HIST 102-201
Western Civilization: 1500 to the Present
Instructor: Brian Scott Mueller (bsm@uwm.edu)
Meets: No Meeting Pattern
In his 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, political scientist Francis Fukuyama argued that Western liberal democracy, an outgrowth of the French Revolution in the late 18th century, had become “the final form of human government” with the end of the Cold War. This course will explore the evolution of liberal democracy, not only its political characteristics, but also its relationship to nation states, economics, and competing philosophies, including fascism and socialism. Yet, the emergence of liberal democracy is only part of the story. With the onset of the Reformation, religion itself evolved and expanded into new environments, eventually coming under scrutiny as Enlightenment ideas made their way across the West. Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution gave birth to modern capitalism. As Europe entered the age of nationalism, it sought to extend its footprint abroad, leading to reforms and revolts. Thus, this course will also look at how supposedly “non-Western Civilizations” influenced and impacted “Western Civilizations.” In the last century, the West has endured global conflicts, most notably World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Finally, this course will examine how Western Civilization has adapted to globalization, which both strengthens and threatens its supremacy.
HIST 131-201
World History to 1500
Instructor: Jessica L Nelson (nelso878@uwm.edu)
Meets: No Meeting Pattern
The cultures and histories of Ancient Greece, the Aztec Empire, or the Almoravid Dynasty can feel very far removed from 21st century Milwaukee. The distance between those societies and ourselves can inspire fascination (as the recent viral meme about the Roman Empire has shown) or a sense of disconnect. But the discipline of history can actually move us towards a better understanding of the daily life, decision-making, and structures of people from these long-ago times.
This course explores the history of societies from around the world, beginning with some of the earliest recorded peoples and continuing through the year 1500. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which people gave their lives meaning -- often through religion, philosophy, or relationships with the people, animals, or land around them. We will also focus on the peoples of the Americas, Africa, and Asia in order to establish a well-rounded understanding of history at a global level.
This is an asynchronous online course that will require watching pre-recorded lectures, assigned readings, and brief quizzes on both; regular short analysis papers; and analysis and discussion of primary sources through Canvas tools.
HIST 150-201
Multicultural America
Instructor: Gregory T Carter (cartergt@uwm.edu)
Meets: No Meeting Pattern
What moments from United States history shed light on racial matters in the twenty-first century? How have themes like “the invention of race,” “intimate life,” “crime and punishment,” “associations,” “education,” “politics,” and “racial democracy” shifted and remained constant?
This online course explores these themes mainly through historical analysis, but also with terminology from sociology. You’ll learn how much race in the United States has changed, but also how it has reflected its beginnings even after four hundred years.
HIST 151-201
American History: 1607 to 1877
Instructor: Lex Renda (renlex@uwm.edu)
Meets: No Meeting Pattern
For more than a century before the American Revolution, and for another century afterwards, the inhabitants of North America fought, with both words and blood, over whom to identify as the “People,” and thus deserving of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” as well as over what sort of government and other political institutions could most likely guarantee such rights. This course will chronicle the rise of representative government in the United States, looking at its myriad forms and debates over what it should look like and what powers it should possess, as well as the political parties through which those who were enfranchised sought to shape the same. We shall also examine how immigration, religious conflict, and economic change led to the development of distinctive social classes in America, how “freedom” meant different things to different people (based on race, class, religion, and gender) at different times, and how the institutions and ideas of freedom and slavery in America became intertwined. The purpose here is not to indoctrinate you; instead, it is to encourage you to conceptualize the American past as something more engaging and more complex than either a "proud story with a few shameful chapters" or a "shameful story with a few proud chapters."
HIST 152-201
American History: 1877 to the Present
Instructor: Gregory T Carter (cartergt@uwm.edu)
Meets: No Meeting Pattern
Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s 2007 survey, “What Will They Learn?” found that 7,000 college seniors, on average, got the equivalent of an “F” on their sixty-question test on United States history and institutions. In 2012, even though History is one of seven core subjects taught in college, only seventeen percent of college graduates could attribute the phrase, “government of the people, by the people, for the people” to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Yearly articles like these point to college curricula as the reason why students are not gaining the general knowledge they need to be informed adults.
History 152: American History, 1877 to Present is one of the classes at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee that attempts to give you this knowledge. On one hand, this is a lower-level elective that may remind you of high school. On the other, this may be the last time that you study U.S. History in a structured way for the rest of your life. What you do here will influence your attitudes towards others’, your understanding of contemporary issues, and what you teach your children decades from now.
HIST 249-401
The Second World War in Europe
Instructor: Winson W Chu (wchu@uwm.edu)
Meets: TR 11:30am-12:20pm
This course examines German and European history through the context of the Second World War. The class follows political, diplomatic, and military developments as well as cultural, societal, and ideological changes that were the causes and consequences of the conflict. Particular attention is paid to continuities between the First World War and the Cold War. One of the main challenges of the course is to periodize the conflict and to reconsider the different meanings of war.
Weekly topics are not in strict chronological order but are rather introduced around themes. The focus of the course is on Germany and the concepts of “total war,” resistance, and collaboration. There will be particular emphasis on the origins of the Holocaust and Germany’s murderous project to create a biological utopia in Eastern Europe. The course also covers the causes and impact of Allied victory and the mass expulsions of Germans, Poles, and other groups at the end of the war. Course readings are drawn from diverse books and articles. In addition, primary source materials are included for weekly discussion.
Important Note: This course covers war and occupation and includes the discussion of sexualized violence in physical and symbolic form. If you have any concerns about the material, please contact the professor in advance.
This course is scheduled to be in-class and discussion-based. No recordings, slides, or class notes will be posted.
Students must get physical paperback copies of the required books.
HIST 294-001
Seminar on Historical Method: Research Techniques
Instructor: Amanda I Seligman (seligman@uwm.edu)
Meets: MW 10am-11:15am
HIST 358-201
The Jews of Modern Europe: History and Culture
Instructor: Lisa D Silverman (silverld@uwm.edu)
Meets: No Meeting Pattern
In 1791, France became the first country in Europe to emancipate Jews and give them full citizenship. So why did it take so long for other European countries to offer Jews legal equality? And why does it matter? What do Sigmund Freud and Franz Kafka have in common? This course covers the history and culture of European Jews from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present. Through a combination of lectures, readings, and class discussions, you will learn about Jews in Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, England, Russia, and Poland through their experiences and responses to political, religious, socioeconomic, and cultural challenges. We will investigate their history using traditional sources as well as alternative perspectives, including books, essays, films, memoirs, letters, and other documents. Assignments include quizzes, discussions, and papers. No prior background in Jewish history or religion is expected. All course materials will be made available on Canvas or through the library.
HIST 372-001
Topics in Global History: Water and Environment in the Nuclear Age
Instructor: Nan Kim (ynkp@uwm.edu)
Meets: TR 2:30pm-3:45pm
As AI continues to drive the ongoing expansion of power demand by data centers, proponents of nuclear energy hail it as an answer to the dilemma of addressing increased energy needs alongside the imperative to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. Critics of nuclear energy, however, raise ongoing concerns about proliferation risks, the lack of scalable solutions for radioactive waste disposal, the opportunity cost of diverting resources from renewables, the social and environmental impact of uranium mining, and the vulnerability of reactors to military conflicts and natural disasters. A key issue is that almost all currently operating nuclear plants rely heavily on water for cooling to function properly. The necessary proximity of nuclear reactors to water sources affects coastal and river ecosystems, while exposing nuclear energy facilities to tsunami, storm surge, and other extreme-weather phenomena that are recurring with greater frequency and intensity. Also, despite histories of radioactive waste dumping at sea, the 21st century has brought renewed awareness of the crucial role of the ocean in supporting human society - including its capacity as an essential carbon-sink as well as the basis of the marine food chain and global water cycle. In the age of the Anthropocene, how have the risks, possibilities, and consequences of nuclear technology since 1945 transformed the human relationship with water as a natural resource necessary to sustain life? This course builds upon classic publications and recent research to critically evaluate this complex issue and related debates regarding energy transition, while exploring the nexus between nuclear history, environmental history, and STS (science and technology studies).
HIST 404-002
Topics in American History: Food as a Historical Artifact
Instructor: Arijit H Sen (sena@uwm.edu)
Meets: W 1pm-3:40pm
Historians have always faced challenges in writing histories of people whose voices are unrecorded, individuals who left few written records, and communities whose stories have been erased or ignored in the archives. This course examines foodways as an archive from which we can begin to construct new histories.
Foodways is a term that refers to the cultural, social, and economic practices related to the production and consumption of food. It encompasses the study of what people eat, why they eat it, and often involves the intersection of food with culture, traditions, and history. Food speaks to us in profound ways; it evokes memories, reflects human relationships, conveys histories, upholds cultural traditions, and symbolizes life itself. Food results from dedicated labor—someone grows it, distributes it, and prepares it. It communicates not only nourishment and love but can also signify hunger and disease. Access to food, or the lack thereof, can reveal much about politics, power dynamics, food justice, and food deserts.
Throughout the semester, we will explore and experiment with ways to study foodways as a means to construct narratives of the past and heritage of people whose experiences and contributions are not fully documented in mainstream historical accounts. While much of the course readings will focus on African American foodways, our goal is to learn from this experience and deliberate on what historical counter-methods could look like.
By examining foodways, we hope to deepen our understanding of our collective culture and traditions and envision new narratives of our past.
HIST 409-201
Causes of the Civil War, 1828-1861
Instructor: Lex Renda (renlex@uwm.edu)
Meets: No Meeting Pattern
All historians see the conflict over racial slavery as the fundamental cause of the Civil War. They often disagree with each other, however, over why and how slavery caused such divisions in American society, and they also distinguish the causes of the conflict over slavery from the reasons why that conflict resulted in a civil war, for it is not always the case that a conflict produces a war. Disagreements existed over slavery long before 1861 (when the Civil War started), and the federal union of states surviving for as long as it did with as divisive an issue as slavery is in some ways a more remarkable fact than the eventual breakdown of that union in 1861. And so, the questions we ask as historians are 1) in what ways did the institution of slavery divide Americans and how and why did the sources of those divisions change over time?, and 2) why was the political system able to confine such divisions to peaceful channels for so many years, and yet fail to confine it to such channels in the final analysis? This course, taught online, will provide you with different points of view on the answers to these questions, and in the process, enable you to come to your own conclusions.
HIST 436-001
Immigrant America Since 1880
Instructor: Rachel I Buff (rbuff@uwm.edu)
Meets: TR 1pm-2:15pm
This course gives students historical context for understanding the inflamed current political discourse on migration and the US-Mexico border. Focused on the US immigration policy that originates in Asian exclusion at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the course also explores global regimes of bordering and immigration enforcement.
HIST 436-001
Immigrant America Since 1880
Instructor: Rachel I Buff (rbuff@uwm.edu)
Meets: TR 1pm-2:15pm
This course gives students historical context for understanding the inflamed current political discourse on migration and the US-Mexico border. Focused on the US immigration policy that originates in Asian exclusion at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the course also explores global regimes of bordering and immigration enforcement.
HIST 593-201
Seminar on Historical Method: Theory and Approach
Instructor: Brian Scott Mueller (bsm@uwm.edu)
Meets: No Meeting Pattern
In 1961, historian E.H. Carr published What is History? He was hardly the first to pose this question. In fact, since Herodotus, the so-called “Father of History,” in the 5th century B.C., historians and philosophers have spilled enormous amounts of ink debating the purpose of the study of history. Unlike a traditional history course, which examines past events, this class will focus on the history of historical writing, exploring the development of history as a field of knowledge from its beginnings in the ancient world to the twenty-first century. In the process, this course will look at debates over, among other things, objectivity, description versus interpretation, revisionism, and presentism as evident in the work of academic, popular, and public historians. Thus, this course will investigate the historical writings of Herodotus, Karl Marx, Charles Beard, Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, William Appleman Williams, Howard Zinn, and James Sweet, to name just a few. This course will use historians’ own writings as primary sources to understand how the study of history has developed over the centuries in response to events both inside and outside the walls of the university.
HIST 600-001
Seminar in History: Coming & Going: U.S. Immigration & Restriction
Instructor: Kimberly L Hernandez (hernandk@uwm.edu)
Meets: TR 2:30pm-3:45pm
History 600 is a senior level topical research seminar designed for History majors and Broad Field Social Studies Education majors that not only focuses on course materials revolving around a specific topic but also results in completion of a 20+ page research paper toward fulfillment of degree requirements. Although we will have some research orientation and collaboratively aid one another in the writing process, it is expected that students enrolled in this course have already completed a historical methods course that satisfies the major’s requirements and have prior experience locating, assessing, and utilizing primary and secondary source materials, and writing research papers. Topical examination in this History 600 course explores the history of U.S. immigration policy, processing, and restriction with emphasis on the politics of immigration control during specific historical eras, each characterized by its own varying degrees of selective welcoming on the one hand and restriction on the other. If it is true that the United States is, as then senator John F. Kennedy penned in 1958, A Nation of Immigrants, it is also true that, as the late political scientist Aristide R. Zolberg published in 2006, it is A Nation by Design. Although the focus of our readings and discussion are on the politics of immigration control, areas of focus for research projects are not limited to topics of political economy. With guidance from the professor, students may focus individual research projects on varying aspects of immigration history and the immigrant experience to the United States, within the United States, and/or transnationally, between sending and receiving communities. Some topics to consider include (but are not limited to): immigration control (at the local, state, federal levels); xenophobia; immigrant labor; Red Scare(s); Cold War immigration policies and effects; refugee and asylee policies/effects; immigrant ethnic community formation and maintenance; restriction, deportation, and effects; transnational communities.
HIST 600-202
Seminar in History: Protest & Resistance in U.S. History
Instructor: Brian Scott Mueller (bsm@uwm.edu)
Meets: No Meeting Pattern
In 1857, Frederick Douglass, who had escaped slavery and later became an abolitionist, declared, “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning.” From the Boston Tea Party of the revolutionary era to Black Lives Matter in the early twenty-first century, Americans have taken Douglass’s words to heart. Ordinary citizens from across the political spectrum have repeatedly turned to protest, resistance, and dissent in an effort to transform the nation’s political, economic, and social structures. Over the course of the semester, students will research and write a paper on a protest movement of their choice. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, temperance, anti-slavery, women’s rights, civil rights, workers’ rights, white supremacy, LGBTQ+ rights, and anti-tax.