In this program, you’ll hone your investigation and information literacy skills by exploring and analyzing varied sources across a range of periods and developments in the Western and non-Western worlds.
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Curriculum
Your coursework will take place both inside and outside the classroom and will include research, collaboration with faculty, and hands-on fieldwork. As a graduate, you'll be well prepared for graduate study or careers in government, non-profits, or the private sector, as well as for a lifetime of informed citizenship.
Course topics include:
- Developments in the Age of Discovery in the 15th century
- Evolving relations between the United States and the Middle East
- Life in the medieval era
- Women’s history
- Urbanism in American history
First Year Advising and Registration recommendations
All 100 and 200- level courses have no pre-requisites and fulfill the Humanities requirement for the Multiple Inquiries-Humanities Goal. Many of these courses also fulfill the Global Understanding, Conceptualizing Diversity, or STS requirements. History majors may count one AP History credit as a 100-level elective toward the major, but regardless of any AP credits received, all History majors must have one of the History Department’s 100-level courses. Students who are claiming an AP credit for U.S. History should not take History 231: U.S. to 1877 or History 232: U.S. since 1865. Prospective majors should take one 100-level and one 200-level course during their first year. FY students can take 300-level courses only with permission of the instructor.
For advising help, please contact Prof. Dina Lowy, History Department Chair.
History Major
To major in history at Gettysburg College, students must complete ten courses, which include:
| Requirement | Description |
|---|---|
| Foundational Course | A 100-level world history course to provide foundational knowledge. |
| Historical Method Course | A course that emphasizes collaborative research and group work. |
| Advanced Courses | Three 300-level courses offering deeper exploration into historical topics. |
| Field Distribution Courses | Four courses at the 200 or 300-level, chosen from at least four of the following fields: North American, European, Asian, Latin American, African, Islamic, or Comparative History. |
For detailed course lists and eligible seminars, visit the course list page and specific sections on First-Year Seminars and Non-Departmental Courses.
The Capstone Experience: Senior Research Seminar
As a senior, each history major must select a research seminar as the capstone course in the history program.
A selection of senior seminars is offered each year. They provide students with an opportunity to work in small groups with a faculty member in research of a selected topic. Typically, participants are expected to engage in reading, discussion, oral reports, writing of formal papers based on individual research, and critiques of each other's work.
History minor
Requirements for the History minor are listed below. Minor courses may not be taken S/U.
| Requirement | Description |
|---|---|
| 100-Level Limit | No more than two of the courses can be at the 100-level. |
| Advanced Coursework | At least two courses must be at the 300-level, including History 300: Historical Method. |
| Interdisciplinary Option | One course may be selected from the Courses from Other Departments list, which also counts toward the history major. |
| Credit Limits | Only one AP or transfer credit may be applied toward the minor. |
Courses
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Introduction to the history of the modern world (app. 1750-1930). Focus is on the comparative global history of Asia, Africa, and Europe during this period. Course examines economic, political, and cultural interactions between these three continents, and includes some history of the Americas to round out the picture of world history. Themes include global economics (slave trade, industrial revolution(s), world markets), imperialism, nationalism, and world war. Course is intended as an introductory history class for all students and fulfills one of the Humanities requirements. Course also fulfills the global history requirement for majors. Offered annually.
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Course focuses on cultural and economic interactions between Europe, Asia, the Muslim World, and the Americas, and places great 'discoveries' of Western history--the new World, conquests, the 'rebirth' of antiquity, and the beginnings of modern science-within their context of cross-cultural exchange. Students consider literary, scientific, and religious influences on individual encounters, as well as historians' explanations for long-term global realignments during a dynamic period in world history. Offered annually.
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Examination of the development of an Atlantic world system that connects Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Students study Atlantic communities in a comparative context that emphasizes international trade and communication, encounters between native and colonial peoples, the rise and fall of New World slavery, and the development of new national identities. Offered annually.
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Historical change in the global setting, from the ascendancy of the pre-First World War empires to the present. Topics include technological development, imperialism and decolonization, world wars, political revolutions, social and economic forces, and the reshaping of thought and the arts in the diverse cultures of humanity. Offered annually.
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Exploration of an announced topic in European History. Offered as staffing permits.
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This class introduces students to ideas, debates, and best practices in the field of public history. Public history is a term that defines a constellation of historical practices outside of the academy, but most often refers to historians who work in institutions such as museums, historic sites, preservation offices, archives, and cultural resource agencies. This course will introduce students to the historical origins of public history in the United States and current ideas about the practice of public history. Offered annually.
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Survey of British history from ancient times to 1800. Includes Ireland, Scotland, and the overseas empire. Offered every other year.
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Survey of British history from 1800 to the present. Includes Ireland, Scotland, and the overseas empire. Offered every other year.
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Examination of the social, cultural, and political history of Spain and the New World from 1450 to 1700. Special attention is given to the effects which the discovery of the New World had on Spain and Latin America and the manner in which Spain imparted its institutions, culture, and beliefs to the peoples it conquered. Offered as staffing permits.
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In the words of Cardinal Ximenez, character in the Monty Python sitcom: “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Our chief weapon is surprise and fear...and ruthless efficiency.” How accurate is the popular conception of the Spanish Inquisition? Was it an instrument of sadistic torture and cruelty? In this course we will examine the history of the Spanish Inquisition, considering the myths and legends which have circulated about the “Holy Office.” We will set the Spanish Inquisition in the context of late medieval and early modern European history, briefly considering other inquisitions, in order to understand its origins, development, and operation.
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Introduction of Islamic history from Pre-Islamic Arabia to the Conquest of Constantinople. Analysis covers the rise of Islam, the impact of the life of the Prophet Muhammad, and the rapid growth and expansion of the Islamic empire. Examines the socio-religious debates of the Islamic community against a backdrop of political intrigue, civil war, revolution, and mass migration. Covers a broad range of Islamic culture from architecture, miniature art, banquets and erotic poetry to science, maps, travel, education, and tulips. Offered annually.
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Survey of the history of women since 1500, with particular attention on women's participation in the political, economic, cultural, and familial realms. Focus is primarily on European women, with occasional comparisons to the United States. Offered as staffing permits.
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Examination of major themes in French social, economic, and cultural history, from the reign of Francis I and the emergence of the Renaissance state to the Revolution with its sweeping away of the order associated with that state. Course concentrates on the changing social and economic structure of the period, as well as on the contemporaneous evolution of 'popular' and political culture. Offered as staffing permits.
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Survey of developments in French, Italian, English and German popular culture over three centuries. Inquiry covers whether elite culture-makers were waging war upon popular culture in early modern Europe, and whether popular culture was being driven underground from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Topics of study include Carnival, community policing, ritual behavior, family life, violence, deviant behavior, religion, magic, and the transmission of culture. Offered as staffing permits.
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This course has two objectives: firstly, to conduct an interdisciplinary investigation of the various ways that the medical profession, patients, and the state narrate illness; secondly to chart the history of medicine and public health, paying particular attention to the changing roles of doctors, the history of disease causation, and how these two phenomena overlap especially in the mid to late nineteenth century. While this course covers a broad chronology, it focuses on the Civil War era, which gave rise to sanitary principles and provided the foundation for the bacteriological revolution at the end of the nineteenth century. CWES 212 and HIST 212 are cross-listed.
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Course covers the social, political, and cultural history of France from the end of the French Revolution to the present. Topics to be discussed in detail include: the legacy of the French Revolution, the expansion of the French imperial world and "nation-building" in rural France, the twin catastrophes of two world wars, the post-World War II economic miracle, challenges of urbanization, decolonization and immigration, and France’s changing role in the world and Europe. Offered as staffing permits.
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Introduction to the history of modern Russia and the Soviet Union. Course follows political, economic, cultural, and social developments in Russia from the time of Catherine the Great and the French Revolution to the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Topics include Tsarist Russia, Russia in World War I, the Russian Revolution of 1917, Stalinism, the Cold War, the Post-1945 period, and Gorbachev and the end of single-party rule. Course also addresses the role of women, minorities, and social classes in the history of modern Russia. Offered every other year.
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Introduction to the history of modern Germany, addressing political, economic, cultural, and social developments since 1800, with special attention given to the Bismarckian and Wilhelminian era, World War I, the Weimar and Nazi periods, World War II, the Holocaust, and the era of the two Germanys. Students may not receive credit for this course and Hist 218-GC taught in Cologne. Offered every other year.
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One hundred years ago Europe’s Great Powers went to war. The resulting conflict forever altered the nations that fed its human destruction. This course examines the First World War’s history, cultural legacy, and memory from 1914 to the present. It does so through both traditional study of the examination of the causes, conduct, and consequences of the war, but also, investigates the Great War as a cultural experience, one that went far beyond the battlefields of Europe, its legacy deeply felt to the present day. Students will learn not only the history of the war itself, but how war’s change people, how they alter notions of identity, how their legacies develop and change over time. Through detailed study of the war’s history, cultural production, and by problematizing its lasting memory, students will understand not only the history of a conflict important in world history, but lenses for understanding war itself, that go far beyond the years 1914-1918. Offered every other year.
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Exploration of an announced topic in Asian History. Offered as staffing permits.
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Survey of East Asian civilizations to approximately 1800 and of East Asian political, social, and intellectual developments since the beginning of the Qing Dynasty. Offered as staffing permits.
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Survey of East Asian civilizations since 1800 and of East Asian political, social, and intellectual developments since the beginning of the Qing Dynasty. Offered as staffing permits.
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Study of Chinese history since the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, with emphasis on transformations of the nineteenth century and the Nationalist and Communist revolutions. Offered annually.
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Examination of Japanese history and culture from the beginning of the Tokugawa period (ca. 1600) to the present. Explores Japan's attempts at constructing a nation that would meet the challenges of modernity, while at the same time preserving Japanese traditions. Offered annually.
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Exploration of the events surrounding the 1945 destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The history of the Pacific War leading up to the bombings is presented as well as the cultural, ethical, and political repercussions that followed in both the U.S. and Japan. A basic understanding of the science behind the weapons used and the biological damage done is given through appropriate atomic, nuclear, and medical physics. The controversy of the U.S. decision to use atomic weapons is discussed. Offered as staffing permits.
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Survey of Australian History since first European settlement. Major themes include political, economic, social and cultural developments. Significant attention paid to Australia's role in world affairs, racial policies, and demographic change. Offered annually.
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Course focuses on encounters and adaptations between native American and European peoples in North America from 1500 to the present. Topics include the demographic consequences of contact; impact of European trade, religion, and war on native societies; relations between native Americans and the U.S. government; and the question of native American identity in the modern world. Offered every other year.
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Survey of United States, from colonization through Reconstruction. Major topics include: encounters and adaptations between European, African, and Native American peoples; origins, operation, and destruction of American slavery; ideological and political origins of American democracy; nineteenth-century urbanization and industrialization; origins and consequences of the Civil War. Offered every other year.
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This class is a survey of U.S. History since 1865 that will focus on how various groups in American society have defined themselves as citizens. Why people have collectively come together to pursue and defend a common set of interests, often to the point of violence, is the primary line of inquiry of this class. In pursuing this question, we will examine the various claims that American citizens have placed upon government, both at the state and federal level. Offered as staffing permits.
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Introduction to American history from the perspective of urbanism. Beginning with the colonial town and continuing to the megalopolis of the late twentieth century, students investigate the nature of urban life and its influence on the course of American development. Offered as staffing permits.
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A broad overview of the African and African American experience in colonial North American and the United States. This course considers how black peoples have responded to and been shaped by their experience during slavery and freedom, as well as examining the considerable economic, cultural, social and political impact of their presence in the United States. Offered annually.
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Exploration of an announced topic in United States History. Offered as staffing permits.
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This course charts the rise of protest in the United States, paying particular attention to the Civil War Era. It identifies key turning points throughout the mid-19th century--temperance, abolition, suffrage, women's rights, and the labor struggle-- that transformed the meaning of freedom in the U.S. This course also seeks to identify the key tropes and strategies that unite these otherwise disparate movements. Readings will include both primary and secondary sources with many opportunities for students to conduct short primary research projects on topics of their choice.
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Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary sources—government documents, newspapers, medical and archeological records, slave narratives, film, art, theater productions, and music—this course interrogates how ideas about race and slavery were at the center of Northern culture. The course explores a range of topics from the Constitution and the Fugitive Slave Act to the first ever prison for profit in Auburn, NY and slave narratives to minstrel shows performed by working-class white immigrants and the rise of white nativism. CWES 242 and HIST 242 are cross-listed.
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A survey of the American military experience from the early colonial period to the most recent experiences in the Gulf War and Afghanistan. The course encompasses a study of the relationships and impact of warfare and military forces in the establishment, expansion, preservation and development of the United States. Emphasis is placed on the context of American warfare and how it has influenced our history and way of life. The course analyzes factors which have influenced military operations, such as strategy, tactics, organization, technology, logistics, national will, leadership and luck. Offered annually.
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An exploration of Abraham Lincoln’s life as a way to understand the many facets of the Civil War era. Students will examine Lincoln’s formative years in Kentucky and Indiana, his political and legal maneuverings in Illinois, and his presidency in Washington. How Americans have remembered Lincoln, and the ways in which his image has served a wide variety of political agendas will receive attention. Reading Lincoln’s own words will also be a major component of the class. CWES 246 and HIST 246 are cross-listed.
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An examination of the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863, involving an understanding of the major protagonists, the regional history into which they thrust themselves, a comparative history of battle at Gettysburg and elsewhere in the 19th century, and an overview of the consequences of the battle. Assignments will include readings in primary sources on the battle, outdoor forays across the Gettysburg National Military Park and adjacent sites, and a research paper on a particular aspect or personality connected with the battle. Offered every other year.
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Survey of the history of poverty and responses to poverty in America, from the colonial period to the passage of recent welfare reforms. Class focuses on three interrelated clusters of questions. Who were the poor and how have they lived? What have Americans thought about poverty? And what have been the public and private policy responses to poverty? Course has a required service-learning component. Offered as staffing permits.
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A study of the history of American ideas and the ways Americans have invoked ideological or philosophical interventions to change or protect their moral lives and cultures, whether in the form of literature, philosophical treatises, protest writings, or writings about art and architecture. Readings include primary sources by William Ames, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, William James, W.E.B. DuBois, Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Rorty and interpretive essays. Offered every other year.
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Survey of Hellenic civilization from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period. CLA 251 and HIST 251 are cross-listed. Offered every other year.
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Through an examination of sports, this course will explore some of the most significant themes in modern world or global history, such as race, gender, and class relations. Historians and other scholars (economists, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, mathematicians and many others) have been studying the field of sports and leisure seriously for at least the last four decades. In the past two plus centuries, the modern era, organized sports and leisure-time activities have formed a major source of entertainment, economic consumption, and political and personal identity for countless individuals. Sports have also played a critical role in the efforts of modern women and men to define their lives and to find places for themselves in a rapidly changing world. Students in this course will trace major developments such as the effects of urbanization, shifting gender, race, and ethnic relations, the forging of identities, and the growth and influence of consumerism in the modern era by examining and analyzing sports history.
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Exploration of an announced topic in Latin American History. Offered as staffing permits. HIST 260 and LAS 260 are cross-listed.
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Exploration of Spanish and Portuguese America from its roots in Iberia and indigenous America through three centuries of change. During the period, Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans transformed their economies and cultures and created new societies. Hist 261 and LAS 261 are cross-listed. Offered every other year.
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Survey of Latin American history from independence through the formation of national identity and the quest for modernity to dictatorship, democracy, and neoliberalism. Hist 262 and LAS 263 are cross-listed. Offered every other year.
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Major themes in Brazilian history from early Portuguese-indigenous relations, expanding frontiers, colonial society, and the development of African slavery, through nineteenth-century formation of national identity, to twentieth-century industrialization, political struggle, and cultural change. Hist 264 and LAS 264 are cross-listed. Offered as staffing permits.
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Exploration of an announced topic in African History. Offered as staffing permits.
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Study of African history from the pre-colonial era to the 1880s covering traditional societies, state formations, Africa's relationship to the world economy, and European exploration and conquest. Offered annually.
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Study of African history from the 1880s examining developments leading to the colonization of Africa, changes in African societies under colonial rule, African responses to colonialism, African nationalist movements, and post-colonial socioeconomic and political experiments. Offered annually. AFS 272 and HIST 272 are cross-listed.
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A critical examination of the literary, filmic, historical, and memorial representations of Africa. The course traces and analyzes the politics that informs the cultural constructions of Africans as people who live in particular spaces and times. The course compares various African(ist) literary, cinematic, and historical traditions and maps out the areas of convergence and differences as far as the representation of Africa is concerned. Engaging with history as a discipline, it highlights alternative ways in which intellectuals and laypeople have laid claim to the interpretation of the African past. Finally, moving away from Euro-centrism, the course emphasizes cultural productions of African writers, film directors, and public historians to show that Africans are not just subjects of history; they are equally agents of historical representation in its various guises. AFS 262 and HIST 273 are cross-listed. Offered as staffing permits.
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Exploration of the evolution, links, and applications of black thought in the Atlantic World. Efforts toward political, economic, and social change in the African Diaspora are examined through the lenses of various ideologies and historical contexts, such as black emancipation and nationalist movements, black and African feminism, and global expansion of hip hop culture. Students conduct extensive analysis and discussion of oral traditions and primary writings, stretching from Sundiata to C. L. R. James, Sojourner Truth to Franz Fanon, and Frederick Douglass to Angela Davis. AFS 331 and HIST 274 are cross-listed. Offered every other year.
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Study of Islamic technology, as the set of arts and crafts that impart a distinctive atmosphere to the predominantly Muslim societies of the Middle East and North Africa. Concentrates on technologies that contribute strongly to the particular qualities associated with life in the Muslim world. Offered as staffing permits.
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This introductory course examines the myriad ways in which historical categories of identity were constructed within the cultural contexts of the Islamic world. Global and comparative in perspective, this course provides a comprehensive historical survey, ranging in geographical scope from Arabia to the Americas. Its temporal scope is similarly expansive, drawing on primary and secondary sources from Late Antiquity onward. The course is structured around multiple interpretive frameworks such as theories of identity and alterity, classification schemes, global diasporas, slavery and the law, and the discourse of rights. By taking an historical perspective, this course offers a unique opportunity to explore the roots of contemporary issues of identity formation.
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Exploration of an announced topic in Comparative History. Offered as staffing permits.
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Course introduces majors to the techniques of historical investigation, considers the nature of history, and examines the relation of history to other fields of study. Prerequisite: Two courses in history. Offered annually.
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Topics covered begin with the origins of history-writing in Herodotus, Xenophon and Thucydides and continue to the post-Enlightenment models of deconstruction, environmental history, and the ‘clash of civilizations.’ Students will address four basic questions: What is history? How have ‘the great historians’ gone about the task of choosing what to write about the past? What are the literary genres they have adopted? Can we ever get at the truth of history? Offered as staffing permits.
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Exploration of an announced topic in European History. Offered as staffing permits.
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his course examines how physicians throughout the British and American empires in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries depended upon populations of dispossessed people of color in Africa, the Caribbean, the American South, India, Latin America, and other parts of the world to advance new theories about the cause of disease transmission. CWES 305 and HIST 305 are cross-listed.
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A study of the Italian City-states of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This course examines the evolution of the city-states of northern and central Italy from the ninth through the seventeenth centuries. The purpose of the course is to compare political, social, economic and cultural systems of several city-states in order to understand how the unique evolution of this area contributed to the development of modern western political theory, the rise of bourgeois society, European expansion and the ascendancy of humanism in western culture. Offered as staffing permits.
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Study of women's access to political power and their participation in politics in early modern and modern Europe. Consideration is given to different ways women exercised authority and influence and how they expressed a political voice. Includes an analysis of perceptions of politically powerful women. Offered as staffing permits.
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Survey of the period from the breakdown of Roman institutions in the West to the coming of the Black Death in 1347. Special emphasis is given to political, cultural, and social developments, including such topics as the Germanic invasions, the reign of Charlemagne, the struggle between secular rulers and the papacy, the Crusades, and the twelfth-century renaissance. Offered every other year.
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Study of the simultaneous creation of the modern British nation and the British Empire. Topics include internal colonialism in the British Isles; rise and fall of Britain’s involvement in the Atlantic Slave Trade; encounters with indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, India, and the South Pacific; geopolitical rivalries with other European powers; and the long-term impact of imperialism on modern British identity. Offered every other year.
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Study of the gradual transition from the medieval to the early modern world, from ca. 1350 to the end of the sixteenth century. Course covers the cultural, political, economic, and religious changes and discusses such seminal figures as Petrarch, Machiavelli, Luther, Calvin, and Loyola. Offered every other year.
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Course begins with the sixteenth-century wars of religion and continues with a study of the Habsburgs' attempts to dominate Europe, the emergence of France to predominance, and the development of the absolute state. The cultural and social impact of those political changes form a central part of the class. Offered every other year.
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Intensive analysis of the origins and implications of the French Revolution. Course explores the differing aspirations of the nobles and peasants, lawyers and artisans, clerics and women, soldiers and philosophers whose world was transformed during the revolutionary decades. Students assess diverse interpretations of the revolution's causes and its consequences for the development of modern political culture. Offered as staffing permits.
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In-depth analysis of the history of nineteenth-century Europe. Course follows political, economic, cultural, and social developments in Europe beginning with the Ancien Regime and the French Revolution. Focus is on the transformations in the nineteenth century that brought Europe and much of the world into the modern era. Topics include the industrial revolution, Napoleon, political ideologies, the creation of new social classes, and scientific and medical revolutions. Course emphasizes the differences between the world before 1789 and the world in which we live today. Offered every other year.
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Period from the Paris Commune of 1871 to the settlement of the Great War in 1919. Course explores transformations in European economies, states, foreign relations, society, and thought that formed the backdrop for the Great War.
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Studies of selected aspects of European history from the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 to the end of the Second World War in 1945. Offered every other year.
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Perspectives on postwar Europe: reconstruction, de-Nazification, de-Stalinization, the end of the colonial empires, nationalism and European integration, and the role of the state and of religion, with the reflection of these in culture and society. Offered every other year.
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Exploration of an announced topic in Asian History. Offered as staffing permits.
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Examination of Japanese history from the 1600s to today using gender as the main category of analysis. Course explores connections between gender constructions(of proper masculine and feminine roles)and the modernizing process. Topics and themes include class differences, religious attitudes, political participation, sexual orientation, legal rights, militarism, educational and employment opportunities, participation in sports and the arts, and the role of the family. Offered every other year.
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Study of early modern Japan beginning with mid-sixteenth century civil war and unification and ending with the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868. Emphasis is on the social, cultural, and political transformations during this extended period of peace and relative isolation. Encounter samurai, geisha, kabuki actors, rebellious peasants, wealthy merchants, Confucian scholars, and more. Offered every other year.
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Offered as staffing permits.
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Survey of the history of the Ottoman Empire. Topics include the arrival of the first Turks in Anatolia; origins of the Ottoman ghazi warriors; Ottoman conquests in Eastern Europe, South-west Asia, and North Africa; government, religion, and socio-economic aspects of daily life and material culture. Concludes with the demise of the Ottoman Empire: the Tanzimat (rejuvenation period); the "Eastern Question;" and the onset of the nationalist movements that frame the Middle East of today. Offered annually.
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. History of the Austrian Empire from its rise in the late medieval and early modern period until its demise at the end of the First World War. The course looks at many dimensions of this sprawling, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic state, which was for long periods of its history a European and even global power. In particular, the course looks at the construction of the empire, its ability to adapt to the pressures of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, its evolution in the nineteenth century, its dissolution in the twentieth century, and its legacies for contemporary Europe.
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Determining and applying law goes far beyond judicial decisions of which laws are relevant for a particular case. Course will consider how culture, politics, economics, and other forces have shaped the law, and have been shaped by the law, in order to better understand how the law actually works. By examining a spectrum from sensational murder cases to routine legislation, this course explores the law's power to shape the lives and thinking of ordinary Americans. Offered every other year.
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Course traces America's major social, religious, artistic, and philosophical movements and their immediate and long-range impact on American life and culture, beginning with the American Revolution to the Civil War. Offered as staffing permits.
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Course traces America's major social, religious, artistic, and philosophical movements and their immediate and long-range impact on American life and culture, beginning with the Civil War to the present. Offered as staffing permits.
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Explores geographical regions from the Great Lakes to the South American pampas beyond the effective control of Spanish, Portuguese, British, or French empires or early nation states. Often transitional environmental zones, ecological and human variables shaped these spaces of ethnic, cultural, and economic exchange, where competing spheres of indigenous and European influence overlapped. The histories of these places have often been memorialized and mythologized in the development of national identities. Offered as staffing permits.
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Romantic legends of the Old South and the Reconstruction era serve as a point of departure for the entire class. Exploring the origins and development of a slave system, and the ways that human bondage infused all aspects of Southern life is the dominant line of inquiry for the first half of the class. How Southerners of all backgrounds came to grips with Union victory, emancipation, and military occupation after Appomattox is the primary line of investigation for the second half of the class. Offered every other year.
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Exploration of an announced topic in United States History. Offered as staffing permits.
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Examination of the colonization of North American from ca. 1500-1750, with emphasis on the European-Indian encounter, the origins of slavery, and comparative analysis of family, gender, and labor relations. Students also study provincial American culture from different regional perspectives and within a wider British-Atlantic world. Offered every other year.
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Examination of the origins, conduct, and results of the American Revolution, from ca. 1750-1790. Emphasis is on the social and cultural transformation of American life and the political ideology of the revolutionaries. War for Independence is explored from the perspectives of soldiers, civilians, women, African Americans, loyalists, and Indians. Offered every other year.
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Course covers the period from the 1790s to the Mexican War and explores currents of American national life under such influences as Jefferson's agrarian republicanism, the emergence of liberal capitalism, and the democratic movements of the Jacksonian period. Attention is paid to slavery and sectionalism. Offered every other year.
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The trauma of America from the end of the Mexican War to Appomattox, moral judgments in history, political culture, economic interests, diplomacy, and war. Offered every other year.
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Comparative study of slave systems, enslaved peoples, and emancipation in the Atlantic world. This course examines processes of slavery, resistance, and emancipation in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas from the 1500s to today. The course analyzes the effectiveness of emancipations and conclude by heightening awareness of ongoing slavery in Sudan and other countries. Offered every other year.
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Focus is primarily on the major political, economic, and social developments in the U.S. from about 1900 to 1945. Some attention is given to the role of the U.S. in the world during this period. Offered every other year.
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Examination of major political, economic, and social developments in the U.S. since 1945, including demands made on the U.S. as a leading world power. Offered every other year.
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This course will explore the twentieth-century African-American struggle for equal rights. Special attention will be paid to the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, the role of women, young people & college students in the movement, the relationship between legal equality and economic justice, black power, the connections between the Cold War and domestic civil rights campaigns, the “long civil rights movement,¿? and the relationship between past inequalities and contemporary policies. Offered every other year.
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Study of the experiences of women and men during the Civil War era (app. 1840-1870s), with particular attention given to the following questions: How did the public role of women evolve during these decades? How did the experiences of women and men vary according to race, class, condition of servitude and location? How did the war illuminate or challenge existing gender roles? How did the military experiences of the war shape notions of masculinity? Offered as staffing permits. CWES 352 and HIST 352 are cross-listed.
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Exploration of an announced topic in Latin American History. Offered as staffing permits. HIST 360 and LAS 360 are cross-listed.
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Study of the background, precursor movements, participants, events, and outcome of the violent social revolution; that swept the Mexican countryside between 1910 and 1917. Hist 361 and LAS 361 are cross-listed. Offered every other year.
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The United States and Latin America since 1898. This course examines the evolution of U.S. policy toward Latin America, identifying the historical developments that have shaped that policy. It also investigates the effects these policies have had in the region and the ways in which Latin Americans have reacted to them. While the course centers on traditional diplomatic history in its orientation, it also examines interactions among non-state actors and the broader cultural and social dimensions of international relations. Offered as staffing permits.
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Intensive study of Brazilian history with an emphasis on the creation of social difference, the formation of concepts of race and ethnicity, and the construction of colonial, imperial, and national identities. Exploring historiographical trends and recent scholarship, the course emphasizes topics such as early contact, colonial society, Indian and African slavery, immigration, religion and culture, and indigenism. Hist 364 and LAS 364 are cross-listed. Offered as staffing permits.
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Exploration of an announced topic in African History. Offered as staffing permits.
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Study of the evolution of the interactions between people and the environment in Africa. Using the early 19th century as its starting point, the course examines the ways in which Africans (and others) not only managed Africa’s natural resources over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries and how they perceived the ecological system around those resources, but also explores various struggles to control the environment in Africa. The course equally inquires into the ways in which outsiders have created and propagated myths regarding Africans in connections with their environments. Offered as staffing permits.
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Study of the impact of European colonial rule on African cultures, African responses to colonialism, and the impact of the colonial experience on contemporary African nations. Course also examine various methods of African resistance to colonial rule. Offered as staffing permits. AFS 373 and HIST 373 are cross-listed.
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A critical examination of the evolution of foreign aid provision and volunteering in Africa. The course analyzes the international and transnational politics of assisting Africans in their quests for a better life. The course also examines the various ways in which aid provision and volunteering have constructed Africa as the ultimate “paradigm of difference.¿? It assesses the impact of aid and volunteering on African societies and investigates the possibility of alternative approaches to aid provision. The course finally explores how Africans have historically been instrumental in the development/modernization of their respective societies. AFS 375 and HIST 375 are cross-listed. Offered as staffing permits.
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A critical examination of the rise and evolution of the shared, but also contested, history between France and the nation-states that once formed France’s empire in Africa south of the Sahara. The course will begin by briefly introducing the French colonial expansion in Africa in the late 19th century and mapping out its geographic contours. Offered as staffing permits. AFS 376 and HIST 376 are cross-listed.
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Traces US relations with the Middle East from the earliest encounters in the eighteenth century with the Barbary States of North Africa to American involvement in the Iranian Revolution. We examine the symbiotic relationship of Islamo-Christian civilization from 600 C.E. until today, the irony of American slavery in the Middle East, the impact of European Orientalism on American views, Holy Land fantasy and missionary ventures, the impact of the Cold War on American policies regarding the Middle East, the quest for control of oil, the effects of the Iranian Revolution, and the development of the Muslim community in America. Offered as staffing permits.
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This course provides an extensive survey of the military, economic, social, and political history of the early Islamic conquests from the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661 CE) onwards. The course examines historical and historiographical topics including seventh-century conditions, causes of expansion, geography of warfare, and battle narratives. This course covers the conquest of Arabia, the incorporation of former Byzantine provinces, the expansion into the northern Mesopotamian frontier, and the fall of the Sasanian Empire.
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Exploration of an announced topic in Comparative History. Offered as staffing permits.
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Offered as staffing permits.
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Dwight Eisenhower's career as a soldier, educator and statesman will be examined, with primary attention focused on his popular and consequential presidency. Exploring how Ike responded to challenges and how is actions as president reflected his sensitivity to moral issues as well as the practical demands of politics, managing domestic affairs, and national security is a central concern of this seminar. We will attempt to evaluate the Eisenhower presidency in the context of the history of the modern presidency, to make some judgments about the validity of the popular presidential "ratings" systems. The course will be organized primarily around readings in primary and secondary sources, and in the discussion of papers. Offered every other year.
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The purpose of this seminar is to familiarize senior history majors with the debate about the decline of the European colonial empires in Africa. Basically, the course will provide perspectives for the assessment of the years 1940-1960 in Africa. The wider goal is to acquaint students with both European and African conditions which contributed to the rise of African anti-colonial sentiments and the ultimate forcing of the major colonial powers out of Africa. The heart of the seminar is the research paper. Students will choose one of two topics: whether or not (a) World War II served as a catalyst not a cause of the independence movements in Africa; (b) Africa's economic dependency on the former colonial powers has had the effect of limiting political independence in most African nations. For his/her topic each student will select an African country and leader. Offered every other year.
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In this seminar students will study the transformations in political ideology, social structure, and cultural values that accompanied American independence during the Revolutionary Era. Seminar participants will compare the meaning of independence for some of the leading figures of the Revolution - including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams - as well as the ways in which commonfolk - husbands and wives, slaves, working people - experienced independence in their everyday lives. Offered as staffing permits.
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Senior research seminar on Nazism which is a shorthand term for National Socialism. National Socialism, the German variety of Fascism, dominated that country from 1933 to 1945. Students in the seminar will consider the origins, development, and effects of Nazism. In particular, students will examine the Nazi seizure of power, Nazi domestic and foreign policy, the Second World War, and the Holocaust. In addition students will look at major figures such as Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich, but will also read and discuss broader social and cultural issues. These issues will involve a look at life inside the Third Reich and how Nazism affected women, minorities and the young. Offered every other year.
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This course explores the American experience during the second World War. It will examine the origins of the war, the major military theaters, and the home front. Special attention will be paid to such themes as the state and society, race, and gender in context of a nation at war. Offered every other year.
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Senior seminar exploring the events, ideas, individual experiences and long-term significance of the Pacific War. Emphasis is on the conflict and its human impact through events that include the 1931 Manchurian Incident, the Rape of Nanjing and war with China, Pearl Harbor, expansion into Southeast Asia, and the dropping of the atom bombs. Offered every other year.
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Seminar that takes a comparative approach to studying frontier regions of the Americas. Topics include colliding empires, inter-ethnic conflict and interdependence, shifting alliances, economic ties, social development, and cultural exchange and transformation. We will explore the concept of the frontier in the historiography, from Frederick Jackson Turner to recent re-evaluations. Offered as staffing permits.
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This seminar examines how law and race have intersected in US history. The course will begin with an examination of legal scholarship from an interdisciplinary field, Law and Society in order to introduce students to basic legal concepts and schools of thought such as positive law, critical legal studies, and critical race theory. The goal is for students to understand the cultural, political, and social forces that have acted on the law, and vice versa, as well as understanding the complex ways in which law and race have shaped one another. After this introduction, the seminar will explore these theories in historical contexts of legal case studies, legislation, and rights discourse. Students will conduct preliminary research in the same sets of microfilmed and local court records in order to construct models of how historians might interpret legal sources, which will help prepare them for their final paper. Their own research paper will based on original research in primary sources, and clearly link that research with the appropriate historiographical and legal schools of thought. Offered every other year.
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The seminar will focus senior history majors on one major problem of the Civil War through primary and secondary sources and will help each student to create an original research paper that will emulate articles published in the scholarly press. The major problem considered by the seminar will change from year to year. Offered every other year.
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Senior research seminar on Pennsylvania's original inhabitants, from prehistory through twentieth century. Course materials focus on the colonial era, c. 1680-1800, with examination of fur trade, religion, diplomacy, captivity, and warfare. Native and colonial groups studied include: Delaware, Shawnee, Iroquois, Quakers, Moravians, Scots-Irish. Offered every other year.
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The Mediterranean is a geographical and cultural space, a circuit of lands and sea linked by a shared history. This seminar will investigate the cultural and literary dynamics of Mediterranean history, concentrating on encounters between Muslims, Christians, and Jews across the "Greater Mediterranean" from the Islamic Conquests to the Reconquista. Against the template of crusades and personal ambitions, issues related to trade and commerce, socio-cultural interactions, perceptions and misperceptions, geographical accounts, travel narratives, maps, art, and theories about the role that the sea itself played in Mediterranean history, will be discussed. Offered every other year.
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Course will examine the history of letter-writing, concentrating particularly on the early modern period. We will look at the development of letter writing from the medieval to the Renaissance period, considering such famous letters as those of Petrarch (1404-1374) and those of the Paston family (1422 -1509). We will examine the conventions that correspondents used as well as their goals in writing, considering also the material aspects of letters, epistolary culture, and gender. Offered every other year.
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This seminar locates the Qur'an in its late antique context in order to fully appreciate the historical conditions that shaped it. The course examines an extensive range of scholarly approaches to scripture in higher criticism, including historical criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, and genre criticism. Since the Qur'an is the only extant primary source from which to reconstruct the history of Islam at its origins, higher criticism establishes the crucial link between life and literature in the past. While the Qur'an will be the primary focus, the comparative methods developed in this seminar are equally applicable to Judeo-Christian texts. Offered every other year.
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Senior research seminar focusing on a single historical genre: eyewitness accounts of journeys in the Americas prior to independence. From the turn of the sixteenth century on, European explorers used this traditional literary form to record their land and sea voyages in the Americas. Their texts enthralled contemporary readers with descriptions of exotic places and people. For the historian, the accounts elucidate such subjects as environmental and indigenous history, interethnic contact, cultural practices and transformations, trade, transportation, and European imperial competition. Seminar participants will write a close textual analysis and a historiography as they develop an original interpretation of one of these classic texts. Offered every other year.
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A comparative and transnational examination of the process of decolonization as lived and viewed from the perspective of the Global South in the 20th century. This is a seminar that will familiarize senior history majors with the debates about the decline of the European colonial empires in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and beyond. Beside such outlook on the historiography on decolonization, the course will provide perspectives for the assessment of the years 1940-1994 in the Global South. What were the causes of the collapse of European empires? Did the decline of formal imperialism signal the establishment of symmetrical relations between former colonizers and the former colonial subjects? What were the consequences and legacies of decolonization? What contributions did the peoples of the Global South make to the construction of the post-1945 world and its global governance? Was the creation of distinct independent nation-states in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean the only possible outcome of the politics of decolonization? These and other questions will be explored in this course.
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A senior seminar exploring the history of enslaved individuals who sought freedom through escape, from the American revolutionary era through the Civil War, and to consider the degree to which their efforts shaped the development of the United States. We will examine escaping slaves’ strategies and motivations; how variables such as gender posed specific challenges; the role of free Black and white abolitionists networks; and the societal and legal frameworks that escapees challenged. Primary sources, scholarly readings, and class discussions will guide our exploration of these narratives of resistance and resilience.
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Individualized tutorial counting toward the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded A-F
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Individualized tutorial counting toward the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded S/U
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Individualized tutorial not counting in the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded A-F
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Individualized tutorial not counting in the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded S/U
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Individualized research counting toward the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded A-F
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Individualized research counting toward the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded S/U
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Individualized research not counting in the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded A-F
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Individualized research not counting in the minimum requirements in a major or minor graded S/U
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Internship counting toward the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded A-F
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Internship counting toward the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded S/U
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Internship not counting in the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded A-F
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Internship not counting in the minimum requirements in a major or minor, graded S/U
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Summer Internship graded A-F, counting in the minimum requirements for a major or minor only with written permission filed in the Registrar's Office.
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Summer Internship graded S/U, counting in the minimum requirements for a major or minor only with written permission filed in the Registrar's Office
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Half credit internship, graded S/U.