Seminar Topics - Spring 2025
The following courses are seminar topics for Spring 2025. Topics will vary semester to semester. A course may be repeated if the selected topic is different.
History 300: Senior Seminar
Section 1: Reconstruction
Instructor: Dr. Ron Gifford
This course will provide an opportunity to analyze primary sources in relation to one of the most important eras in U.S. History. While Eric Foner provided in 1988 the most memorable comprehensive synthesis of the period, there is still room for interpretation, as you will see in the discussion of historiography since the 1990s. Students can choose to write about emancipation, race, labor, republicanism, the role of the executive, violence, corruption, agency, the freedmen, and hundreds of other topics wherein we see the country grappling with the outcome and meaning of the Civil War. Whether or not Reconstruction was revolutionary, counter-revolutionary, a missed opportunity, or a success is still to be decided. We still see Reconstruction playing a role in our lives today.
Section 2: WWI in the Middle East
Instructor: Dr. Janice Jayes
WWI transformed every aspect of life in the Middle East, causing the death of nearly one quarter of Ottoman subjects and the end of the empire. European states competed on the battlefield to control land, waterways, trade and oil, and competed in the postwar negotiations to control post-Ottoman politics. This class samples from diplomatic, economic, social and cultural histories examining the European-Ottoman relationship in the decades before WWI, social and cultural transformations during the war, and the demographic remaking of the region due to state policies and refugee movements.
Section 3: Age of Revolution
Instructor: Dr. Matthijs Tieleman
In this class, we will study the methods, sources, and problems of studying the history of the Age of Revolution, which in this class circumscribes the revolutions taking place in Europe and America in the period ranging from 1688 to 1989. You will learn how to read, analyze, and write at an advanced level about this history, and you will have the opportunity to dive into a historical topic of your choice.
Section 4: Gandhi
Instructor: Dr. Sudipa Topdar
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) is renowned globally as a prophet of non-violence and one of the significant architects of the Indian nationalist movement. This undergraduate research seminar examines Gandhi’s life and political ideology through his own writings as well as through the lens of historical scholarship. We will trace Gandhi’s biographical and political journey starting from the early satyagraha years in South Africa and cover topics including his critique of modernity, experiments with ‘truth’, views on women, communalism and Hindu-Muslim unity, and role as a mass leader.
Section 5: Comparative Urban History
Instructor: Dr. Alan Lessoff
This senior seminar focuses on comparative urban history. That is to say, the seminar considers the development and structure of cities, the role of cities in society, the interaction of cities with their environments and regions, and the character of urban life in different societies across time. This theme offers a vehicle for honing student skills while emphasizing a fundamental trend of the modern world. The urbanization of human life--the shift in the center of gravity in most societies from the country to the town--counts as what Adna Weber, a pioneer of American urban studies, called "the most remarkable social phenomenon" of recent centuries. By asking why cities emerge, how they operate, and how people build, live in, and perceive them, we ask questions that go to the heart of what it means to be a modern person. Moreover, urban history has geographic, environmental, economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions. It illustrates just how many other disciplines history is allied to.
History 307: Topics in Non-Western History
Section 1: Before and After Oil in the Middle East
Instructor: Dr. Camille Cole
For many people in the United States, oil is the main characteristic of Middle Eastern society. Middle Eastern oil certainly is important: it has transformed the region and the world. But how is it important, actually? This course begins by exploring the states and economies of the pre-oil Middle East, before examining how oil has shaped cities, identities, daily lives, and conflicts in the twentieth century. We end by exploring the global political impacts of Middle Eastern oil and how people in the region imagine the post-oil future.
Section 2: Beyond ‘Breaking Bad’: A History of Drug Trafficking in the Americas
Instructor: Dr. Patrice Olsen
This course investigates the history of drug trafficking in the Americas, focusing on the past 50 years. Students will investigate key issues in this area, including the cultivation of marijuana and coca, the production and transshipment of drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine, and the impact of such upon Latin American economies and societies, with a focus on Mexico's current "War on Drugs." Thus, we will analyze the growth of transnational criminal organizations – the cartels – in Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, as well as US responses. In addition, we will study newly declassified documents on the CIA's alleged involvement in drug trafficking in Central America, and its impact in the region. We will also analyze the constantly shifting criminal landscapes in Mexico, Central America, and South America with an emphasis on the growth in the production and trafficking of opiates and synthetic drugs, and the impact of this on human rights. In various segments of this course, we will assess the "reality" of "Breaking Bad" along with other dramatic and documentary works with other artifacts of popular culture in the US and Mexico (particularly Mexican narcocorridos, Santa Muerte, and "St." Jesus Malverde), discerning what each can teach us about these issues.
History 308: Topics in European History
Section 1: The History of Medicine
Instructor: Dr. Nathan Kapoor
What is Disease? Medicine is a body of knowledge. It is also a reaction. It is a reaction to the infectious and non-infectious conditions that alter our bodies. This semester we will explore the history of Disability, HIV/AIDS, and Diabetes. We explore these medical phenomena from the ancient world all the way to the present. And we will compare Western and non-Western medical knowledge.
Section 2: Water History
Instructor: Dr. Keith Pluymers
Water is all around us in varied forms. Efforts to access, control, and manage water have played a significant role in human societies for millennia. In this course, we will begin to think about how historians can study the relationship between people and water, considering a range of topics, from dam-building and irrigation to swimming culture and religious practices centered on water. The class will ask around the world before focusing in on a local waterway in Bloomington-Normal.
Section 3: Alexander III
Instructor: Dr. Georgia Tsouvala
Course Description : Intrigue, conspiracies, war, genocide, sex, rape, terror, love; this course has it all!
This course will introduce you to the ancient sources, modern methodologies, and the current debates surrounding the figure of Alexander III, king of Macedon and Persia. Few characters in ancient history are as easily recognized as Alexander the Great. In fewer than fourteen years as king of Macedon, Alexander III conquered more territory than anyone before but died unexpectedly of uncertain causes. With an eye toward illuminating not only the man but also his historical context, this class will focus its attention on the reign of Alexander’s father, Phillip II, the life of Alexander, his upbringing in Macedonia, and his campaigns in and interactions with Persia, Egypt, Bactria, and India.
Course Goals : This course will require you to read both primary and secondary sources, engage with modern scholarship on Alexander III in class discussions and in your writing, compose a short as well as a long research paper, and present work orally.
History 309: Topics in U.S. History
Section 1: American Film History
Instructor: Dr. Amy Wood
This course examines the history of American cinema as one of the most influential mediums of the twentieth century. We will trace the aesthetic, technological, and industrial developments of American film from its origins in the 1890s through the rise and fall of the Hollywood studio system to the new Hollywood era and emergence of independent film in the 1970s and 1980s. We will pay close attention to the larger historical forces that shaped film, forces such as: urbanization and suburbanization, immigration, racism and Jim Crow, economic depressions and booms, and world wars. Indeed, cinema can provide a valuable lens into historical change because it not only reflects wider cultural ideals and prejudices, but it works to frame wider values and project them to masses of people.
History 412: Topics in Early American History
Section 1: History of Capitalism in the Antebellum Period
Instructor: Dr. Stewart Winger
For most of the twentieth century, progressive scholarship held that the U.S. Constitution and “capitalism” were a betrayal of the American Revolution; common Americans resisted the “market revolution” and the slave south was anti-capitalist. But at mid-twentieth century, liberal consensus historians also known as (liberal market historians) pushed back against reading the masses as victims in a game rigged by a hazily defined “elite.” Contrary to the progressive tradition, they held that American history was defined by a lack of class conflict and by a consensus on liberal capitalist values. Consensus narratives celebrated America as it steeled itself for the fight against fascism and communism. Neither of these two traditions had room for a powerful republican state successfully shaping U.S. economic development to democratic ends.
Progressives loved to hate the supposedly laissez-faire American past while consensus historian simply loved it even though the evidence kept telling them it never existed, both sides remained committed to a “laissez-faire” myth of the American past, largely for political reasons. Since the rise of these two dominant schools of thought just over a century ago, historians have continually rediscovered the role played both by federal and state governments in the creation of the American economy, but. Such is the power of paradigms of thought and preconceived notion, somehow this secret has remained closeted with a relatively small group of insiders. And more recently, it has become increasingly apparent that when the vast agricultural and small-town spaces are given their due, well into the 1880s the American economy achieved a remarkably egalitarian outcome. Not only has the United States never been laissez faire, but it has also not always been characterized excessive income inequality and a lack of social mobility.
In spite of this, recently the so-called New Historians of Capitalism (NHC) have argued not only that slavery was a form of “capitalism,” but controversially, that capitalism always enslaves. These new historians of capitalism laid the intellectual foundation for the later 1619 project. The NHC acknowledge the role of the state in the creation of American “capitalism,” but decry is as almost always a sinister force.
It remains contested whether the extremely dark views of these “new historians of capitalism” is justified. To many reviewers, their definition of “capitalism” has appeared shaky, even slippery. Is this a politically useful narrative designed to justify policy, such as reparations? Are the NHC right about the South but wrong about the North? Or should we adopt their basic view of the American economic past?
How SHOULD we think, write, and teach about the history of American economic life? What is the place of the American Revolution in U.S. economic history? Has America been oppressively capitalist? Does the term “capitalism” even mean anything or is “capitalism” just a term of disapproval or approval, a rhetorical ghost that disappears when we approach closely to analyze it? Along the way we will explore older views about industrial revolutions, market revolutions, invisible hands and visible hands and a dozen other fascinating things.
History 478: Seminar Topics in Global History
Section 1: Global History
Instructor: Dr. Patrice Olsen
This research/writing seminar has a dual purpose: to provide students with the opportunity to build on concepts and skills gained in other courses, and to explore various dimensions of civil-military relations in Latin American countries since 1821. We will study topics such as the emergence of caudillos and death squads in the midst of the chaos and political vacuums following independence and the search for order and stability in subsequent decades, as nations such as Peru, Brazil, Argentina and Chile looked to Europe for training to "professionalize" their militaries and convert them into truly national institutions. We will also explore problems created by this reliance on European doctrine, including the shift to professional militarism. We will also study themes of constitutionalism within the armed forces; twentieth century coups d’état; the issues posed by US intervention; Cold War variants of counter-insurgency strategies and tactics and their impacts on human rights, particularly of marginalized peoples; and the inversion of national security doctrines due to the perceptions an "enemy within". We will also look at the distortions created by non-state actors (e.g. transnational criminal organizations, including cartels and paramilitaries).
History 497: Research in History
Instructor: Dr. Katrin Paehler
This graduate-level research seminar—likely to be situated in the growing field of Refugee & Forced Migration Studies and therefore open to research in different spatial and temporal contexts—has a dual purpose. It introduces students to the field and guides them towards the preparation of an original research paper.