Seminar Topics - Fall 2026
The following courses are seminar topics for Spring 2026. 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
Focusing on Reconstruction during the Civil War Era, 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: "The Other Side of the Story”: Soviet Perspectives During the Cold War
Instructor: Dr. Christine Varga-Harris
In this section, students will produce an original research paper on some aspect of Soviet history from the 1950s and 1960s, or on a particular feature of the Cold War contest from the Soviet perspective. All projects will draw on a vast, readily available database of articles from the Soviet press translated into English. Topics, however, can vary from different aspects of Soviet politics, life and society, to Soviet diplomacy with the West, outreach to developing countries, and participation in international events like youth festivals and art exhibitions.
Section 3: Medicine in Civil War Era America
Instructor: Dr. Megan VanGorder
This seminar explores how the breakthroughs and shortcomings of Civil War medical care shaped American society in lasting ways. Topics include battlefield care, women’s nursing, the work of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, doctors’ professionalization, veterans’ struggles with pain and addiction, grief and mourning, and Black public health after emancipation. Students will engage primary sources and scholarship to develop original research projects at the intersection of war, race, gender, and medicine.
Section 4: Ghandi
Instructor: Dr. Sudipa Topdar
This undergraduate research seminar examines Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s life and political ideology through his own writings as well as through the lens of historical scholarship and will 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: Intelligence and Intervention
Instructor: Dr. Patrice Olsen
This class is designed to introduce students to formal research in foreign intelligence and US interventions in the Global South since 1947. In particular, students will gain a familiarity with the structure and operation of the United States intelligence community. Through extensive case study research, the course’s objective is to provide the opportunity for students to interpret for themselves the operational, political, and socio-economic soundness of particular operations, and their impacts.
History 308: Topics In European History
Section 1: Digital Methods in Historical Research
Instructor: Dr. Kathryn Jasper
This course will provide a setting to apply digital tools to historical scholarship. Students will be working with the data of professional historians to learn how to visualize their data using various digital methods.
Section 3: Alexander the Great
Instructor: Dr. Georgia Tsouvala
Intrigue, conspiracies, war, genocide, sex, rape, terror, love; this course has it all! It will introduce you to the ancient sources, modern methodologies, and the current debates surrounding the figure of Alexander III, king of Macedon and Persia.
History 309: Topics In United States History
Section 1: Foundations of American Democracy
Instructor: Dr. Matthijs Tieleman
This course dives into the foundational texts and debates of American democracy. We will particularly discuss the formation of the United States and the transatlantic origins of the American system of government, but the class will also look further into the past and the periods beyond the founding. Discussion and debate will be a central component of the course.
Section 2: People, Animals, and the Land
Instructor: Dr. Lindsay Stallones Marshall
This course, collaboratively taught between faculty in the Wonsook Kim School of Art and the Department of History, focuses on the complicated relationship and interactions between people, animals, and land. Topics include Indigenous and settler history, farming, livestock, animal labor, prairies, wild animals, and the cultural-historical ties between people and the land that sustains them.
Section 3: Constitutional History
Instructor: Dr. Stewart Winger
U.S. Constitutional History from the Revolution and Founding to the early 14th Amendment Case and the rise of Substantive Due Process in 1897.