School of Humanities
History Undergraduate 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 351
History of the National Guard
M/W 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
The History of the US National Guard. This course will be the first ever course taught
at the college level on the history of America's National Guard. The course will be
team-taught, featuring Dr. Zelner, Dr. Mammina, Dr. Mocheregwa, and Dr. Wiest from
Southern Miss. The course will also welcome Dr. Richard Clark (Chief Historian of
the National Guard Bureau) and Professor Gary Sheffield, one of Britain's leading
military historians. The course will explore the US militia system and its transformation
throughout US history to today. The course will feature several veteran presentations
and a trip to Camp Shelby for some hands-on work with the Guard.
HIS 400
Senior Capstone Seminar: Communities in Crisis
Tu/Th 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM
Dr. Kyle Zelner
Communities throughout history have had to deal with different crises, be they natural
disasters, pandemics, crime waves, wars, civil unrest, or countless other catastrophes.
HIS 400 is the required senior capstone class for all history majors and as such,
the class will include a mixture of discussion seminars and considerable independent
research/writing time. Along with a refresher on primary document research and historical
writing, the first several weeks of the class will see students reading a number of
articles and/or books about communities in crisis and discussing them in a seminar
setting.
For the remainder of the semester, students will research and write an original history
of a community in crisis. The research paper (15-20 pages) must make extensive use
of primary documents (such as newspapers, oral histories, diaries, letters, and other
accounts) as well as the secondary sources written on their topic. The first draft
of the paper will be evaluated by the professor and then redrafted to create a final
manuscript. In addition to the major research paper, students will be required to
give two oral presentations in the class.
Some possible research paper topics might include:
鈥hat happened to New York City during the American Revolutionary War?
鈥hat happened to the community in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina?
鈥ow did the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 change life in Chicago?
鈥hat happened to London during the Blitz in World War II?
鈥ow did the Civil War affect the town of Vicksburg?
鈥ow did the community in Birmingham, Alabama experience the Civil Rights movement?
The possibilities are almost endless . . .
Required text: Kate L. Turabian, "A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses,
and Dissertations," 9th ed., Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2018.
Other readings as assigned.
HIS 300
Research Seminar
M/W 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Dr. Max Grivno
This course is designed to teach you the basics of historical research and writing.
We will begin with discussion about what history is and how the discipline has evolved,
with a particular focus on the rise of academic history in European and American universities
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will examine some of the major schools
of historical thought and the controversies and debates that have gripped the field.
Over the course of the semester, you will also research and write a piece of original
historical research and present your findings to your colleagues.
HIS 375
Economic History of the United States
M/W 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
Dr. Max Grivno
This course offers a broad overview of American Economic History from the beginnings
of European conquest and expansion in the 15th and 16th centuries to the early decades
of the current millennium. Economic history is a broad, diverse, and vibrant field.
Its practitioners embrace political ideologies that range from socialist to libertarian,
and they employ methodologies that include statistical analysis, environmental and
social history, and cultural studies. This diversity makes the field exciting, but
it also means that no one course can cover the entire field. I have structured this
course to give you a sense鈥攁 taste鈥攐f the major changes that have occurred in the
American economy over the past 400 years and to show you how those profound, often
wrenching transformations changed the lives of American consumers and workers. Understanding
economic history allows you to understand the world around you. Political revolutions
and wars may capture the headlines, but the daily machinations of the economy are
the engines that drive much historical change.
You do not need to be steeped in economic theory or mathematics to succeed in this
course. A general knowledge of American History (equivalent to completing History
201 and 202) may be helpful, but there are no prerequisites for this course.
HIS 461
The American Revolution
Tu/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, 鈥淛ust how revolutionary was the American Revolution?鈥�
HIS 461 is a great class for Social Studies Licensure majors as it covers many highlights
of American Government classes (the Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc.), as well as
Early American History.
HIS 423
Queer History
Tu/Th 9:30 AM - 10:45 PM
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鈥� 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 鈥渁lternative,鈥� 鈥渄eviant,鈥� or queer in comparison
with 鈥渘ormal.鈥� 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
HUM 301 (H081)
The Light Ages: Medieval Science and the Birth of the Renaissance
Online
Dr. Courtney Luckhardt
While Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps best known as an artist in the popular imagination,
he was also scientist and engineer, and well-versed in the most up-to-date knowledge
of his day. Da Vinci鈥檚 expertise did not spring up from nothing, but instead built
upon the remarkable creativity of the previous thousand years of medieval art and
science. While the Middle Ages is at times dismissed as the 鈥淒ark Ages鈥�, this class
will instead argue that the medieval period was in fact a 鈥淟ight Ages鈥� in which foundational
scientific, philosophical, and artistic ideas were invented and tested. This paved
the way for the remarkable transformations of modernity in the 鈥淎ge of Discovery鈥�,
in which people from across the globe encountered one another, in both positive and
negative ways, in a complex web of connection, contagion, and exchange.
This class is offered completely online and is open to all majors in the Humanities
and beyond! I particularly welcome STEM and health sciences majors, as this class
will explore the history of your future professions. Also, there are two Hum 301 classes
being offered in Spring 2025; make sure to sign up for Hum 301 H081.