HIS 510 Approaches to Modern European History

This course is a reading- and discussionbased field seminar that will explore a variety of themes and scholarly approaches to
topics in modern European history from the 18th - 20th centuries. Topics will include: nation-state and imperial formations/
expansions, industrial capitalism, the cultural sources and impact of revolutions, social movements, identity politics, modern
ideologies, total wars, class, race/racism, gender, multiculturalism, and post-coloniality

HIS 522 The British Empire

At its height, the British Empire encompassed about one third of the habitable globe and governed one quarter of its peoples. The historical legacy of empire continues in the conflicts and vast discrepancies of power and wealth across the world today. This course traces the historical evolution of the British Empire from its origins in eastern trade networks and trans-Atlantic settlement to its demise in the quarter century following WWII. We will read a number of books and essays that explore: 1) how modern and ever-shifting concepts of race, class, gender, and sexuality were forged through empire’s trans-cultural encounters and used to justify its continued existence and violent expansions; 2) the relationship between modern forms of knowledge, exploration, and expansion, and 3) how these processes shaped the very meanings of “Britishness/Englishness." These themes will be considered within changing contexts and conceptions of empire from the 18th to the 20th centuries, through the contests and resistances the acquisition, policies, and loss of empire generated both at home and abroad at critical historical junctures.

HIS 540 Approaches to Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern European History

This course will interrogate the modern European past from the analytical perspectives of gender and sexuality. The main focus
of the course will be on the cultural logics and contradictions of gender ideologies, how they shape and legitimated broader
social changes, their conformities and contestations in public discourse and social practice, and on how assumptions about
women’s ‘nature’ and abilities were used to expand, as well as delimit, real women’s (and men’s) lives and actions.

HIS 542 Approaches to Early Modern European History

This course explores comparative approaches to early modern European history. This course will move chronologically and thematically through the early modern period, and consider its events and developments from a variety of both traditional and
more recent analytical perspectives. Topics will include: imperial expansion, cultural encounters, print culture and the expansion
of literacy, religious fragmentation and conflicts, family gender and sexualities, the expansion of state power, capitalism, and
popular resistance, science, Enlightenment, anthropology and the re-imagining of human difference.

HIS 544 Citizenship, Culture, and Difference in Western Modernity

This course introduces students to a broad thematic approach to conceptions of citizenship. Modern western notions of citizenship
are products of the Enlightenmentand soon found both application and justification in the emergent republics of the Americas and Europe. Initially defined by and for educated European males of property, citizenship was both imagined and applied on the basis of foundational exclusions. In this course, there will be an exploration of the languages, practices, and appropriations of modern citizenship in different contexts of reform, resistance, and revolution, and consideration of the various ways it has been contested and reworked by groups and individuals seeking greater rights and freedoms.