Spring 2022 Courses

The Department offers a variety of 1000- and 2000-level surveys that expose students to fundamental overviews of US, European, Latin American, Middle Eastern, Russian, and Asian history in addition to World History. History majors are required to complete at least two survey courses, which do not need to be sequential. Thus, a History major could complete one semester of “World History” and one semester of “U.S. Women’s History” to fulfill this requirement. 

There is a general expectation that assignments in 1000- and 2000-level courses will involve analytical writing, including essay examinations or papers. Both 1000 and 2000-level courses are generally bigger than upper-division courses, so they are usually based on a lecture format, though all of them also include time for class discussion.

T/Th 9:30-10:50 Online
Prof. Peterson Niehoff
This class will trace the history of film and other screen media from the origin of motion pictures to the present. It will look at the most important technological,industrial, aesthetic, and cultural developments in screen media. Topics include the establishment of a film industry, the emergence of national cinemas, the studio system,key cinematic events and movements, and the emergence of new screen media technologies in the 20th and 21st centuries.

T/Th 12:30-1:50
Dr. Christpher Phillips
This course is the second of a two-semester sequence on the Civil War era. This course introduces students to the events and interpretations of the American Civil War and its aftermath, one of the most turbulent periods in U.S. history. We will examine the political  social ideological  military  economic  and constitutional issues that emerged during the war;the crucial question of emancipation and conceptions of freedom by both black and white Americans; federal efforts to reintegrate the Confederate states into the Union; and the southern white resistance to those efforts  including the development of postwar racism and the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. The course will allow students to evaluate the multiple influences of the period as well as to form educated historical opinions about the role which cultural and ideological norms played in the conflict and its outcome  and will encourage assessment of the place of the Civil War and Reconstruction in our modern national experience.

M/W/F 1:25 - 2:20 Online on Friday
Dr. Brianna Leavitt-Alcantara
This course examines the relationship between God and Guns  religion and violence  in Latin America  from the expansion of the Aztec and Incan empires  to the European Catholic conquest of the Americas  to the modern revolutionary movements of the twentieth century.

M/W/F 10:10-11:05
Dr. Anne Delano Steinert
This course will introduce students to the rich and varied history of LGBTQ people and movements in American cities. Beginning in colonial America  the course will move on to explore nineteenth- and twentieth-century urban life with an emphasis on art and literature. The course will also explore the origins of the modern gay rights movement  the Stonewall uprising  and the AIDS crisis. Course material will emphasize LGBTQ activism and individuals who have worked to end systems of oppression and exclusion across time. Course discussion will focus explicitly on understanding of the nature of equality and the development and perpetuation of inequality through interlocking systems of oppression  privilege  and power. Providing students with a solid background in American LGBTQ history  the course will turn its focus to the local community and engage in a long exploration of Cincinnati's LGBTQ history with a public-facing final product rooted in the best practices of public history.

T/TH 12:30-1:50
Dr. Issac Campos
This course examines the business, culture, policy, legal, and public health implications of drugs and the broader category of addiction since 1980. Topics here will include the emergence of “crack” in the United States and “cartels” in Mexico and Colombia, the ties between the War on Drugs and the Cold War, the War on Drugs and the “prison industrial complex,” the militarization of police in the name of fighting drugs, and how all of this eventually led to calls for reform that resulted in part in the legalization of both medical and recreational marijuana, and a more public-health oriented approach to the more recent opioid epidemic. At the same time, the course will explore other forms of addiction that have exploded since the 1980s, principally the various “digital addictions,” from online gaming, to smart phones and social media.

Our Freshman Seminars (HIST 1099) are designed as interactive, small-enrollment classes in which first-year students work with leading historians on the in-depth study of a range of historical issues.  Seminars in the past have focused on topics such as: The Essential Documents of the American Revolution; City Life in Renaissance Italy; The Merchant of Venice in Historical Perspective; and World War I in Memoir, Fiction, and Film. The goal of these classes is to expose students to the special rewards of studying history at the college-level by allowing them to focus on a topic up-close with leading experts in the field.  These courses also fulfill the departmental requirement for majors and minors concerning lower level electives.

M/W 1:25-2:35 
Dr. Man Bun Kwan
The work of this freshman seminar is situated at the intersection of African American history and public history. It will explore questions about the way we experience race in museums, historic monuments, walking tours, films, and other forms of public history including who decides what stories are told, and where, how, and for whom they are told?  We will begin by looking at examples around the country including Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Historic Williamsburg, ghost tours in Louisiana, and Richmond’s Monument Avenue, but then narrow in on stories in our own city. Student groups will each conduct research and produce a public history product to shed light on Cincinnati’s African American community.

This small seminar is required of all History majors and minors as an essential introduction to the ideas and practices of studying history and conducting historical research.  With this goal in mind, students read a selection of books and articles touching on different periods, world regions, and historiographical approaches that expose the many ways historians do their work.  

Courses at the 3001 to 4099 level are designed to give students an in-depth knowledge of the history of a particular place or era, such as medieval or early modern Europe, or of a historical subject that cuts across geographical and chronological boundaries, such as the history of slavery and emancipation, or of a special research methodology used by historians, such as computer applications in history, the analysis of material culture, or the study of intellectual discourse. These courses vary in format and may include lectures, discussions, readings from secondary materials, and use of primary materials such as documents, films, or still pictures. 

In addition, 4000-level courses also include a guided research component that introduces students to the basic methods of research in order to prepare them for the research projects ahead in the History 5000 research seminars.

M/W/F 11:15-12:10
Dr. Mark Lause
This course examines the history of the American West as a place and as an idea in American popular culture  memory  and imagination. In both geography and in meaning  the West has always been a shifting region that was the object first of European and then of American expansionism. It has proven a distinct region with a unique relationship to the U.S. federal government and distinctive patterns of race relations and interactions with Native Americans. The class explores the region from colonial expansion  through the Trans-Appalachian frontier period during the first years of the Republic (when the West meant the Ohio Valley and Kentucky)  as well as focusing on the historical development of the trans-Mississippi west stretching from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean.

T/TH 11:00-12:20
Dr. Stephen Porter
This course explores the intersections between international human rights and U.S. foreign relations  broadly construed focusing primarily on developments since World War I to create a broader understanding of the history of U.S. foreign relations. This includes but extends beyond issues of diplomacy, trade and war to include such matters as genocide, international humanitarian aid  struggles for racial justice  state sovereignty versus multilateralism refugee affairs and the Geneva Conventions.

M/W/F 11:15-12:10
Dr. Tracy Teslow
This course examines the social construction of American identity in the United States through a study of sculpture, painting, photography and emblematic imagery in their social, cultural, political  and scientific contexts. The Statue of Liberty  memorial sculpture  Depression era photography  and a variety of other art and imagery provide evidence about what it has meant to artists and Americans to be a citizen. We will address the problem of defining American citizenship  paying special attention to how citizenship has been understood not only in terms of American ideals of freedom, equality and opportunity  but particularly in terms of race, gender and power.

M/W/F 2:30-3:25
Dr. Mark Lause
This course explores the comparative roles of labor movements in the United States, Britain, France, Germany  and other societies. The focus will be the differing impacts of workers' organizations on the economic, social  and political lives of western societies from the eighteenth century through the First World War  with a particular emphasis on how national differences redefined attempts to promote a common international agendas like socialism or anarchism.

M/W/F 1:25-2:20 Online on Friday
Dr. Sigrun Haude
This course explores the social  economic, sexual, religious and political aspects of women's lives in European history from 1600-1850 placing women's experience into a range of broad historiographical traditions.

M/W 1:25-2:45
Dr. Jeffrey Zalar
This course offers students in the Honors Program and other high-achieving undergraduates the opportunity to study focused historical topics that include analysis and understanding of issues arising from individual and cultural differences. The topics will vary each time the course is offered and will reflect the research interests of the instructor. The course is designed to offer a flexible framework to support creative instruction  and sections may include regional field trips or service learning.

M/W/F 2:30- 3:25
Dr. Anne Delano Steinert
This course offers students in the Honors Program and other high-achieving undergraduates the opportunity to study focused historical topics that incorporate social and ethical reasoning from an historical perspective. The topics will vary each term and will reflect the research interests of the instructor. The course is designed to offer a flexible framework to support creative instruction  and sections may include regional field trips or service learning.

T/TH 2:00-3:20
Dr. Longfield Karr
This class examines the institution's meaning  and historical significance of the development of the rule of law and due process by critically examining some of the most important criminal  political  and civil trials in history and the stories we tell about them. Great trials and their outcomes serve as critical statements on and reflections of the societies in which they take place. In some cases  great trials might serve as means to affect legal change or social justice  whereas in others they may stand as opportunities to extend authority and tyranny. Beyond their own historical contexts  some great trials have had such a fundamental and foundational influence on the history  development  and justification for modern legal and political institutions that their stories have been recast, reenacted  and reimagined in order to teach timeless lessons about the dangers of tyranny  the virtues of duty  and the limits of justice. The trials under consideration  from term to term  are selected based on their fundamental and foundational importance to the evolution of civil  constitutional  and international law and will range from the trial of Socrates to the Nuremberg trials of the 20th century.

M/W/F 1:25-2:20 Online 
Dr. Mark Raider
This course investigates the history and culture of Israeli society since the establishment of the state in 1948 until the present. We will pay close attention to the dynamism, swift growth, and heterogeneity of Israeli society in all its diversity and complexity. We will also consider Israel’s place in the global geopolitical landscape. The main ethnic/cultural divisions and ideological/political tensions in Israeli society will be examined – Jews and Arabs, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, religion and secularism, newcomers and veterans, right and left – as well as a variety of ongoing sociopolitical challenges including minority rights, civil rights, gender equality, environmentalism, Jewish-Muslim-Christian relations, and so forth. There are no prerequisites for this class and no prior knowledge of the subject matter is presumed.

M/W/F 2:30-3:25
Dr. Wayne Durrill
This course will introduce students to the history of the American South from its colonial beginnings to the conclusion of the American Civil War. The region's history was characterized by the persistence of the institution of slavery and systemic forms of racial subordination wide social stratification  and defeat in the Civil War. It informs the more general history of America in that it counters the national myths of innocence, invincibility and affluence. Thus the class will examine the South's people  black  white and red, its social and cultural institutions  prevailing political ideology  and ultimately its meaning in the early American continuum.

T/Th 11:00-12:20
Dr. Maura O'Connor
This course examines the history of the British Empire from the settlements of the seventeenth century to the end of empire in the second half of the twentieth century. It focuses on how and why the empire grew so large by the end of the nineteenth century and what effects it had on societies and peoples across the globe  as well as what effect it had on the British themselves.

M/W 3:35-4:55
Dr. Shailaja Paik
To explore women in South Asia  particularly in India, Pakistan  and Bangladesh. We will study traditional topics like patriarchy  marriage and family  gender and sexuality  but also explore women as political actors, intellectuals  and professionals. This perspective will enable us to focus on the social and political dynamics of South Asia  as well as the daily activities of ordinary Asian women.

W 3:30- 6:20
Dr. Man Bun Kwan
History 5000 research seminars are the capstone courses for the History major in which students complete a significant research paper of approximately 20-25 pages. Students research a topic of their choice and are guided both by the course instructor and any other faculty member with expertise in the research area. The courses are purposefully small in order to offer majors a structured and supportive environment in which to sharpen their historical skills. Before enrolling in History 5000, students must have completed History 3000 (with a grade of C or higher) as well as one 4000-level course.

W 4:00-7:50
Dr. Brianna Leavitt-Alcantara
In this seminar students engage in original historical research. Students will conduct primary and secondary research and complete an article-length scholarly paper.

W 4:00-7:50
Dr. Sigrun Haude
This seminar is the second course of a two-course sequence in which graduate students engage in original historical research. Students will conduct primary and secondary research and complete an article-length scholarly paper.

Th 6:00-8:50
Dr. Rebecca Wingo
This course offers a practical orientation to and exploration of various fields encompassed under the rubric "public history " approached through specific team projects in conjunction with local organizations. Students will develop a museum exhibit  short publication  or other historical product examining an aspect of Cincinnati history with a view to the end product being available to the general public or to be turned over to a museum or other organization to expand into a professionally finished product.

Internships provide students with practical professional experience, under the guidance of specialists, in an institution whose purposes and activities are related to an area of public history (for example, historic preservation, museums, archives). Terms and hours will be arranged with individual students, institutions and faculty supervisors. - By Permission Only

This course allows doctoral students to concentrate on their upcoming qualifying exams. Under the guidance of their exam committees  students synthesize the knowledge acquired through a wide variety of formats  including lecture courses, seminars  directed readings  and independent study  in preparation for the qualifying exams.

This course is for the most advanced students, those beyond their preliminary exams. PhD candidates work independently under the supervision of their doctoral advisers, completing the research for and the writing of their dissertation.