"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." —George Orwell
History is, along with philosophy and mathematics, one of the oldest academic disciplines still practiced today. History and astronomy are the only contemporary disciplines with their own Greek Muses. (Ours is Clio.)
The study of history helps students to develop skills such as reading comprehension, analysis, cross-cultural comparison and written argumentation that are useful in a range of careers and avocations. The practice of law, political activity, policy studies, library science, and museum work are careers that commonly follow from a collegiate study of history. However, the usefulness of historical study is far greater than that of training individuals for a small number of occupations. All citizens -- of this country and of the world -- have good reason to learn history and to learn about the nature of history. In all classes, students come to see that, as both the powerful and the powerless have learned over and over, history is not a perfectly objective chronicle of the past, but rather an interpretation of that past. We are all a part of history, and in that sense, we understand ourselves only to the extent that the tellers of history allow us to do so. At the same time, historical education broadens students' knowledge and perspective, as they learn about people and places far removed from their own experiences. Thus, a goal in history classes is to empower students to develop a discerning eye on the stories about the past that are presented as the simple truth.
At Metropolitan State, history is taught in ways that are both fascinating and important to everyone. Our courses tend to balance the actions of leaders and elites with stories of the grassroots movements that have challenged those elites and advanced popular agendas. Survey courses are offered in American history and world history, similar to those applied by history departments at many colleges and universities. However, a more distinctive feature of this curriculum is the large number of courses focusing on more specific topics, ranging from History of the Holocaust to The Vietnam War to Gender History. Many courses in the Metropolitan State history program offer opportunities for students to dig into documents and other archival material, "getting their hands dirty," as it were, like professional historians do, and learning to interpret evidence.
The faculty is comprised of both resident and community faculty members. They are both highly experienced teachers and distinguished scholars.
Here is what one history major says about our program:
“Through Metropolitan State University, I’ve been able to pursue a Bachelor’s Degree in history while concurrently establishing a career at the Minnesota Historical Society. The staff instructors have created a history curriculum that is challenging yet entertaining and ultimately very rewarding. I feel that Metro State has prepared me well for a future in the history field.”
The history program is both rigorous and flexible enough to allow our majors to focus on areas and topics of greatest interest to them. Students who aim to excel—in their studies, in their chosen profession, and in life—will find in the Bachelor of Arts program in history at Metropolitan State a major that stretches their horizons and prepares them for a life of success and achievement.
By completing the history program, students will be able to:
Once you’re admitted as an undergraduate student and have met any further admission requirements your chosen program may have, you may declare a major or declare an optional minor.
Apply to Metropolitan State: Start the journey toward your History Minor now. Learn about the steps to enroll or, if you have questions about what Metropolitan State can offer you, request information, visit campus or chat with an admissions counselor.
A minimum total of nineteen (19) semester credit hours in history courses must be completed with a minimum grade of C- or better in each course.
WRIT 131 (or equivalent) is a prerequisite for all upper-division HIST courses.
Students may transfer up to 8 credits to meet minor requirements with courses designated as history only. Students may not transfer courses from other disciplines, including multidisciplinary programs, to meet major requirements.
Required is 1 history course (minimum 3 credits) of introductory level electives; 100- or 200-level or HIST 302-309 courses can fulfill this requirement.
This survey course traces U.S. development through colonial times, the making of the Republic, and the nineteenth century up to and including the Civil War. Students and instructor work together in solving historical problems and learning historical skills.
This survey course traces U.S. development from the end of the Civil War until the present day. Students study post war Reconstruction in the South, the return of legal and social discrimination against African Americans, the advent and results of the Industrial Revolution, the making of modern capitalism, the increasing political and economic roles of women, the two World Wars, and America as a world power and multiethnic society.
Does the world have a history? This course is based on an affirmative answer to the question. A history of the world must be more than a mere compendium of facts about disparate societies and traditions. In this course students study the interactions among far-flung civilizations in ancient and medieval times. However, for most of the period considered in this course, those interactions were quite limited. Therefore, a coherent account of human history as a whole before the modern era emerges in large measure from comparisons among independently developing societies, and from a search for common patterns of development. Both similarities and important differences receive due attention. Topics include: the change from hunter-gatherer societies to sedentary agriculture; the rise of cities, social stratification, and the beginnings of written culture and organized religion; the complex civilizations and empires of West Asia, East Asia, Africa, Mesoamerica, and Europe; gender…
Full course description for World History I: Patterns of Civilization to 1500
This course examines the interactions among the world's peoples as they were brought increasingly into contact with one another after 1500. The rise of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism were closely linked to the creation of the modern world system, a system that took shape out of the cooperation and conflict among and between people as they were drawn into a world economy. Their experiences, the experiences of the people of the past as they both created and confronted the modern world, are thus central to an understanding of our own place in it.
Full course description for World History II: The Modern World, 1500 to the Present
Are you curious about but afraid of history? Have you taken history courses a long time ago? Do you need a brush-up opportunity? Then HIST 140 is perfect for you, as it is a basic skill building course, which establishes the relationship between current events in the news and the historical context in which these current events take place. The specific topical focus of the course will vary from one offering to the next, depending on the relevance of historical inquiry to specific issues of intense current interest. Students should check the Class Schedule for specific course content.
Full course description for History in the News: Variable Topics
Where did our ancestors come from? What prompted them to remain in a place or move? What evidence do we have to document their experience? Were our families part of a large historical event or phenomenon? In this project-based course, students will learn to locate family history/genealogy in time and space with a global focus. In order to understand their literal or figurative ancestors' experience, they will gather relevant primary as well as secondary sources and evaluate them. They will also investigate their family history/genealogy in political, economic, linguistic, cultural, environmental, and/or demographic contexts. Topics and perspectives to be explored include, but are not limited to, migration, war, colonialism, persecution, segregation, genocide, revolution, industrialization, urbanization, famine, flooding, epidemics, education, and employment, as well as identity, adoption, traditional and nontraditional families (including GLBTQ families, intentionally designed or…
What is history? It is often said that history should be objective, that it should provide just the facts, that it should bring people a sense of the past "as it really was." Those who study and write history professionally tend to view these demands as extremely naive. It is a fact that historians have produced radically different interpretations of particular events or developments in the past. The dominant interpretations of important events have changed greatly over time. The study of these changes is called historiography. Through the readings in this course, students confront such interpretive discrepancies and changes with respect to several important historical developments, which occurred in different parts of the world and in different eras.
Required upper-division history courses: Electives (any geographical area or field) (2 courses, 8 credits); Women's or Gender History (1 course, 4 credits). Courses from the list below or transfer equivalency may be used to fulfill these requirements.
How did the economic undertakings of the first colonists in Virginia and Massachusetts grow into today's businesses? How did American businessmen and women shape the Industrial Revolution and how, in turn, did that revolution influence American business? What is distinctive about American capitalism, and how did it come to be what it is? These and other subjects make up the story of business in U.S. Economic Life.
What was the role of working people in the development of economic life in the U.S.? Who were the artisans and small entrepreneurs in the cities and the towns of rural America? How did slaves, sharecroppers and farmworkers contribute to the settlement of the continent? Students study what workers did, who they were, including women and people of color, how they contributed economically to society, and how work changed over time.
Full course description for U.S. Economic Life: Working People
This course investigates the changes in American economic life from the late eighteenth century to the present, with a special emphasis on how technological developments have influenced these changes. Students explore the major technological innovations and their diffusion and impact, the social institutions that influenced and were influenced by these changes, and the ramifications of technological and social change upon the everyday material life of Americans.
This course examines women's public activism in the United States from the Republican period to the social movements of the 1960s. Thematic emphasis is on an analysis of how women's position outside traditional politics determined the direction of their activism over time, with particular attention to the development of collective efforts to achieve legal, political, economic and social equality with men. Students consider how ethnicity, race and class differences among women affected these coalitions for social change. In addition, students learn to understand how the civil rights and women's movements created opportunities for women to change mainstream politics by the 1970s.
History 310 is a general survey of the history of Native North American nations from pre-contact to the contemporary era. The course makes use of readings, lectures, films, group projects, community investigation, and class discussion to introduce students to the rich diversity of Native North American societies and cultures. American Indian tribes are sovereign nations. Students will explore how Euro-Americans used the construct of race as a tool during the process of settler colonialism to diminish and erase tribal sovereignty and avoid recognizing tribes' inherit power as politically sovereign entities. Throughout this relationship the legalistic erosion of tribal sovereignty was paired with genocidal policies including wars of removal, forced assimilation through the use of boarding schools, and other acts of ethnocide that continue to contribute to contemporary issues in Native Americans communities. Despite these settler colonial actions, tribal governments and Native American…
This course examines the history of African Americans and race relations in the United States from slavery to freedom. Emphasis is on putting the experiences of African Americans in the context of U.S. social, cultural and political history. The course encourages examination of primary sources (such as slave narratives, newspapers and speeches) to illuminate an African-American cultural and intellectual tradition in U.S. arts and letters. Assignments include library and/or other research.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, American Indians, European settlers and African slaves forged a new society. Emphasizing experiences of accommodation and conflict among diverse peoples in early North America, this course offers a multicultural perspective on the colonial era. The course explores the expansion of European settlers into North America; the comparative development of French, Spanish and British societies; diplomacy and war among Europeans and American Indians; the origins of slavery; and the impact of gender in colonial society.
Full course description for Beginnings of American Society: Colonial and Revolutionary History
The president of the United States is the most powerful political leader in the world. And yet Americans know astonishingly little about the person they elect to the highest office in the land, and even less about past presidents-who they were, what they did, how they helped shape the history of the United States and the world. At the same time, paradoxically, the genre of presidential biography is an extremely popular one with the reading public. This independent study is a critical and analytical exploration of the history of America's past leaders. Periodically historians are surveyed to determine how they "rank" the American presidents. Among the issues considered are why presidents have been ranked as they have, and whether these rankings reflect reasonable judgments of their accomplishments in office. As students read about these men-for that is what they always have been-they should what constitutes political success, and why people remember some presidents as "great,"…
The Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s represents the culmination of decades of effort, a change in civil rights legislation and a touchstone for subsequent "revolutions." It changed the then current laws and it relied upon law to demand those changes. Many of the debates started then, and continue today. Through reading, discussion, lectures and videos, students study the people, the events (as well as their antecedents and their progeny), and the ideas of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism.
Full course description for The Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s
A majority of U.S. immigrants today come from Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. The immigration pattern represents a significant departure from the past, when immigrants came from very different regions of the world. This course traces the unique story of Asian Americans following them from their early days to modern times when they have become full participants in the making of a multicultural America.
This course examines the ways in which the American movie industry has depicted major events and themes in American history and society, and considers both the accuracy of these depictions and their influence on popular understandings of the American past. Students are expected to rent and view movies, in addition to in-class viewing, and to read materials relating to both American cinema and historical topics. A general understanding of U.S. history is recommended.
This course examines how and why political, economic, and cultural events and social customs in modern America were influenced by and shaped the life experiences of women from diverse ethnic, racial, and class backgrounds. We will also examine when and how women organized collectively to improve the quality of their lives. The course introduces students to many aspects of women's everyday life in modern America-family life, sexuality, work, friendship, leisure, consumerism, and public activism-through documents, films, lectures, discussions, and recent scholarship in U.S. women's history.
This course analyzes the family as both a public and a private institution adjusting to and shaping social, political and economic changes in American life from the colonial period to the present. Even though contemporary debates about family values suggest a fixed pattern of family life, students learn how family patterns have changed over time in response to historical changes such as wars, slavery, the disappearing frontier, industrialization, immigration and migration, consumer culture, social movements and social protest, and the rise of the welfare state. Primary emphasis is on an examination of how women used their positions within the family to gain personal power and access to public institutions.
Full course description for Legacies: History of Women and the Family
Religion has always been deeply enmeshed in American political life, despite the American tradition of separation of church and state. Today, some fear an erosion of that separation, while others complain that we live in a "culture of disbelief" where religion is not respected. This course examines controversies surrounding religious belief, religious practice and religious diversity in industrial America, giving students the opportunity to decide for themselves what the place of religion in modern America is and ought to be. Students of diverse religious backgrounds are most welcome, but a respect for the beliefs of others is a condition of participation. Overlap: RELS 355/555 Religion and Politics in America and Hist 531 Religion and Politics in America.
Full course description for Religion and Politics in America
This course surveys the history of environmentalism in America over the last 100 years. Students are introduced to the ideas of the environmentalists-from Theodore Roosevelt and Rachel Carson to EarthFirst!'s Dave Foreman and Vice President Al Gore-about wilderness preservation, resource conservation, public health and, fundamentally, about the proper relationship between humans and the natural world. Environmentalist thought and actions are considered in the context of ecological and resource crises (such as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the oil crisis of the 1970s), of problems created by technological applications (such as the widespread use of DDT) and of particular cultural developments (such as the closing of the "frontier" at the turn of the century and the growth of the counterculture in the 1960s).
Full course description for The Greening of America: Environmental History since 1900
Students study factors that caused the collapse of the U.S. economy in the 1930s and government action against the social and economic consequences of the Great Depression. Students also examine the experiences of women, African Americans, working people and organized labor, and agricultural communities during the Depression. In short, this course provides students with both a broad sketch of the main currents that shaped American society and more focused examples of how and why the Great Depression affected various communities. It also includes two short research projects.
Full course description for The Great Depression of the 1930s
This course examines the political, social and military conflicts that divided the United States during the years 1845-1876, the era of the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Readings in primary documents, such as letters and diaries, supplement secondary sources and library research in the study of Southern slavery and the secession crisis, emancipation and the destruction of slavery, the political and economic organization of societies for war, the evolution of warfare, and the struggles over Reconstruction in Congress and the postwar South.
Full course description for A New Birth of Freedom: U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction
From the pit of the Great Depression to the struggles of World War II, the emergence of the Cold War, the growth of new social movements, and the rise of political conservatism, this course examines the course of American history from the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the election of Ronald Reagan. The rise and fall of what historians call the New Deal order is examined. Familiar personalities and controversies are placed in a larger historical context. Political, social, economic, and cultural trends are analyzed. Both national leaders and grassroots movements receive attention.
Full course description for From Roosevelt to Reagan: American History, 1932-1980
The United States emerged from World War I as the world's economic giant and from World War II as the dominant military power. Compelled by the Great Depression and Hitler's Germany to assume a role of global leadership, the nation encountered opportunities and challenges as a superpower after 1945. It helped transform Europe and Japan into economic rivals, waged a costly and dangerous "cold war" with the Soviet Union, fought an inconclusive war in Korea, and suffered defeat in Vietnam. It acted like a "world policeman" yet could not control events in Latin America, the Middle East or Africa.
Full course description for American Empire: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1898
This course will examine the tension between the private life and public controversies about sexual expression and identity in modern U.S. history. Students will consider the preconditions that gave rise to collective behavior calling for increased regulation of private life as well as examine when, why, and how groups organized to reclaim individual rights to free expression. Consequently, this course is organized around the following sources of public debate about sexuality over time: reproduction and reproductive freedom; patterns of sexual behavior within and outside of the family; consumer culture and mass media; and the formulation of sexual identities.
Full course description for History of Sexuality: Modern Perspectives
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read 'Vietnam'." The American military experience in Southeast Asia, during the height of the cold war, was traumatic for many Americans, including many who did not share King's antiwar views. Years later, the Vietnam War remains a specter haunting American politics and culture. This course considers how the war came about, why it took the direction it did, what the alternatives were, how Americans have viewed the war since the 1960s and why it continues to matter so much to so many.
What really happened in the 1960s in America? Why is this decade remembered as a watershed, and why does it remain so controversial? This course examines closely the popular social movements whose size and impact made the 1960s an era that many Americans found exhilarating, and others found threatening. This course also considers the political context within which these movements unfolded, and which they sought to alter. Students are encouraged to peel back the layers of myth surrounding the popular memory of the 1960s and to develop their own ideas of what truly occurred then, and why it seems to matter so much (and even whether it should).
This course takes "current events" out of the headlines and into the realm of history. We examine controversies and developments that have marked American political and social life since 1980. Issues such as Ronald Reagan's election, economic policy, abortion, affirmative action, welfare, "political correctness," the Iran-Contra scandal and the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars are considered. The class brings the perspective of history to bear on Reagan's presidency, the power of the conservative movement and the opposition to that movement.
Full course description for From Reagan to Obama to Trump: America Since 1980
This course is a survey of U.S. legal history from the colonial origins of the U.S. Constitution to the "rights revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s and the "revival" of conservative constitutionalism in the 1970s and 1980s. The course will emphasize the tension between two ideological perspectives on the role of government. Should government function primarily to ensure collective rights and provide social control or to protect individual rights and liberties? These two perspectives on the function of government are evident in the shaping of law and public policy over the course of U.S. history. Students will learn how the concepts of individualism, rights, and equality have changed over time and how collective behavior and social movements have recast constitutional principles and judicial practices. We will explore these concepts and developments through consideration of the following subjects: commerce and the industrial state, civil rights and civil liberties, women and…
During this period in European history many commonly held ideas about humans, politics and religion were directly challenged. Students explore these new ideas, including the Renaissance, with its emphasis on humanism and secular politics; the challenges posed by the Protestant Reformation to established religious thought and practice; and the importance of the seventeenth century Scientific Revolution and eighteenth century Enlightenment. Included are conflicts between-and within-different European powers and Europe's rapidly expanding contacts with the rest of the world.
Full course description for Europe: Creation and Conflict, 1500-1789
Students in this course study Europe's rise, and decline, as the dominating force in the world. The numerous political and economic systems which existed in Europe during this period-monarchy, democracy, fascism, capitalism, socialism, communism-are examined, and students explore how people living under these systems perceived them. The class also discusses the current movement towards a federal, "United States of Europe." Emphasis is placed on learning historical skills and using a variety of sources.
Full course description for Europe: The Global Power, 1789-Present
The Holocaust, the extermination of six million Jews by Nazi Germany, took place in one of the most scientifically advanced and cultured nations in Western Europe-in a regime elected to power. This course examines how such an event could happen and why the Holocaust cannot be considered an accident. The course also considers implications for all minority groups living within a majority-dominated society.
What is Europe? Who is a European? How broadly can Europe be defined? How have recent social, political, and economic changes affected Europe? Using the lens provided by the past, serious problems facing Europeans today are examined in an effort to understand the causes and consequences of issues that have importance not only within Europe, but also within the world community.
Full course description for Problems of Contemporary Europe in Historical Perspective
This course explores gender in early modern Europe with an emphasis on women, both ordinary and elite. With lives and experiences as diverse as the Europe in which they lived, women in the period from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century were not only daughters, wives and mothers, but also prophets, witches, writers, artists, artisans, queens and courtesans. Applying gender analysis to early modern European society allows for better understanding of how people both shape and are shaped by the time and place in which they live.
This course is a survey of the history of sub-Saharan Africa to approximately 1800, exploring developments in the cultural, sociopolitical and economic life of the region. Specific topics include the Neolithic Revolution; the Great Bantu Migrations; rise and decline of states; the impact of Islam; the impact of trade on political, social and religious changes; and early European settlements in southern Africa. (Also listed as EthS 349 Africa: From Ancient Times to 1800.)
Full course description for Africa: From Ancient Times to 1800
This course examines the European conquest of Africa and the struggle of the African people for independence and the effects of both on the present day socioeconomic and political conditions of sub-Saharan Africa. Topics include the origins of the Atlantic slave trade; the impact of European colonialism on the social, economic and political life of Africa; the African response to colonial rule; the significance of African independence; the lingering impact of colonialism in present day Africa; and the nature and character of apartheid.
Full course description for Africa: From Colonialism to Independence
This course surveys the key themes and developments in world environmental history; that is, the history of how human societies have changed their environments and how the environment has influenced the courses of societies. It examines pre-modern cultures' intellectual, economic, and technological approaches to the environment, the role of epidemic and environmental transformation in the colonial age, and the revolutionary changes introduced to the environment in the modern period of industrialization and population growth and the rapid consumption of resources that has involved. The course places contemporary environmental issues in their deep historical contexts.
This course traces the transatlantic enslavement of Africans and people of African descent, as well as the ways in which those who had been enslaved resisted slavery, in North America as well as Caribbean societies such as Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. People from Europe and Africa, as well as members of new societies in the Caribbean and in North America, took part in struggles over this new structure of oppression from the first Portuguese extraction of enslaved persons from the West African coast in the 15th century through the abolition struggles and emancipations of the 19th century. Europeans and white Americans turned the pervasive and age-old practice of slavery into something new in its profits, its cruelties, and its capacity to generate new identities and forms of inequality. Resistance to slavery is an essential part of this history and receives great attention in this course, including materials on uprisings in Caribbean societies such as Haiti. This course gives…
Full course description for Slavery and Resistance in North America and the Caribbean
"Can Palestinian lives matter?" This is a question that one journalist asked in 2021. Saying "yes" to this question is the starting point for this historical exploration of a conflict that has shaken the Middle East and affected the whole world for a century or more. Why begin with this question and this answer? Because, too often, narratives of the Israel-Palestine conflict devalue Palestinian lives and treat them as less worthy than others, and it is necessary to challenge that inequity directly in order to clear the way for a truly diverse and humane approach to this topic. Saying this does not mean that Jewish lives do not matter, no more than the phrase "Black Lives Matter" means that white lives do not. Students in this course will learn about histories of nationalism and colonialism from multiple perspectives, reading about both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism, in Palestine/Israel, from sources inside and outside of these movements. They also will learn about the…
Full course description for Palestine/Israel since 1880: Histories of a Conflict
This course provides a topical overview of modern China. It teaches students how China's modern development was shaped by tradition, geography and history. It presents Chinese history, geography, government and politics, rural and urban life, education, the family, art and literature, economic development, and foreign policy. Students study major changes that have affected women and the family as China moved from a traditional nineteenth century society through the transition to the modern world. Students are encouraged to share their family, community and work experiences of Asia with the class.
Full course description for Behind the Great Wall: The Real China
After examining the underlying social, economic, political and cultural foundations from which a modern industrial nation emerged, this course considers Japan's imperialist adventure, its rebirth in the post-war era and the structures and forces which define Japan's position in the world. It includes study of the education system; business management practices; popular culture; economic and political trends; changes made to women's lives as Japan moved into industrialization; women's contributions to society and their current roles and status; and the development of modern classes.
In this course, we will examine various aspects of Japanese popular culture from the Tokugawa period, through the imperial era (1868-1945), to the postwar/contemporary time (1945-present), though more emphasis is put on postwar Japan. Critical analysis of different forms of cultural production, from the theoretical and thematic perspectives of class, gender, globalization, modernity, national/racial/ethnic identity, sexuality, invented traditions, and war memory, will provide insight into Japanese history, culture, and society.
Full course description for History of Japanese Popular Culture
This course examines US-Japanese relations from a racial perspective from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will examine official and popular discourse and media representations produced by both Americans and Japanese of race in the context of changing diplomatic and geopolitical relations of the two countries. Students will consider how the concepts of race and ethnicity were used to construct national and transnational identities. In addition, students will learn about past events, issues, and ideas in the two countries in order to compare, contrast, and analyze how race was mobilized to justify, as well as challenge social hierarchy and regional or global hegemony. COMPETENCE STATEMENT: Knows and understands specific concepts and approaches to history at an upper division level well enough to analyze racial issues in US-Japanese relations.
Full course description for US-Japanese Relations from a Racial Perspective
Students study the changing faces of some of the United States' closest neighbors, Mexico and the countries of Central America and the Caribbean. Topics may include early American Indian societies, Columbus' discovery and its immediate aftermath, comparisons of the varied colonial experiences and each society's place in the modern world. Economics, social life, values and popular culture are all part of the mix of each country's history and their contemporary identities.
Full course description for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean
This course surveys the key themes and developments in Latin American History from ancient times to 1910. It is divided into three parts: The first introduces the history of indigenous Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean before conquest. The second covers the three hundred years of Spanish and Portuguese rule. The third examines the century of struggle for sovereignty and equality, after independence.
Full course description for Colonies, Challenge, and Change: Latin American History to 1910
This course surveys the last one hundred years of the history of Latin America, focusing on struggles to overcome economic dependency, underdevelopment, gross internal inequalities, a lack of democracy, and U.S. "hegemony" of domination. Students learn why Latin Americans faced these five challenges, and will be able to evaluate the many efforts of Latin Americans to grapple with them. Key historical developments, including globalization, environmental devastation, war, revolution and reform, and social movements will be surveyed. We will place contemporary issues facing Latin America in their historical context. Broad continental trends will be discussed and then tested by examining particular case studies.
Full course description for Latin America History II: 1910 to Present
The 2020 George Floyd murder case prompted us to scrutinize what certain historical figures had done and whether their actions deserved to be revered. As a result, many statues around the world, including those of Columbus, Robert E. Lee, and Belgian King Leopold II, were attacked and taken down as memorialized individuals were deemed to have committed racial injustices. These cases present opportunities for history students to pose a series of questions. How is the past reconstructed by historians? How is the past remembered by communities? By whom and for what purposes is the past appreciated, appropriated, and abused? How is knowledge about the past created, selected, erased, maintained, and reshaped? In this course, we will examine the concepts and theories of memory and history. We will analyze, with a worldwide lens, the politics and practices of remembering and forgetting the past. We do so by investigating specific places which include, but are not limited to, monuments,…
Lasting from c. 1095 until the sixteenth century, the crusades had an impact on late medieval and early modern Europe and world history. Taking many forms and reaching many places, the crusades reflected and affected great change all over Europe, from the papacy to the Holy Land, Spain, and central Europe and the Baltic regions. They also reflected changing perceptions of many peoples in relation to each other, especially of Europeans in relationship to eastern Christians, Muslims, Jews, and "heretics." This course examines the crusades in their historical context and the historical debate surrounding them.
Full course description for The Crusades: Origins and Global Perspectives
This course compares women as global citizens in a least two cultures or regions of the world. Topics to be covered include women's involvement in family, reproduction, work, education, social and public activism, and war as well as cultural, racial/ethnic, class, generational and ideological differences among women. We will examine these issues in such global contexts as capitalism, industrialization, imperialism/colonialism, socialism and international law.
This course is a general overview of the history of communism. It examines how the theories of Carl Marx were put to practice by leaders such as Lenin, Stalin and Mao. The class focuses on the antagonism between communist and noncommunist states and on the impact the communist regimes had on the people who lived under them.
This course offers students an overview of the World War II (1937-1945), emphasizing social and political history. This war was truly a global experience, and the European and Pacific theaters of the war are integrated into a world history perspective. Students learn about the causes and effects of the war, and come to understand the national, regional and global transformations that occurred during the course of the war itself. Military history is not emphasized, although some material in this vein is integrated into the larger perspective that students gain through a variety of reading and writing assignments.
This proseminar is an advanced-level discussion course, required for history majors. It focuses intensively on scholarly literature produced by historians around a specific topic. The topic changes from one offering to the next; the topic will be stated in the university's course schedule each semester. In each offering, students will read and carefully analyze several historical monographs and analyze the methods and approaches used by the assigned authors.
Taking the role of professional historians, students conduct research in archives and libraries, use local collections of historical documents, read and produce projects in oral history, research distant archives through the Internet, and help to inventory community-based records. Students investigate at length one topic of their own choosing, using two or more methods of historical research. They discover the excitement of using documents written "at the time," of finding "the truth" in history, and of researching and writing about a topic of personal interest. Traditionally, the class has involved both history students and students outside the discipline. History majors should take the capstone course at or near the end of their study in history. Discipline preparation has not determined performance.
Full course description for Historian as Investigator: Historical Research
This course examines women's public activism in the United States from the Republican period to the social movements of the 1960s. Thematic emphasis is on an analysis of how women's position outside traditional politics determined the direction of their activism over time, with particular attention to the development of collective efforts to achieve legal, political, economic and social equality with men. Students consider how ethnicity, race and class differences among women affected these coalitions for social change. In addition, students learn to understand how the civil rights and women's movements created opportunities for women to change mainstream politics by the 1970s.
This course examines how and why political, economic, and cultural events and social customs in modern America were influenced by and shaped the life experiences of women from diverse ethnic, racial, and class backgrounds. We will also examine when and how women organized collectively to improve the quality of their lives. The course introduces students to many aspects of women's everyday life in modern America-family life, sexuality, work, friendship, leisure, consumerism, and public activism-through documents, films, lectures, discussions, and recent scholarship in U.S. women's history.
This course analyzes the family as both a public and a private institution adjusting to and shaping social, political and economic changes in American life from the colonial period to the present. Even though contemporary debates about family values suggest a fixed pattern of family life, students learn how family patterns have changed over time in response to historical changes such as wars, slavery, the disappearing frontier, industrialization, immigration and migration, consumer culture, social movements and social protest, and the rise of the welfare state. Primary emphasis is on an examination of how women used their positions within the family to gain personal power and access to public institutions.
Full course description for Legacies: History of Women and the Family
This course will examine the tension between the private life and public controversies about sexual expression and identity in modern U.S. history. Students will consider the preconditions that gave rise to collective behavior calling for increased regulation of private life as well as examine when, why, and how groups organized to reclaim individual rights to free expression. Consequently, this course is organized around the following sources of public debate about sexuality over time: reproduction and reproductive freedom; patterns of sexual behavior within and outside of the family; consumer culture and mass media; and the formulation of sexual identities.
Full course description for History of Sexuality: Modern Perspectives
This course explores gender in early modern Europe with an emphasis on women, both ordinary and elite. With lives and experiences as diverse as the Europe in which they lived, women in the period from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century were not only daughters, wives and mothers, but also prophets, witches, writers, artists, artisans, queens and courtesans. Applying gender analysis to early modern European society allows for better understanding of how people both shape and are shaped by the time and place in which they live.
This course compares women as global citizens in a least two cultures or regions of the world. Topics to be covered include women's involvement in family, reproduction, work, education, social and public activism, and war as well as cultural, racial/ethnic, class, generational and ideological differences among women. We will examine these issues in such global contexts as capitalism, industrialization, imperialism/colonialism, socialism and international law.
History 310 is a general survey of the history of Native North American nations from pre-contact to the contemporary era. The course makes use of readings, lectures, films, group projects, community investigation, and class discussion to introduce students to the rich diversity of Native North American societies and cultures. American Indian tribes are sovereign nations. Students will explore how Euro-Americans used the construct of race as a tool during the process of settler colonialism to diminish and erase tribal sovereignty and avoid recognizing tribes' inherit power as politically sovereign entities. Throughout this relationship the legalistic erosion of tribal sovereignty was paired with genocidal policies including wars of removal, forced assimilation through the use of boarding schools, and other acts of ethnocide that continue to contribute to contemporary issues in Native Americans communities. Despite these settler colonial actions, tribal governments and Native American…
The Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s represents the culmination of decades of effort, a change in civil rights legislation and a touchstone for subsequent "revolutions." It changed the then current laws and it relied upon law to demand those changes. Many of the debates started then, and continue today. Through reading, discussion, lectures and videos, students study the people, the events (as well as their antecedents and their progeny), and the ideas of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism.
Full course description for The Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s
This course traces the transatlantic enslavement of Africans and people of African descent, as well as the ways in which those who had been enslaved resisted slavery, in North America as well as Caribbean societies such as Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. People from Europe and Africa, as well as members of new societies in the Caribbean and in North America, took part in struggles over this new structure of oppression from the first Portuguese extraction of enslaved persons from the West African coast in the 15th century through the abolition struggles and emancipations of the 19th century. Europeans and white Americans turned the pervasive and age-old practice of slavery into something new in its profits, its cruelties, and its capacity to generate new identities and forms of inequality. Resistance to slavery is an essential part of this history and receives great attention in this course, including materials on uprisings in Caribbean societies such as Haiti. This course gives…
Full course description for Slavery and Resistance in North America and the Caribbean
This course examines US-Japanese relations from a racial perspective from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will examine official and popular discourse and media representations produced by both Americans and Japanese of race in the context of changing diplomatic and geopolitical relations of the two countries. Students will consider how the concepts of race and ethnicity were used to construct national and transnational identities. In addition, students will learn about past events, issues, and ideas in the two countries in order to compare, contrast, and analyze how race was mobilized to justify, as well as challenge social hierarchy and regional or global hegemony. COMPETENCE STATEMENT: Knows and understands specific concepts and approaches to history at an upper division level well enough to analyze racial issues in US-Japanese relations.
Full course description for US-Japanese Relations from a Racial Perspective
This course is offered during the academic year to allow faculty or visiting professors to deal with more specialized historical topics and issues in their areas of expertise. Students should check the Class Schedule for descriptions of specific course offerings. This course is intended for a variety of students, but individuals registering should have at least some introductory college-level experience in history.
Full course description for Special Topics and Issues in History
Course topics offered under this title present a variety of approaches to European history. Possible topics include: focused study of one country or region; comparative research in family history (conditions in the European country of origin versus those encountered upon arrival in the United States); women and work; cultural and intellectual history; and focused study of a relatively short time span, socialism and communism. Students should check the Class Schedule for specific course content.
In this course, we will examine various aspects of Japanese popular culture from the Tokugawa period, through the imperial era (1868-1945), to the postwar/contemporary time (1945-present), though more emphasis is put on postwar Japan. Critical analysis of different forms of cultural production, from the theoretical and thematic perspectives of class, gender, globalization, modernity, national/racial/ethnic identity, sexuality, invented traditions, and war memory, will provide insight into Japanese history, culture, and society.
Full course description for History of Japanese Popular Culture
The History Department encourages serious and disciplined history majors and history minors to participate in internships which are well-designed and academically beneficial. The department will sponsor one internship per student (HIST 350I, from 0.5 to 4 credits) and it can count toward upper division history elective credits. Please contact the History Department Chair (history@metrostate.edu) for more information.
Internships offer students opportunities to gain deeper knowledge and skills in their chosen field. Students are responsible for locating their own internship. Metro faculty members serve as liaisons to the internship sites¿ supervisors and as evaluators to monitor student work and give academic credit for learning. Students are eligible to earn 1 credit for every 40 hours of work completed at their internship site.
Full course description for History Individualized Internship