Course descriptions 2026-2027

HIST*6000

Historiography 1

Calendar description: This course will introduce students to some of the essential components of the historical process. It will also assess history as a cognitive discipline in contemporary society. While the scope of the course may extend from ancient times to the present, emphasis on the historiography of particular periods may vary according to instructor expertise and student research needs.

Instructor description: In Fall 2026, this course engages in a seminar format some of the essential components of the historical process: sources; narratives; social, cultural and political uses; new directions in research and communication, etc. It also assesses history as a cognitive discipline in contemporary society, and specifically history's role in addressing present crises. In Fall 2026, we carry out two fields of activity: the first, a historical and transcultural examination of the role of history in different historical and spatial contexts; and second, an analysis of the evolution of modern and contemporary historical research, debate and controversy in both academic and popular or political arenas.  

An important goal of HIST*6000 is to connect the class participant’s proposed MRP or MA project research to its historical and historiographical contexts; the final research paper in HIST*6000 can be considered as a contribution to the foundation of the HIST*6000 student’s MRP or MA project.

North American History

Theme: Racialization and Animality

Calendar description: Depending on the expertise of the instructor, this course may concentrate on either the United States or Canada, or it may concentrate on an historical theme or themes common to the larger continent.

Instructor description: In the first half of the course, we will examine how racial ideologies and practices in the United States since the eighteenth century have been constructed and justified through ideas about animality. Students will consider how the classification of certain human groups as “animal-like” shaped legal systems, colonial governance, labour regimes, scientific knowledge, and cultural expression. We will also explore how nonhuman animals were materially impacted by and symbolically implicated in racial projects. In the second half of the semester, using the tools and insights developed earlier in the course, you will research and write about a topic related to the history of racialization and/or animalization in a context crucial to your own thesis or Major Research Paper (MRP) research.

HIST*6610

Histories of Tourism and Travel

Calendar description: This seminar course will explore the history of modern tourism, examining the distinctions between travel and tourism in historical discourses and historiography, and engaging extensively with primary source material to examine the sector's evolution in trans-national perspective. Emphasis is placed on the development of key institutions, the influence of political environments, intercultural encounters, environmental impacts and global citizenship.

HIST 605

Global Governance in Historical Perspective 

Calendar description: This course examines the history of global governance, focusing on the institutions, issues, and debates that have shaped global governance throughout history. Students will consider how and why state and non-state actors have turned to global governance to tackle pressing challenges and create common frameworks. They will also examine the power dynamics involved in these processes, analyzing the politics of inclusion and exclusion within global governance arenas across different historical periods.

United States History 1

Instructor description: Focus on post-1945

HIST 691

Special Topic: The History of the Modern Body

HI622A

Modern Canada

Calendar description: This seminar focuses on topics of historical importance in the recent history of Canada.

Instructor description: This seminar focuses on topics of historical importance in the recent history of Canada. Taking a thematic approach, this course will explore how land and water have shaped political, social, economic, and environmental change in 20th-century Canada. Weekly seminar discussions will consider themes such as exploration, colonialism, gender and labour, agriculture and extraction, war and militarization of landscapes, waste and remediation, and land and water rights. Through seminar readings and discussion, this course will explore how land and water function not only as physical environments, but also as contested spaces of power, identity, and resistance.

HI656_

Napoleon and Napoleonic Wars

Reading Seminar: Instructor description: Napoleon Bonaparte dominated his time. After catching sight of the French emperor on horseback, Hegel dubbed him “this world-soul.” Ever since, he has been a subject of enduring fascination. Moreover, the wars named after him were the greatest conflicts before the world wars of the twentieth century. In this seminar, we will read major works from the extensive scholarly literature on Napoleon and his wars.

Prerequisite for HI657_

Chinese Cultural Revolution

Theme: The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 1966-1976: Narratives, Explanations, Memories

Reading seminar: Instructor description: In one decade, the Cultural Revolution transformed Chinese society, politics, and economy through mass mobilization and ideological campaigns intended to purge Chinese Communism of “revisionist” and “bourgeois” elements. Mao urged youth to denounce their politicians, their teachers, their parents and eventually each other. The People's Republic of China (PRC) was engulfed in waves of violence and counter violence. Red Guards became uncontrollable and factionalism spread in urban and rural China.

Meanwhile, struggles among the political elite accompanied military crackdowns and persecutions on an unprecedented scale. Schools and universities closed, and intellectuals became “sent-down youths” who spent years in remote rural exile. When Mao died in 1976 and the Gang of Four were arrested, how did Mao’s political successors assess events so that the Party could retain its legitimacy? And how did the Chinese people, many of whom still refer to the events as the “ten years of madness,” make sense of this normalization of brutality? What media did they use to express themselves, and how did this intersect with official interpretations? Was there space to remember or were people encouraged to forget?

In this course, we explore the causes, development, and consequences of the Cultural Revolution, and how it continues to affect the PRC. We will not only read differing interpretations in secondary literature, but will also investigate how the Cultural Revolution has been remembered in various media, including memoirs, films, museums, novels, art and online. This will be particularly useful for those who do not read Chinese in preparing papers for the Winter term research version of this course. 

Prerequisite for HI657_

HIST*6010

Research Methods in History

Calendar description: This seminar examines the historical methods, techniques, and sources relevant to graduate level research in History. Through hands-on activities, students will learn about research methods, research project design, historiography and theory, strategies for locating and working with various types of sources, and tools for analyzing sources.

HIST*6360

History of Sexuality and Gender

Calendar description: This course will examine the history of gender and/or sexuality in different cultures, paying close attention to various theoretical approaches to understanding the history of gender and/or sexuality. The chronological and geographic focus of the course may vary according to the interests and expertise of the instructor.

HIST*6500

Topics in Global History: Women, War, and Nation

Calendar description: This is a topical course that explores the history of processes that take place on a worldwide scale. These may include social, cultural, economic, or environmental processes.

Instructor description: This course is a survey of the inter-connected nature of gender constructs, nation-states and violence in history, primarily focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course proceeds in a roughly chronological order, examining individuals, nations, revolutions, and wars across the globe. We engage in individual and comparative studies to question the gendered origins and effects of nationalism and violence in history - and their continuing relevance.

Topics include, but are not limited to: Mythology; The French Revolution; Imperialism in Africa and Asia; Colonization of Turtle Island; Russian Revolution; The Second World War: Europe and Asia; Partition in South Asia; The Chinese Civil War; Protesting War; Remembering War.

HIST 612

Global Indigenous Rights

Calendar description: This course examines the historical and political contexts of Indigenous rights movements from around the world. It considers the histories of Indigenous-state relations and Indigenous assertions of rights and sovereignty through cultural, political, and legal means. We will discuss grassroots and global Indigenous rights movements and international efforts to address Indigenous aspirations and decolonization especially following WWII. Attention will be also paid to the formation of Indigenous organizations and the engagement of international forums (i.e., through the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples).

Early Modern History 1

Transnational and Global History: Old Problems and New Directions

Calendar description: This course examines transnational and global historical processes, focusing on temporal and geographic scales of analysis outside of traditional national histories, and promotes linking the local and the global. It looks at global forces influencing particular societies and encourages students to place themselves outside conventional local, regional, and national boundaries, and will critically consider a number of the metanarratives that have informed and continue to inform historiography, particularly idea such as modernity, progress, and the ongoing preoccupation with the 'rise of the west'. Given these questions, and the almost endless scope of a course that purports to take the world as its focal point, weekly seminars will begin with a discussion of the possibilities offered by as well as the limits to transnational/global/world history, the various interpretative frameworks in use and their proponents as well as the challenges that transnational/global/world history poses. We will then focus on particular case studies or themes so as to promote discussion that is as much historiographical as it is historical. Such themes/case studies may include: feminism and imperialism, famine and climate change, disease and ecology, military technology and governmentally, global trade and the rise of consumer society(s), colonial knowledge and shifting ideas of race.

Cold War America

Instructor description: “Cold War America” examines the impact of the Cold War on the United States, politically, culturally, and in terms of its foreign policy. Topics to be addressed include the development of the national security state, McCarthyism and television, the civil rights movement, Hollywood films, the rise of conservatism, and the Vietnam War.

Napoleon and Napoleonic Wars: Research

Prerequisite: HI656_

Research Seminar: In this seminar, students will produce a research paper based on primary sources on some aspect of Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars.

Chinese Cultural Revolution: Research

Prerequisite: HI656_

Research Seminar: In this seminar, students will produce a research paper based on primary sources on some aspect of the Cultural Revolution.