History
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CAS HI 300: American Popular Culture
Examines how Americans have changed (and haven't) since the nineteenth century by exploring their curious beliefs, social and sexual practices, and changing understandings of selfhood. Topics include Victorian etiquette, modern city pleasures, racial stereotyping, dating rituals, family dynamics, and more. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking. -
CAS HI 301: Women and Gender in US History
Examines the ideas and experiences of women in the United States from the 1600s through the late twentieth century. Considers the common factors that shaped women's lives as well as women's diverse class, ethnic, and regional experiences. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking. -
CAS HI 303: Sex, Love, Family: American Relationships from Birth to Death
Explores Americans' intimate bonds and family dynamics throughout US history. Follows the life cycle from birth to death, surveying common milestones and rituals such as coming of age, coming out, getting married, or having a midlife crisis, and more. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Digital/Multimedia Expression. -
CAS HI 308: Religious Thought in America
Surveys many of the strategies that American religious thinkers have adopted for interpreting the cosmos, the social order and human experience, and the interaction of those strategies with broader currents of American culture. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II. -
CAS HI 311: The South in History and Literature
Explores the experience and culture of the U.S. South by focusing on its history and literature to understand how and why the South continues to be seen as a unique component of the larger American experience. -
CAS HI 315: The American West
We examine the American West, the mythical landscape of freedom and adventure, as a region of violence, empire, and exclusion. Exploring 300 years of Western history, we focus in particular on Indigenous conquest and the continuities of colonialism. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II. -
CAS HI 321: The American Revolution, 1750-1800
The course examines the American Revolution and America's dramatic war for independence, situating these struggles within broader changes in the society and the Atlantic world. The course also shows how Americans struggled, often violently, to create a stable republic in the aftermath of these truly revolutionary upheavals. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness. -
CAS HI 322: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire
Examines early modern Britain's global expansion, with a focus on the British isles and the American colonies. Explains how economic growth and imperial warfare shaped Britain and her colonies, and probes the causes of the empire's collapse in 1776. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course titled "Colonial British America from Settlement to Revolution" that was previously numbered CAS HI 322. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking. -
CAS HI 331: Drugs and Security in the Americas
(Meets with CAS IR 290). Drug trafficking has become a dominant issue in U.S.- Latin American relations. This class examines the War on Drugs from both U.S. and Latin American perspectives in order to draw out racial, socio-economic, political, and gender-based dimensions and explore alternatives. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning. -
CAS HI 338: Repression, Revolution, Rock n' Roll: US in 1950s & 1960s
Few periods shaped American society, culture and politics as dramatically and enduringly as the 1950s and 1960s, transforming institutions, life experiences, the nation's role in the world, and the ways Americans thought about social problems and political activism. Topics include: Cold War, McCarthyism, Civil Rights, Vietnam, Campus Protest, Counterculture Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS HI 339: A History of the Present: The United States since 1968
Analyzing the recent experience of the United States and its people in historical perspective, the course allows students to explore important developments in US politics, race relations, economy, and popular culture, investigate diverse social science approaches to contemporary problems, and develop an independent research project. Topics include war, politics, religion, and popular culture as well as changing notions about race, gender, and selfhood. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS HI 341: Political and Cultural Revolution
Comparative historical analysis of modern and contemporary revolutionary upheavals and cultural change in Europe, the Americas, East Asia, Africa, Middle East, and the former Soviet republics. Examines the challenges posed by modernization, crisis of legitimacy, nationalism, imperial decline, and globalization. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS HI 215. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking. -
CAS HI 343: Taste, Culture, and Power: The Global History of Food
An exploration of the global history of food from prehistory to the present, considering the birth of agriculture, food in nations and empires, hunger and nutrition, and the future of eating, including examples from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation. -
CAS HI 347: Bodies, Drugs, and Healing: A Global History of Medicine
An introduction to the history of medicine in global contexts, offering a broad perspective on the ways that bodies, healers, drugs, and health have been conceptualized, from antiquity to the present day, in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Ethical Reasoning. -
CAS HI 348: Colonialism in Africa: Impact and Aftermath
Uses case studies of particular African societies or nations to examine patterns of European conquest and African resistance; forms of colonial administration and socioeconomic consequences of colonial rule; decolonization and contemporary African liberation movements; economic and political developments since independence; and contemporary social and cultural change. -
CAS HI 349: History of Religion in Precolonial Africa
The study of the development of religious traditions in Africa during the period prior to European colonialism. An emphasis on both indigenous religions and the growth and spread of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the continent as a whole. Also offered as CAS AA 382 and CAS RN 382. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS HI 350: Atlantic History
Examines the various interactions that shaped the Atlantic World, connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas between 1400 and 1820. Begins by defining the political interaction, then emphasizes cultural exchange, religious conversion, and the revolutionary era. -
CAS HI 358: Twentieth-Century European Thought and Culture
This course treats artistic, musical, literary, political, and philosophical works historically. Among its large themes are modernism and the discovery of the unconscious, the cultural effects of both World Wars, democracy and its critics, totalitarian culture, existentialism, and postmodernism. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness. Effective Fall 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Writing-Intensive Course. -
CAS HI 360: European Dimensions of the Black Diaspora
Explores writings about the Black experience in Europe since the 1800s through examinations of historical and literary works, artistic and folkloric depictions, as well as politics and sports in England, France, Germany, Russia, and the Netherlands. Also offered as CAS AA 380. -
CAS HI 363: Early Chinese History
From the Bronze Age to the seventeenth century, China changed dramatically yet maintained political and cultural cohesion, unlike any other civilization. This course explores both diversity and unity in early Chinese society as well as their historical legacies. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
