Courses

An introduction to historical analysis and argumentation. While individual sections will focus on different topics and time periods, in all sections students will investigate a range of sources, methods and historical approaches to the past. Hist 100 may be repeated for credit with different topics.

Fall Semester information

100A: Historical Encounters: Life and Death in Early Modern China

This course is an exploration of seventeenth-century Jiangnan, the heart of the Chinese Ming empire, one of the largest empires of the early modern world and the center of the emerging global economy. Today, the region of Jiangnan is best-known for modern cities like Shanghai and the traditional gardens of Suzhou. The early modern period (ca. 1500-1800) was a transformative and turbulent time in world history and, by focusing on Jiangnan during this time, this course opens a window on the challenges, dramas, and fascination of people's lives and social change during this period. Through the best-selling fiction and historical sources of the seventeenth century, discover seeds of the modern world in the environmental issues, family relationships, economic growth, political conflict, and cross-cultural interactions of this time and place. This course provides an introduction and foundation for further work in Asian studies, history, and the humanities and social sciences.

100B: Historical Encounters: God and Sex: Religion and Culture in Africa

Societies across the world attach different values, taboos, sacredness, and interpretations of sex, sexuality, and sexual relationships. In Africa, although societies saw sex as a routine exercise that every "adult" aspired to engage in, the act, however, was intersected with religion, culture, ritual, belief systems, and customs. The course investigates the historical, cultural, and social contexts of sexual diversity, identity, discrimination, and sexual violence in 20th and 21st-century Africa while paying close attention to the influence of cultural norms and religion. We will organize our inquiries around the themes of sexuality and sexual relations, religion, culture, family, and courtship. Some of the questions we will raise include: What counted as sex? What types of sex were considered socially acceptable in different societies in Africa? Who was allowed to engage in them? How did taboos, values, customs, and rituals on sexual relationships change over time and across histories and geographies? Also, the course covers ongoing issues such as HIV-AIDS and the current struggles for the rights of the LGBTQIA communities in Africa.

100C: Historical Encounters:Birth Control and Reproductive Justice

In this course, we will explore the global history of birth control and the rise of the reproductive rights movement. From Colonial Mexico to Postwar Japan, we will explore how the state, religious institutions, juridical system, healthcare practitioners, international organizations, and society have negotiated but also competed in their reproduction and birth control definitions. We will ask why doctors, governments, religious groups, left and right-wing politicians, feminists, intellectuals, and scientists had --and still have-- something to say about who should have children, who should not, and what means to prevent pregnancies are acceptable. Moreover, we will address how the appeal to control fertility had techno-material results, such as the development of new contraceptive technologies like the pill or the IUD in the second half of the 20th century, bringing new urgency to the discussions on women's health and bodily autonomy.

Spring Semester information

100A: Historical Encounters: Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali has been described as "the spirit of the 20th  century".  A man who proclaimed himself "The Greatest" from the earliest stages of his professional boxing career, Ali achieved an unprecedented level of global sporting fame.  Accurately or not, the 1980 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records named him "the most written about" man in history.  Yet, despite all the words and images we are left with a deceptively complicated question following his death in 2016: Who was Muhammad Ali? For his part, Ali told the world in the mid-1960s, "I don't have to be who you want me to be."   What role did Ali play in shaping his own image?  In what contexts was Ali's reputation forged and how did different communities respond? Did Muhammad Ali change?  Did we change?  This course engages those questions and others while analyzing Ali's complex life and boxing career in the historic contexts of race (including Black Power and white supremacy), religion (Nation of Islam), resistance and political activism (Vietnam War and freedom struggles), sport, masculinity, celebrity and memory.  The course will focus heavily on representations of Ali, including commentaries by scholars, journalists and writers, film footage of Ali's boxing matches, documentaries, photographs, songs, etc.

100B: Historical Encounters: Empire of Sport

Organized sports are frequently described as one of Victorian Britain's most enduring global legacies.  This course will consider the historic development of organized sport in Great Britain and the British Empire through case studies analyzing rugby and cricket, among others.  Central themes will include the codification of games in the 19th century, the Victorian sporting ethos, amateurism/professionalism, women's sport and debates over gender roles and social class in a sporting context.  Of particular interest are the cultural and sporting ties that spread to the Dominions and Crown Colonies of the British Empire and beyond through formal and informal means.  The course will highlight the ways in which sport illuminated broader imperial developments including those that secured ties to Britain and fostered emerging national and post-colonial identities and resistance.  The geographic range of the class will include: cricket in the West Indies, Australia and South Asia; Rugby in New Zealand, South Africa and the Pacific Islands.

100C: Historical Encounters: Land of Lincoln

Illinois proudly proclaims itself the "Land of Lincoln," and Indiana lays claim to being the 16th  president's boyhood home. But, in a very real sense, everyone in the United States lives in the Land of Lincoln. Lincoln remains ubiquitous in American life--from monuments and money to automobiles, financial institutions, schools, and street names. The Lincoln Memorial draws tourists, musicians, protesters, and orators to its steps. He is also a character in movies and even in a prize-winning ghost story. Perhaps the most consequential single figure in US history, more has been written about Lincoln than any other American. Lincoln is a puzzle, a reflection, a mystery, a prism. This course combines biography, history, and culture to figure out who Lincoln was and how his story has marked his country during the 160 years since his death.

100D: Historical Encounters: Sex & Society in Modern America

Everything has a history, including sex. In investigating the history of sexuality in the modern United States, this course introduces the changing social circumstances that affected the meanings of sexuality as well as how sex has been regulated over time. Central questions we will ask are: How did sexuality change over time? How did it come to be a central aspect of identity? How were systems of sexuality, gender, race, and class mutually constituted? What was the nature of the sexual revolution(s) of the 20th century?