Spring 2027 Undergraduate Courses

Quick View of Undergraduate Courses

Department Policy on In-Person Attendance

All Spring 2027 History courses will be taught in-person, unless indicated by the (*course note).By signing up for a class, you have agreed to attend and participate in theclass. You should not expect to be able to attend an 'in-person' class remotely or to access class recordings. Exceptions to this policy may be granted at the instructor’s discretion. If you are unwilling or unable to commit to attending and participating in person over the duration of the semester, you should seek alternative options for all-remote or online courses. (For assistance with finding alternative classes, please contact your advisor and/or the History Advisor, Hayes Moore,hayes.moore@colorado.edu.)

Expanded course descriptions

This page does not list all Spring 2027 History courses, only those for which we have expanded descriptions. To see all courses, please use the Course Search button above. If you would like an expanded description of a course which is not on this list, please reach out to the instructor.

HIST 1800-002 / Introduction to Global History

(002) The Silk Road - Kwangmin Kim

This course offers an introduction to the history of the Silk Road and Central Eurasia from the Neolithic Period to the present. Specific topics to be covered in this course include, but are not limited to, 1) long-distance trade and transnational migration, 2) interactions between the nomads and settled societies, 3) expansion of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, 4) Chinese and European, especially Russian, colonialisms. This course explores the parallels and interconnections between the local societies along the overland trade routes rather than exploring collective “national histories” of this region. In so doing, this course shows how the local societies interacted with one another as well as with the forces of global trade and European and Chinese colonialism, giving rise to a distinctive historical world.

HIST 2015-001 / U.S. Revolutionary Origins: The American Revolution - Honor Sachs

Americans just celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Over the next decade, our nation will continue to celebrate founding moments, as the American experiment took shape in war, law, politics, and culture. This course will examine the revolutionary origins of the United States and the struggles that unfolded along the road to nationhood. It looks at the American Revolution as a conflict that was both global and local, one that involved tensions and transformations among empires and individuals alike. We will look at the aspirations and limitations of freedom, liberty, and equality that shaped the creation of the new nation and consider the consequences of issues left unresolved and incomplete. Throughout the course, we will discuss what the American Revolution can mean for us today, as we enter a decade of 250th anniversaries marking the civic origins of the United States.

HIST 2220-001 / History of War and Society: Gunpowder and War, 1300-1648 - David Paradis

Knights on horseback dominated European warfare in the Middle Ages and even inspired a code of conduct and social paradigm: chivalry. With the adoption of gunpowder weapons, the inclusion of the middle and lower classes in warfare, and the growth of religious wars, chivalry receded, and Europeans found new ways to recruit soldiers. In addition to covering these topics, this class will include a role-playing game, centered on the Protestant Reformation.

HIST 2316-001 / History of American Popular Culture - Viola Burlew

From silent films to jazz to Superman to Taylor Swift toSinners, all facets of American popular culture draw from interwoven histories of the past and have bearing on our future. In this course, we will explore the origins of four main media types – print, music, film, and television—as they relate to American popular culture and will then connect those developments back to broader trends in U.S. history. By engaging directly with multimedia sources likeCasablanca, I Love Lucy, Beatles music, Marvel movies, and more, this course will demonstrate how popular culture as a whole is a negotiation of our individual identities, of our relationship to broader cultural movements, and of our understanding of what it means to be an American.

HIST 2476-001 / United States Legal History - Honor Sachs

This course explores the legal history of the United States from the founding era into the present. We will study the legal ideas that shaped the drafting of the Constitution and survey the various pressures and tensions that have tested and changed that founding document over the last 250 years. Throughout the semester, we will study the legal debates that arose in the contexts of territorial expansion, industrial development, financial expansion and collapse, shifting demographics, and both civil and world war. We will consider how legal questions over slavery, civil rights, race, regulation, economic expansion, privacy, gender, sexuality, and equality have contributed to both inclusive and exclusive understandings of citizenship.

HIST 2500-001 / Fact and Fiction in History: Who Invented the Indian? - Noah Ramage

More than five hundred years ago, an infamous sailor mislabeled the inhabitants of San Salvador Island in the Bahamas as “Indians.” Over the centuries that followed, the term became attached to images of savagery and nobility, narratives of conquest and resistance, and competing ideas about race, nationhood, and inclusion. This course examines how “the Indian” was invented, how its meanings have changed over time, and how Native peoples have challenged, revised, and embraced the label. Examining primary and secondary sources from the Americas and Europe, students will use historical methods to investigate the relationship between representation and reality. Together, students will explore a central question: who invented the Indian?

HIST 3020 / Historical Thinking and Writing

(002) The Rise of the Propaganda State - Tim Weston

This seminar examines the rise and evolution of modern propaganda states. While all governments use propaganda, in this class we will concentrate on instances when state propaganda became a defining feature of the nation's politics. We will study this in four different historical settings: China; the Soviet Union; Nazi Germany; and the United States. During the semester we will discuss what political “propaganda” means, how governments have made use of it, and the consequences of that form of politics. This will involve studying visual, textual, performative, artistic, architectural, and other forms of propaganda. Students will be guided step by step through the design, research, and writing stages of a historical research paper on a topic of their own choice related to propaganda and politics.

HIST 3328-001 / Seminar in Middle Eastern History: The United States and the Middle East - Hilary Kalisman

This course examines key moments of the intertwined history of the United States and the Middle East from the 18th century through the present. Topics include piracy, millenarianism, Syrian immigration to the United States, Cold War diplomacy, Israel/Palestine, the Iranian revolution, the Gulf Wars, the legacies of 9/11 and current politics. Students will be able to choose their own subject to research in more depth.

HIST 3415-001 / Seminar in Recent American History - Thomas Zeiler

This course explores the diplomacy (and the domestic roots of foreign affairs) of the United States in the world from the post-Vietnam War period (1970s) to the present. The course will explore how and why decisions were made and apply this information, and the lessons of history, to contemporary affairs. We will ask questions, many of them: was there a distinctive American foreign policy? Has America been a force for good or ill in the world? Who hold the power to make decisions in foreign policy? What were the internal debates over foreign policy and how were they resolved? What was the reception abroad of U.S. ideas, policies, and power? How were the domestic and international arenas linked? And, what does it all mean for today?

HIST 4126-001 / History of U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1941 - Thomas Zeiler

This course explores the diplomacy of the United States from American entry into World War II to the present, with a focus on the Cold War. We will study the economic, social, intellectual, moral, technological, and political bases of U.S foreign relations as the nation emerged as a global leader, and as it maintained that status during and after the Cold War. You will examine the history armed with professional historians’ models, and will draw on both secondary and primary sources to make your arguments. The course will explore how and why decisions were made and apply this information, and the lessons of history, to contemporary affairs.

HIST 4258-001 / Africa under European Colonial Rule - Myles Osborne

This course seeks to understand the experience of colonialism in Africa. We will start with British, French, Portuguese and German empires that undertook the "Scramble for Africa" in the late 19th century. Themes include slavery and the slave trade; colonization and "pacification"; African resistance to European rule; missionaries and converts; decolonization and anti-colonial uprisings; issues facing Africa today, including oil, war and the Rwandan genocide.

HIST 4359-001 / The Global History of Modern Arabia - John Willis

In this class we'll look at the states of the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf as part of a global order of trade, imperialism, migration, and revolution from the 19th century to the present. In doing so, we'll not only look at the transformative role of petroleum and Islamic thought on the region, but a longer history of cosmopolitan interactions with the Indian Ocean world through trade, missionary work, revolutionary organization, and cultural exchange. We'll do so through an examination of various primary sources, academic articles, music, and films.

HIST 4627-001 / Native American History II: 1815 to Present - Noah Ramage

This course introduces students to the Indigenous history of North America from 1815 to the present. We trace how Native peoples interacted with the United States, Canada, and Mexico through several turbulent periods of war, removal, protest, and reform. We will examine how Native nations exercised sovereignty, built strong institutions, and sustained political and cultural community amid conquest, exploitation, and ethnic cleansing. Throughout the semester, students will engage with the core concepts of the field, including sovereignty, settler colonialism, genocide, and empire. We will collectively develop the tools to interpret Indigenous, U.S., Mexican, and Canadian decision-making with nuance. Grappling with the complexity of the past, and using historical methods to understand this complexity, we will often return to one central question: what are the stakes of studying Native American history?

HIST 4648-001 / Inventing Chinese Modernity, 1800 to Present - Tim Weston

This class focuses on China's last era of greatness and the collapse of that order in the early twentieth century; on Western and Japanese imperialism in China and the so-called "Century of Humiliation" (1842-1949); on efforts to define and acuate Chinese modernity; and on the forces that led to the Communist Revolution of 1949, one of the truly seismic events of twentieth century global history.

HIST 4800-001 / Special Topics in Global History: A Global History of Yoga - Sanjay Gautam

This course focuses on the history of yoga from its origin in the spiritual traditions of India to its spread in the West and beyond. The worldwide spread of yoga, particularly in the last century, has made it a truly global phenomenon. In the process, it has not only transcended all ethnic, religious, and national boundaries, but has also undergone subtle and often unnoticed changes of immense significance. Given its near universal reach, only a global approach to its history can allow us to understand the real nature and significance of its presence in the world today. We will start off the course with a reading of some relevant parts of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras—the original book on yoga—and then closely follow its evolution as it expands throughout the world.

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