Course descriptions 2025-2026

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.

Instructor description: This seminar examines historical methods, techniques and sources relevant to graduate level research in History. Students will learn about research methods, research project design, historiography and theory, and strategies for locating and working with various types of sources. The major assignment for the course is a research proposal for their major research paper or thesis.

HIST*6290

North American History

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: Theme: The Zoopolitics of Consumer Capitalism

In the first half of the course, we will examine the global trade in biologically wild animals (whether born in captivity or taken from their natural habitat) since the 18th century. Students will consider how the development of consumer economies shaped that traffic, the human sciences, politics, and leisure subsisting on the trade, as well as the lives of individual nonhumans caught up in the trade. Historical reading topics include animal dealers, zoos, circuses, national parks, pet keeping, taxidermy, the politics of extinction, and the role of animals in wildlife TV and tourism. 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 animals, globalization and commodification of the environment, or popular science in a context crucial to your own thesis or Major Research Paper (MRP) research.

HIST*6380

Topics in Early Modern European History

Calendar description: This seminar course examines current issues in early modern European history as selected by the instructor(s). Participants review current research and historiography, discuss the principal debates, and develop their own perspectives through encounters with primary source materials.

Instructor description: This course will examine European voyages of discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Using early modern travel narratives in conjunction with secondary readings, we will examine early contact, conflict and commercial interaction between European and non-European peoples. We will investigate the early efforts of Portugal, Spain and England to establish colonies and trading posts in the Americas, Asia and Africa, as well as the worldviews that framed them. Where sources exist, we will also examine the perspective of non-Europeans through firsthand accounts.

HIST 610

War and Society in the Twentieth Century

Calendar description: This course will explore the impact of twentieth century war on the English - speaking world, especially Canada. It will introduce students to the many ways in which historians have studied the First and Second World Wars, as well as other conflicts. Our seminar presentations and research papers will sample the 'old military history' of tactics and strategy, and we will also examine the 'new military history' that focuses on the social, economic and cultural impact of 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

Topic: Crime and Violence in Early Modern Europe (1450-1850)

Instructor description: This course will explore the history of the early modern period through the lens of crime and violence.  It will examine the ways in which early modern Europeans perpetrated, navigated, and policed physical, social, and religious crimes, including piracy, heresy and witchcraft, sexual violence, and murder.  It will explore the secondary literature on early modern crime and work with primary sources from the period.  The course will also include workshops to build competencies with digital humanities to support final project development.

Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe

Calendar description: This course borrows its title from the famous collection of essays edited by Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero. The course explores how historians use narrative to (re)construct past realities. It looks closely at the uses, abuses, and limitations of microhistory as a genre and exposes students to important trends in social history. Though the bulk of the material deals with Europe in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, the course is methodological in nature and is intended for all graduate students of social history.

Students in HIST 622 read the great microhistories including Davis' The Return of Martin Guerre, LeRoy Ladurie's Montaillou and Caranaval at Romans, Spence's The Death of Woman Wang, Ginzburg's Night Battles, and others. Through these sources students acquire a deep understanding of the historiography surrounding this genre. In addition, HIST 622 exposes students to the various non-historical theorists (sociological, anthropological, etc.) whose works inform the microhistorical method.

Race and Gender in the United States 1608-1877: Research Seminar

Prerequisite: HI639A Reading Seminar: On Race and Gender in the United States 1608-1877

Instructor description: Students who continue from 639A will write a research paper on the topic of their choice related to race and gender in colonial and U.S. history from 1608-1877. They may develop a paper about one of the topics discussed in 639A or select a different area. These essays must be based on and utilize a substantial body of primary sources. This class continues the collaborative approach from fall term. Course activities will include source compilation, peer review, individual and group meetings, essay drafting, a research presentation, and responding to feedback by producing a polished final research paper. 

Research Seminar on Ancient Sexualities

Prerequisite: HI656S Reading Seminar: Ancient Sexualities

Instructor description: Students conduct research into topics related to ancient sexuality and gender and/or their reception in contemporary cultural products.  Activities include research presentations and written reports. Emphasis will be on data collection and interpretation. The final product will be a research paper that is developed over the course.

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: This seminar course engages 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 2024 we carry out two fields of activity:  the first, an historical and trans-cultural 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.

HIST*6300

Topics in Modern European History - Modern Russia and Ukraine

Calendar description: This seminar course will focus on selected aspects of the political and social history of Europe between 1789 and 1989. Topics to be examined will vary according to the expertise of the faculty and the interest of the students.

Instructor description: This cross-listed undergraduate and graduate History & European Studies course focuses on the politics, history, and culture of the complex relationship between modern Russia and modern Ukraine, in the context of the relationships of both nations to communism, Europe, and the Western world. It first examines the roots of tensions between Russia and Ukraine, and between the Soviet Union and the outside world, in the twentieth century, paying particular attention to the Holodomor and the Holocaust. The course then focuses on the original Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States (c. 1945-91) and the fraught allyship in this period between the Union’s two most powerful socialist republics, Russia and Ukraine. It then turns to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of communism (1989-91) and their impact on Russia’s relationships with Ukraine and the rest of Europe. The course concludes by studying the new Cold War between Russia and the West, which was dramatically escalated in 2022 by the Putin regime’s invasion of Ukraine. Studying various historical figures, from Mikhail Gorbachev to Vladimir Putin, and various historical events, including the Russian Civil War, the Holodomor, the Holocaust, and Chernobyl, this course uses a range of sources and approaches (including government documents, memoirs, literature, propaganda, film, and sport) to take students to the heart of the crisis that is reshaping contemporary Europe and the contemporary world.

HIST*6500

Topics in Global History - A World on Fire: Historians and the Climate Crisis

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: In this graduate history seminar, we will explore climate history and investigate how natural and anthropogenic processes have shaped the vulnerabilities, responses, and resiliency of past societies. In doing so, we will apply historical thinking and interdisciplinary perspectives while reading widely in environmental history, environmental studies, climate science, and allied fields. We will reflect on the role of historians in contemporary society and consider how they can mobilize their expertise to address the climate crisis and its multifaceted challenges and opportunities. Our explorations will also extend into the future, as we attempt to understand how the climate crisis is reshaping the historical profession (its approaches, perspectives, methods, pedagogies, and career trajectories) and what implications this has for history, students, and educators.

HIST 605

Two sections

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.

HIST 691A Section 12

Special Topic: The History of the Modern Body.

HI639A

Reading Seminar: Race and Gender in the United States 1608-1877

Calendar description: This seminar examines Colonial America and the United States through the lens of race and gender relations in the period between early colonization to the end of the Civil War. Taking a historiographical approach, topics may include clashes over political and social rights; Indigenous-colonist relations; the rise of slavery and of classes; changing ideas about sexuality, the Salem Witch Trials; the impact of the American Revolution on gender and race relations; the development of participatory democracy; the market revolution's transformations of the nation's economy and cultural landscape; the rise of national and sectional identities precipitated by western expansion; and class relations, race and gender during the Civil War.

HI656S

Reading Seminar: Ancient Sexualities

Instructor description: This seminar explores the construction and regulation of sexual identities and gender in ancient Greece and Rome (c. 800BCE to 500CE) by examining cultural products, such as art, literature and philosophy, ritual practices, legal and medical texts, and other historical documents. In addition, we consider how these conventions and attitudes are reflected in contemporary film and fiction. Topics include sexuality in myth; erotic poetry; virginity and sexual abstinence; same sex love; legal controls of sexuality; erotic magic; cross-dressing; inter-sexed bodies; eunuchs; prostitution; sexual slander, obscenity and pornography. Student activities include leading and participating in discussions, presenting research to the class, and writing papers.