HIST 101-001Western Civilization: Ancient World to 1500 Instructor: Martha Carlin (carlin@uwm.edu) Meets: TR 1pm-2:15pm Course description: This course surveys the extraordinary arc of early Western Civilization over 4,500 years, from about 3000 BCE to 1500 CE. We will trace such landmarks as the birth of governments, massive building projects, and writing in the ancient Near East and Egypt, the soaring intellectual and cultural achievements of the Classical world, and the dramatic political, religious, technological, and artistic developments of the European Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. We will also look in depth at some individual careers and events that had long-term effects on Western history. To do all this, we will read works by modern scholars who have attempted to reconstruct pieces of the ancient and medieval past, as well as accounts written by people in antiquity and the Middle Ages who described their own world as they saw it. In addition, we will examine non-textual sources, including examples of the art, architecture, and material culture of ancient, Classical, and medieval Western Civilization.
Course objectives: This course should provide you with a good overview of Western Civilization between 3000 BCE and 1500 CE and enable you to understand the significance of broad and long-term historical patterns, and also of some outstanding individual careers and events. It should also enable you to develop important skills in:
* reading and evaluating sources carefully and critically
* identifying and analyzing a wide variety of types of evidence
* using such evidence to reconstruct and interpret the past
* combining research and analysis with thoughtful writing to produce clear, original, and persuasive arguments
HIST 150-201Multicultural America Instructor: Gregory T Carter (cartergt@uwm.edu) Meets: No Meeting Pattern Were African Americans the only group that had a civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth century? No, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, and American Indians did too. Did they ignore each other? No, they influenced each other, making each other's gains possible. Did they spend all their time complaining about racism? No, they went to school, created art, and fell in love.
This online course presents expands on the idea of the civil rights movement by including activism by other minority groups. Through documentary films and original documents, we will start with Japanese resistance to World War II’s internment camps. We’ll compare black and Mexican families’ efforts to desegregate schools. You’ll learn the difference between Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham, and Little Rock. And you’ll discover the significance of the 1973 shoot-out between Indians and the FBI at Wounded Knee.
HIST 151-201American History: 1607 to 1877 Instructor: Brian Scott Mueller (bsm@uwm.edu) Meets: No Meeting Pattern The preservation of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” required the creation of a national government, Thomas Jefferson proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Earlier in the same document, he declared it “self-evident” that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” and if denied, the “People” have the right to create a new government. Jefferson’s words inspired Britain’s North American subjects to revolt against the Crown and seek independence. For more than a century before, and for another century after, however, 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,” and what sort of government could most likely guarantee such rights.
Beginning with the arrival of the first European settlers at Jamestown in 1607, 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. Living among one another on the same lands, however, did not mean that all were accepted under the umbrella of “We the People,” as the preamble to the U.S. Constitution puts it. With each movement West, from the earliest migration to the New World until the westward expansion of the mid-nineteenth century, conflict emerged between whites, ethnic groups, Native Americans, and African slaves. This course will explore the interactions among these various groups, looking at how they viewed one another and how disputes between them came to change the role and functions of the national government.
HIST 152-201American History: 1877 to the Present Instructor: Brian Scott Mueller (bsm@uwm.edu) Meets: No Meeting Pattern A century after its founding, the future of the United States remained uncertain. War had preserved the Union, but at a tremendous cost in terms of blood and treasure. Fissures still remained. Racial, social, economic, and political issues continued to divide much of the nation. African Americans, immigrants, workers, farmers, and myriad other groups struggled to make the United States “a more perfect Union,” as declared in the preamble of the Constitution. At the same time, the footprint of the United States grew, first westward across the continent, then to the farthest corners of the globe. As “We the People” took on a new, more expansive form and the size of the republic expanded, the U.S. government had to adapt, though not without controversy. This course will explore the interactions among these various groups, looking at how they viewed one another and how disputes between them came to change the role and functions of the national government.
HIST 176-001East Asian Civilization Since 1600 Instructor: Xin Yu (yu35@uwm.edu) Meets: MW 10am-11:15am While news reports on China, Japan, North Korea, and South Korea have made East Asia a familiar geographic area, we need to study the history of East Asian civilizations to understand East Asia today. This course is a survey of East Asian history from 1600 to the present. While the course will cover major historical events in East Asian history, such as the Opium War, the Meiji Restoration, and World War II, it will focus on longer-term developments, such as modernization, state building, industrialization, colonization, and decolonization, as well as connections among the societies within East Asia and with the world. Therefore, students will critically engage a wide range of materials, including imperial edicts, case files, Confucian scholars’ treatises, workers’ diaries, peasants’ wife-sale contracts, prints, magazines, films, textbook accounts, and academic articles. In doing so, they become familiar with East Asian history and practice a variety of historical approaches: social, economic, cultural, political, transnational, and comparative history.
HIST 204-001The History of Medieval Europe: The High Middle Ages Instructor: Martha Carlin (carlin@uwm.edu) Meets: TR 10am-11:15am Course description: This course covers an exceptionally dramatic and rich period in European history, including the Crusades and the Black Death, the rebirth of scholarship and the rise of the universities, new world-changing technologies such as gunpowder and the printing press, and magnificent developments in literature, art, and music. Over the course of the semester we will survey the political, military, religious, social, economic, and cultural history of Europe in the high and late middle ages, c. 1000-1500 CE. We will also look in depth at some individual events and developments, and we will trace their long-term effects on European society. To do this, we will read works by modern scholars who have attempted to reconstruct pieces of the medieval past, as well as accounts written by medieval people who described their own world as they saw it. In addition, we will examine non-textual sources, including examples of the art, architecture, and material culture of medieval Europe.
Course objectives: This course should provide you with a good overview of European history between 1000 and 1500 CE and enable you to understand the significance both of outstanding individual careers and events, and of broad and long-term historical patterns. It should also enable you to develop important skills in:
* reading and evaluating sources carefully and critically
* identifying and analyzing a wide variety of types of evidence
* using such evidence to reconstruct and interpret the past
* combining research and analysis with thoughtful writing to produce clear, original, and persuasive arguments
HIST 229-001History of Race, Science, and Medicine in the United States Instructor: Nicole E Welk-Joerger (welkjoer@uwm.edu) Meets: MW 8:30am-9:45am This course explores the intersection of health and race in the United States, with attention to the history of the origins of racial classifications, racial disparities in medicine, and cases of resilience and resistance by the communities most affected by these developments in the history of science and medicine in the United States. Topics explored include: the history of public health with attention to cholera and yellow fever, environmental health concerns related to histories of labor and urban segregation, reproductive health, the history of medical professionalization, and the role of citizen science and activism in medicine. Scholars in this course will explore these topics, the training required of historians to study them, and will be given the opportunity to build on some of these skills with a classroom public history project related to the soon-to-be-demolished hospital building on campus.
HIST 267-001The History of Latinos in the United States Instructor: Kimberly L Hernandez (hernandk@uwm.edu) Meets: TR 11:30am-12:45pm Did you know that Spanish, rather than English or French, was the first European language spoken in what is now the United States? Or that the oldest continuously inhabited European-built city in U.S. territory—San Juan, Puerto Rico—predates Jamestown, Virginia by nearly 90 years and Plymouth, Massachusetts by about 100 years? Long before the U.S. existed as a republic Hispanic and mestizo America was well established. Latinx people have influenced and been incorporated into the cultural, historical, social, and economic fabric of the United States ever since. Why is it, then, that Latinx history is so little known? Or that many in the dominant culture have so frequently perceived Latinx people as members of an “alien” culture? This course will address these questions. We will examine how people from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and other Latin America nations have both made “America” and themselves become “American,” even while cast as racial and cultural “other.” We will also examine how U.S. Latinx have navigated the many political, cultural, social, and economic forces affecting their lives in the U.S. and how they have created new ethnic, racial, and regional identities in the process. By studying the experience of U.S. Latinx and Latin American immigrants with an eye toward patterns of citizenship and belonging, political mobilization, ethnic culture, community maturation, and socio-economic mobility, we will map out the heterogeneous mosaic of Latin American and Caribbean diasporas in the U.S.
HIST 294-201Seminar on Historical Method: Research Techniques Instructor: Brian Scott Mueller (bsm@uwm.edu) Meets: No Meeting Pattern What is it that historians do? Can anyone be a historian? Does it require a special skillset? Based on the bestseller lists for works of non-fiction, it would seem as though anyone can do history. The names atop these lists include television hosts like Bill O’Reilly and journalists such as Cokie Roberts, neither of whom are trained historians. Technology, moreover, makes it easy for everyone to access genealogical records and other digital archives with the click of a button. In reality, history is no different than medicine, engineering, or quantum physics. Doing the work of a historian requires learning the crucial skills that allow for a true understanding of the past, as opposed to just skimming the surface. This course will help you understand how historians read and conduct research by doing so yourself. Over the course of the semester, you’ll be carrying out tasks designed to help you understand historiography, methodology, research methods, and writing. This includes the use of Chicago Style citations, locating reference materials, carrying out bibliographic research using traditional and electronic resources, and the critical evaluation of primary and secondary sources. Throughout the course, you’ll be completing the steps that make up the preliminary stages undertaken before the major research and writing undertaken for a major project, as you might complete in the capstone course, History 600.
HIST 358-201The 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. So why did it take more than 100 years before all the other European countries offered 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 countries like Germany, France, Austria, 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, tracts, letters, and other documents.
HIST 364-202The Holocaust: Anti-Semitism & the Fate of Jewish People in Europe, 1933-45 Instructor: Lisa D Silverman (silverld@uwm.edu) Meets: No Meeting Pattern This course will examine the Holocaust – the term used to denote the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis and their helpers during World War II. We will analyze the steps leading to the genocide of the Jews in Europe as well as the economic, social, and political factors that enabled its implementation, focusing on the on the interaction of victims, perpetrators, and witnesses/bystanders. The course also deals thematically with literary and visual representations of the Holocaust. Readings include primary source documents, images, and eyewitness accounts, as well as secondary sources by historians and other experts in the field. Assignments include quizzes, discussions, and papers based upon primary and secondary sources.
HIST 400-002Topics in Latin American and Caribbean History: Revolutionary Movements in Modern South America Instructor: Michael Robert Gonzales (gonza326@uwm.edu) Meets: TR 10am-11:15am Topics covered include: early 20th century Anarcho-Syndicalism, Popular Unity and the Chilean Road to Socialism, and the Shining Path of Peru, among others.
HIST 402-001Topics in Asian History: Family, Gender, and Sexuality in East Asia Instructor: Xin Yu (yu35@uwm.edu) Meets: MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Familism, an opposite of individualism, has been identified as a core feature of East Asia (historical China, Japan, and Korea) to distinguish it from the rest of the world. How did the family as a unit of social organization establish its dominance in East Asian cultures? With the family at the center, did men dominate family lives and did women have agency? What constituted masculinity and femininity, and what defined manhood and womanhood? How was sex understood, constructed, and performed in East Asia? Did beggars, eunuchs, and Buddhist monks and nuns engage in sexual activities? Was same-sex relationship prohibited, promoted, or widely practiced in East Asia? To answer these questions, this course investigates the history of family, gender, and sexuality in East Asia from prehistoric times to the present. It covers a wide range of topics such as family and ancestor, population and genealogy, marriage and divorce, infanticide and inheritance, prostitution and sex market, masculinity and femininity, erotica and pornography, and sexual harassment and gender violence. Taking a journey to Chinese ancestral temples, Korean gardens, Japanese villages, and many more East Asian destinations, students will gain a sympathetic understanding of East Asian culture and learn to question assumptions about family, gender, and sexuality that are built upon European and American experiences.
HIST 418-001America in Prosperity, Depression and War, 1921-1945 Instructor: Richard K Popp (popp@uwm.edu) Meets: MW 1pm-2:15pm In the wake of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938, researchers fanned out across the United States to figure out why substantial numbers of listeners had believed the program’s reports of a Martian invasion. “In this troubled world of ours,” one California man responded, “there are so many things that have happened and are happening that the people are believing that nothing is impossible.” The statement captured the tumult of the times. Beginning with the onset of Prohibition and ending with the birth of the atomic age, the quarter century examined in this course was perhaps the most momentous in the nation’s history. Even a short list of major developments would have to include the Great Migration, the second Ku Klux Klan, the Dust Bowl, the crash of 1929, the Depression, the New Deal, the Labor Movement, and the Second World War. We will pay especially close attention to the era’s cultural artifacts, including its films, music, sports, fashions, popular print, literature, and art, using them as windows into the social, political, and economic transformations of the day.
We’ll use two books for this course. Both offer succinct, engagingly written overviews of major developments of the interwar years.
Eric Rauchway, Why the New Deal Matters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021). Available as a library eBook.
Michael C. C. Adams, The Best War Ever: America and World War II, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015). Available used for less than $10.
• Note: You can buy the 1st edition if it’s significantly cheaper.
HIST 596-001Maps as Historical Sources Instructor: Richard K Popp (popp@uwm.edu) Meets: MW 10am-11:15am The purpose of this course is to (a) develop your ability to think historically about maps and; (b) develop your ability to use maps as a means of presenting history.
Drawing on maps from all over the world and from different ages, we’ll explore how maps work, how they were created, how their use and appearance developed over time, and the different roles they played in various eras. We’ll place a heavy emphasis on learning how to use maps as evidence, how to analyze them, and how to connect them to larger processes of historical change. In addition, we’ll learn the foundational concepts and methods of geographic information systems (GIS) in order to make our own maps.
This will be a very hands-on course. We’ll spend a lot of time working with actual things: maps, globes, atlases, and more. It will also be hands-on in the sense that we’ll devote a lot of time to using GIS programs (free and open-source) to create digital maps that depict bygone places and historical transformations.
HIST 600-001Seminar in History: Coming & Going: U.S. Immigration & Restriction Instructor: Kimberly L Hernandez (hernandk@uwm.edu) Meets: TR 2:30pm-3:45pm In this History 600 topical research and writing seminar, we will explore 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 core readings is on the politics of immigration control, areas of focus for student 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 600-202Seminar in History: Race Relations in America Instructor: Gregory T Carter (cartergt@uwm.edu) Meets: MW 4pm-5:15pm Based on my experience participating in the 2022 National Endowment for the Humanities and Japanese American Citizens League workshop, Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis, this seminar will make explicit the lessons of the WWII Japanese American experience through content that emphasizes the universal issues of identity, community, patriotism, civil rights, and justice that continue to be relevant especially in recent social justice events.
As the capstone seminar for History majors, this course provides students with an opportunity to devote a semester to writing a piece of history. This course will explore the history and implications of Japanese incarceration, providing students a set of subtopics to research and write about on their own. In the first few weeks of class, each student will choose a paper topic and prepare a plan of work. In the seminar classes, we will do some background reading to get started, and review methods of research. As the semester progresses, students will work on their projects, and we will discuss issues of historical writing. At the end of the semester, students will present their papers orally before submitting it.