Course Descriptions

TTh 11:00-12:15

Dr. Kristen Foster

The new American nation, the United States, was born from a set of ideas about governance, liberty, tyranny, property, hereditary rule, and human equality.  This made the early United States a unique experiment that tried to build a nation not on bloodlines but on a set of ideas.  The unfolding of this process was optimistic and also messy, fraught with both human prejudice and hope.  This course focuses on the American Revolution and the reasons for the independence movement, the hopes and failures of the founding generation, the debates over the Constitution, the roots of an American empire, westward expansion, slavery, the rise of democracy, the formation of a distinctly American identity and culture, and the endless optimism of the young republic.  The class requires weekly reading, discussion, and lecture.

TTh 3:30-4:45
Dr. David McDaniel

History 3118 will undertake an analysis of the military history of the United States from the colonial period to the present. This course considers the role of the U.S. armed forces in relation to the social, cultural, political, economic, and technological development of the United States. It will not only address such themes as wartime strategy, operational tactics, and combat technology, but also the impact of warfare on society and the reflections of ordinary men and women in uniform.

MWF 9:00-9:50

Professor Sam Harshner

This course will examine the origins, development, and contemporary form of our economic system, capitalism.  We will examine both the dizzying levels prosperity it has created and the formidable crises it has engendered.  We live in a time of great change and great peril.  Understanding the confusing and evolving world around us requires understanding the challenges and opportunities afforded us by the capitalist system in which we all carve out our day-to-day existence.  And understanding capitalism requires understanding forces that created it and sustained it over the past five hundred years. 

W 2:00-4:30

Dr. J. Patrick Mullins

For communities as for individuals, we are what we remember. The identity of a people—from a small community to an ethnic group to a nation-state—hinges on how those people recollect shared historic events and apply those lessons to present and future problems. Historians have a responsibility to inform the public about the past—and to inform themselves by listening to the public. Public History is the subfield of History which studies the past for and with the public. Public historians study how the public understands history, how historians can address general audiences, and how historians and the public can work together.

In this course, we will explore the challenges and opportunities of Public History by focusing on three pivotal historic episodes: the American Revolution, slavery and the Civil War, and World War II and the Holocaust. We will approach each event as a case-study in public memory, examining how events are interpreted for the public by historians (or for historians by the public) through museum exhibitions of artworks, photographs, and other artifacts, creation and preservation of historic sites (such as buildings, landscapes, and memorials), and through storytelling, from folk oral histories to Hollywood and documentary movies.

Graduate students and undergraduates will explore together the practical advantages and theoretical challenges of working directly with unconventional sources and engaging constructively with communities about their shared memories. Together, we will gain appreciation for the power of artifacts, places, and stories to help public historians connect communities with their past and to help academic historians understand marginalized communities and hear silenced voices.

Th 4:30-7:00

Dr. Robert Smith

This course explores the United States legal tradition by examining significant legislation, case law, key figures and the impact of law on U.S. society. Much of the case law will consider the 14^th Amendment because of its role in shaping individual rights and freedoms. The class readings and discussions will also consider how “common people” shape basic constitutional rights through legal action.

T 4:30-7:00

Dr. Kristen Foster

In The American Revolution and the New Nation, we will look at the birth and early development of the United States beginning with the American Revolution and ending roughly with the rise of Jackson and the abolition movement. To this end, we will begin by exploring the ways that historians have explained the American Revolution. Then we will explore together the era of the early American Republic.  We will study the formation of a workable national government, the bid for empire, westward expansion, slavery and its impact on American identity, the rise of democracy, class identities, and Andrew Jackson, all alongside the endless optimism of the young republic. Not surprisingly, then, as a colloquium, the emphasis in this course is on shared readings, weekly writing practice, historiography, and intense discussion.

MWF 12:00-12:50

Dr. Alan Ball

HIST 4271/4271H is a survey of modern Russian and Soviet history that begins with an introduction to tsarist Russia in order reach an understanding of the revolutions in 1917 that swept away much of the old regime and left the Bolshevik (Communist) Party in power.  The bulk of the course will concentrate on the Soviet period, featuring the tumultuous development of “the world’s first socialist state,” the emergence of the Soviet Union as one of the world’s two superpowers, and the country’s subsequent collapse.  In particular, we will examine the Bolsheviks’ aspirations in 1917 and then see to what extent these hopes for a new society were realized as the Communist Party confronted both domestic and foreign challenges. 

The course is composed of lectures, a few Soviet films, and eight periods set aside for discussion.  On these eight weeks, in place of a Friday lecture, students will meet with me in small groups to discuss sources pertaining to major topics in the course.  These readings include a variety of primary documents, memoirs, and selections from the wealth of Russian literature that provoked tsarist and Soviet authorities alike.

Syllabus on request; questions welcome: alan.ball@marquette.edu

MWF 1:00-1:50

Dr. Timothy McMahon

This course has been created specifically for the university core discovery tier, under the theme "Cognition, Memory, Intelligence." We will explore the relationship of history and memory, particular public and collective memory as experienced through commemoration, public art (especially statuary), and public celebration. While our readings will be historical in nature, they will draw from the fields of film study, literature, historical geography, anthropology, and folklore. Students will explore the relationship between history and memory broadly defined. Topics might include, but are not limited to, popular culture and memory, politics and commemoration; and public history, memory, and forgetting. We will focus our attention on the modern period and most specifically on the British Empire and Ireland, but we will also take a significant look at parallels to the United States, particularly on questions of race and commemoration. The crux of what we will explore can be summed up in the following questions: How does a particular historical moment affect expressions of collective memory? And how do new conditions and new information affect the acceptance or lack of acceptance of past expressions of the collective? 

TTh 12:30-1:45

Dr. Chima Korieh

World War II had a profound impact on the world. It required unprecedented efforts to coordinate strategy and tactics with other members of the Grand Alliance in battle against the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan. At the same time, it demanded a monumental production effort in European colonial territories and dominions to provide the materials necessary to fight the war. This course concerns itself with the relationship between World War II and the phenomena of home front. It will examine the challenges of the war years and the lasting effect they would bring to different regions. The course deemphasizes the Eurocentric focus of much of Euro-North American history by focusing on the experiences of non-Western societies—European colonies in the global conflict.

MW 2:00-3:15

Dr. Michael Donoghue

This course examines the history of the Caribbean from pre-colonial times to the 21st century. As such, we will explore major topics such as colonialism, slavery, race, gender, and state formation. But our main emphasis will be on the notion of “crossing borders” and diasporic world-making, how people on the move from South America to the Caribbean, from Europe, Africa, and Asia to the Caribbean, and of course, from the Caribbean to Central America and the United States, played a central role in constructing new social, cultural, and political environments, largely in conflict with preexisting ones.  Students will examine this process from a multitude of perspectives: that of pre-Colombian indigenous hunter-gatherers, Africans kidnapped and enslaved, migrant workers journeying from Caribbean islands to work on railroad and canal projects, and immigrants from the islands seeking economic and political opportunities in Latin America, Europe and the United States.  The neglected story of Asian immigrants who replaced slaves as a labor force from the mid-19^th century onwards will also be addressed. The efforts of these “border crossers” besides creating continuing waves of in- and-out migration, reshaped established notions of race, class, and gender on the islands and forged unique diasporic world-making to survive against great odds in an increasingly globalized environment.  These topics and processes will be analyzed in a multi-disciplinary fashion though the approaches of anthropology, race studies, political science, history, and cultural studies. Students will be introduced to a broad range of methodologies and theories to better understand how reconstructions of race, identity, and culture broke down the borders of colonialism and racial exploitation to forge increased opportunities and renewed communities in a wide range of geographical spaces.  Students will write two short papers on these themes and have a midterm and final exam as well.

MWF 10:00-10:50

Dr. Charles Gallagher, S.J.

This course will examine North American and European religious history from the perspective of its intersections with the interests of intelligence collectors and agencies.  The course will start with spying in the Hebrew Bible and move to espionage during the Elizabethan era.  Spying in Islam and Hinduism will also be discussed.  The ethics of spying will be a major theme of the course.  The class will have modules on spying and Just War theory and Jesuit espionage.  During the modern era we tussle with the question, “If deception is the bedrock concept motivating espionage, how can religious actors and institutions align their motives with the interests of state intelligence officials?”  The course will be global in scope, looking at espionage cases involving religious actors in the Middle East, Europe, India, Canada, North Africa, Israel, the United States, and Ukraine.

TTh 3:30-4:45

Dr. Lezlie Knox

The global turn in medieval studies provides exciting opportunities to explore connections between regions and to raise questions about their commonalities and divergences.  No prior knowledge of the premodern world is required beyond curiosity about how Damascene jewelry came to be interred in a Viking grave in ninth-century England, what a Jewish merchant from Cairo packed for a twelfth-century trading expedition across the Indian Ocean, or why the clothing worn by papal emissaries made such a bad impressions on the Mongols.  These and other examples will allow us to evaluate how the exchange of goods and ideas connected peoples across the Global Middle Ages.  Class outcomes include a collaborative digital project exploring the pre-modern world through its textual and material evidence.

Students also should expect regular discussions focused on book-length studies and academic articles, as we will apply a critical lens to our categories of historical analysis. That includes the ideas embedded in the above description such as Middle Ages/medieval, modernity, globalization, etc.  Graduate students enrolling in the cross-listed HIST 5953 will have additional readings focused on historiographical debates in the field.

M 2:00-4:30

Dr. Alan Ball

Political and institutional propaganda has been with us for thousands of years.  Not just the specialty of fascist or communist dictatorships, propaganda can be found among the ancient Greeks and Romans, the medieval Papacy, and modern political campaigns, to suggest just a handful of examples.  We’ll begin the course by formulating a more precise understanding of the term “propaganda” than you may have at the moment, and then—with this background as your guide—you’ll be able to choose a version of propaganda that interests you and which will serve as a suitable subject for investigation.  Given that HIST 4955 is a research seminar, the bulk of the semester will be devoted to the research and writing of a paper (approximately 20-25 pages) on your chosen topic, relying on primary sources as far as possible.  During the last week or two of the semester, we will schedule group sessions to discuss the fruits of our labors.

W 4:30-7:00

Dr. Alison Efford

This seminar offers an introduction to the study of history at the graduate level. Our goal is to become conversant with the range of theories and methodologies used by twenty-first century historians. We will examine different approaches to historical research and analysis, debates around the nature and meaning of history as a discipline, and the potentials and pitfalls of academic scholarship about the past. Through readings, discussions, short writing assignments, and discernment activities, we will explore history in theory and practice.

M 4:30-7:00

Dr. Michael Wert

In this course, we use trauma as a lens for looking at historical topics of interest to students. These could include individual or group trauma as part of commemorative history, historical and commemorative memory surrounding traumatic historical events, or even trauma as crisis, in other words, the breaking of everyday life because of historical events like the pandemic. Our readings will focus on concepts rather than geographical or temporal content, allowing you to explore historical content in your own way.