History Undergraduate Courses and Descriptions - Fall 2025

Please refer to Class Search/Shopping Cart for more information when classes are being offered. 

You can find a link to the History Major Undergraduate Requirements and Course Catalog here. 

You can find a link to the History Minor Undergraduate Requirements and Course Catalog here.

HST 101 American History to 1865 - Murphy
This introductory course will survey American history from the pre-colonial era to the Civil War. We will approach this period of history through a discussion of three themes. The first covers the period from the founding down to the middle of the eighteenth century and focuses on how Europeans from a medieval culture became Americans. The second theme explores the political, social and economic impact the Revolution had upon American society. And finally, we will focus on the modernization of American society in the nineteenth century and how that modernization was a major factor in causing the sectional crisis.

In addition to the two lecture classes a week, you will attend a small discussion class taught by one of the teaching assistants once each week.

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Pre-Modern

HST 111 Early Modern Europe: 1350 to 1815 - Kyle
This course covers the history of Europe from the Black Death, which marked the end of the Middle Ages, to the French Revolution – the beginning of the modern world. While it will cover the major events of the period – the Renaissance, the Reformation, the English, French and scientific revolutions, the rise and fall of Napoleon, the growth of the modern state – the emphasis will be on changes in the lives of ordinary men and women. There will be a mid-semester midterm, a final, and two short (c. 5 page) papers.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern

HST 121 Global History to 1750 - G. Kallander
This course introduces students to global history from the thirteenth century through 1750 by focusing on social, economic, political, intellectual, and religious developments in major regions of the world: Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. Beginning with the Mongol’s Eurasian empire, their transformation of the continent, and the spread of Islamic empires from Central Asia to the Atlantic, it traces the historical patterns of different world regions in the fifteenth century through the trans-Atlantic slave trade and European imperialism.  What types of exchanges were facilitated by maritime trade and trade diasporas? How were human interactions with their environment circumscribed by climate change and disease? The latter part of the course looks at global connections and local particularities facilitated by the spread of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Course themes include empire, disease, environment, slavery, religion, state-formation, and the rise of global trade. Topics will be covered thematically in general chronological order. Lectures will be supplemented by maps, visual materials, music, documentaries and films. All students are required to attend lectures and one discussion a week.

Concentration: Global / Period: Pre-modern

HST/MES 208 Middle East Since the Rise of Islam - Cheta
This course is an introductory survey of Middle East history from the rise of Islam in the seventh century to 1900. There are no pre-requisites, and no prior knowledge of the Middle East is expected. We will discuss the origins of Islam, and aspects of major Islamic empires such as the Umayyads (7th-8th centuries), the Abbasids (8th-13th centuries), the Fatimids (10th-12th centuries) with greater focus on the Ottomans (14th-20th centuries). In approaching this long history, which unfolded over a vast geography from the Iberian Peninsula and West Africa to Central and South Asia, we will not confine our study to high politics but will also explore intellectual, cultural and social issues such as gender relations, sectarianism, consumerism (coffee, tulips!), gossip and disease. We will also learn how to critically read documentary and material historical traces in order to understand how historical knowledge is constructed as well as the tensions between popular memory and written history. 

Concentration: Global / Period: Pre-modern

HST 210 The Ancient World - Diem
This course surveys the history of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East and explores the classical roots of modern civilization. We will begin with the first civilizations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the roots of western religion in ancient Israel; then proceed through Bronze Age, archaic and classical Greece, the Persian wars, the trial of Socrates, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Hellenistic world, the rise of Rome, and end with the fall of the Roman Empire and the coming of Christianity. The course will treat political, social, cultural, religious and intellectual history. We will focus on issues that the ancients themselves considered important – good and bad government, the duties of citizens and the powers of kings and tyrants – but we will also examine those who were marginalized by the Greeks and Romans: women, slaves, so-called "barbarians." The course will emphasize reading and discussion of primary sources, in order to provide a window into the thought-worlds and value systems of past societies.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern

HST 213 Africa: Ancient Times to 1800 - Shanguhyia
This course is a survey of pre-modern African history, presenting an overview of the main themes and chronology of the development of African culture and society. It provides an exposition of the regional and continental diversity and unity in African political, economic, social and cultural histories with special emphasis on major African civilizations, processes of state formation, encounters with the Euro-Asia world, Africa’s role in the international Trans-Saharan, Indian Ocean and Atlantic trades, ecology, and urbanization.

Concentration: Global / Period: Pre-modern

HST 300: Absent Presence: History of Palestine - A. Kallander

A history of Palestine and Palestinians from the nineteenth century to the present. It begins with Palestinian urban experiences, village histories, and family life in the late Ottoman era. We will then turn to nationalist movements, and anti-colonial resistance under the British Mandate before covering Palestinian histories over the remainder of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. This will include the experiences of Palestinians with occupation whether in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Palestinian refugees, Palestinians living inside the Green Line, and in the diaspora. Topics also include women and gender, human rights and international law, poetry, fiction, and film.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

HST 300 Economic History of Africa Since 1500 - Shanguhyia

This course analyzes economic trends in Africa from circa 1500 to today. The focus is on the qualitative development of various African sectors such as trade, agriculture, mining, tax regimes, labor regimes, development, oil economies, to mention just a few. It includes an analysis of economic frameworks within which these sectors have evolved, as well as understanding the roles of certain historical agencies in shaping these sectors, notably African peoples/communities, African states—precolonial, colonial, and post-colonial—as well as international/external factors such as Western imperialism and capitalism, global markets/demands, global conflicts, Global Financial Institutions, and international aid.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

HST 300/HNR 360 Whose Middle Ages? - Herrick

This course examines two concurrent developments in medieval history and historiography. The first is scholarship reevaluating race (and ideas about race) in the European Middle Ages. Second is how ideas about race continue to frame discussions about the Middle Ages today, both in academia and in the broader culture. Examples include debates among medievalists about the study of race, and the misappropriation and misrepresentation of the Middle Ages by white supremacists. By discovering that medieval Europe was more diverse than is generally assumed and that ideas about race go further back than most historical accounts recognize, students will better understand how the medieval era shaped the present and is being distorted in the present.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-Modern

HST 300 The Big Game: Cultural History through Sports Films - Lasch-Quinn

This course explores cultural history through selected sports films, including documentaries, game reportage, and feature films, connecting filmic sources with readings in history, theory, and literature on the cultural meaning of sports and games. The course involves close-readings of primary and secondary sources, understanding and discussion of differing perspectives and ideas, and reading and writing intensive assignments.

Concentration: US/Europe / Period: Modern

HST 300 Cultural History in Images - Lasch-Quinn

This is a research and writing seminar on selected ideas/movements/episodes in cultural history, ancient and modern, as seen in images. Through close-reading, students investigate texts, images, and other cultural artifacts. Research centers especially on representations of the self, emotion, and the art of living as reflected in a range of primary sources, including philosophy, literature, art, architecture, music, and film. 

Concentration: U.S./Europe/Global / Period: Pre-Modern/Modern

HST 300 World War II in Europe- Allport

The Second World War in Europe lasted for six years and cost the lives of more than 50 million soldiers and civilians. It transformed the continent's politics, economics, society, and culture. Its memory continues to haunt Europe and influences every aspect of the region's current affairs. Studying its causes, conduct, and consequences, then, is an essential precondition for understanding modern Europe. In this seminar we will combine close classroom readings of important primary and secondary sources with independent research on aspects of the conflict chosen by the students themselves. The end goal for each participant will be an original research paper drafted and presented to the class.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

HST/LIT300: Mystics, Knights and Drunks - Van der Meer

This course introduces students to the surprising width and depth of medieval literature from the Mediterranean and Western Europe, debunking a great deal of commonly held assumptions, such as that these times were ’dark ages’, obsessed with life-denying religiosity, and full of valiant crusaders. Instead, we will discover the cosmopolitan nature of many texts and authors, we will engage with the political and social – at times remarkably advanced - aspects of medieval literatures, and indulge in some really great humor.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern

HST 301 Practicum - Cheta, Diem, Hagenloh
What is History? How do scholars “do” history? This seminar introduces history majors to the methods and goals of historical study, and to the skills needed to conduct independent historical research. The first part of the course will be spent discussing what exactly history is and has been. We will then move on to discussing the kinds of history that have developed across the century in the American Historical profession. Finally, students will spend a large portion of the course familiarizing themselves with the analytical and practical skills needed to develop their own research projects.

HST 311 Medieval Civilization - Herrick
This course explores European civilization from about 800 to about 1200. We will study kings, saints, and villains; faith and violence, love and hatred; ideas and beliefs. Our questions include: how did these people make sense of their world? How did they respond to crisis and opportunity? How did their civilization work? What was life like in medieval Europe? To answer these questions, we will mainly read primary sources that show us what medieval people themselves had to say about their world. Our goal will be to understand the past on its own terms. We will also emphasize the skills of close reading, strong argumentation, and clear expression of ideas.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-modern

HST 315 Europe in the Age of Hitler and Stalin - Ebner

This course covers the major political, social, and cultural developments in Europe during the period of the two world wars. During this era, liberal democracy and capitalism failed, authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorships proliferated, and, ultimately, political violence and warfare obliterated European civilization. In order to understand these developments, we will focus on themes such as political ideology, class conflict, racism, gender, the persecution of “internal enemies” and social outsiders, violence, and Europe’s general “crisis of modernity.”

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

HST 320 Traditional China - Kutcher
In this course we will survey Chinese history from earliest times to the end of the Ming dynasty in 1644.  This seemingly remote time witnessed the formation of a complex government and society whose influence extended to much of East Asia. Ranging over the centuries, the class will explore some of the main currents in Chinese political, cultural, social, and intellectual history. These include:  Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Legalism as competing and sometimes intersecting philosophies; the imperial system and major changes in its form over time; the changing roles of women in society; popular rebellion and heterodox religion; and the place of science and technology in the Chinese past.

We will read a variety of texts in addition to a concise textbook.

Concentration: Global / Period: Pre-modern

HST/SAS 329 Making Modern India - Kumar

This course surveys the history of modern South Asia from the beginnings of British colonial rule in the eighteenth century, through the moment of decolonization in the mid-twentieth century, to present-day politics in independent India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Using fiction, memoirs, maps, films, as well as academic literature, we will sequentially address themes ranging from violence and famine to cricket and cuisine

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

HST 341/PSC 329 Modern American Presidency - Thompson

This course analyzes the evolution of the modern presidency and its present operation. The focus of our attention will be on the years since 1960. The decision-making process and operation of presidential administrations from Nixon to Trump will be studied in particular detail. We shall consider the various roles that the president plays in government, politics, and society. We will examine the presidency as an institution and as an individual office to identify factors that have contributed to the successes and failures of particular administrations. This course also shall examine the roles and influence of unelected officials (especially senior White House staff), and popular attitudes toward both the symbolic and the practical presidency—particularly as they have been shaped by the traditional and “new” media. We will consider what lasting effects, if any, events during the past quarter century have had on the presidency as an institution. 

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern

HST 347/HNR 360 Modern American Politics Through Film - Thompson

In this course we will examine major themes in the political consciousness and popular culture of modern America, as they are reflected in contemporary films. The focus will be both on particular events and movements and on more generalized and persistent concerns (discrimination, alienation and depersonalization, authoritarianism, violence, gender, sexuality, bureaucratization, corruption). We shall be examining “politics” broadly understood, through the lens of popular culture. The goal is to explore a range of movies as ways of interrogating how Americans understand themes of power, intersectionality, conflict and consensus. This class differs from most at SU in that it is intergenerational. In addition to those enrolled for credit , participants will include approximately ten people from Oasis, a program for “mature learners” (generally, retired professionals and businesspeople) in the Syracuse community. Their lived experiences and perspectives on both the movies and the themes they illuminate will be a major component of what this course is all about.

HONORS ONLY

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern

HST 354/LIT 300 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Van der Meer

At its height in the second century CE, Rome was one of the most powerful states the world had ever seen. By the sixth century, however, the Western part of the Roman world had fractured into a number of smaller kingdoms and the Empire’s Eastern half was forced to reinvent itself, away from the West. The question of how to interpret these dramatic changes and the literary products generated in this time has occupied ancient historians and literary scholars alike. This class will examine the political, social, religious, and literary transformations of the Roman world, west and east. We will not only focus upon the political, military, and social changes that accompanied Rome’s decline, but also devote attention to the impact that these developments had on the lives of individual Romans. We will discuss such themes as the relationship between paganism and Christianity, the impact of social and political change on daily life, and role of violence in the lives of Romans. Students will come to appreciate both the variety of source materials that historians and literary scholars use to analyze details of ancient life and thought, and the challenges that these materials can present.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Pre-Modern

HST/JSP 362 Nazi Germany and the Holocaust - Terrell
In 1933, a radical and dictatorial regime came to power in Germany, remade the German state, and went on to orchestrate a vast program of mass murder in pursuit of a vision of biological purity and to launch a war of world conquest, ultimately killing millions. This course examines the history of German fascism, the Nazi state, and the Holocaust according to three primary lines of inquiry. In the first part of the course, we will address the question of how the Nazis came to power. What was Nazism, and why did it gain a popular following? Why did the Weimar Republic, the parliamentary democracy founded in 1918, fall (first to dictatorship and then to Nazism) in the early 1930s? In the second part of the course, we will examine the politics of Nazism in power. What was everyday life like for various Germans under the Nazi state, and why did many Germans come to support the regime? The course’s third section addresses war, genocide, and the legacies of Nazism and the Holocaust.  How did Nazi genocide policies develop, and how was it possible to implement them? What can the history of Nazi Germany teach us about other state-run mass murder programs?  How have Germans grappled with the aftermath of Nazi Germany?

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

HST 364 The Origins of Modern Russia - Hagenloh

The Russian Empire emerged relatively late in the modern era, but it quickly rose to dizzying heights of military power, cultural prestige, and influence on international politics. Powerful rulers like Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, literary giants like Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevsky, radical socialists like Alexander Herzen and Vladimir  Lenin – these figures placed Russia at the center of trends that transformed European society for five hundred years. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire was in the midst of a period of precipitous decline, which led to the collapse of the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty during the First World War. This course examines the history of Russia from the emergence of the Tsarist autocratic system in the 1400s to the revolutions of 1917, focusing on the Russian state, serfdom, the Russian intellectual tradition, Russia’s imperial policies, and nineteenth-century working-class activism. We will also examine the lived experiences of various social groups within the Empire, including peasants, urban women, ethnic minorities, factory workers, and the intelligentsia.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

HST 370 American Military History - Allport

Is there, as some historians have claimed, a distinctive ‘American way of war’ traceable over the four centuries since the beginning of the European colonization of North America? If so, what are its characteristics, how has it changed over time, and what does it reveal about a peculiar American attitude to state violence and the relationship between military and civilian society? In this course, we will examine the ‘small’ and ‘big’ wars of the United States from the colonial period to the ongoing campaigns in Afghanistan and Syria. Class meetings will be a mixture of lectures and discussion. Students will complete primary and secondary source readings. Assessment will be based on class discussion and several reading and writing assignments.

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern

HST/WGS 379 Race, Gender and Colonialism - A. Kallander

This course explores the centrality of gender (ideas about what it means to be a man or woman, understandings of masculinity and femininity) and race (whether biological, cultural, or otherwise) in France, England, and their colonial empires. The focus is the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will examine the hierarchies and presumptions that justified colonial occupation, domination, and exploitation, and the ways they infused politics, science, literature, and the arts in shaping world systems that endure to this day.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

HST 386 Crime and Society in US History - Cohen

This course focuses on the history of crime and criminal justice in the United States from the colonial period to the present. We will consider the ways in which the state encouraged order among its constituents, as well as the ways that people defied the norms established by law. Students will examine how industrialization, immigration, urbanization, emancipation, and war transformed American society, causing the breakdown of older forms of social control, such as religion, while producing significant discontented and dispossessed populations.

Concentration: U.S. / Period: Modern

HST 393 East Asia and the Socialist Experience - G. Kallander

Examines the adoption of socialism in East Asia. Historical account of how socialist China, Mongolia, North Korea and Vietnam arose, developed, “failed” and responded to globalization in the 20th century.

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

HST 401 Genocide in the Modern World - Ebner

The goal of this seminar is to produce a research paper (20-25 pp.) that explores one topic related to the history of genocide in the modern world. The term genocide initially referred to the Nazi massacre of millions of European Jews during WWII. Since the defeat of Nazism, the term has been applied to many instances of mass killing that occurred before and after the Holocaust. This course seeks to answer several important questions about genocide. What constitutes genocide? Why does genocide happen? Why do ordinary people kill? Finally, can genocide be prevented? If so, how? During roughly the first half of the semester, the seminar will examine readings that explore these issues. After the sixth or seventh week, members of the seminar will work exclusively on conducting research, giving presentations, and writing their final papers.

Concentration: Europe/Global

HST 401 China in Western Minds - Kutcher

This course examines the history of Western attitudes towards China.  In particular, we will focus on experts: the relatively small group of individuals we have relied upon for our knowledge of China. Among their numbers have been journalists, historians, missionaries, fiction writers, poets, and philosophers. Some have been famous, such as Pearl Buck and Marco Polo; and some infamous, such as the forger Sir Edmund Backhouse. One famous expert even boasted he’d never been to China. Why, he asked, should he permit the real China to interfere with the more glorious China of his mind?  How experts have seen China has been determined in some sense by how they wanted to see it, and by how they wanted to convey it to the people back home.  Students choose a China expert to research in depth, and prepare a substantial research paper based on original sources. 

Concentration: Global / Period: Modern

HST 425 Food in Modern Europe - Terrell

In the last two and a half centuries, food has transformed dramatically. Global integration and new agrarian and industrial systems of production have displaced many earlier relationships with the land and its products. The people who grow, harvest, prepare, and serve food and how they do so have transformed due to accelerating social processes from urbanization to mass migration and the culture of domesticity. Eating, too, has become both deeply politicized and intensely refined—the stuff of regulation, identity formation, and emotional connection. The production, consumption, abundance, and scarcity of food create boundaries, political or otherwise, defining people and shaping bodies from obesity to genocide. This course anchors the study of these transformations in European history in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Concentration: Europe / Period: Modern

HST 427/IRP 327/NAT 300 Native America and the World - Luedtke

This course is a study of Native America in an international context. Organized thematically, this course will begin with a discussion of the 2007 United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the issues faced by Native Americans in the present day. We will then touch on critical points in the history of North America that place Native Americans in contact/conflict with other nations from across the world. This course is an even split of lectures and discussions with major topics ranging from colonialism to migration to the global whaling industry to the sport of Lacrosse to environmental activism and justice.

Concentration: US/Europe / Period: Pre-Modern/Modern

HST 428/NAT 300 Native American History to 1830 - Luedtke

This course is part one of the Native North American Survey. Spanning from the pre-colonial era to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, this course will take a chronological approach to Native North America to understand how major historical events and themes connect the past to the present. This is mostly a discussion-based course with major topics including Native sovereignty and self-determination, cultural conflict, the Doctrine of Discovery, international/inter-imperial warfare, settler colonialism, Native survivance, and other forms of Native resistance and cultural perseverance.

Concentration: US / Period: Pre-Modern/Modern

For any questions regarding the History Program please contact: 
Director of Undergraduate Studies: Professor Albrecht Diem at adiem@syr.edu or
Academic Coordinator: Christina Cleason at cmcleaso@syr.edu or 315-443-2210

All undergraduate forms should be submitted electronically to Christina Cleason via email for processing.