This course offers a broad survey of the history of the world from the end of the 15th century to the beginning of the 20th century. The course begins at the pivotal moment in world history when oceanic contact created new connections between Europe, the Americas and Asia. During the first term we will cover the period from 1500 to 1750, and the focus will be on those...

Section 102: In 2012W, the topic for section 201 of HIST 104 is Disease, Health and Medicine. Each week, this World History course focuses on relationships between people in society and examines them in various cultures in the context of the law, religion, and customs that circumscribed their lives. In various...

In 2012W, this section of HIST 405 is restricted to students in CAP (Co-ordinated Arts Program).  The topic for HIST 105 is Indigenous Peoples in a Local and Global World. In British Columbia, the significance of Indigenous history is hard to miss. Unresolved Aboriginal title throughout much of the Province keeps topics like treaties, roadblocks, and...

This course will offer an overview of the history of European civilization from the late Middle Ages to the end of the twentieth century. The course will deal with many of the transformational events and movements of European history, such as the Renaissance and Reformation, the growth of the nation-state, the age of revolutions, the emergence ofmodem ideologies, the era of...

This introductory survey course will examine American history from the colonial era to the present. Topics will include Native life; early European settlements; the American Revolution and the early Republic; slavery and race relations; westward expansion; the Civil War and Reconstruction; industrialization and urbanization; commercial culture and mass culture;...

This course will introduce students to the cultural history of the Caribbean region, from the 18th century to the present.  Students will use a variety of primary sources, including film, music, memoirs, and diaries to explore the unmaking and making of empire in the Anglophone, Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean through the everyday lives of inhabitants of the islands...

China does not exist apart from the world, and never has. This course takes this perspective by exploring Chinese history over the last two and a half millennia as though what really shaped that history lay as much outside the zone called China as within it. We will examine what went on in China during these millennia, but we will spend at least as much time exploring what...

History 305 offers a topical survey of the history of British Columbia from first contact between Europeans and Aboriginal people. It aims to explore what we know about British Columbia history as well as how we have come to know it. The course is structured around two approaches: in the fall term, the course will explore the relationship between settlement and colonialism...

In the nineteenth-century Britain became not only the world’s first urbanized, industrialized, democracy but also the centre of a worldwide empire.  Many of the issues and debates we now think of as central to "the modern world" first emerged in the second half of that critical century.  This course explores the impact of "the new" on Victorian Britain – from the...

This course will critically examine Britain’s ‘fall from grace’ following the Second World War. Topics include postwar austerity, the defeat at Suez, decolonization, the development of the special relationship with the United States, and relations with the Commonwealth. On a domestic front, topics include immigration, racism, and the feared loss of Britishness from society...

The Rashomon Effect: Memory, Narrative, History, and Truth

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An examination of the political, cultural, and intellectual transformations that reshaped the Atlantic world between 1763 and 1838; special attention will be given to British North America within the context of the Age of Revolutions.

Equivalency: Credit will not be granted for HIST 323 and 326 if 326 was taken before 2007W.

This course examines the second half of the twentieth century, from the end of the Second World War and the return of the veterans.  Topics will explore the optimism and uncertainty of the later 1940s, the affluence and conservatism of the 1950s, as well as the pervasive menace of the Cold War, the increasing complexities of Canada/US relations, the social and...

This course will examine both the origins of the American Revolution and its social and political consequences. It will focus on the breakdown of the old imperial system, the war for independence, the transformation of the colonies into republican polities, the creation of a national government, and the impact of the Revolution on slavery, social relations and political...

Key moments and themes in late-nineteenth-century United States history, including Reconstruction, urbanization, immigration and westward movement, leisure and consumer culture, and nation-building.

This course is an introduction to historical thinking, past, present, and future.  We will be discussing when, where, how, and why particular kinds of historical thinking (and thinking about time in general) have emerged, and why historical writing takes the particular forms it does.  How have different societies - the different elements within those societies -...

Formerly HIST 338, 6 credits, The United States in the 20^th Century.  This course examines many important issues concerning the United States History since 1945 to the present. We pay due attention to the political, cultural, and intellectual aspects of the American Century. We will investigate the questions of ethnicity, race, gender, and...

The course will cover the 20th century history of Russia and the Soviet Union. The Soviet project will be explored in all its complexity, including questions of ideology and politics, nation and empire, and international contact and conflict. Readings will include a wide range of primary sources including memoirs and fiction as well as political texts.

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This course is designed as a topical introduction to the formative period of western medieval European history, roughly from the third through the ninth centuries. It traces the processes by which Roman, Germanic, and Christian political and intellectual traditions coalesced into a new civilization. Emphasis is placed on the reading, analysis, and discussion of primary...

The interplay between new and traditional ideas, styles, and institutions from the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century, with emphasis upon the relationship of social, economic, and political factors to intellectual and cultural change.

This course offers a survey of European history from the beginning of the twentieth century to the aftermath of the Second World War.  The brief 50-year period covered by this course begins with Europe as the seat of numerous global empires and proceeds to encompass the First World War, the challenges to democracy and emergence of collectivist ideologies during the...

This course explores the history of China from the earliest times to the disintegration of the Tang empire (618-907).  Its goals are to help students develop the language and tools to understand the origins and foundations of Chinese society and to initiate them to the art and techniques of historical analysis.  The course challenges the stereotype of a monolithic...

This course explores changes in institutions and ideas in China from the late imperial period (circa 1600) to the present. Approaches are thematic, by periods, and by problems. This course is open to all students; no previous background in Chinese history is required or expected. 

Equivalency: ASIA 380

The Mughals ruled one of the richest, mightiest, and most dynamic states of the early-modern world. This course explores the politics, economy, society, and culture of the Mughal Empire in its South Asian as well as global contexts.

Equivalency: ASIA 428

Humankind’s encounter with its ocean frontier through exploration, trading, fishing, whaling, piracy, and naval warfare from 1400 to 1850. 

In 2012W, the topic for HIST 402F, section 101 is Terrorism and CounterTerrorism since 1970. We will be dealing with the major terrorist and counter-terrorist activities and policies from the 1970s to the Present. We will examine the sources of motivation for terrorism and the different ways in which terrorism was or could have been addressed from 1970 to...

Selected topics in the history of international relations. Priority for registration will be given to fourth-year majors in the International Relations and History programs.

War and Its Aftermath in Southeast Asia.  This class will examine armed conflict in Southeast Asia from the eighteenth century to the present, largely from the perspective of inter-state relations and international law. Topics will include European imperial conquests, wars of national independence, the Japanese occupation, insurgencies...

This course will examine Canada's plight as a neighbour to the 'behemoth' or 'elephant' living next door. The American impact on Canada in the socio-cultural, political, environmental, and economic realms will be reviewed over a time period from the American Revolution to the present-day, with a particular angle ofhow the United States has shaped Canada's national identity...

This course examines selected themes regarding the international relations of the great powers from the First World War to the start of the 21st century. The focus of the course will be on assessing the competition between rival ideologies during the 20th century, attempts to establish new world orders following the first and second world wars, and the disorder of the post-...

Explores relationships between politics, culture, and social change in Europe. Topics include the changing role of intellectuals: literary aestheticism, painting, design and the city, origins of psychology.

Formerly HIST 461

A comparative analysis of the institution of chattel slavery, its growth, its effects on slaves and masters, its relation to the larger society, and the causes of its decline, in the various cultures of the Americas.

Examines the international politics of the “Third World” – an indefinite coalition of developing countries and resistance movements in the second half of the Twentieth Century. The course is particularly concerned with the connections between decolonization and the global economy, and the causes of revolution. Topics include the end of European empires, the Bandung...

In 2012W, the topic for HIST 468G will be Comparative Environmental Histories of North American Indigenous People. We will examine the complex intersections between Aboriginal and environmental histories. Topics covered will include Indigenous epistemologies of place and landscape; the visibility of “pre-contact” histories in the environmental record;...

The goal of this course is to help student understand and explore the dynamics of Chinese society in the late imperial period (esp. the Ming and Qing dynasties) through a close examination of how beliefs and practices—the stuff of culture—were created and transmitted. Among the topics to be discussed are the civil service examination system, foot-...

Confucian societies are often thought of as ones in which the brush is mightier than the sword. In fact the military has been a crucial factor in East Asia, and warfare has been the engine which has driven many of the most significant changes in East Asian history. This course will look at the evolution of East Asian military systems, and at the impact of recurrent warfare...

The United States and Vietnam: Revolution, War, Aftermath.  This course explores the intertwined histories of the United States and Vietnam within the twentieth century global contexts of colonialism, anti-colonial resistance and revolution, and world war and global cold war.  The seminar places these developments within the domestic social and...

Living under Communism. This seminar will explore experiences of revolution and of repression, but also of more “ordinary” times, in a variety of communist regimes including those of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Cuba. What was it like to survive revolution, imprisonment, and the loss  of your family, but also, what was it like to go to school...

Heaven and Hell in the Western Imagination, from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.  

Where do we go after we die?  Is there a heaven or a hell, and if so, what do they look like? These are questions that have exercised the minds of poets, philosophers, theologians and almost everyone else throughout human history.  In this seminar, we...

Chinese Migration: Colonialism, Refugees, and Transnationalism. This seminar looks into main themes, theoretical debates, and methodological approaches in the study of Chinese      migration. The course will focus on the period from the 17th century to the 20th century in selected countries and areas. Leaving home and moving to an alien...

The Lost Economy of Early America.  How did people in pre-industrial North America go about making a living?  Were they driven by the same desires we are?  Did they make the same trade-offs between work and leisure, necessities and luxuries, acquiescence and resistance that we do?  Did work mean then what it does today?  Adam Smith...

The History of Violence.  This course offers a conceptual engagement with the role of organized violence in history. Drawing on case studies that range from processes of state-formation to the operation of violent enterprises such as pirate crews, street gangs, and terrorist networks, it asks how violence is organized and, in turn, how organizations...

In 2012W the topic for History 490Z sections 201 and 202 is From Autobiography and Biography to Auto/bio and Life Writing. Autobiography (a person’s life and times written by the person) has been practiced for 2000 years. But over the centuries it has shifted in genre, meaning, and practice. In the past decades, biography and autobiography have become not...

This course will introduce students to some of the central themes in modern American history through readings of both classic and new works in the field.  Topics will be wide-ranging, focusing mainly on historical issues of the late nineteenth century onward. Possible readings include works by George Chauncey on sexuality; Mary Ryan on nineteenth-century public life;...

This course will be structured around the idea of ³new material histories² of Europe.  In several sub-fields of European history, historians have sought new methodologies that draw from, but also move beyond, the cultural turn (which oriented historians more towards discourse and power than materiality).   This course will explore some key readings in at...

This course is designed to introduce graduate students to the challenges of presenting historical research to a popular audience by curating a public history exhibition.

The first part of the course will introduce students to debates on the theory and practice of curatorial methodology, starting from the work of Michel Foucault in The Order of Things. This...

Taking into account the history of science, medicine, and technology changes our understanding of the cultural and social development of human societies, past and present. This seminar is designed as an orientation for graduate students into the field.  It uses seminal samples of research in the history of science, medicine, and technology, both classic and current...