Fall 2024 Undergraduate Courses

Hunter College History Department Description of Courses Fall 2024

HIST 11100: World History to 1500
Nathan Melson Tuesday/Friday, 11:30 am – 12:45 pm

This is a survey of the history of human civilization from the end of the Stone Age to 1500 CE. The course examines the concept of civilization, the emergence of the earliest civilizations, and the distinctive features of ancient cultures, societies and governments. Other topics include the expansion of contacts among the early centers of urban society, and the emergence of civilizations in what had originally been peripheral regions. Particular attention is paid to the development of the religious and intellectual traditions of several classical civilizations, and the influence these traditions have had on later societies. The course ends roughly around 1500, on the eve of the tremendous changes that came about in the relationship between Europe and the rest of the world as a result of the European explorations and conquests that began with the voyages of Columbus.

For College: Fulfills CUNY Common Core (World Cultures). Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group A). For History Majors: Counts as World, Non-Western, Latin American and Prior to 1800

HIST 12100: Early Modern Europe
Nathan Melson Tuesday/Friday, 4:00 – 5:15 pm

The early modern period saw the Renaissance, the Reformations, the Age of Discoveries, the invention of print, the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Contemporary observers interpreted these events as harbingers of new times, and speculated how society should or will be organized in the future. This course reads the major transformations of early modern Europe through the lens of these utopian visions. As we will see, the expectations of contemporaries were often not realized. Yet their writings reveal how scholars, priests, newswriters and ordinary people experienced and hoped to shape the world they were living in. For College: Fulfills CUNY Common Core (World Cultures).
Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group D).

For History Majors: Counts as European and Prior to 1800

HIST 12200 (W): 19th and 20th Century Europe (Sect. 01)
Evan Spritzer Monday/Thursday, 8:30 am – 9:45 am

History of modern Europe between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, covering Western, Eastern Europe, and Russia. The focus of this course is upon political history but topics related to economy, culture and the arts are included as well. We start with the French Revolution of 1789 and complete the course with the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union in 1991. We will analyze how the concept of Europe changed over time; how colonies turned into nation states, and how these nations transformed during the modern era; why, how, and when some states adopted totalitarian models; and how colonialism and totalitarianism came to an end in Europe after WWII. Themes include: the French Revolution and Revolutionary Wars, romanticism, liberalism, socialism and Marxism, 1848, empire and nation states, European imperialism, WWI, interwar radicalism, Nazism, fascism, and Stalinism, WWII, the Holocaust, cold war, European Union, the collapse of communism, and the creation of a new Europe. Lectures will be supplemented by weekly readings from the textbook and primary sources. Students will learn to work with primary sources and incorporate them into historical analysis.

For College: Fulfills CUNY Common Core (World Cultures).

For History Majors: Counts as European Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 12200 (W): 19th and 20th Century Europe (Sect. 02)
Elidor Mëhilli

Tuesday, 10:00 am – 11: 15 am (Hybrid: meets in person once a week with additional online work each week).
History of modern Europe between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, covering Western, Eastern Europe, and Russia. The focus of this course is upon political history but topics related to economy, culture and the arts are included as well. We start with the French Revolution of 1789 and complete the course with the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union in 1991. We will analyze how the concept of Europe changed over time; how colonies turned into nation states, and how these nations transformed during the modern era; why, how, and when some states adopted totalitarian models; and how colonialism and totalitarianism came to an end in Europe after WWII. Themes include: the French Revolution and Revolutionary Wars, romanticism, liberalism, socialism and Marxism, 1848, empire and nation states, European imperialism, WWI, interwar radicalism, Nazism, fascism, and Stalinism, WWII, the Holocaust, cold war, European Union, the collapse of communism, and the creation of a new Europe. Lectures will be supplemented by weekly readings from the textbook and primary sources. Students will learn to work with primary sources and incorporate them into historical analysis.

For College: Fulfills CUNY Common Core (World Cultures).

For History Majors: Counts as European Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 14166 (W): Russian Foreign Policy
Sam Casper Monday/Thursday, 2:30 pm – 3:45 pm

This course examines Russia's international engagements and entanglements over the past two centuries. Devoting particular attention to the country's territorial expansion and clashes with neighboring empires, the course will consider policy continuities and divergences in Russia's actions on the global stage. Topics to be addressed include the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars, the Great Game, the sale of Alaska, the conquest of the Caucasus and Central Asia, the building of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Russo-JapaneseWar, World War I, the Comintern and the interwar Left, World War II, the Cold War, the dissolution of the USSR, the rise of illiberal democracy, the annexation of Crimea and frozen conflict in Eastern Ukraine, and 2016 US
presidential election. Readings will be drawn from scholarly books and articles, as well as select primary sources.

For History Majors: Counts as European Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 15100: United States from the Colonial Era to the Civil War
See general schedule for sections, instructors, day/times and MOIs

American political, social, and cultural history from the early period of European settlement to the conclusion of the Civil War.

For College: Fulfills CUNY Common Core (US Experience). These sections will NOT be offered as writing intensive

For History Majors: Counts as US and Prior to 1800

HIST 15200: United States from the Civil War to the Present
See general schedule for sections, instructors, day/times and MOIs

American political, social, and cultural history from the Civil War to the present. Among the subjects covered are the struggles for justice of African Americans and women; the expanding scope and power of the federal government; and the increasing engagement of the United States with the world.

For College: Fulfills CUNY Common Core (US Experience). These sections will NOT be offered as writing intensive For History Majors: Counts as US

HIST 208: History of the Jews
Bruce Ruben Monday/Thursday, 11:30 am – 12:45 pm

The History of the Jews surveys almost 4000 years in one semester. Beginning with the origins of the Jewish people in the biblical period, it will look at Jewish identity as it evolved over time. We will examine Jewish life in the Greco-Roman world, the Medieval diaspora communities of Babylonia, Spain and Northern Europe. After the expulsions from much of Christian Europe by the end of the 15th century, Jews made new homes in the Ottoman Empire, Eastern Europe and eventually in Amsterdam and the New World. We will examine the gradual secularization of European society that allowed for a partial reintegration of Jews into Western Europe and the radical impact this process had on Judaism itself. Finally earning emancipation, thoroughly acculturated Western Jews faced new challenges with the rise of Modern anti-Semitism. These virulent new trend culminated in the Holocaust. In its aftermath came the rise of the State of Israel and the remarkable growth of the American Jewish community. What were the key beliefs and practices that defined the Jewish people in each period? What did Jews share or learn from their neighbors during periods of cultural openness? How did they contrast their identity with those of their neighbors? This overview offers an opportunity to understand the continuities and discontinuities that characterized the Jewish people over this long history.

For College: Fulfills CUNY Common Core (World Cultures).

For History Majors: Counts as World, Non-Western, Latin American.

HIST 25013 (W): History of Humanitarian Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa
Jill Rosenthal Tuesday/Friday, 11:30 am – 12:45 pm

What does it mean to give ‘humanitarian aid’? Who receives aid and why? This course is designed to offer students a historical understanding of humanitarian action that, while centered geographically in sub-Saharan Africa, is applicable in a global framework. Beginning with the evolution of the concepts of ‘humanitarian’ as well as ‘aid,’ we will explore the motivations behind humanitarian endeavors through the era of the slave trade, colonialism and the present. We will also examine how terms such as ‘refugees,’ ‘peacekeeping,’ ‘famine,’ and ‘gender,’ have evolved in humanitarian discourse, and the consequences of these processes for aid endeavors. Throughout, questions will be posed regarding the interactions between humanitarian aid, international relations, exploitation, and violence. The focus of this course is both local and global—we will analyze international humanitarian policy as well as the effects and perceptions of humanitarian aid within different African localities. We will consider how notions of power and objectivity affect both the site of aid inception as well as implementation. Students having completed the course will acquire the skills to think critically about humanitarian aid and its role in local, regional and global contexts.

For History Majors: Counts as World, Non-Western, Latin American Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 25015: Rabbis, Radicals and Racketeers: Jewish NYC
Aaron Welt Monday/Thursday, 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm

How have Jews shaped the history of New York? As we will see in this course, New York’s Jews profoundly shaped the city’s experience during the American Revolution, the debate over slavery and the Civil War, large-scale immigration and machine politics during the Gilded Age, New Deal governance during the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement and today’s modern urban social debates. This course will survey the Jewish history of New York City with a particular emphasis on their political and cultural impact while tracing the rise of America’s largest metropolis over three centuries.
For College: Fulfills Pluralism and Diversity requirement (Group A). For History Majors: Counts as US. This section will not be offered as writing intensive.

HIST 25021: Tradition and Transformation: Russia and East European Jewry
Sam Casper Monday/Thursday, 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm

From the mid-19th century through the end of the Second World War the majority of the world's Jewish population lived in the contested borderlands that encompass much of today's Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states. Though many key aspects of Jewish life remained constant during this period, it was also marked by a degree of dynamism previously unseen as Jews living in the Romanov and Habsburg empires and their successor states responded in multifarious ways to the challenges facing and developments within their communities. This course will trace the socio-economic, political, and cultural trajectories of a people whose past has often been obscured by the penumbra of Nazi genocide. Topics to be addressed will include, but are not limited to, the decline in religious authorities' influence; economic niches; anti-Jewish policies and pogroms under the tsars; emigration; the rise of political movements (including socialism, communism, diaspora nationalism, and Zionism); linguistic controversies; the effects of the FirstWorld War; minority status in newly-independent interwar states; communal responses to the Holocaust; Soviet state antisemitism; and the refusenik movement of the 1970s90s.

For History Majors: Counts as European This section will not be offered as writing intensive.

HIST 25022: Gender in Modern Jewish History
Aaron Welt Monday/Thursday, 11:30 am - 12:45 pm

Gender has a played a pivotal role in the major turning points of modern Jewish history. This course will explore how Jewish men and women, informed by intra-Jewish debates and interactions with the empires in which they lived, constructed the gendered norms of the larger Jewish world. This course will pay particular attention to the ways in which Jewish women carved out spaces in politics, economic activity, and religious life across the Jewish diaspora in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Students will also grapple with how Jewish masculinity has been conceived and performed during different moments of modern Jewish history. As the course probes Jewish encounters with the rise of global capitalism, the forging of imperial networks and nation-states, mass migrations, and Zionist state-building, students will learn how gender integrally shaped the modern Jewish experience.

For History Majors: Counts asWorld, Non-Western, Latin American This section will not be offered as writing intensive.

HIST 25086 (W):Women in the United States to 1869
Vanessa May Monday/Thursday, 11:30 am – 12:45 pm

This course will examine women’s role in American History beginning before European settlement and ending in 1869, the year that the women's suffrage movement split over the issue of race. Over the course of the semester, we will answer the following questions: How have women of different races, regions, and backgrounds influenced the American political narrative? How have shifting cultural ideas about gender affected women’s experience in the American past? Finally, how does our understanding of the past change when we view it through women’s eyes? We will pay close attention to the experiences of diverse groups of women and consider the ways in which race and class have shaped women’s interaction with one another as well as with the American state.

For History Majors: Counts as US Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 25090 (W): Europe in the Late Middle Ages
Nathan Melson Tuesday/Friday, 10:00 am – 11:15 am

This course surveys the history of Europe and the Mediterranean from the mid-13th to the early 16th centuries. It examines the ecological and economic crises that disrupted life in the later Middle Ages (famine, plague, and the effects of climate change), schisms and divisions within Latin Christianity, peasant rebellions, political centralization in the Mediterranean, the Hundred Years' War, humanism, new trends in vernacular literature and political thought, the early development of the sovereign state, the collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire and rise of the Ottomans, the Maritime Revolution and global exploration, and beginnings of the Protestant movement. As a 200-level history course, it also introduces students to intermediate-level critical analysis of primary source texts and how to utilize these sources in crafting historical arguments.

For History Majors: Counts as European and Prior to 1800 Writing Intensive Course. (W) Not open to students who have already taken HIST 31300

HIST 25089 (W): History of Western Medicine to 1800
Seth LeJacq Monday/Thursday, 10:00 am – 11:15 am (Section 01) Monday/Thursay, 8:30 am - 9:45 am (Section 02)

This course examines the history of Western medicine from classical antiquity through the Middle Ages and early modern period. It traces the formation and evolution of the humoral medical tradition, which is the root of today’s biomedicine. We will explore health and healing in the pre-modern West from the perspectives of medical practitioners and sufferers. The course explores key themes in medical history including the organization of healthcare, growth of medical institutions, transmission of medical knowledge, experiences of the ill, theories of health and the body, ideas about bodily difference, and contact and exchange between medical cultures.

For History Majors: Counts as European and Prior to 1800 Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 27100: Early Latin America
Sandor John Tuesday/Friday, 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm

This course provides an overview of the early political, economic, cultural and social history of Latin America (1490s to 1820s). The course encompasses the history of Spanish America as well as Portuguese Brazil, but emphasis will be on the former. Among the topics covered are pre-Columbian indigenous societies in the Americas; the personal, regional and transnational impact of the encounter between European, African and Native peoples; evolving land, labor and production arrangements; Christian evangelization and the role of the Catholic Church in colonial society; the character and reach of imperial authority; racial, ethnic, caste and gender relations; popular resistance and protest; and the ideological and material underpinnings of emergent independence movements in the early 19th century.

For History Majors: Counts as World, Non-Western, Latin American.

HIST 27650 (W): Middle Eastern History: From the Beginning of Islam to 1800
Karen Kern, Monday/Thursday, 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm

The Beginning of Islam to 1800, is intended to acquaint the student with the origins and development of the history and civilization of the Middle East since the advent of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula until 1800 when Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt changed the course of Middle Eastern (and European) history. As a result of this focus, we naturally concentrate on the Muslim experience in the Middle East. Because of time constraints in a survey class, non-Muslim populations are considered only in relation to the dominant Muslim culture.

For History Majors: Counts as World, Non-Western, Latin American Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 29000 (W): History Practicum
Jonathan Rosenberg: Tuesday, 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm, Sect. 01

Rick Belsky: Monday, 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm, Sect. 02 Elidor Mëhilli: Tuesday, 11:30 am – 12:45 pm, Sect. 03
(All sections are Hybrid: meets in person once a week with additional online work each week). A writing intensive seminar intended to help history majors develop their skills as historians. Each section of this course may focus on a different historical theme and so students will encounter different readings and topics. But in all sections of this course students will learn to locate, critically assess, and interpret primary sources, both textual and non-textual; analyze and critique a range of secondary sources for both methodological and historiographical purposes; and develop, draft, and revise a strong and effective research paper by learning how to construct a thesis, organize a paper, devise a bibliography, and cite sources following the Chicago Manual
of Style. Writing Intensive Course (W) Prereq: ENGL 12000; 6 cr in history and declared history major.

HIST 31700: History of the American City
Donna Haverty-Stacke Friday, 10:00 am – 11: 15 am Hybrid: in person once a week/ additional online work each week

In this course, we will explore the relationship between the growth, use, and regulation of urban spaces, and the creation and transformation of gendered, class-based, ethnic, racial, religious, and civic identities in cities. By understanding the city as both a physical landscape and a human community we will be able to examine the process of the social and historical construction of identity there, something perhaps less easily visible than the construction of tenements, parks, and opera houses. Over the course of the semester we will address a series of related questions. How did these cities take shape, in terms of their infrastructure and their diverse subcultures? What did the development of these cities mean to those who built them, those who were drawn to them, and those who fled from them? What were the social, cultural, and political possibilities of the new modern city, and what were its problems? How did urban middle-class, elite, and working-class dwellers define those hopes and anxieties? How and why did these aspirations and fears change over time?

For History Majors: Counts as US

HIST 31900 (W): Jewish History in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods
Bruce Ruben Monday/Thursday, 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm

This course will trace Jewish history from the formative late Second Temple period, through the Destruction of the Temple and the creation of Rabbinic Judaism in Palestine and Babylonia. We will then discuss the two major Medieval Jewish communities in Spain (Sephardic) and Northern Europe (Ashkenazic). After the expulsion from these communities, we will follow their rebirth in the Ottoman Empire and Eastern Europe. Finally, we will look at the factors that led to secularization and the beginnings of Jewish emancipation during the French Revolution.

For History Majors: Counts as World, Non-Western, Latin American and Prior to 1800 Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 34400: Georgian and Victorian England
Seth LeJacq Monday, 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm Hybrid: in person once a week/ additional online work each week

This course explores the history of Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It focuses on broad transformations to the state and their relationships to everyday life in the British Isles and Britain’s empire from the Revolution of 1688 to the death of Queen Victoria. We will survey political, economic, social, and cultural history that shaped the modern world, and we will also closely examine the history of British imperialism and colonialism. Key course themes include class conflict; racial thought; gender, sexuality, and the body; popular nationalism; and developments in science, medicine, and technology.

For History Majors: Counts as European

HIST 3411V (W): The History of Arab-Israeli Relations
Karen Kern Monday/Thursday, 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm

This course traces the history of the origins and development of Arab-Israeli relations from the late 19th century to the present. Through the use of primary and secondary sources, this course examines major issues such as colonialism, imperialism, and nationalism, as well as the development of Zionism, Palestine under Ottoman Rule, Jewish Settlements in Palestine, the Palestine Mandate, the 1948 War, the 1967 War, Israeli Settlements, and the Peace Process.

For History Majors: Counts as World, Non-Western, Latin American Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 3412V (W): Gender, Sex, and Reproduction in American History
Vanessa May, Monday/Thursday, 2:30 pm – 3:45 pm

This course examines how sexuality has been socially constructed, how understandings of sexuality have changed over time, and how ideas about sexuality have interacted with ideas about other social identities, including motherhood. We will seek to understand how individual understandings of gender, sexuality, and reproduction have changed across time as well as how questions about reproduction and sexuality have been shaped by public debates about categories like race and class. Topics will include sexual violence, sexual rights, and the regulation of sexuality and reproduction by the state.

For History Majors: Counts as US Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 3412U (W): Memory, Myth, and History in Post-1945 Europe
Evan Spritzer Monday/Thursday, 10:00 am – 11:15 am

In the aftermath of World War II, European political leaders and ordinary people constructed false or incomplete versions of their nations’ wartime actions and experiences. These narratives, which often denied collaboration with Nazi Germany or instances of violent anti-Semitism, entered “history” when they were reinforced by professional historians and by educational and cultural institutions. Subsequent transformative events, such as the Cold War, decolonization, and the social movements of the 1960s also produced tensions between dominant, state-imposed versions of the past and the memories of those who had witnessed the past.

For History Majors: Counts as European Writing Intensive Course. (W)

HIST 38228: Refugees and the Making of the Modern World
Jill Rosenthal Tuesday/Friday, 2:30 pm – 3:45 pm

Following the mass popular displacements of WWII, a group of diplomats came together to create the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees-- the bases of the international refugee regime that has endured to the present. We will explore the processes that led to the creation of the modern international refugee regime and how international refugee law has evolved in response to conflicts and emergencies "on the ground." Throughout, we will question the category of the "refugee," and interrogate the methods by which refugees, as individuals and as groups, have sought to control and alter their positions under national and international authorities. Topics will include notions of migration and asylum, the creation and evolution of international refugee law, refugees, stateless people, economic migrants, and decolonization. We will have case studies of European, Palestinian, Thai, Ethiopian, Haitian, and Cuban "refugees," among others.

For History Majors: Counts as World, Non-Western, Latin American

HIST 38236: History of the American Revolution
Noah Gelfand, Tuesday/Friday, 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm

In June 1776, with a war already raging and the Continental Congress debating whether to formally declare independence from Great Britain, John Adams wrote, “We are in the midst of a Revolution, the most compleat, unexpected, and remarkable in the History of Nations.” Adams could not have been more on the mark, for less than a month later colonial Americans founded a new nation based on truly radical principles of natural rights and the consent of the governed. This seminar seeks to understand the origins of the American Revolution and the creation of the United States. It begins by looking at colonial America in the mid-eighteenth century and continues through the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791. While a major focus is on the political ideas and events of the age, the social and cultural implications of the Revolution will also be examined, especially regarding the experiences of women, Native Americans, African
Americans, and Loyalists.

For History Majors: Counts as US

HIST 38266: Leisure/Pleasure in US History
Eduardo Contreras Thursday, 11:30 am – 2:20 pm

This undergraduate seminar will be driven by a quotidian yet meaningful question: How have Americans had fun in the past, and why does it matter? Using the themes of leisure and pleasure, we will study the emergence, popularity, and significance of amusement parks, bars and saloons, dance clubs, movies and television, and fairs and festivals, among other sites of recreation and merriment. We will connect our study of these spaces and mediums to questions of labor, industrialization, and capitalism; family life, gender relations, and sexual identity; and inclusion, equality, and freedom. Our key goal is to understand how leisure and pleasure illuminate the evolution and complexity of American society and culture over the past two centuries. The course will include field trips to museums, Central Park, and neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village and Harlem.

For History Majors: Counts as US