School of Humanities
History Graduate Course Descriptions
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Spring 2025
**This is not a complete list of course offerings. Please use the Course Catalog in SOAR for accurate advising.**
HIS 409/509
Special Topics in Asian History: A Supernatural History of Asia
Tu/Th 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Dr. Kenneth Swope
As a result of exposure to films, manga, anime, and video games among other mediums,
the entire world is becoming aware of the rich and varied history of monsters, ghosts,
and strange creatures populating the history and folklore of the countries of Asia.
This course will explore the historical context of some of these strange denizens,
tracing their cultural and historic significance, and examining their appearance in
folk tales, novels, films, and other mediums. Students will be asked to complete review/reaction
essays, in-class essay examinations, and a larger project on a topic of their choice.
HIS 417/517
The Vietnam War
Tu/Th 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM
Dr. Heather Stur
This course examines the history, causes, and consequences of the Vietnam War. By
the end of the semester, you will have a deeper understanding of the war from various
American and Vietnamese perspectives, military decision-making and engagements, U.S.
foreign relations, and decolonization during the Cold War. Together we will think
critically about the long reach of war beyond the battlefields, how wars are remembered,
and why Americans are still grappling with the Vietnam War.
HIS 423/523
Queer History
Tu/Th 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
Dr. Katya Maslakowski
This course will introduce students to the historical study of LGBTQI* individuals
living in Europe and North America during the 19th and 20th centuries. During this
course we will read historical and interdisciplinary scholarship and analyze primary
sources that will help us better understand same-sex loving and gender transgressing
historical actors. We will pay close attention to historical actors’ self-conceptions
and self-identifications as we explore how queer people have been understood historically.
We will thus use personal stories to understand how certain identities, communities,
and practices came to be situated as “alternative,” “deviant,” or queer in comparison
with “normal.” What happens when queer identities demand inclusion into the normal?
Topics will include: queer archives and public history, queer urban communities, policing,
sex work, activism, family life, ball room life, the AIDs crisis and modern trans
panics
HIS 561
The American Revolution
T/Th 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Dr. Kyle Zelner
Just in time for the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution!
This course will examine the political, military, and social aspects of the Revolutionary
period, roughly from 1760 to 1800. We will focus on the imperial crisis that leads
to war; the politics of protest and nation-building; the military conflict from 1775-1783;
Loyalists, African-Americans, and women during the war; the post-war crisis in national
and state governments; the writing of and ratification fight over the new Constitution;
and the Federalist era. Ultimately, we will have to attempt to answer the crucial
question, “Just how revolutionary was the American Revolution?”
HIS 726
U.S. Historiography II Seminar
Tuesdays 6:00 PM – 9:00 pm
Dr. Andrew O. Pace
HIS 726 is an intense text- and discussion-based seminar on modern American historiography.
The course introduces graduate students to classic and recent works in modern U.S.
history and examines major historical themes, questions, and movements since the end
of the American Civil War.
At the undergraduate level, “history” is primarily about the past, but at the graduate
level, “history” largely refers to the interpretation of the past. In this class,
therefore, graduate students must make the intellectual leap from making historical
arguments or interpretations to historical interventions or contributions. That is,
students must become familiar with the historical schools of thought about a given
topic or time period in order to understand how new research intersects or intervenes
with previous and current scholarship. Put another way, graduate students must learn
to write essays that are not only clear, organized, and persuasive, but also valuable.
In upcoming comprehensive exams, students will need to know not only what happened
in the past and why, but how historians have interpreted the past, and how their evolving
methodologies and expanding source bases have changed their consensus or conflicting
interpretations over time.
During the course, students will read "old" and "new" interpretations of Reconstruction,
the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, the rise of Conservatism, and other major
themes in U.S. history. Students will write bi-weekly book reviews, two annotated
book lists, and one historiographical essay. By the end of the course, students should
be able to understand and explain the arguments, debates, and schools of thought about
modern U.S. historiography, assess complex historical monographs and engage in advanced
scholarly debates about modern U.S. history, and prepare for comprehensive exams and
professional historical scholarship.