The Senior Capstone Experience (SCE) consistsof the design of a research project. It includesstudies in historiographical techniques andpreparation of a substantial senior thesis. DuringSpring Semester of the Junior year, studentsparticipate in a required course, HistoricalMethod (HIS 399). In connection with this course,students are assigned a thesis advisor under whosesupervision a prospectus, preliminary bibliographyand other elements are prepared. Students who wishto be considered for departmental honors, or whoare preparing for graduate study in history orrelated fields, should request permission toattempt an honors thesis. Candidates for thesishonors must have and maintain a 3.5 cum. GPA bySpring semester of the Junior year.

This course introduces students to the disciplineof history by exploring compelling themes orproblems in history. Through study of differenttopics, each section instructor teaches studentsthe core methodological skills of historicalanalysis and interpretation. Students are expectedto appreciate differing interpretations of thesame historical questions. Students studyappropriate primary and secondary sources in thefield and learn the basic analytical and writingskills historians use to interpret the past.Examples of topics offered include TheUnderground Railroad, The Invention ofChildhood, American Home Front, RussianRevolution, Harry Potter's World: RenaissanceScience, Magic, and Medicine, Small Worlds ofEarly America, and America in the 1960s.

Topics not regularly offered in a department'snormal course offerings, chosen based on currentstudent interest and faculty expertise. Specialtopic courses can only be offered 3 times; afterthis, the course must be approved as a regularcourse. Graded A-F or Pass/Fail.

A survey of United States history through theCivil War, this course begins with the history ofthe first residents of North America, NativeAmericans. Includes the founding and developmentof the various colonies that eventually joined toform a new nation, and the early history of thatnation--political, economic, and social.

This survey of United States history starts withthe Reconstruction era and traces the growth ofthe nation to the present. We will study how thenation was restored after the Civil War, how theUnited States industrialized, urbanized andbecame a world power in the twentieth century.

A survey of world history from roughly 1000 AD tothe end of the eighteenth century. This coursetreats the increasing integration of worldcivilizations through commercial and culturalinteractions and traces the emergence of Europe asa center of global economic and military power.Prominent themes include the Mongol empire, BlackDeath, Age of Exploration, Reformation, Gunpowderempires, Enlightenment, and French revolution.

A survey of world history in the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries. The course examines theworld in the age of global integration andincludes such themes as the rise of republicanismand nationalism, the industrial revolution,imperialism, communism and fascism, the worldwars, the Cold War and globalization, amongothers.

Focuses on ancient societies, from Sumer throughimperial Rome, whose cultures contributed to thedevelopment of western civilization. The coursestresses the multiplicity of cultures that meldedand conflicted in the ancient Near Eastern andMediterranean worlds, and looks to the origins ofcultural symbols that appear and reappear in theemerging Western world.

Studies European society from the fall of thewestern Roman empire through Galileo and Newton.This course is a continuation of History 205; itbuilds on the assimilation of ancient culture intoa multi-cultural milieu that included Roman,Germanic, Greek, Christian, Jewish and Islamicsocieties. It traces the development of Europethrough the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformationand Scientific Revolution.

Topics not regularly offered in a department'snormal course offerings, chosen based on currentstudent interest and faculty expertise. Specialtopic courses can only be offered 3 times; afterthis, the course must be approved as a regularcourse. Graded A-F or Pass/Fail.

The social, economic, and political structure ofColonial America; the background and developmentof the American Revolution; and the interactionof social and political life during theConfederation, Constitutional, and Federalistperiods.

This course explores the history of the earlyAmerican republic from the framing of theConstitution to the Civil War. The courseinvestigates the clash between Hamiltonian andJeffersonian visions, the development of partypolitics and a popular political culture,territorial expansion and dispossession of NativeAmericans, the spread of King Cotton and slavery,the transportation and market revolutions,religious revival and social reform, and thesectional conflict between North and South.

This course examines the history of AfricanAmericans from the colonial era to the present. Wetrace the Black experience from African originsthrough more than two centuries of enslavement toemancipation in 1865. We examine the fight forcitizenship and equality during Reconstruction,the segregation era, and the civil rightsmovement. While including examination of thenature of racism and race relations, we arefocusing particularly on Black initiative, and therole African Americans have played in all aspectsof American history.

This course encompasses the U.S. Civil War(1861-1865) in all pertinent areas. In additionto military history, the course reviewssignificant historical interpretations of thecauses and effects of the Civil War; thedimensions of social, economic, political, anddiplomatic history pertaining to the war; and theevolution of war aims relating to the centralissues of slavery and race relations.

The era from the end of the Civil War to the endof the nineteenth century saw some of the greatestchanges in American history. We examine therebuilding of Reconstruction from the desire torestore national unity to the attempts ofindividual freedmen and women to carve out newlives and rights for themselves. The era also sawa turn from Victorianism to Modernity, asindustrialization, urbanization, and immigrationproceeded at a rapid pace, causing tension betweenrural and urban people, old ways and new.

Focuses on one of the great reform eras inAmerican history. Beginning in the late 19thcentury, the Progressives pushed for women'srights, prohibition, good government, protectionfor workers and consumers, and more. We also lookat World War I, especially the impact on the homefront. We examine both the well-known side of theTwenties--economic success and high living, andthe not-so-well known aspects, like the rise ofthe Ku Klux Klan, and anti-immigration sentiment.

Examination of American social attitudes andbehavior in both the public and private spheresduring the ninteenth century. Topics includemarriage and the family, childhood; theindividual's role in society; entertainment; raceand ethnicity; religion; migration; immigration;urbanization; and reform movements.

Examines the private lives and public roles ofwomen throughout American history, from colonialsettlement to the near-present. Social attitudes,laws and policies affecting women are studied, aswell as women's daily lives, experiences, andaccomplishments. Our focus includes women ofdifferent races, classes, and ethnic backgrounds.

Germany and Italy emerged as modern nations onlyin the nineteenth century. Both experiencedturbulent internal divisions for centuries priorto their respective national unifications. Acommon thread bound their political difficulties,that is, the tension between two supranationalideas: The Roman Empire and the Roman Papacy. Thiscourse explores the origins and development ofthis conflict between the Holy Roman Emperors andthe Papacy and its effect on the histories ofmedieval Germany and medieval Italy.

The social, cultural, and political history ofancient Rome and its dominions, from prehistorythrough the decline and fall of the Roman Empirein the fifth century C.E. Topics includerepublican and imperial government, Rome's armyand conquests, the Roman family, Roman religion,and the rise of Christianity.

This course traces the history of France and Spainfrom the 8th to 14th centuries from theperspective of their castles, monastic cloisters,cathedrals, and mosques. Topics includearchitectural structure and style; pre-modernFrench and Spanish history; history and regularroutines of religious life; social and culturalaspects of buildings including their roles inmilitary technology, guild organization, palatialresidence, and church life.

A study of Europe in the period of 1400-1648.Cultural developments in fifteenth-century Italyare the starting point; students then explorereligious and political change, and social andeconomic trends throughout Europe.

A seminar exploring the lives of women and theirrole in society from the fifth through thefifteenth centuries. Topics include legalstatus,economic activity, marriage and family, and womenin religion. Readings include both traditionaland feminist-influenced secondary works, medievalworks about and for women, and the writings ofmedieval women themselves. Discussion is a majorcomponent of the course.

Early Islamic civilization from its origins inArabia to its expression in several imperialregimes in the sixteenth century (e.g. Ottoman,Mughal). We examine the creation of a Muslimcommunity, the development of a rich and dynamiccivilization, the competing claims for politicaland religious authoritym the forging of empiresand their break-up, as well as contacts with thenon-Muslim societies. Thus we study a universalreligion as it was expressed and incorporated intoa variety of unique cultures that differed inethnicity, language, geography, and beliefs.Students acquire an understanding of basicvocabulary, geography, historical sources andnarrative, through directed readings, lecture andclass discussion.

An examination of Central Europe from theunification of the German lands in themid-nineteenth century through the Kaiserreich,World War I, Weimar Republic, National Socialism,Cold War division, and reunification.

This course examines the political, economic, andsocial history of the Republic of South Africa.Beginning with the earliest inhabitants, we tracethe diversity of African life, the arrival ofEuropeans and the establishment of colonies, thepolicies of segregation and apartheid, and Africanresistance to them. We also assess the importanceof history to individual and group identities, aswell as for interpreting issues of the present.

This course traces the history of China fromroughly 1800 to the present. It devotes specialattention to the development of nationalism andcommunism in China and China's uneasy relationshipwith the West. Topics include the Opium War andTaiping Rebellion, Republican era warlordism,China in the Pacific War, Maoism and the reformsof Deng Xiaoping, among others.

An examination of Japan from the late Tokugawaera(ca. 1800-1868) to the present. The course looksat the causes and consequences of the MeijiRestoration, Japan's rise as a modern industrialstate, its struggle with democratic government,imperialist expansion, the impact of World War IIon the country's subsequent political, social,andeconomic development, the Japanese Miracle ofthe 1970s, and Japan's current difficulties inconfronting its past and defining its place inthetwenty-first century.

Russian political, social, economic, and culturaldevelopments from the founding of the firsteastern Slavic state to the present. The firstsemester treats Kievan Rus, Muscovy, and theImperial period from Peter the Great to AlexanderII. The second semester deals with the finaldecades of the Russian autocracy, therevolutionary movement, World War I, therevolutions of 1917, the Civil War, and thehistory of the Soviet Union to the end of theGorbachev era.

Russian political, social, economic, and culturaldevelopments from the founding of the firsteastern Slavic state to the present. The firstsemester treats Kievan Rus, Muscovy, and theImperial period from Peter the Great to AlexanderII. The second semester deals with the finaldecades of the Russian autocracy, therevolutionary movement, World War I, therevolutions of 1917, the Civil War, and thehistory of the Soviet Union to the end of theGorbachev era.

Topics not regularly offered in a department'snormal course offerings, chosen based on currentstudent interest and faculty expertise. Specialtopic courses can only be offered 3 times; afterthis, the course must be approved as a regularcourse. Graded A-F or Pass/Fail.

A study of history as a discipline. Classroomlecture and discussion on fundamental aspects ofresearch and synthesis plus the history ofhistorical writing. With the help of an assignedadvisor, each student prepares first a prospectusand then a preliminary chapter of the eventualsenior thesis in history. Both papers arepresented to the class for comment and review inworkshop format. Enrollment is limited to historymajors.

This seminar examines interactions among native,European, and African peoples during the initialcenturies of North American colonization.Situating the American colonies within a broaderAtlantic World and offering a comparativeapproach, the course investigates processes ofcultural conflict, exchange, adaption, andtransformation.

This course provides a detailed examination ofthe upheavals across Europe from the 1789revolution in France to the experiment insocialism of the Paris Commune in 1871. We payspecial attention to ideological changes acrossthe period and their relationship to the politicaland economic transformations that dramaticallytransformed the modern world. Topics of particularfocus include the French revolution, theindustrial revolution, romanticism, politicalreaction, popular movements and socialism, and therevolutions of 1848. In addition to providingstudents with an understanding of these topics,the course helps students develop research skills,along with critical analysis, oral presentation,and writing techniques.

This seminar employs new and classic novels toinvestigate diverse trends in modern LatinAmerican history, focusing on the insight eachtext offers into the land's people andinstitutions. Collectively, these volumesilluminate sweeping historical themes, harnessingpersonal stories to broad, impersonal forces andsurveying a range of topics, from poverty andrepression to adaptation and rebellion.

Topics not regularly offered in a department'snormal course offerings, chosen based on currentstudent interest and faculty expertise. Specialtopic courses can only be offered 3 times; afterthis, the course must be approved as a regularcourse. Graded A-F or Pass/Fail.