Search Results
Your search for courses · during 25FA, 26WI, 26SP · tagged with HIST Pre-Modern · returned 10 results
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CLAS 229 The Collapse of the Roman Republic 6 credits
The class will investigate the factors that led a Republican government that had lasted for 700 years to fall apart, leading to twenty years of civil war that only ended with the rise of a totalitarian dictatorship. We will look at the economic, social, military, and religious factors that played key roles in this dynamic political period. We will also trace the rise and influence of Roman warlords, politicians, and personalities and how they changed Roman politics and society. We will study many of the greatest characters in Roman history, as well as the lives of everyday Romans in this turbulent time.
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CLAS 229.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Jake Morton 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLanguage & Dining Center 104 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLanguage & Dining Center 104 2:20pm-3:20pm
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CLAS 230 Hellenistic Greek History 6 credits
Alexander the Great united the Greek states by force before waging a ten-year campaign that brought Greek influence all the way to India. In the aftermath of Alexander’s death, his generals divided the world into kingdoms that presided over an extraordinary flourishing of arts and science over the next 300 years. However, this period also saw these kingdoms continuously strive for domination over one another until they were in turn dominated by Rome. This class will explore one of the most exciting periods in ancient history, a time of great cultural achievements, larger than life characters, and devastating conflicts.
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CLAS 230.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Jake Morton 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLanguage & Dining Center 104 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLanguage & Dining Center 104 1:10pm-2:10pm
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HIST 100 Confucius and His Critics 6 credits
An introduction to the study of historical biography. Instead of what we heard or think about Confucius, we will examine what his contemporaries, both his supporters and critics, thought he was. Students will scrutinize various sources gleaned from archaeology, heroic narratives, and court debates, as well as the Analects to write their own biography of Confucius based on a particular historical context that created a persistent constitutional agenda in early China. Students will justify why they would call such a finding, in hindsight, "Confucian" in its formative days. Themes can be drawn from aspects of ritual, bureaucracy, speech and writing.
Held for new first year students
- Fall 2025
- AI/WR1, Argument & Inquiry/WR1 IS, International Studies
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Student is a member of the First Year First Term class level cohort. Students are only allowed to register for one A&I course at a time. If a student wishes to change the A&I course they are enrolled in they must DROP the enrolled course and then ADD the new course. Please see our Workday guides Drop or 'Late' Drop a Course and Register or Waitlist for a Course Directly from the Course Listing for more information.
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HIST 100.03 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Seungjoo Yoon 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- M, WLeighton 301 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 301 12:00pm-1:00pm
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HIST 100 The Black Death: Disease and Its Consequences in the Middle Ages 6 credits
In the 1340s, the Black Death swept through the Middle East and Europe, killing up to a third of the population in some areas. How can we understand what this catastrophe meant for the people who lived and died at the time? In this seminar, we will examine the Black Death (primarily in Europe) from a range of perspectives and disciplines and through a range of sources. We will seek to understand the biological and environmental causes of the disease, therapies, and the experience of illness, but also the effects of the mortality on economic, social, religious, and cultural life.Held for new first year students
- Fall 2025
- AI/WR1, Argument & Inquiry/WR1 IS, International Studies QRE, Quantitative Reasoning
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Student is a member of the First Year First Term class level cohort. Students are only allowed to register for one A&I course at a time. If a student wishes to change the A&I course they are enrolled in they must DROP the enrolled course and then ADD the new course. Please see our Workday guides Drop or 'Late' Drop a Course and Register or Waitlist for a Course Directly from the Course Listing for more information.
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HIST 100.05 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Victoria Morse 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- M, WLibrary 344 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLibrary 344 1:10pm-2:10pm
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HIST 137 Early Medieval Worlds in Transformation 6 credits
In this course we will explore a variety of distinct but interconnected worlds that existed between ca.300 and ca.1050. We will interrogate primary sources, especially written and visual materials, as they bear witness to people forming and transforming political, social, religious, and cultural values, ideas and structures. We will work to understand how communities adapt to new conditions and challenges while maintaining links with and repurposing the lifeways, ideas, and material cultures of the past. We will watch as new and different groups and institutions come to power, and how the existing peoples and structures respond and change. Projects in this course will build capacity to interpret difficult primary documents, formulate research questions, and build arguments that combine rigor and humane sympathy.
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HIST 137.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:William North 🏫 👤
- Size:35
- M, WLeighton 304 8:30am-9:40am
- FLeighton 304 8:30am-9:30am
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HIST 159 Age of Samurai 6 credits
Japan’s age of warriors is often compared to the Middle Ages. Sandwiched between the court society and the shogunate, the warrior population in Japan is often compared to the vassals in feudalism. This course examines the evolution of the samurai from the late twelfth to the seventeenth century, with the thematic focus on the evolving dynamics between violence and competing political regimes (monasteries, estate holders, opportunistic households, regencies, cloistered government). With analyses of many different types of primary sources (chronicles, poems, letters, diaries, travelogues, thanatologues, maps) students will develop critical skills to frame key historical questions against broader historiographical contexts.
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HIST 159.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Seungjoo Yoon 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- M, WLeighton 303 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 303 12:00pm-1:00pm
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HIST 169 Colonial Latin America 6 credits
This course examines the formation of Iberian colonial societies in the Americas with a focus on the lives of “ordinary” people, and the ways scholars study their lived experience through the surviving historical record. How did indigenous people respond to the so-called Spanish conquest? How did their communities adapt to colonial pressures and demands? What roles did African slaves and their descendants play in the formation of colonial societies? How were racial identities understood, refashioned, or contested as these societies became ever more globalized and diverse? These and other questions will serve as the starting point for our study of the origins and formation of contemporary Latin America.
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HIST 169.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Andrew Fisher 🏫 👤
- Size:35
- M, WLeighton 236 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 236 1:10pm-2:10pm
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HIST 235 Making and Breaking Institutions: Structure, Culture, Corruption, and Reform in the Middle Ages 6 credits
From churches and monasteries to universities, guilds, governmental administrations, the medieval world was full of institutions. They emerged, by accident or design, to do particular kinds of work and to benefit particular persons or groups. These institutions faced hard questions like those we ask of our institutions today: How best to structure, distribute, and control power and authority? What is the place of the institution in the wider world? How is a collective identity and ethos achieved, maintained, or transformed? Where does corruption come from and how can institutions be reformed? This course will explore these questions through discussion of case studies and primary sources from the medieval world as well as theoretical studies of these topics.
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HIST 235.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:William North 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WWillis 204 8:30am-9:40am
- FWillis 204 8:30am-9:30am
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HIST 278 The Aztecs and Their World 6 credits
Come explore the world of feathered serpents, smoking mirrors, flower songs, and water mountains! This course examines from multiple disciplinary perspectives the Nahuatl-speaking people of central Mexico under both Aztec and early Spanish rule (spanning approximately the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries). Students will gain experience working with a range of sources produced by Nahua authors, scribes, and artists, including ritual calendars, imperial tribute records, dynastic annals, and translated documents. The College’s rich collection of Mesoamerican codex facsimiles will play a prominent role in our investigation. No prior knowledge is required or expected.
- Winter 2026
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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HIST 314 Crime and Punishment: Early American Legal History 6 credits
In this advanced seminar, you will learn to research and write a compelling microhistory about early America (1607-1860) through legal documents such as depositions, complaints, accusations, confessions, and laws themselves. The archives of American law are rich with evidence about a diverse array of people, events, and places; your 20- to 25-page paper, based on your original research, will have many topics from which to draw. The seminar will include common readings with a variety of approaches to legal history as well as extensive peer review.
Recommended Preparation: At least one US History course and/or HIST 298.
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HIST 314.01 Spring 2026
- Faculty:Serena Zabin 🏫 👤
- Size:20
- T, THLeighton 202 1:15pm-3:00pm
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