52 courses with the subject HIST H, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
HIST H111INTRODUCTION TO WESTERN CIVILIZATION1.0
The fall-semester course is a survey of Western Civilization from the fall of Rome to the sixteenth century. It focuses on the institutional and intellectual dimensions of the western tradition, by closely interrogating both primary sources and secondary accounts. The second semester of this course (which may be taken independent of the first semester) picks up at the beginning of the sixteenth century and goes to the present. It explores the development of the modern European world.
This course analyzes the complex histories, shifting geographies, and unequal relationships of power denoted by the term “Global South,” a designation that maps unevenly onto the formerly colonized regions of Latin America, Africa and Asia. As we shall see, the term is also at times used to describe marginalized populations and places within the “Global North,” a convenient though not entirely accurate label for today’s relatively rich and developed world regions. A basic concern of the course will be to assess how colonialism and its legacies have influenced world history, including the production of knowledge. Our collective goal will be to develop new ways of thinking about our pasts, presents and futures.
An exploration of the movement of peoples, goods and ideas across the four continents that border the Atlantic basin (Africa, Europe, North America and South America) over the transformative periods of exploration and empire from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
HIST H118INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE1.0
Although science is an essential characteristic of the modern world, it took nearly 4000 years to attain that status. This course surveys various sciences in the past focusing on both how and why humans have interrogated the natural world, how they have categorized the resulting knowledge, and what uses they have made of it. Topics can include science and medicine in antiquity, Islamic sciences, Byzantine and medieval sciences, early-modern science and the Scientific Revolution.
HIST H119ETHNIC AND TRANSNATIONAL HISTORIES OF THE UNITED STATES1.0
This course surveys the intersecting ethnic and transnational histories of the United States in the 20th and 21st century. It encourages students to conceptualize U.S. history as a set of transnational encounters and systems that transcend national borders, where divergent ways of coming into America and Americanness structure U.S. national and postcolonial polities and exclusions over long arcs. Capitalism, the environment, decolonization and Third Worldism, the Black Atlantic, modernity, imperialism, diaspora and migration, world war, travel, the United Nations and "Our America" serve as organizing motifs. Students will gain a facility with the languages of hemispheric and global imagining that structure the pursuit of contemporary U.S. history, while sharpening analytical skills working with primary texts.
HIST H125INTRODUCTION TO LATIN AMERICAN AND LATINX HISTORY1.0
This course is an intensive history class designed around two goals: to give students an introduction to themes and debates in Latin American and Latinx History, and to provide hands-on practice toward doing research. We will focus on Indigenous histories of resistance and migration, gender studies, as well as intellectual and political trends across the American continents. Texts are interdisciplinary and include fiction, journalism, polemic, history, sociology, and anthropology.
HIST H200MAJOR SEMINAR: APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF EAST ASIAN CULTURES1.0
This course is a writing intensive course for EALC majors and minors to some foundational ideas and concepts in the study of East Asia. Beginning with close readings of primary source texts in translation, students are introduced to the philosophy and culture of China, and its subsequent transmission and adaptation across the vast geographical and cultural area that is commonly referred to as “East Asia.” Students will gain familiarity with methods in this interdisciplinary field and develop skills in the practice of close critical analysis, bibliography, and the formulation of a research topic. Required of EALC majors and minors. Majors should take this course before the senior year. This is a one-term course offered in the Fall and the Spring. The Fall term focuses more on development and transformation of Chinese thought and systems in Japan, and the Spring term on the elaboration of these key themes in a Chinese context. Prerequisite: One year of Chinese or Japanese.
HIST H203FROM REVOLUTION TO EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC1.0
This course charts the transformation in American political institutions, economy, and society from the ratification of the Constitution to the eve of the Civil War. Often identified as the crucial period when the American nation cohered around a national culture and economy, this period also witnessed profound social rifts over the political legacy of the American Revolution, the national institutionalization of slavery, and the rise of a new class system. We will consider the points of conflict and cohesion in this rapidly changing American nation.
HIST H204WOMEN, GENDER, AND AMERICAN SOCIETY TO 18701.0
This course surveys the history of American women from the colonial period through 1870. We will consider and contrast the lives and perspectives of women from a wide variety of social backgrounds and geographic areas as individuals and members of families and communities, while also examining how discourses of gender frame such topics as colonization, slavery, class identity, nationalism, religion, and political reform. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or above.
Founded in 1206, the Mongol Empire remains the largest contiguous empire in history. This course examines this remarkable empire from its founding to its division into four successor states in the fourteenth century. Students will read The Secret History of the Mongols, an indigenous chronicle of the empire’s rise and the crowning achievement of Mongolian literature. Along the way, the course introduces the early histories of East and Central Asia. No prior knowledge is necessary. Crosslisted: HIST,EALC. Lottery Preference: History and EALC majors
HIST H210TOPICS IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY: WATER1.0
Water was and remains a contested concept, as fights over water rights, laws restricting the collection and storage of rain, and the “raw water” movement demonstrate. This course examines that contested history across a range of time and space. We will explore ideas about, attitudes toward, and interactions with water. We will grapple with the issues through a variety of topics, such as spa culture, bathing and swimming, pleasure gardens and fountains. We will think about water in the context of health and hygiene, cleanliness, and hydrotherapies. Water is often an important aspect of governance in areas like urban planning, engineering, resource management, and distribution. Water is never free, so we will also explore efforts to privatize access to water or to bottle and sell water.
Siberia, which covers 10 percent of the Earth’s surface, is imaged as a Russian space and distanced from world history. This course, which covers Siberia from antiquity to the present, will question how Siberia became a “Russian” space and consider its place in world history. Themes examined include indigenous lifeways, the Age of Exploration, settler colonialism, the carceral state, art and literature, Soviet socialism, and others. No prior knowledge of Russian/Soviet history is required. Lottery Preference: History majors.
This course examines the scientific and socio-cultural importance of astrology in the medieval and early modern world. The course combines analysis of the historical contexts in which astrology was practiced and made authoritative with instruction in mathematical and technical practices that made astrology an expert body of knowledge. Pre-requisite(s): A previous history course. Lottery Preference: none
This course examines the history, politics, and culture of the black power movement in the United States. We will explore the intellectual and political activities of major activists and organizations during the 1960s and 1970s. We will also examine the black power movement’s global dimensions in addition to its connection to other social movements and political traditions including black feminism, Marxism, Pan-Africanism, and gay liberation. By the end of this course, students will have a solid understanding of the ways black power transformed both politics and culture in the United States after World War II. Crosslisted: HIST.
The emergence of the culture of Modernism; revolutionary dreams and Stalinist nightmares in Russia; Fascism; the trauma of war 1914-1945; the divisions of Cold War Europe; and the challenge of a new European attempt at re-integration in the 1990s.
In 1586, Queen Elizabeth I of England famously proclaimed in response to a petition from Parliament, "Princes, you know, stand upon stages so that their actions are viewed and beheld of all men." Her remark alerts us to the theatrical nature of power and the importance of spectacle to rulers of early modern states. In an era of violent religious wars and political revolts, sovereigns used ceremonies to shore up inadequate fiscal and military resources. The royal court emerged as a locus of this strategy for image-building and government. This class focuses on the courts and empires of England, France, and Spain to explore the relations between media and power in the emergence of Baroque statecraft. How did early modern rulers use print, art, ceremonies, and spaces to consolidate power and instill obedience? How and where did subjects resist these efforts? How does the concept of spectacle illuminate the role of the role of media in contemporary politics? By the end of the semester, students will have a deeper understanding of the period and the relationship between politics and culture in early modern government.
HIST H231IMAGINING ENLIGHTENMENT IN 18TH-CENTURY EUROPE1.0
This course approaches the Enlightenment as a process of political and cultural change rather than a canon of great texts. Special emphasis will be placed on the emergence of a public sphere and new forms of sociability as distinguishing features of 18th century European life.
HIST H233SAINTS AND SINNERS: EUROPE'S RELIGIOUS WORLDS, 1500-19001.0
This course surveys European religious history from the early fifteenth century, when Martin Luther ignited debates about sin, faith, and salvation, to the end of the nineteenth, when Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God. We will trace the evolution of Christian and Jewish religious traditions, their encounters with the cultures of the “New World,” and their interactions with cultural and intellectual developments such as the rise of toleration, the Enlightenment, revolutions, Romanticism, and secularization. Crosslisted: HIST,RELG.
HIST H237GEOGRAPHIES OF WITCHCRAFT AND THE OCCULT IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE1.0
Rather than dismiss witchcraft and the occult sciences as irrational beliefs, this course investigates them within the context of early modern Europe to understand them as rational practices. How did people defend magic and what evidence did they invoke? Why did people accuse each other of practicing witchcraft? How were arguments for and against occult practices related to religious, political, and geographic contexts? What role did ideas about gender and social roles play in ideas about witches, necromancers, and sorcerers? Equally important for this class: If we no longer accept these practices as valid, why do we still care today?
The development of Quakerism and its relationship to other religious movements and to political and social life, especially in America. The roots of the Society of Friends in 17th-century Britain, and the expansion of Quaker influences among Third World populations, particularly the Native American, Hispanic, east African, and Asian populations. Crosslisted: Religion, History
Pastoral nomadism – a form of animal husbandry involving season movements – has been seen as contrary to modern statehood. In this course, we will question these assumptions as we examine forms of pastoral nomadism through case studies of China, Tibet, Mongolia, Islamic Central Asia, and Siberia and how these states have regulated these practices. We will conclude by thinking about the present and future of pastoral nomadism in Asia. No prior knowledge is required. Crosslisted: EALC. Lottery Preference: History and EALC majprs
This course is a critical inquiry into what Black Marxism author Cedric Robinson called “the Black Radical Tradition.” We will examine the historical legacy of black radical thought and action, with a particular emphasis on the United States during the 20th century. We will engage texts in social, political, and intellectual history and Africana critical theory to examine how people of African descent have formulated alternative definitions of abolition, freedom, and citizenship in response to slavery, capitalism, and racism. Crosslisted: HIST.
Topics considered include the culture of serfdom, Westernization, reforms, modernization, national identities, and Revolution. Crosslisted: History, Russian
Continuity and change in Russian and Soviet society since the 1890s. Major topics: the revolutionary period, the cultural ferment of the 1920s, Stalinism, the Thaw, the culture of dissent, and the collapse of the system.
Many of the words we use to talk about politics today are the product of what historians call the Age of Revolutions. Some, like liberalism and conservatism, were first heard at the time. Some others, from liberty and equality to human rights, democracy, and revolution, were then questioned, discussed, and redefined. This seminar will look at the Age of Revolutions to investigate the birth of the vocabulary of modern politics.
HIST H252HISTORY OF HAVERFORD COLLEGE: CONFLICT, CONSENSUS AND THE LIBERAL ARTS1.0
This course provides a chance to work in the Haverford College archives, with guidance provided on how to analyze primary source evidence. Over the course of the semester we will debate and answer questions such as: How has Haverford College's status as a school of Quaker origin been significant and does that legacy remain relevant today? What is the purpose of a values-based undergraduate liberal arts education in the hyper-competitive, debt-fueled and increasingly consumerist educational marketplace found in the contemporary United States? Crosslisted: HIST, RELG Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing or above.
HIST H253THE HISTORY OF THE US BUILT ENVIRONMENT, 1870 TO THE PRESENT1.0
This course looks at the history of the U.S. through its built environment, or the physical spaces & landscapes through which Americans constructed their habits, hopes, and divisions. We will investigate how struggles over the U.S. polity came to be reflected in the built world. Topics include the creation of property, the building of the metropolis, the making of the suburbs, electrification and the highways, urban crisis, and the postindustrial landscape.
What are we talking about when we talk about Zen? This course is an introduction to the intellectual and cultural history of the style of Buddhism known as Zen in Japanese. We will examine the development and expression of this religious movement in China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Crosslisted: East Asian Languages & Cultures, History, Religion
Collecting, classifying and displaying natural artifacts acquired new significance in early-modern Europe and played an important role in the development of modern science. This course explores the motivations and contexts for such collecting and classifying activities.
HIST H272DEMOCRACY AND RESISTANCE IN ASIA AND BEYOND1.0
Democracy arrived in most of the world as an imaginary before its institutional or governmental form was established. In recent decades, state policies have engendered diverse modes of resistance across Asia, and popular uprisings today continue to challenge assumptions about passivity not only in authoritarian states, but under electoral rule as well. This co-taught interdisciplinary course reads the contemporary politics and histories of China, India, and other societies through the lens of democracy and resistance. Crosslisted: HIST,EALC,POLS.
Scholars across fields date a crucial set of historical and cultural changes in American and global history to the year 1973. This course offers a survey of these transformations, from 1973 to the present time. Prerequisite(s): At least one 100-level course in the Humanities or Social Sciences
HIST H291INDIGENOUS WOMEN: GENDER, ETHNICITY AND FEMINISM IN LATIN AMERICA1.0
This course gives students an introduction to the themes and debates in the intersectional fields of Gender and Women’s Studies, Race, Ethnic and Indigenous Studies, Latin American History, and Feminist Theory. Pre-requisite(s): None Lottery Preference: History majors, first and second year students, LAILS, and GenSex concentrators, with first priority for History and LAILS.
HIST H296CHINA AND AFRICA: HISTORICAL ENCOUNTERS AND CONTEMPORARY LEGACIES1.0
China's economic and cultural presence in Africa has expanded dramatically since 2000, especially after the launch of the “Belt and Road Initiative." But to understand the contemporary China-Africa relationship, it is essential to examine historical precedents. This course draws from scholarship, journalism, and culture to explore modes and implications of foreign aid, diverse experiences of travel and resettlement between China and Africa, and the role of race in past and present constructions of China-Africa relations. Crosslisted: EALC. Pre-requisite(s): N/A
HIST H299HISTORICAL METHODS LAB: ARCHIVE THEORY AND PRACTICE1.0
In recent decades, the historical concept of “the archive” has served as a cornerstone for inquiry across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. At a moment of dramatic transformation in archival practice through digital technologies, one that is fundamentally altering the nature of archives and our relationship to them, this course introduces students to the interdisciplinary theory and practice of the archive as method, material culture, power, and idea of the world. Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing or above
HIST H309KNOWLEDGE, POWER, AND THE PRODUCTION OF HISTORY IN LATIN AMERICA1.0
This course examines the revolutionary politics, emancipatory pedagogies, and struggles for liberation espoused by grassroots intellectuals, students, and working-class, peasant and indigenous activists in modern Latin America. We will consider questions of intellectual and political agency, as well as the political power of literacy, education, memories, and archives in the face of imperial threats throughout history.
HIST H315HISTORIES OF THE THIRD WORLD: ASIA, AFRICA, AND INTERNATIONALISM1.0
This seminar uncovers possibilities, solidarities, and conflicts that defined the “Third World," which was, at its core, a constellation of visions for a more just postcolonial international society. We will probe its conceptual rise and pragmatic limits, and in so doing, grapple with some of the most important political currents of modern history: Pan-Asianism, Pan-Africanism, anti-imperialism, Marxism, and the globalization of the U.S. civil rights movement. The capstone project is an original research paper. Crosslisted: AFST,EALC.
This seminar invites you to analyze Mexican cultural history from its origins in antiquity through the transnational redefinitions of the twenty-first century. Mexico has always contained an extraordinary mosaic of diverse peoples and cultures, widely varied geographies and microclimates and intricate combinations of local, regional and global history. Millennia of indigenous civilizations, three centuries of Spanish colonial rule, and a complex process of nation-state formation from the nineteenth century to the present marked by wars for independence, foreign interventions, the first great social revolution of the twentieth century, and more have combined in Mexico to create extraordinary legacies and traditions in terms of art, culture and politics. The seminar is designed to introduce students to exciting currents of recent scholarship in these areas while developing their abilities to conceptualize and successfully complete independent research.
HIST H318EAST ASIA AND RUSSIA: CONTACT, CONFLICT, EXCHANGE1.0
This course approaches contacts, conflicts, and exchanges between East Asia and Russia/the Soviet Union as a mutually constitutive history and reconsiders Europe and the West’s influence on Asia. The course is not a survey of East Asian or Russian history, but each session will contextualize a particular East Asia-Russia encounter. We will analyze key processes and events: colonialism, orientalism, reform movements, the rise of communism, the Cold War, and others. No prior knowledge is required. Crosslisted: HIST, EALC Lottery Preference: History and EALC majors
HIST H321POWER AND PARANOIA: CONSPIRACY THEORIES IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD1.0
Conspiracies have always existed; conspiracy theories as we know them today are a creation of the early modern era. Between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, a set of interconnected transformations reshaped European societies. In this class, we will observe how conspiracy theories emerged as a response to these transformations, and how they were used to understand, reinforce, or resist them.
HIST H322U.S. WOMEN'S AND GENDER HISTORY IN A TIME OF CRISIS1.0
This course will explore a range of topics and debates in U.S. women's/gender history from the early nineteenth century through the mid twentieth century explicitly in light of a currently hostile political climate. As historians, we recognize the passion and political purpose that inspired early feminist, anti-racist, and queer scholarship; as people living through these times, we must address how the backlash against complex historical scholarship and memorializing is part of a larger political project. Crosslisted: HIST,GSST. Lottery Preference: History majors
This seminar uses space as a frame through which to study the construction of race and power in U.S. spheres from the early part of American history through the present. The course also examines crucial moments when Black, Latine, Indigenous and Asian American subjects have deployed space and spatial techniques as a dynamic medium for redress, revolution and repair.
This course introduces students to some of the cultural theories that have influenced the recent work of historians as well as examples of historical monographs that take a theoretical approach. It highlights imaginative & innovative approaches to history rather than a particular geographic or chronological period. Among the cultural theorists whose work we will examine will include Michel Foucault, Clifford Geertz, Pierre Bourdieu, Edward Said, and Dipesh Chakrabarty.
HIST H336HUMAN RIGHTS IN HISTORY: THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD1.0
This class will trace the historical evolution of the concept of rights in early modern Europe. We will explore the origins of notions of rights and consider whether rights were invented, as some historians claim—and if so, when. We will analyze how ideas about rights intersected with the histories of constitutionalism, colonialism, revolution, and liberalism. Additionally, we will examine competing theories of rights to understand which rights historical actors claimed, and whose rights they were. Crosslisted: HIST, PEAC. Pre-requisite(s): One prior course in history.
HIST H354AMAZONS: FEMALE RULE IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE, 1550-18001.0
Seminar meetings and final research paper based on primary sources. May be repeated for credit with change of topic. Topic for Fall 2026: Amazons: Female Rule in Early Modern Europe, 1550-1800. This seminar explores how women rulers adopted existing practices and invented new ones to govern in a patriarchal world order.
HIST H358TOPICS IN ENLIGHTENMENT HISTORY: THE REMARKABLE BODY OF MARIE-ANTOINETTE1.0
Why does Marie Antoinette continue to fascinate us more than two hundred years after her execution during the French Revolution? This seminar uses the figure of the queen to explore debates about feminism, sexuality, media, politics, revolutionary justice, fashion, beauty, celebrity, global trade and cultural obsession. It traces the evolution of her legacy from the eighteenth century to the present.
History 400a thesis seminar is the senior research lab for thesis work. Students enrolled in the one-semester option will submit their thesis on the last day of class, and work with their assigned faculty advisor throughout the semester. Students will continue on to History 400b in the spring where they will work with their assigned faculty advisor to complete the writing and revision of the thesis.
