Online BA in History Curriculum

This course explores significant people, movements, events, and ideas in the major civilizations of the world to about 1500. Our class will permit students to compare civilizations, empires, religions, epistemologies, and cultures on a planetary scale. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Machiavelli’s The Prince, students will analyze primary sources to better understand human societies in their own words and works. This class will also incorporate the use of games, the sampling of global cuisines, and the analysis of art and music to achieve an in-depth, yet broad survey of human history to the Early Modern period.

What does it means to live in a truly “globalized” world? How have human societies, and the identities of their members, changed in response to human migration on a planetary scale? This course investigates these and other questions about human cultural and civilizational encounters following the Colombian Exchange. Students will explore the most recent five hundred years of human history, interrogating the global impact of such phenomena as the Atlantic slave trade; the Reformation; the emergence of nation-states and European empires; the industrialization of nations and the embrace of capitalism; political revolutions and the unraveling of empires; the two world wars and the Cold War; climate change, and extremist terrorism.

“Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.” Joseph Ellis' quotes encapsulates the driving questions of this course: what are the many meanings of America, and how can we understand the historical development of the United States? This course investigates the "creation" of America, and the development of American identities, from the pre-colonial period to the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Topics will include: the peoples and cultures of North America circa 1491; encounters between indigenous peoples and early European colonizers; the political and religious tenor of the early British colonies; American independence and westward expansion; slavery and the Atlantic world; and the legacies of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

In this course students continue to investigate the many meanings of America from the end of Reconstruction to the present day. Using diverse primary sources materials from newspapers articles, to private diaries, to film, students will explore key controversies and debates in American history. Topics and themes include, but are not limited to: Reconstruction, lynching, and the Jim Crow era; Native American persecution and resistance in the face of Manifest Destiny; successive waves of immigration from Europe and Asia; the Gilded Age, the roaring 20s and Great Depression, the world wars, Cold War, and culture wars; recent American wars from Vietnam to Iraq; and current debates about American identity in an age of global immigration.

This course explores the impact of historical events on the lives of American women and, in turn, the many roles women played in shaping American history. Topics include native American women’s lives; gender and family life under slavery; the impact of industrialization on women of different classes; the ideology of separate spheres; women’s political activities including the anti-slavery movement, the suffrage movement, the 19th Amendment, and the resurgence of feminism in the 1960s; and transformations in the lives of modern women including work, politics, sexuality, consumption patterns, and leisure activities.

This class offers an overview of the American Politics sub-field of political science. This course examines the origins, development, structure, and functions of the political system of the United States of America. Topics include the constitutional framework; federalism; the three branches of government, the bureaucracy; civil rights and liberties; political participation and policy formation. Note: Fulfills the Missouri state requirement. General Education Area: Social Science

This course will integrate social, economic, political, and cultural history to explore the dramatic changes that occurred in the United States from the end of WWII. We will study a variety of events and people, but we will focus particular attention to three major themes of the period: conflicts (the Cold War, Iraq War, & Afghanistan War, for example), social and economic domestic policies, and the social/cultural changes we see in the U.S. across this roughly 70 year period. We will examine primary sources, such as newspapers and music, to understand Americans’ concerns and reactions to major events in this era.

This course introduces history majors to the many skills sets required to pursue their careers in history and related fields. Students will develop an individual research project in their stated career trajectory (post-graduate study, public history, or alternative academic) which will be the first step in building their job market portfolio. The course will introduce students to traditional archival and digital research methods; reading and writing like an historian; academic publishing; and networking in academia. In this class, students will also begin to develop their public, professional personas as they build personal websites, craft their social media presence, and professionalize their CVs.

Your own backyard has a history, and this class will teach you to uncover it. Whether in St. Louis or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, students will explore the history of their region through local archives, site visits, and original research projects. This class will incorporate an oral history component, in which students will interview members of their community in an attempt to understand how the unique social fabric of their village, town, or city came to be woven together. The on-campus St. Louis version of this course will feature visits to museums and notable sites in St. Louis history, while the online version will encourage students around the country to explore places in their own hometown, either by visiting historical sites, or through an exploration of local newspapers, online archives, or historical websites. In the online version, students will complete a series of short research projects on certain aspects of St. Louis history (Cahokia/Dredd Scott/Ferguson etc.) as well as create a short vlog about their own “local” history, whether they live in north STL or Belleville or NYC. This course will have a discussion forum component, allowing STL natives to compare their history with students from other parts of the region/country.

The History Portfolio Project represents the culmination of the student’s undergraduate career, and is the final step in their professionalization before the job market. Students will present a research paper and oral presentation of an individual project which corresponds with their chosen career trajectory (graduate school, public history, or alternative academic). Successful completion of this course will also entail practice interviews and the students’ application to job openings or graduate school, depending on their stated career trajectory.

What has it meant to be "sick" throughout history? Who were physicians and nurses, how were they trained, and what roles did they have in western society? When did we as a species turn away from magical understandings of illness, toward a modern scientific understanding of disease and infection? This class seeks to answer these questions by examining an array of first-hand stories, anatomical designs, medical case studies, and cultural histories of medicine. We will explore such themes as: changes in our understanding of sexual difference from the Greeks to the present, the emergence of the modern hospital, the development of germ theory, and the evolution of the physician's, the nurse's, and the midwife's role in western society from the middle ages to the twentieth century.

What do we mean by the middle east? How can we understand the history of a region that fostered humanity's first written laws and urban settlements, yet now according to some is the epicenter of a clash of civilizations? This class will explore these and other questions about the history and governments of the Middle East, from Hammurabi to Mehmed the Conqueror to the rise of Daesh (ISIS). The course is divided into three broad chronological units. The first explores the middle east before Islam, the subsequent expansion of Muslim societies under the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, and the changes wrought by Mongol invasions in the 13th century. The second unit examines the rise and dominance of the Ottoman Empire and the kinds of cross-cultural exchanges which occurred between the peoples of the Middle East and other regions during the early modern period. The final section interrogates the legacy of European incursions in the region, beginning with the French and British in Egypt, through both world wars and the present conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Mediterranean.

If you watched the grand scope of human history unfold from a seat on the moon, East Asia's enduring contributions, and the longevity of its institutions, would be strikingly ap-parent. From China's "5,000" years of civilization to the rise and fall of Japan's empires, this course investigates the development of East Asian peoples, politics, and cultures from approximately 1500 to the modern period. While the course primarily centers on Japan and China, students will spend some time exploring the relationships these re-gions fostered with Korea, Vietnam, and Central Asia from the early modern era through the 21st century.

This course will introduce students to the central debates about Latin American history, politics and culture from 1491 to the present. Beginning in the pre-colonial period, the course explores the rich social, religious, and political traditions of Latin America before the arrival of Europeans. Students will then assess the impact of European conquistadores and immigrants on native popu-lations and their institutions. Students will investigate indigenous resistance to, or in certain cases hybridization with, Old World peoples and their cultures through the colonial period. The course will then explore attempts at national self-determination and independence among the peoples of Latin America. Finally, students will investigate the legacies of colonialism, capitalism, and immi-gration in modern Latin America using a diverse array of primary sources such as personal ac-counts, newsprint and film to gauge the many meanings of Latin America in our increasingly globalized world.

This course will explore the history of Russia from the early imperial expansion to Putin's government today. Students will explore such themes and topics as: the modernization of Russia under imperial control & the Great Reforms, the 1917 revolution, Stalin's "Revolution from Above," soviet socialism, the experience of minority groups in imperial Russia, the USSR, and modern Russia. Students will consider the long-term, global effects of Russia's many revolutions, as well as assess it's power and influence on other governments today.

What does it mean, and has it meant, to be queer in America? This course examines the histories of gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, and non-binary identifying people in the United States. Students will examine how our understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality has changed over the last century, and the impact that capitalism and nationalism have had on these definitions, and on the lives of queer-identifying people. This course takes an intersectional approach, asking how age, class, (dis)ability, gender, ethnicity, and race all effect our understandings of queer identity. It places particular emphasis on the struggles of queer people to obtain equal rights, from the Stonewall riots to the landmark 2016 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling, which declared that a ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.