Upcoming Courses
Summer 2022
Comparative World History: The History of Global Health
HST 450/550 l 6/20 - 8/14 l FULLY ONLINE
African History Since 1800
This survey of African history offers an introduction to the major themes of African history in the 19th and 20th centuries.
HST 313U / BST 306U l 6/20 - 8/14 l FULLY ONLINE
Fall 2022
Topics in World History: Plagues & People
Having lived through the most recent global pandemic, we are all well aware that disease can shape human history and fundamentally change the world. This course examines past plagues and how they altered the course of human history. From the infamous Black Death through the more recent pandemic of HIV/AIDS and COVID-19, the course explores how disease and our efforts to respond to threats to our collective health and wellbeing have simultaneously united us and created many of the divisions that plague human society to this day.
HST 390U l FULLY ONLINE
Topics in African History & Culture: Health & Healing
The history of health and healing in Africa examines the historical roots of the high disease burdens facing contemporary African societies. The course explores a range of disease threats from the more recent epidemics of Ebola, cancer, and HIV to those of earlier eras including malaria, yellow fever, venereal infections, and TB. Key questions concern the social determinants of health, the impact of European colonial rule, as well as how pharmaceuticals and Non-Governmental Organizations figure in the post-colonial rise of Global Health.
HST 412/512 & BST 450/550 l W 11:30 - 1:20 (HYBRID)
Past Courses
Introduction to African Studies / Global Perspectives (Africa)
This course is a general introduction to the interdisciplinary study of Sub-Saharan Africa and a four-credit Sophomore Inquiry (SINQ) designed to serve as a gateway to the upper-division Global Perspectives cluster. Focusing on three regions (Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and the Mande region of West Africa), we critically examine a number of myths that have and continue to complicate productive engagement with the continent. A central aim of the course is to explore how Africa has been an integral part of world history, culture, and affairs and how - far from exotic or distant - the African experience illuminates core principles of intellectual inquiry and debate.
African History to 1800
This survey of the African past offers an introduction to the major themes of African History in early eras. Beginning with human evolution and the peopling of the planet and extending to the period prior to the advent of the Transatlantic slave trade, the course will examine a number of African empires, states, and societies and how African peoples shaped not only their own past but also the history of the world.
HST 312U / BST 305U
We will examine the recent history of the second largest continent in one term by focusing on central themes and specific regions including the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Emphasis is placed on Africa’s connections to the world through the slave trades, European imperialism, and finally, in the post-colonial age, through the neo-liberal order. The course aims to illuminate the roots of contemporary political, social and economic inequalities that define relationships between the peoples and societies of the continent and the world at large.
HST 313U / BST 306U
Historical Imagination
Historical Imagination offers an introduction to the historian’s craft. Students majoring/minoring in history will have an opportunity to master the research and writing skills needed to succeed in upper-level research seminars—while also becoming acquainted with the major theoretical and methodological debates that have and continue to drive historical inquiry. Our examination will focus on debates over the transnational antislavery movement through a graphic novel. This visual engagement with the history of slavery and abolition will provide a launching point for students to imagine and develop their own historical research projects.
HST 300
World History: 1500 - Present
This introductory survey of world history from 1500 to the present will explore the major historical developments that have shaped human history over the past five centuries. Through a global and environmental approach attuned to the inadequacies of Eurocentric narratives, we will interrogate past explanations for current global inequalities. Primary materials and guest lectures from historians of specific world regions will allow us to consider the diversity of the human experience and the forces that have increasingly connected disparate global populations.
HST 106
History of Women and Gender in Africa
The history of women and gender (and increasingly sexuality) has been a strength of Africanist scholarship since the 1970s. This course examines how African women have shaped all spheres of life, and how gender and the reconfiguration of gender over time has figured in the African past. Beyond restoring the visibility of African women and their contributions to the making of African histories, we will query gender as a crucial category of historical analysis. Students will have an opportunity to explore an aspect of this history in greater depth through a final research paper and final presentations of their work.
HST 412 / 512 I BST 450 / 550
Courses Taught:
· UNST 124, Freshman Inquiry (Three-Term Sequence), Sustainability
· UNST 211/INTL & BST 233, Sophomore Inquiry – Global Perspectives (Africa)/Introduction to African Studies
· HST 300, Historical Imagination
· HST 312U, Africa before 1800
· HST 313U, Africa since 1800
· HST 405, Undergraduate Reading Colloquium: Africa and the Abolition of the Slave Trade
· HST 405/505 & 407/507, Research Seminar Sequence: Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
· HST 412/512, Topics in African History: Health and Healing in Sub-Saharan Africa
· HST 412/512, Topics in African History: Women and Gender in Sub-Saharan Africa
· HST 412/512, Topics in African History: East Africa Through a Thousand Years
· HST 495/595, Comparative World Hist: Colonial/Tropical Med & Global Health in Africa, India & S. America
· HST 514, Graduate Research Colloquium