Courses

HIST 202/2 – XX
Modern Europe

This course introduces students to the history of Europe from the French Revolution to the twentieth century, as well as providing some grounding in historical method and the development of a critical historical mind.

HIST 203/2 – A
Canada: Pre-Confederation

A survey of Canadian history, from settlement to Confederation, emphasizing readings and discussions on selected problems.

HIST 206/2 – A
Medieval Europe

A survey of the history of Europe during the Middle Ages, from the fifth century to the 15th century, with consideration of political, social, economic, intellectual, and religious developments.

HIST 208/2 – X
History of the Balkans

This course surveys the history of Europe through the Balkans (a region consisting of present-day Bulgaria, Romania, North Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Montenegro, Kosovo/Kosova, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia), from the premodern period to the present day. Emphasis is placed on the cultural diversity of the region and its impact on peace and conflict. Topics include the rise and fall of empires, economic change, religious transformation, violence, and the impact of ideologies such as nationalism, democracy, fascism, and communism.

HIST 251/2 – XB
History of the US to the Civil War Era

This course surveys American history from the period preceding European contact to the aftermath of the Civil War. It will focus particularly on the encounter between Indigenous North Americans, Africans and Europeans in the Atlantic basin, and the imprint that this encounter left on the political, social, cultural and religious character of the United States. Topics covered may include: slavery and the origins of racism, the rise and fall of the First British Empire, the forging of American nationalism, the growth of democratic politics and spread of reform movements, the rise of industry, and the causes and conduct of the American Civil War.

HIST 261/2 - A
History of South Asia

This course is an introduction to the intellectual traditions, social structures, and political institutions of South Asia, with particular attention to developments during the past two centuries.

HIST 262/2 – A
History of China

A survey of China’s history from earliest times to the modern era.

HIST 263/2 – AA
History of Japan

This course surveys Japan’s history from earliest times to the modern era. In addition to tracing political developments, it explores other themes such as the changing role of the samurai in history and the evolution of Japanese art, literature, and popular culture.

HIST 264/2 – A
History of Africa

This course is an introductory survey of the history of Africa from the earliest times to the present. Together we will trace the complex social, political, cultural and economic processes that have shaped the continent’s varied history. African history is one that has been entwined with, and critical to, world history in fundamental ways, but this centrality has too often been disavowed. In addition to examining the major phenomena of the African historical experience – including the development of pre-colonial kingdoms and trans-Saharan trade, the Atlantic slave trade, European imperial conquest, the rise of anti-colonial nationalism, the victories of independence, and more recent challenges such as the anti-apartheid struggle – we will explore how varied groups of African women and men, peasants and workers, rulers and ruled, lived these changes.

HIST 285/2 – A
Introduction to Law and Society

Law influences all aspects of life in society, from resolving conflicts to structuring family or commercial relationships to controlling crime to allocating property. This interdisciplinary course examines the roles law plays in Canada and internationally, from the perspectives of history, political science, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy. Cross listed with POLI/ANTH/SOCI 285.

HIST 298/2 – A
Special Topics in History: Environmental History

Environmental conflicts, 'green' activism, and popular and scientific alarm over species extinctions, climate change, and the exhaustion of natural resources are global phenomena.  This class will help you understand these issues in historical perspective over the long term, from the last ice age to the present.  We will survey some of the major themes and problems in interactions between human societies and their environments in the past, considering changes in climates, landscapes, and biological communities of microorganisms, plants, and animals in many places around the world.  Topics include ideas about nature, climate history, the environmental consequences of colonization, disease environments, agricultural and landscape change, the environmental impact of science and technology, the unprecedented expansion of human population and urban environments, the origins of pollution, the politics of nature conservation, and environmental injustice.  The course will include lectures but will emphasize reading, writing, and class discussion. 

HIST 305/2 - AA
Race and Gender in Canadian History

This course examines the lives and experiences of Canadian women and men marginalized because of their race, gender and/or sexuality. By looking at people on the margins, this course explores the intersections of gender, race, and space, and speaks to two key issues of today: equality and justice.

HIST 306/2 – A
History and the Public

This course is an examination of the practice of history outside the academy and an introduction to the critical analysis of presentations of history in public and popular culture. Topics include archives, corporate and popular history, museums and historic sites, preservation, film and television, theme parks, and anniversary commemorations. A special emphasis is placed on public controversies and ethical dilemmas involving historical interpretations.

HIST 307/2 – A
History of Montreal

A survey of the history of Montreal from pre-European times to the contemporary period.  The course will explore the key transformations that have shaped this city and cover important subjects such as Montreal's place in the world, its economy, social organization, cultures, and the built environment.  Students will engage in a range of activities designed to provide a broad overview, organized around the central theme of Place and Space, and to introduce more specific themes, such as health, leisure, diversity, religion, and modernity.  Most of the lectures will take a particular place as a point of entry into specific periods, trends, events, and themes in the history of the city.  Several will be presented by guest speakers, each of whom is a prominent scholar engaged in cutting-edge research on the history of Montreal.  We will also venture beyond the classroom for a least two urban-history excursions, including an exploration of Old Montreal and a walking tour of the 20th-century downtown core.

HIST 315/2 – A
Rights and Freedoms in Canadian History

Rights and Freedoms in Canadian Society - Since the advent of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, Canada has played a leading role in the articulation and interpretation of fundamental rights and freedoms.  Our contemporary culture of rights has a long history, however, and is not without its critics.  In this course we will study both the historical development of fundamental rights and freedoms in Canada and various contemporary debates about rights culture in Canada, particularly as the Charter has been defined and interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada.  This course is conceived as a law and society rather than a history course, and so readings and assignments will include both historical and legal approaches.

HIST 336/2 – A
Deviancy & Orthodoxy/Mexican History

In both the colonial and post-colonial eras, the Mexican state—as well as other powerful institutions like the church—developed changing notions of socially deviant groups in order to reinforce normative behaviour. Through the examination of historical and historiographical writings and primary sources, this course examines the construction of social orthodoxy over time, following a roughly chronological structure, by examining evolving conceptions of various deviant groups including heretics, prostitutes, criminals, bandits, political dissenters, and cross dressers. How did ideas about deviancy change across time? Why did these groups threaten the Mexican state? What other influences did they exert?

HIST 344/2 – A
Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia

This course is an introduction to the history of the two Yugoslav states that existed during the twentieth century (1918-1941 and 1945-1992), both of which came to an end in wars characterized by large-scale violence. The attempt to create viable states in this culturally diverse part of Europe resulted in the experimentation with nearly every type of political system and ideology: from constitutional monarchy to dictatorship, from fascism to communism. A basic objective of this course is for students to acquire a critical understanding of the long- and short-term historical factors that made possible both long periods of inter-communal peace and short periods of extreme discord in this part of the world. Students will explore the region’s history through class lectures and the reading of a modest amount of scholarly literature. The bulk of critical reading, however, will be primary sources. These will include a short travel account, a major work of literature and a short story, a piece of contemporary historical journalism, and a documentary film. As the course unfolds, we will focus on a vexing question: What led many residents of the south Slavic lands, who shared so much in common, and who found ways to live together in peace for sizable periods of time, to choose in certain moments of dramatic historical change to engage in mass violence against each other?

HIST 351/2 – A
England in the Reign of Henrry VIII

This course examines English history in the first half of the 16th century. In addition to specifically examining the personality and politics of Henry VIII himself, lectures and assignments examine broader social, religious, economic, and legal developments in the kingdom during his reign.

HIST 364/2 - A 
Modern South Asia

British conquest established nearly two centuries of colonial rule over the world’s oldest civilization. This course examines the nature of imperial control, the resistance of traditional leaders, European intellectual imperialism, Indian cultural and religious revivalism, and modern nationalism. Special attention is paid to M.K. Gandhi and Gandhism as well as to Muslim separatism and the Pakistan movement.

HIST 377/2 – A
History of Russia 1694 – 1917

This course provides an outline of Russian history from the reign of Peter the Great to the 1917 revolutions.  Long-term questions such changes in political liberty, economic development, the impact of warfare and foreign affairs, as well as gender relations are emphasized.

HIST 380/2 – A
History & Digital Media

This course offers an introduction to the changes that new media and technologies are bringing to historical research, writing, presentation, and teaching of the past.  The course begins with an overview of the history of the Internet and digital media, and then examines historical work on a variety of subjects — by scholars, teachers, archivists, museum curators, and popular historians — published on the Web.  Historical and critical readings provide the basis for the hands-on section of the course in which students develop pilot online history projects.

HIST 402/2 – A
The Philosophy and Practice of History

This course examines problems in the philosophy and practice of history. Particular attention is given to contemporary debates about history as a distinctive mode of understanding and explanation. This course is required of all honours students.

HIST 485/2 - A
Public History Workshop: Podcasting: History and Practice

This course provides an introduction to the history and practice of podcasting. The course will begin with a brief overview of storytelling in aural form, from the history of radio and sound recording to the birth of podcasting in the twenty-first-century. Historical and critical readings provide the basis for the hands-on section of the course, including workshops on sound recording, editing, scriptwriting, and incorporating interviews, music, and sound effects. During each class, we will dissect an award-winning nonfiction podcast series, including Serial (true crime), 99% invisible (design), The Dig (labor and radicalism), Have You Heard George's Podcast? (Africa, slavery, and colonialism), Sexing History (gender and sexuality), More Perfect (law), and others. The course will include guest lectures by several practitioners, including Bill Siemering, who drafted and enacted the first mission document at National Public Radio (NPR in the US) in the early 1970s. During the course, students will develop a pilot history podcast. For their podcasts, students can revise an academic paper written for another class or experiment with a new project.

HIST 498/2 – A
Advanced Topics in History: The Supernatural in History: Witches, Shamans, Vampires and Zombies

This course seeks to recapture the importance of certain spirit-beings – witches, shamans, vampires, and zombies – as a way of understanding social dynamics in the Atlantic world from the 17^th through the 20^th centuries. In particular, it will examine the connections between the political and the spiritual, looking at instances in which the intervention of spirits was a lens though which people understood interpersonal tensions. Rather than seeing the supernatural as something to be dismissed or explained away, we will try to understand historical actors’ beliefs on their own terms. Questioning the conventional distinctions between the rational and the spiritual, the natural and the supernatural, magic and science, the course challenges the historiographical convention of explaining the past in a strictly naturalistic manner.

HIST 498/2 – C
Advanced Topics in History: Truth and Lies on the US-Mexican Border

Debates and distortions about the US-Mexican border are central to American political attention in our current moment. In the winter of 2024, nearly half of all adult Americans reportedly accepted the notion that illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country. We will examine the long history of the borderlands region and the interactions between the Indigenous people, Spaniards, Blacks, and Anglo-Americans who populated it across time. We will use both scholarly and eye-witness accounts of borderlands from Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca’s tale of his sixteenth-century journey from Florida through Texas and California to Luis Alberto Urrea’s reconstruction of the harrowing story of 26 Mexican men who paid to be smuggled across the dangerous Sonora-Arizona crossing known as The Devil’s Highway in 2001. This seminar focuses on the key issues of race, labour, identity, and community to unpack current misperceptions of the border, border policy, and border impermeability. 

HIST 202/4 – A
Modern Europe

This course introduces students to the history of Europe from the French Revolution to the twentieth century, as well as providing some grounding in historical method and the development of a critical historical mind.

HIST 205/4 – X
Canada: Post-Confederation

A survey of the history of Europe during the Middle Ages, from the fifth century to the 15th century, with consideration of political, social, economic, intellectual, and religious developments.

HIST 235/4 – A
The Holocaust

Beginning with a discussion of Jewish communities in Europe and America before 1933, this course traces the evolution of anti-Semitism, nationalism, and racism, the rise of Hitler and the Nazi movement, the shaping of Nazi ideology, the growing demonization of the victims of the Holocaust and the genocide against them in their various countries, resistance by the victims, and the parts played by bystanders in the outcome of the Holocaust.

HIST 242/4 X
History of the Middle East

This course surveys the history of the Middle East from the rise of Islam to the present.  It traces broadly the formation of an Islamic World over a millennium and follows its engagements with modernity, examining closely the shift from the overarching paradigm of the multi-ethnic/multilinguistic Ottoman Empire to that of the mono ethnic/monolinguistic modern nation state.  This course covers the political history of the region including the experience of British and French colonialism, the rise of nationalist movements, and the Arab-Israeli conflict, and focuses on its social, intellectual, and cultural history.

HIST 253/ 4 – X
History of the US Since Civil War

This course is a survey of United States history from the end of Reconstruction to the present.  It asks how contests for power among different regions, classes, and groups animated U.S. political, economic, social, cultural, and intellectual development.  Course topics include:  Reconstruction, reconciliation, and segregation; western expansion and empire; industrialization and immigration; urbanization, suburbanization, and consumption; reform and radical movements, including progressivism, the labour movement, civil rights, feminism, and the new left and right; world wars, Cold War, and globalization.

HIST 276/4 – A
History of Latin America: Colonial Period

A survey of Latin America from the pre-Columbian period up to the early nineteenth-century wars of independence. The class focuses on central Mexico and the Andes, the two centers of colonial power, but also touches on Brazil, the Caribbean, and Argentina. The class examines how indigenous civilizations, enslaved Africans, and European immigrants all shaped Latin America society and culture and focuses on Iberian techniques of colonial rule and subject populations’ responses to these.

HIST 285/4 – AA
Introduction to Law and Society

Law influences all aspects of life in society, from resolving conflicts to structuring family or commercial relationships to controlling crime to allocating property. This interdisciplinary course examines the roles law plays in Canada and internationally, from the perspectives of history, political science, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy. Cross listed with POLI/ANTH/SOCI 285.

HIST 298/4 – A
Pacific Worlds

This course forefronts experiences and knowledges of Indigenous, Native, and Aboriginal peoples of Oceania in better understanding the entangled and intimate worlds of the Pacific. Although fundamentally marked by imperialisms, capitalist extraction, and militarization, the contemporary Pacific is also a historical place profoundly shaped by centuries of imaginative worldmaking by peoples across multiple continents, archipelagos, and islands. This course simultaneously embraces a people’s historical perspective on social dilemmas currently faced by those in the Pacific, such as: environmental and climate crisis, intensified frictions over regional security, struggles over displacement and diaspora, and ongoing desires for decolonization. 

HIST 298/4 – BB
Histories of Film & Performance

This course examines intersections of film and performance. Course material includes screenings, scripts, recordings, live events, and scores that help us reflect with the transmission of the shared past, evidence, and its exclusions.

HIST 304/4 – BB
Tutorial: Prep. For Honours Essay

This course provides honours students in History with the opportunity for tutorial reading and research in preparation for the writing of the honours essay.

HIST 314 /4 – AA
Quebec in the 20^th Century

This course explores the major social, economic, and political issues of 20th‑century Quebec in the light of the concentration of economic power into relatively few hands early in the century and the declining importance of industrial production since World War II.

HIST 321/4 – A
American Culture Since 1945

This course examines different forms of artistic expression in the U.S. since World War II. Attention is given to changing aesthetic styles and technological developments, as well as to the role of culture as an expression of American identity at home and abroad.

HIST 328/4 – A
The Scientific Revolution

This course explores the Scientific Revolution in the context of early modern European society and culture. Major themes include the debates over the methods, purposes, and scope of science; the relationship between science, the supernatural, and the occult; the relationship between science, technology, and craft; and scientific networks, institutions, and means of communication.

HIST 339/4 – A
Crime and Punishment in Canadian History

This course examines the history of crime and punishment in Canada. Topics include the definition and regulation of deviance; policing; trials and the criminal law; prisons and theories of punishment; the death penalty; crime and the media. Students engage with a variety of primary and secondary sources in readings and assignments.

HIST 354/ 4 – A
Revolutionary America

From the 1760s through 1815—a matter of a single generation—American society was transformed from a string of British colonial outposts into a powerful nation state. This course examines the origins, nature and consequences of the American drive toward independence, with a focus on the interplay between political ideology and social relations. Its premise is that this period was a turning point in both American and world history—marking the birth of the United States of America, the end of the First British Empire, and the beginnings of the Age of Revolution. Themes will include the transatlantic diffusion of liberal democratic ideas, social upheaval and class conflict, the simultaneous development of liberty and slavery, and the emergence of American nationalism to 1815.

HIST 360/4 – A
History and Sociology of Genocide from 1945

This course explores the history of a form of mass violence that many legal experts, human rights advocates, and scholars have understood as "genocide." After studying the history of the genesis of this term, we will examine primary sources that will give us a window into the worlds of ordinary people who have survived and perpetrated instances of mass killings. In the last third of the course we will explore why the international community has, more often than not, proven incapable of preventing and effectively halting gross violations of human rights. Cases to be examined will include Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and East Timor. This is a reading-intensive course, and our texts will include survivor memoirs, interviews with perpetrators, writings by human rights advocates, works of historical journalism, and scholarly studies.

HIST 368/4 – A
African Popular Culture

From African-American choirs touring South Africa in the early 1900s to Nigerian pulp fiction and the contemporary popularity of hip-hop and Hindi film in Africa, this course explores the varied terrain of African popular culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Beginning prior to European colonization of the continent, and moving through the hybrid cultural forms produced under imperial rule, to the politics of culture in postcolonial states, we will track the myriad ways in which African popular cultures have developed in relation to broader political and socio-economic shifts.  In highlighting the heterogeneous character of this popular cultural field — one which extends beyond the continent through diaspora and migration — particular emphasis will be placed on how African cultural forms have been shaped in conversation with influences from far afield.  Our 'texts' in this course will range broadly, including not only scholarly work, but also fiction, film, music and images that provide entry points into the ways African artists, youth, officials, freedom fighters, market women, bachelors, gangsters and others have engaged culturally with the world around them.

HIST 372/4 – A
Latin America Via the Novel

This course uses three Latin American novels (The Mangy Parrot, Sab, and One Hundred Years of Solitude) in order to examine literary and historical means of representing particular episodes in Latin American history. We examine how novels treated key moments and topics in Mexican, Cuban, and Colombian history, including imperialism and autonomy; revolution and violence; and the operation of class, race, and gender hierarchies. Comparing factual and fictional accounts of these issues, we discuss how and why Gabriel García Márquez and other authors have depicted the region and its culture as they have, and we consider what their writing conveys about the uses people make of history and the role that historical memory plays in Latin American society.

HIST 373/4 – A
The Pacific War

This course explores the history of the Pacific War, from its origins in the expansion of the Japanese empire to the atomic bombings, Japan's surrender, and the shaping of postwar Asia.  While covering battles, strategy and tactics, and the weapons of war, the course also looks at diverse themes such as home fronts, propaganda, and how the war has been remembered and represented since 1945.

HIST 385/4 – AA
Age of Dictators: Europe 1914-45

This lecture course examines in some detail the pivotal years of the last century, which began with the death of idealism in the trenches of the western front in the First World War, and ended with the defeat of Nazism in 1945.  Of central concern are the challenges posed to the occidental way of thinking by the rise of Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, and their various imitators throughout the rest of Europe.  The focus of the course will be very much on Western Europe, although some attention will be paid to developments elsewhere.

HIST 388/4 – AA
Oral History and Creative Practice

This course is an introduction to oral history that guides students from theory to practice by exploring the intersections of oral history with the creative and performing arts, popular culture and activism through the examples of innovative past and present oral history projects in Montreal and around the world. Students will also learn the basics of oral history theory, ethics and practice, and will have the opportunity to workshop practical skills in oral history interviewing, deep listening and life story analysis.

HIST 392/4 - A
War, Peace, and Society in France Since 1870

Beginning with the Franco-Prussian War and continuing through to the Paris Commune, the politically unstable Third Republic, two world wars, and the disastrous rise and fall of the colonial empire, this course examines the challenges and victories that have shaped modern France. Between 1870 and the present day, France experienced a full range of political and social movements, from the Boulanger Crisis and the Dreyfus Affair, the rise of nationalist leagues and the opposing Popular Front, the growth of syndicalist movements, the quest for women’s suffrage, advances in military strategies and technologies, through to the May Day demonstrations and more. Using a primary textbook and additional readings to combine a chronological perspective with a thematic approach, students will explore and interrogate the rich social, military, political, and cultural history of modern France and, in doing so, may also learn to recognize and better understand current trends in our contemporary world.

HIST 397/4 – A
History and Sound

This course examines sound as a historical subject and a medium for understanding the past. Emphasizing aural rather than visual sources, it addresses a variety of topics including the history of aural art forms such as music and radio; sound recording and transmission technologies; commercial uses of sound; architectural acoustics; and the evolution of soundscapes. The course may include training in the production of radio documentaries, urban sound walks, and audio podcasts.

HIST 398/4 - B
Special Topics in History: History of China/US Relations

This course examines the history of China-U.S. relations from the late eighteenth century to the present. It focuses on the development of their relationship in the private sector beyond state-to-state diplomacy, with emphasis on the transpacific circulation of goods, people, and ideas. Each session covers varying forms of agents of encounter, ranging from merchants, missionaries, laborers, and students to plants, food, art, and technology. Students will explore how the movement of these agents has informed the two giants’ (un)changing views of each other and how their evolving relations have been intertwined at the most mundane level with such themes as imperialism, racism, capitalism, and globalization. Students will be introduced to a range of primary sources including museum collections, novels, films, and archival documents.  

HIST 398/4 – C
Special Topics in History: History of the Climate Crisis

This course will allow students to delve into the complex environmental, social, political, and scientific history of our ongoing, global crisis of human-made climate change. We’ll begin by situating the crisis in the longer history of Earth’s climate from the Pleistocene to the Little Ice Age, but the emphasis of the course will be on how abiding material changes across the world resulting from human activities in modern times—since roughly 1500 (expansion of agrarian land uses, unbridled resource extraction, colonialism, global trade, uncontainable consumer and industrial waste, increasing reliance on fossil fuels, and much more)—have had disparate direct and indirect social, political, economic, and cultural consequences for different communities around the world.

HIST 403/4 – A
Methodology in History

This course will provide an introduction to historical methods—conducting research into and presentation of findings about historical subjects. Topics will include: critical and effective reading of historical sources; exploration of non-written sources as historical evidence; use of quantitative methods in history; concrete problems of interpretation encountered during historical research; and the presentation of findings through different forms of writing. Because this is required Honours course, it will have no particular geographical or chronological focus. In the course of the term, students will write and present to the other students an extended essay based on primary-source research.

HIST 437/4 – A
Advanced Studies in European History: Popular Revolt and Popular Protest Europe 1300 – 1600

This joint graduate-undergraduate seminar will examine the phenomenon of popular revolts in Europe from the early fourteenth century until the end of the sixteenth.  Over those centuries, governing authorities faced numerous uprisings from peasants, artisans, and labourers.  Over the course of the term we will look at revolts in Italy, Spain, Germany, the Low Countries, France, and England, examining the complex contexts of religious change, political consolidation, economic and demographic crisis, and social transformation.

HIST 481/4 – AA
Advanced Studies in Public History: War & Memory in the 20^th C

This seminar explores historiographical and broader academic engagement with memory - individual, collective, and national. We will approach memories of 20th century wars by looking at a wide range of modes of representation of the past across media including novels, films, video games and genres from World War I poetry to science fiction.  Like all seminars, it has a major presentation, discussion, and class participation component. Students can write a major research paper on memories and representation of nearly any theme intersecting with war and mass violence from the late 19th century to present.

HIST 498/4 – A
Advanced Topics in History: Transnational Networks

In recent years the network has emerged as a critical touchstone of scholarly focus, both empirically and theoretically. Using the concept as a lens, this course explores a wide range of cases including: Atlantic worlds emerging in relation to the slave trade; Muslim commercial networks in the Indian Ocean; the circulations through which European empires rose and fell; and more recent examples of migration, transnational political movements, and neoliberal economics. In order to aid us in exploring these historical examples as well as critically assess the possibilities and limitations of the network as a conceptual tool, the course also features a selection of key theoretical texts from cultural theory, political economy and the roots and fruits of recent turns to a Latourian toolkit.

HIST 498/4 – AA
Advanced Topics in History: Art & The City

This class imagines artists as public historians. Participants are encouraged to delve into their own work, lived experiences, and practices, as well as to witness those that surround and precede us. We will take up decolonial approaches to the local, to Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal, as well as other cities, engaging with pasts, presents, and futures of creative communities. This seminar includes workshops in archival and field visits, performance research, digital practices, and visual ethnography. The course invites a plurality of approaches and the opportunity to develop a sustained project. All practices are welcome and encouraged.

HIST 498/4 - BB 
Advanced Topics in History: Capitalism from Below

Systemic mining, drilling, blasting, tunneling, and other geotechnical methods have not only thrown traditional relations on the surface into upheaval, but have also produced irreversible changes to the foundations of companies, empires, and nation-states. This seminar explores the profound historical role of subsurface extraction and underground labor in the growth and development of capitalism. It will do so by focusing on histories around and below the equator in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, or the so-called Global South. The class, moreover, draws especially from Indigenous, Black, and Third World feminist scholarship. This scholarship may, on the one hand, help reckon with the often-disappeared histories of colonization and racialization buried in orthodox narratives of capitalism, and on the other hand, seek out submerged stories of other possible futures that could come to the surface.