Sources range widely from Lebanese civil war posters and state radio broadcasts to tourist campaigns, Turkish soap operas, and reality television competitions. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Critical Thinking.
HI 392 – Israel: History, Politics, Culture, Identity
Using a broad array of readings, popular music, documentaries, film and art, this course explores Israel’s political system, culture, and society, including the status of minorities in the Jewish state; post-1967 Israeli settlement projects; and the struggle for Israel’s identity. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing- Intensive Course, The Individual in Community, Critical Thinking.
HI 432 – Research Seminar and Tutorial in English History
Learn how to research and interrogate primary and secondary sources while attending small seminars and personalised, specialist meetings with your instructor. You will research and write a 5,000 word British history paper on a topic of your own choosing. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Critical Thinking.
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.
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.
Topics and themes include: empire, race, fast fashion, gender relations, LGBTQ communities, subcultures
HI 508 – The Age of Hamilton
The course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the world in the aftermath of the War of the American Revolution, through the lens of one of its most iconic figures. Effective Spring 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
HI 523 – U.S.-Latin American Relations
Explores both sides of the U.S.-Latin American relationship, tracing its development over time and analyzing its current challenges. Each week focuses on a different theme–including imperialism, intervention, hemispheric security, trade, immigration, and drug trafficking–within a roughly chronological framework. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
HI 595 – Morocco: History on the Cusp of Three Continents
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.
Research and Information Literacy
HI 112 – Black Power in the Classroom: The History of Black Studies
Centers Black experiences, cultures, knowledge production and identity formation in the United States and in the African Diaspora across time and space. Examines and traces the genealogies of Black Studies as a discipline: its political, ideological, and practical foundations on college campuses and in communities. Also explores earlier traditions and contemporary work in Black radical thought and activism that lay the groundwork for and build on the founding principles of Black Studies by mobilizing an intersectional and diasporic lens. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 152 – The Emerging United States Since 1865
After the Civil War, Americans created a new urbanizing and industrializing landscape, flush with immigrants, growing class conflict, and racial divisions. This course explores how, through times of prosperity, depression, and war, Americans transformed the United States into one of the world’s leading nations. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 205 – Gender and Sexuality in Judaism
Explores the role of gender and sexuality in Judaism and Jewish experience, historically and in the present. Subjects include constructions of masculinity and femininity, attitudes toward (and uses of) the body and sexuality, gendered nature of religious practice and authority. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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. Effective Fall 2018, 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.
Topics and themes include: colonialism, imperialism, and anti-colonial movements; caste, religion, and ethnicity; poverty and development; migration and the South Asian diaspora
Readings include: Joe Sacco, “Kushinagar” [short graphic novel]; Mohandas Gandhi, Hind Swaraj; Muhammad Iqbal, “A Separate State for Muslims Within India;” Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s “Hindus and Muslims: Two Separate Nations”; Willem van Schendel, A History of Bangladesh; Arundhati Roy “The Doctor and the Saint”; Subhas Vyam and Durgabai Vyam’s Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability
HI 243 – Crises and Readjustments in Post-War British Foreign Policy, 1945-1990
Investigates Britain’s relative decline as a world power, focusing on a succession of crises, small wars, and policy readjustments in the context of end of empire, the Cold War, and European integration. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 246 – London: Imperial City to World City
Social, economic, and cultural history of London since 1666. How London developed from the modest- sized capital of England to the capital of the British Empire and the world’s largest city, to the modern multicultural city of today’s European Union and globalizing world. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS HI 303 E. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 249 – London Women’s Social History from Aphra Behn to The Blitz
Examines the lives of women in London over the past three centuries from a social history perspective. Students work with primary source materials. Also offered as CAS WS 310 E. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 260 – The Venetian Republic
Founded around the 5th-6th century by former Roman fleeing the barbarian invasions, Venice has been for centuries one of the strongest and most powerful political entities. Venice was for centuries one of the most powerful political global powers until its fall in 1797. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 268 – Postcolonial Paris
Study of Paris’s contemporary history as the center of French colonialism and immigration. Emphasis on the representation of colonial and postcolonial memory in French cinema. Includes guided visits to important sites around the city. Also offered as CAS LF 344 E. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 338 – REPRESSION, REVOLUTION, ROCK N’ ROLL: US in 1950s & 1960s
Repression, Revolution, Rock n’ Roll: few periods shaped American society, culture and politics as dramatically and enduringly as the 1950s and 1960s, transforming institutions, life experiences, the nation’s rile in the world, and the ways Americans thought about social problems and political activism. Topics include: Cold War, McCarthyism, Civil Rights, Vietnam, Campus Protest, Counterculture Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 339 – A History of the Present: The United States since 1968
Analyzing the recent experience of the United States and its people in historical perspective, the course allows students to explore important developments in US politics, race relations, economy, and popular culture, investigate diverse social science approaches to contemporary problems, and develop an independent research project. Topics include war, politics, religion, and popular culture as well as changing notions about race, gender, and selfhood. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy.
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. Effective Fall 2018, 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.
HI 401 – Senior Honors Seminar 1
The first of a two-semester seminar that guides students through the research and writing of an honors thesis grounded in primary historical research. Students participate in a workshop environment and are matched with an additional faculty advisor. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing- Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 407 – Topics in Medieval Religious Culture
Topic for Spring 2021: Magic, Witchcraft, and the Demonic in Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. Magic, witchcraft, and the demonic as understood, employed, and feared in medieval Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities. Exploration of religious world views; visual culture; healing and medical practices; matters of gender, power, and social control, including counter- magic, legal prohibitions, and inquisition. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing- Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 410 – Religion, Community, and Culture in Medieval Spain
Interactions between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in medieval Europe’s most religiously diverse region — from the establishment of an Islamic al-Andalus in 711 CE to the final Christian “reconquest” of the peninsula and expulsion of the Jews in 1492 CE. Also offered as CAS RN 410. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
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. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 461 – The Civil War in American Memory
Examines the ways in which Americans have thought about the experiences of the Civil War, from the immediate postwar period through the later years of the twentieth century. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.
HI 467 – Postwar America: Issues in Political, Cultural, and Social History, 1945-69
Exploring a variety of source materials, analytic methods, and modes of writing, students investigate 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 Cold War culture, youth rebellion, the African American freedom movement, liberalism, the Vietnam war, and the counterculture. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
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.
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.
Topics and themes include: how race has shaped Civil War memory; African American memories of the US Civil War; current battles over Confederate monuments; Civil War cinema
Readings include: Tony Horowitz, Confederates in the Attic; Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery; Slave Narratives from the 1930s
HI 568 – The Modern Metropolis: Approaches to Urban History
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.
Topics include: theories and practices of democracy; environmental inequalities in the city; crime, policing, corruption, and police brutality; race, class, gender, and ethnicity in geographic imaginaries and the built environment
Readings include: Catherine McNeur, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City; Ari Kelman, “New Orleans’ Phantom Slave Insurrection”; Eric Avila, The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City; Eric Klinenberg, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago
HI 575 – The Birth of Modern America, 1896-1929
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.
XCC 410 C1 – Back to the Past
This course, “Back to the Past,” uniquely engages students with the past through a game-based approach where they not only play but also design immersive role-playing games as part of the “Reacting to the Past” (RTTP) consortium. RTTP’s methodology emphasizes experiential learning, encouraging students to dive deep into critical historical, social, political, and cultural debates by adopting roles from the past. Effective Fall 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Creativity/Innovation, Teamwork/Collaboration, Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
Teamwork/Collaboration
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, The Individual in Community, Teamwork/Collaboration.
HI 191 – What Is Europe?
Explores key moments in history when cultural contact prompted Europeans to reconsider how they defined themselves culturally and geographically. Lectures and discussions are combined with trips to local museums/archives to analyze the material remains of this process of self-definition. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration.
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration.
HI 298 – African American History
Surveys the history of African Americans from their African origins to the present, investigating their critical role in shaping the meaning of race, rights, freedom, and democracy during slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the civil rights era. Also offered as CAS AA 371. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Historical Consciousness, Teamwork/Collaboration.
HI 299 – Civil Rights History
This course examines the U.S. Civil Rights and the struggle for black freedom movements. From the late nineteenth century through the twenty-first century, we consider events, organizations, “leaders” and organizers, legal campaigns, and political protests to answer the questions: What were the race, class, and gender dynamics within the movements? What were the changing definitions of freedom? The course treats the movement’s roots, goals, ideologies, and cultures, and includes a comparison of the struggles for equal rights of Mexican Americans, Native Americans, LGBT folks, and other groups. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Historical Consciousness, Teamwork/Collaboration.
XCC 410 C1 – Back to the Past
This course, “Back to the Past,” uniquely engages students with the past through a game-based approach where they not only play but also design immersive role-playing games as part of the “Reacting to the Past” (RTTP) consortium. RTTP’s methodology emphasizes experiential learning, encouraging students to dive deep into critical historical, social, political, and cultural debates by adopting roles from the past. Effective Fall 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Creativity/Innovation, Teamwork/Collaboration, Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
Creativity/Innovation
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. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Creativity/Innovation.
Topics and themes include: revolution, workers’ rights, class warfare, ethnic diversity and conflict, sexual discrimination, religious conflict and warfare, colonization and decolonization, socialism, anarchism, and terrorism, everyday life
Readings include:
Nadezhda Durova, The Calvary Maiden: Journals of a Female Russian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars
Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat
Sergei Nechaev, “Catechism of a Revolutionist”
S.D. Urusov Explains Russian Anti-Semitism
V.I. Lenin, “What is to be Done?”
HI 279 – Experiencing Total War
Analyzes how soldiers and civilians experienced WWI and WWII, which brutally penetrated their everyday lives and affected their bodies, vocabularies, and world-views. Major sources include combat accounts, diaries, letters, songs, material culture, food, and more. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course entitled “Intimate Histories of War” that was previously numbered CAS HI 279. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation.
HI 343 – Taste, Culture, and Power: The Global History of Food
An exploration of the global history of food from prehistory to the present, considering the birth of agriculture, food in nations and empires, hunger and nutrition, and the future of eating, including examples from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation.
Topics and themes include: colonialism and colonial foodways; religion, race, and ethnicity; migration and ethnicity in foodways
Readings include: Donna R. Gabaccia, “Immigration, Isolation, and Industry”; Krishnendu Ray, “Hierarchy of Taste and Ethnic Difference”; Nick Cullather, “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie”; Marcy Norton, “Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics”; Maurice M. Manring, “Aunt Jemima Explained: The Old South, the Absent Mistress, and the Slave in a Box”; Michael W. Twitty, “I Had Never Eaten in Ghana Before. But My Ancestors Had”
HI 367 – The Odd Couple: China and the USA, 1776 to the present
The USA, a bastion of capitalism, and China, the largest communist state on earth, are the two major global powers today. It was not always this way, and the course will map three centuries of this complex historical relationship, filled with mutual admiration and misunderstanding. Effective Spring 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Creativity/Innovation.
HI 447 – Born under a Red Star: Soviet Children at Home, School, & Play
In the USSR, children were the revolution’s lifeblood. They were politically privileged, but also regular victims of poverty and political turmoil. Using schoolbooks, fairy tales, diaries, toys, and fashion, this seminar examines children’s lives and childhood as a historically constructed phenomenon. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation.
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.
HI 458 – American Migrations
Mass migrations have been central to American history from the colonial era to the present. This course investigates why people pick up their lives to travel vast distances, often at great risk, and how such journeys have changed over time. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation.
HI 503 – Race, Ethnicity, and Childhood in US History
The history of childhood in US History intersects with the interdisciplinary area of childhood studies. Within that, the histories of Black children and children of ethnic minorities and historically marginalized young people is a burgeoning subfield. This course examines how identities inclusive of (and structural inequities associated with) race, ethnicity, gender, social class, and sexuality have differently affected the lives and experiences of young people in the United States from the colonial period through to the 21st century. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness (HCO), Creativity/Innovation.
XCC 410 C1 – Back to the Past
This course, “Back to the Past,” uniquely engages students with the past through a game-based approach where they not only play but also design immersive role-playing games as part of the “Reacting to the Past” (RTTP) consortium. RTTP’s methodology emphasizes experiential learning, encouraging students to dive deep into critical historical, social, political, and cultural debates by adopting roles from the past. Effective Fall 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Creativity/Innovation, Teamwork/Collaboration, Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.