Class Schedules

This course explores the history of tourism in the modern world from a global perspective. We will consider how tourists engaged with transnational processes like world war, decolonization, and global economic shifts that allowed for the slow and uneven democratization of leisure travel over the course of the twentieth century. We will also investigate the ways that racism and other forms of discrimination have become deeply embedded in global travel networks and infrastructure. Over the course of the semester we will "visit" a wide range of locales, traveling from the United States and its Pacific empire to Antigua, the Soviet Union, and Peru. As we "tour" the globe, we will contemplate a range of transportation options, including the role that cars, trains, and planes played in shaping the evolution of global tourism. Meets the global and/or comparative requirement for the history major and can count towards the "Colonization and Empire," "Race and Indigeneity," or "Global/Comparative" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course surveys the political, economic, and cultural development of the peoples of the ancient Greek world from the late Bronze Age through the Hellenistic era. Students will hone their critical thinking skills while working with translations of ancient literature, archaeological remains and works of art. The basic structure of the course is chronological, but we will examine major themes across time and space, which may include the interaction between physical landscape and historical change; rule by the one, the few and the many; the nature and development of literary and artistic genres; the economic, military, and/or cultural dimensions of empire; or the intersections of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, slave/free status and civic identity in the Greek world.  Meets History Department pre-1800 requirement.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In the Plan of Union prepared during the 1754 "Albany Convention," Anglo-American colonists met to consider uniting as a loose confederation for their common defense and to ally with the Iroquois confederacy. That plan failed, but a later experiment in unity succeeded when the united colonies declared independence. Nevertheless, social, cultural, and ideological differences persisted, and the union formed in 1776 was tried and tested before finally fracturing with the secession of South Carolina, precipitating the Civil War. In the intervening years, Americans grappled with how they should govern themselves, who should be included in the polity, and how society should be organized. Reformers considered the controversial issues of women's rights, the role of Native Americans within the US, and the place of slavery in a nation founded on the precept that "All men are created equal." This course covers the periods of the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the early national and antebellum periods, before concluding with the Civil War. It also considers the global causes and consequences of the war and the rise of the new United States. We will also analyze the construction of the myth and historical memory of Alexander Hamilton, the founding father who has captured the imagination of people in the modern U.S.  Through a study of the recent biography of Hamilton along with the music and stage production of Hamilton, we will consider both the biographical and mythical Alexander Hamilton in order to understand his era and our own. Can count towards "Colonization and Empire," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "Law and Social Justice," or "North America" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course examines the history of childhood and youth in the United States. The historical voices and perspectives of childhood that we study will pay close attention to the significance of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, time periods, and social settings. Some questions we will consider relevant to the study of history: Do children have agency? What is the role of children as subjects in history? How has childhood been socially and historically constructed? Why are children such galvanizing social and political symbols? How is identity shaped in childhood and what impact does this have on adult society at certain historical moments? Meets the post-1800 requirement, and can count towards "Gender," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "North America" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This is an introductory course focused on African-American history and the places it inspired. We will examine the ideological, political, economic, and cultural make-up of the Black musical traditions in the United States. The basic themes of this course will include: Black geographies; historiography; visual art and design; African American literature; the spatial revolution; and Afrofuturism. Fields: Africa and Atlantic World, North America, Race and Indigeneity, Public History.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This is an introductory course focused on African-American history and the music it inspired. We will examine the ideological, political, economic, and cultural make-up of the Black musical traditions in the United States. The basic themes of this course will include: musicology; historiography; visual art and design; Gospel traditions; Blues Legacies; the Jazz revolution; and Hip Hop transformations. Fields: Africa and Atlantic World, North America, Race and Indigeneity, Public History.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Revolutions in the United States and Haiti transformed the late eighteenth-century Atlantic World. The emerging new republics influenced each other as both nations wrestled with the meanings of race and citizenship. How did revolutionary-era Haitian's politics, history, and cultures influence the early United States? How have North Americans ascribed meaning to the Haitian revolution? In U.S. politics and popular opinion, North Americans have exoticized Haiti by emphasizing voodoo religion, “octoroon” women, and spicy Creole cuisine. Later US history focuses on the nation’s invasions and influence on Haiti, especially in the 20th century. But connections between the two mattered long before that. In this course students will examine primary sources, including political speech, food, fiction, and expressive culture, to explore how the reverberations of the Haitian Revolution shaped the early United States. Fields: Africa and Atlantic World, Colonization and Empire, Race and Indigeneity, Global/Comparative.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What constitutes a disaster in human history, and who decides this? How have explanations for and responses to calamity changed over time and place? What does it mean to describe a disaster as natural, social, or political? How have disasters intersected with racial and socioeconomic inequalities, colonialism and capitalism? In this course, we will consider what historians bring to the table in the growing, interdisciplinary field of disaster studies, surveying select case studies of disaster from across time and around the world that include plague, fire, earthquakes, hurricanes, revolutions, warfare and pollution. We will also consider how writing and disaster converge: Can trauma be captured in prose, and can it be useful to approach our own writing as catastrophic? Fields: Global and Comparative, Environment, Law and Social Justice.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

A study of the history of Africa before 1800, this course covers the major themes relating to the development of African societies and cultures from the earliest times. Students will engage with themes of state-building, trade and religion as catalysts for change and learn how historians have reconstructed the history of early Africa. This course will provide students with knowledge of specific case studies from North, South, East, West, and Central Africa. This course is suitable for first-year students. (4 credits)

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course examines Native history to 1871 -- the year that Congress unilaterally chose to stop making treaties with Native nations -- by considering the multifaceted histories and experiences of Native people in what is now the United States. By looking at Native interactions with (and resistance to) Spanish, French, British, and American explorers, settlers, missionaries, militaries, and government officials, this course argues that Native history is essential to understanding past as well as present issues. Can count towards "Colonization and Empire," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "Law and Social Justice," and or "North America" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

People have always had to contend with the natural world, but only recently have historians begun to explore the changing relationships between people and their environment over time. In this course, we will examine the variety of ways that people in North America have shaped the environment, as well as how they have used, labored in, abused, conserved, protected, rearranged, polluted, cleaned, and thought about it. In addition, we will explore how various characteristics of the natural world have affected the broad patterns of human society, sometimes harming or hindering life and other times enabling rapid development and expansion. By bringing nature into the study of human history and the human past into the study of nature, we will begin to see the connections and interdependencies between the two that are often overlooked. Meets History's post-1800 requirement, and can count towards "Environment," or "Law and Social Justice," or "North America" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This class examines the Atlantic commerce in enslaved Africans that took place between 1500 and 1800. We will explore, among other topics, transatlantic commerce, the process of turning captives into commodities, the gendered dimensions of the slave trade, onboard experiences, resistance to the trade, Africans in the Americas, and the abolitionist movement on both sides of the Atlantic. Students will read a range of primary and secondary sources in order to gain a more complex understanding of the trade and how it changed over time. Meets the global and/or comparative history requirement. Meets the pre-1800 requirement, and can count towards "Colonization and Empire," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "Law and Social Justice," or "Africa & Atlantic World" fields within the History major.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course examines the Russian empire (1689-1917) within a global historical narrative. We will explore the formation and collapse of the Russian empire, paying special attention to its role within larger world developments and the experience of the diverse peoples that populated its territory. Considering external and internal processes, we will examine the numerous challenges that the Russian Empire faced throughout two and a half centuries. Of particular significance are its relationship with the West, Russia's imperialism, and the issues of modernization. Can count towards History's "Europe" and "pre-1800" and "Race/Indigeneity" and "Colonization/Empire" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Through the study of Russian films starting from the silent era up to the present day, the course will explore how storytelling in cinema differs from that in history and fiction, as well as how power relations, technology, and aesthetics shaped cinematic depictions of major historical events in Russia and the Soviet Union, from medieval times to post-Soviet era. Students will view and analyze films that are among the essential Russian contributions to world cinema, by directors including Eisenstein, Tarkovsky, Mikhalkov, and Sokurov. Course readings will draw upon film theory, history, fiction, and memoirs. We will use our readings to create a conceptual framework for examining the films as narratives about real events, as vehicles of propaganda, and as imaginative works of art. In addition to attending weekly film screenings and discussing the films and readings in class, students will give presentations on topics of their choice arranged in consultation with the instructor. Can count towards History's "Europe" field.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

After a brief but essential global history of drugs, this course will focus primarily on the 20th century to the present. We will examine histories of substance use and abuse, temperance and prohibition, the "War on Drugs," the shifting concept of addiction as a moral failing to addiction as a treatable disease, as well as study the history of the recovery movement and harm reduction. This course is not intended to be an exhaustive, comprehensive history of the subject-but it will provide you with a solid base from which to explore other aspects of this fascinating and contentious aspect of human history. Meets the post-1800 requirement, and can count towards "Gender," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "Law and Social Justice," or "North America" fields.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course presents an historical overview of the interaction between artists, the state, and national identity in Latin America. After an introduction to the import of images to crafting collective identities during the colonial era and the 19th century, we will focus on the 20th century. Topics to be discussed include the depiction of race, allegorical landscapes and architectures, the art of revolution, and countercultures. Multiple genres will be explored with an emphasis on the visual arts, architecture, and popular music. Meets the post-1800 requirement, and can count towards "Latin American/Caribbean" field.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This advanced course is required for majors. It examines the various forms of analysis used by historians through a study of different kinds of historical texts and sources. It provides an opportunity for students to develop the skills and habits of thinking essential to practicing the discipline of history. This course invites students to address some of the myriad questions and controversies that surround such historical concepts as "objectivity," "subjectivity," "truth," "epistemology," and thereby to develop a "philosophy" of history. At the same time, it stresses the acquisition of such historical tools as the use of written, oral, computer and media sources and the development of analytical writing skills. The subject matter for study changes each year. Recent themes of the course have been memory, empires, and class formation.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this co-taught, cross-listed History and English course, we will use baseball as a lens to explore historical movements and literary genres. In the history half of the course, we will consider the past two hundred years, both in the United States and abroad, making connections between Jackie Robinson and desegregation, free agency and the labor movement, American empire and the globalization of the game, and an Indigenous women’s softball team and shifting gender roles in Yaxuna, Mexico. In the literary half of the course, we will read and discuss writers who have used the game to better understand their personal experiences and the world around them. Readings may include fiction, essays, narrative profiles, comic book memoirs, labor histories, performance studies analyses, and oral history projects, by a wide variety of authors. We'll also go to Target Field to see a Twins game. By the end of the semester, students will have completed a personal chapbook of four short baseball essays, both literary and historical. Meets the post-1800 requirement and the Global and Comparative fields. Appropriate for first-year students.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Macalester College sits on the homelands of the Dakota people. But what’s the history of the land Macalester occupies? Whose stories are told -- and who gets to tell these stories? How do language, culture, and thought shape the ways we understand the land and our relationships with it? This course will center and amplify these narratives by focusing on the past, present, and future uses of the Katharine Ordway Natural History Study Area (commonly called the Ordway Field Station) in order to help students understand the Indigenous history of Minnesota and the Twin Cities, as well as Indigenous ways of knowing and understanding non-human nature. Fields: Environment, Public History, Race and Indigeneity, North America.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores the dynamic and diverse cultures and people of the Maghreb – North Africa. From Carthage and other indigenous empires of North Africa, through early Christian centuries, to the arrival of Islam and its various expressions, to the “golden period” when North Africa and Spain came together, in Al-Andalusia; one of the greatest chapters of human creativity and cooperation. We conclude c.1492, and the beginning of the early modern period in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Fields: Africa and Atlantic World, Global and Comparative. Offered occasionally.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Arms race! Space race! Farm Race! Following the end of the Second World War, scientists found themselves at the center of the Cold War. Both national leaders and ordinary citizens relied on their expertise to generate new scientific knowledge and develop innovative technologies that would elevate their countries above their ideological adversaries. Yet, the Cold War was not solely a period of competition. While science became deeply entangled in international rivalries, this era also saw significant growth in transnational collaboration among scientists. This course will explore the history of Cold War scientific competition and cooperation, with a particular focus on the Soviet Union and the United States. Meets the post-1800 requirement and the Global and Comparative fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Covering the period from pre-modern times to the twenty-first century, this course places food at the center of the world history narrative. It explores the transnational histories of food commodities such as rice, tomatoes, bananas, and corn while using food as a lens to examine political, economic, cultural, and gender history, as well as the history of science and foreign affairs. The course is based on the premise that food—from cultivation to consumption—permeates every aspect of human life and, therefore, serves as a valuable framework for understanding complex historical processes such as industrialization, globalization, and cross-cultural and transnational exchange. Ultimately, the course aims to introduce students to food as a powerful analytical tool for interpreting global historical developments. Meets the pre-1800 requirement and the Global/Comparative and Environment fields. Offered occasionally.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course focuses on dance in the United States from the early 20th century to today with attention to how it has interacted with the nation’s cultural transformations. The historical study of dance as an embodied art form inevitably lends itself to an intersectional examination of how gender, race, ethnicity, and class experiences continually reflect and shape individual as well as collective identities. We will examine dance forms that have grown in and outside of concert halls, discuss seminal texts in dance and cultural studies, analyze dance videos and live performances, and write short papers that critically consider the relationship between the histories of American dance and culture over the last century. Frequency: Every other year.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This course explores the rise, expansion, and challenges of China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644–1912). Founded by the Manchus, a non-Han ruling elite, the Qing state governed a vast and diverse empire through a combination of military prowess, bureaucratic sophistication, and strategic incorporation of Han Chinese traditions. Topics include Qing government institutions, the complexities of Manchu and Han racial identity, early encounters with Westerners, and the transformative role of opium in shaping China’s 19th-century crises. Through primary sources and historical scholarship, students will examine how the Qing navigated internal stability and external pressures, setting the stage for modern China's turbulent transformations. Fields: Colonization and Empire, Race and Indigeneity, Global/Comparative. Offered occasionally.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The senior seminar is taught every fall on themes that cross chronological and geographic lines. Past themes have included Memory, Migration, Gender and Micro-History.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

How can history help us understand the landscape of global public health today? This history-of-the-present course will help you situate contemporary global health topics in a broader historical perspective and show you how skills from the historian's toolkit can be instrumental in helping build better public health systems. Global Health Histories is organized around three topic-focused units that vary by semester. Possible topics include: pandemics; disease control and eradication; racism and health; vaccines and vaccine hesitancy; health and colonialism; international health organizations; family and child health; and the intersections between public health and eugenics and/or population control. Community and Global Health concentrators and students majoring in the natural sciences are very welcome in this course, including folks without previous history experience. For History majors, this course meets the global and/or comparative requirement, the post-1800 requirement, and can count towards the following fields: "Race and Indigeneity;" or "Law and Social Justice," or "Global/Comparative."

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course offers a general survey of the complex and heterogeneous region we somewhat reductively term Latin America. It follows a roughly chronological approach, beginning with the eve of encounter and continuing through the contemporary era. Discussions will consider themes such as the institution and legacy of colonialism, the search for new national identities, and the onset of modern racial and political strife. The course will emphasize the import of global economic, political, and cultural trends on the formation of the region. Meets the global and/or comparative history requirement. Can count towards "Colonization and Empire," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "Latin American/Caribbean" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The course examines the post-World War II Civil Rights Movement led by African Americans in the United States.  In the class, students will analyze key people, issues, events, and debates within movement history, including, but not limited to, gender and leadership; struggles for civil rights in the south, west, and urban north; the impact of the Cold War on race relations; student activism; movement strategies; and the emergence of Black Power.  Throughout the semester, students will read a wide variety of primary and secondary texts to illuminate the activities and life stories of individual participants as well as the broad historical forces that characterized this long era of insurgency.   Can count towards "Gender," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "Law and Social Justice," or "North America" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course is designed to introduce students to the history of Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It examines major themes relating to change in the colonial period such as European conquest and imperialism, the development of the colonial economy, African responses to colonialism and the rise of nationalist movements that stimulated the movement towards independence. Students will examine these themes by applying them to case studies of specific geographic regions of the continent. Meets the post-1800 requirement, and can count towards "Colonization and Empire," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "Law and Social Justice" or "Africa & Atlantic World" fields. This course is appropriate for first years.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Religion and Law in Africa is an intermediate cross-listed history and religion course designed to teach students how to think like historians and assess how the legal systems of indigenous African societies have been shaped by their respective religions and cosmologies. This course also explores how Arab migration and European colonization in different parts of Africa imposed new legal systems that were influenced by either Islam or Christianity. The major themes of this class include African agency, indigenous African forms of knowledge and periodization, the interconnectedness of religious, legislative, and judicial facets of African societies, and diversity among African regions, societies, ethnic groups, religions, and languages. It counts toward the Legal Studies and African Studies concentrations. For history, it meets either the pre-1800 or post-1800 requirement and can count towards the "Law & Social Justice," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "Africa & Atlantic World" fields.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The American West is central to the construction of America's identity and popular culture.  The mythology of the American West, built on a narrow foundation of Euro-American settlement and conquest, is critical to understanding the role of the West in the national narrative of American history. Using a variety of materials, including films, art and photography, literature, and historical sources, this course will examine how writers, artists, actors, settlers, and government officials, among others, shaped the creation of the mythic West.  This course will investigate what - and who - is and is not considered part of this mythology, as well as the ways in which these constructs attempted to make sense of the diverse populations converging in the West. Can count towards "Colonization and Empire," or "Race and Indigeneity," -and or "North America" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course examines Native history since 1871, the year Congress unilaterally chose to stop making treaties with Native nations. By focusing on Native sovereignty, resistance, and the exercise of treaty rights, this course highlights histories and contemporary experiences of Native people in what is now the United States. Meets the post-1800 requirement, and can count towards "Colonization and Empire," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "Law and Social Justice," and or "North America" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

People have always had to contend with the natural world, but only recently have historians begun to explore the changing relationships between people and their environment over time. In this course, we will examine the variety of ways that people in North America have shaped the environment, as well as how they have used, labored in, abused, conserved, protected, rearranged, polluted, cleaned, and thought about it. In addition, we will explore how various characteristics of the natural world have affected the broad patterns of human society, sometimes harming or hindering life and other times enabling rapid development and expansion. By bringing nature into the study of human history and the human past into the study of nature, we will begin to see the connections and interdependencies between the two that are often overlooked. Meets History's post-1800 requirement, and can count towards "Environment," or "Law and Social Justice," or "North America" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course examines the tumultuous changes that define the postwar era in U.S. society and culture. Themes of the course will vary depending on instructor. Topics may include: cultural tensions of the Cold War era, the civil rights movement and Black Power, the women-s movement, postwar prosperity, suburbanization, the Vietnam War, and the New Right. Meets the post-1800 requirement, and can count towards "Gender," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "Law and Social Justice," or "North America" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Events of the distant European past continue to shape our modern attitudes towards religion, magic and science. How did people in the sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Atlantic world use these frameworks to make sense of the world around them? In this course we will journey back to the period of the "Scientific Revolution" to investigate how and why people began to distinguish sharply between the three systems. Who lost, and who profited, from this transition? What similarities between religion, magic and science persisted? To understand this turning point, we will compare contemporaneous cases of individuals who practiced magic, science and religion and ran afoul of authorities. Their trials highlight how the three spheres began to diverge. Cases we will consider might include the 1633 trial of Galileo, and the 1663  witchcraft trial of Tempel Anneke in Germany. Meets the pre-1800 and the global and/or comparative history requirements, and can count towards "Law and Social Justice," or "Global/Comparative" fields.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, successive waves of immigration created the vibrant, multicultural Europe that we know today. New arrivals and their descendants, however, were not always welcomed with open arms. This course explores the history of these diverse communities and unpacks the prejudices that evolved to exclude them, including racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. We will also consider movements to combat discrimination in European societies as communities work together to imagine a more equitable and inclusive future. All students are welcome in this course, including first-year students and folks without previous history experience. For History majors, this course can count towards the following fields: "Race and Indigeneity" or "Law and Social Justice" or "Europe" or "Colonization and Empire".

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

A study of leading institutions and movements of nineteenth- and twentieth-century China. Major emphases include the impact of Western imperialism, intellectual and cultural changes, the transformation of peasant society through revolution, the rise of Mao Tse-Tung, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and the rise of China as a world power. Special attention will be given to China's international relations. Meets the post-1800 requirement, and can count towards "Colonization and Empire," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "Law and Social Justice," or "Asia" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What is Northern Eurasia? Who inhabited the territory of present-day Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic countries, the Caucasus, and parts of Central Asia? How did groups of diverse ethnic, religious, cultural, and economic backgrounds interact with one another? This course aims to answer these questions and explore the history of peoples and spaces in Northern Eurasia from the medieval period to the eighteenth century. Stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, Northern Eurasia has been a place of intensive cultural exchange for many centuries. During this time, various groups came into contact which resulted in trade, wars, and imperial rule. The complex history of relations among peoples is the subject of this course. Drawing on a variety of primary sources, literary works, and films, we will discuss such topics as Eurasian identities; indigenous peoples; ideas of Russianness and imperialism; the problem of state-building, and the formation of empires.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This advanced course is required for majors. It examines the various forms of analysis used by historians through a study of different kinds of historical texts and sources. It provides an opportunity for students to develop the skills and habits of thinking essential to practicing the discipline of history. This course invites students to address some of the myriad questions and controversies that surround such historical concepts as "objectivity," "subjectivity," "truth," "epistemology," and thereby to develop a "philosophy" of history. At the same time, it stresses the acquisition of such historical tools as the use of written, oral, computer and media sources and the development of analytical writing skills. The subject matter for study changes each year. Recent themes of the course have been memory, empires, and class formation.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Russia’s relations with the West often overshadow its deep connections with its eastern neighbors. From the 17th century onward, Russia - and later the Soviet Union - developed strategic approaches to control Siberia and the so-called Far East and assert its power in the Pacific, where it confronted other regional powers, such as China, Japan, and Korea. Given the current shifts in the global political order, understanding the historical connections between Russia, China, Japan, and Korea is more important than ever. This course examines the complexities of these relationships, with a particular emphasis on foreign policy. Key course themes include imperial Russian expansion into the Pacific region; colonization of indigenous populations; modernization projects (the Trans-Siberian Railway as a geopolitical tool); the clash of imperial interests in the Far East; the Russo-Japanese War; the 1917 revolution and its effect on China, Korea, and Japan; the White Movement in the Far East; the Soviet Union and Mongolia; the Pacific front during WWII; the Korean War and later relations with South and North Korea; Sino-Soviet relations in the 1960-80s; and the fragile partnerships after the fall of the Soviet Union. Fields: post-1800, Global/Comparative, Colonization and Empire.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

No river looms larger in north American history than the Mississippi, which meanders within acouple miles of Macalester’s tree-lined campus. Flowing through the geographic heart of thecontinent, the Mississippi has shaped the region’s economic, social, political, and cultural historysince before the U.S. existed. This course will examine the river’s environmental history – howthe river’s physical form has changed and been changed over time, and what those changes havemeant for people’s livelihoods and worldviews. We will dig into the geologic and geographicforces that shaped the river valley, Indigenous views of the river past and present, slavery and thecommercialization and industrialization of the river, and 20th -century stories of agriculturaldevelopment, pollution, flooding, dams and levees, and conservation. Using interdisciplinaryhistorical tools, we’ll examine case studies from the river north and south, from Itasca to NewOrleans, but with special attention to Minnesota and Midwest histories. Fields: Environment, North America, Colonization and Empire, Race and Indigeneity

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

America’s most long-lasting impact overseas has often come through environmental manipulations. This course will start in the early 20th century examining U.S. consumption of bananas, coffee, and oil and centering the people and landscapes that produced those commodities. Next, we will examine how Americans have shaped landscapes and communities overseas through warfare: we will visit battlefields and “militarized landscapes” in Normandy, Hiroshima, Korea, and Vietnam -- but also, surprisingly, in Hanford, Washington, Love Canal, New York, and hundreds of PFAS sites around the U.S. To tell global stories of American empire, we will zoom in on interwoven local ecosystems and communities, mostly overseas, often in Asia, but some within U.S. borders. We will also examine how nature shaped and often limited or foiled the U.S. “superpower.” Nature was often exploited and reconfigured, bombed and bulldozed, but it was no passive actor. Fields: Environment, Asia, Global Comparative, Colonization and Empire

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Much about the mainstream narratives of queerness and gender transgression have been determined by powerful, cis-dominated institutions, still even to this day: the media, schools, police, the law, doctors and psychiatrists. These are institutions structured by a racialized, heteronormative gender binary, and for whom trans people pose a problem to be managed. Oral history offers the possibility for queer and trans people to tell their own stories, and, in doing so, give more nuanced, complex analysis of identity, activism, and of the intersectional operations of systems of power. Oral history also makes room for the complex interplay of joy, playfulness, grief, anxiety, and connection that makes queer and trans life so valuable. In this course, students will have hands-on experience building an archive of queer and trans oral histories in the context of the pandemic and uprisings for racial justice. In this community-engaged course we will work closely with the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota, learning about oral history methodology, interview techniques, and having the opportunity to conduct oral history interviews and contribute to an online archive of queer and trans oral history. In particular, this semester, students will have the opportunity to work on an ongoing collaborative research project entitled "The Long Fire at Lake and Minnehaha," which uses oral history and archival research to grapple with the layers of history at the Lake/Minnehaha intersection in South Minneapolis, from the legacies of colonialism, to the intersecting systems of racialized capitalism that unevenly expose some members of the community to homelessness, policing, and violence, to the narratives of racialized gender that animate these struggles over space.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In the minds of many Americans, cities are places where nature is absent-places where nature exists only in the crevices and on the margins of spaces dominated by technology, concrete, and human artifice. This course confronts this assumption directly, drawing on the scholarship from the relatively young field of urban environmental history to uncover the deep interconnections between urban America and the natural world. Among the other things, we will examine how society has drawn upon nature to build and sustain urban growth, the implications that urban growth has for transforming ecosystems both local and distant, and how social values have guided urbanites as they have built and rearranged the world around them. Using the Twin Cities has a backdrop and constant reference point, we will attempt to understand the constantly changing ways that people, cities, and nature have shaped and reshaped one another throughout American history. Meets the History post-1800 requirement, and can count towards "Environment," or "North America" fields.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This seminar-style class examines the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality in the history of medicine and health in the U.S. Our diverse topics for study include eugenics, sexuality, midwifery, cultural/spiritual healing methods, pandemics, race- and gender-based ailments and medical experiments (such as the science and politics of the birth control pill and the infamous U.S Public Health Service syphilis experiment in Tuskegee), gender reassignment surgery, and sex-testing in the Olympics. This wide range of topics will prepare students to explore a research topic of their own choosing for a final paper. Can count towards "Gender," or "Race and Indigeneity," or "Law and Social Justice," or "North America" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the ways history is being practiced in the public sphere. We will examine a wide array of topics that fall under the rubric of public history including the study of archives, museums, and oral histories. The course may also consider historical reenactment, commemoration, digital history, and the preservation of historical sites. As we explore these topics we will be asking larger questions about who practices history, the role of audience, and the relationship between history and memory. Can count towards "Public History" field.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials