An analysis of the major forces and events that shaped American history from its beginnings through the Civil War.

An analysis of the forces and events that shaped American history from the Civil War to the present.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department.

This course explores the history of New Orleans during the colonial and early national periods, when the city was a crossroads of the Atlantic World that linked Africa, the Americas, and Europe. It locates the city's past in a transnational Atlantic context that reaches back to the fifteenth century and concludes with the emergence of New Orleans as a major American city in the early nineteenth century.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

Students in this course will study the social dimensions of medicine, disease, and health in U.S. history. We will examine how ordinary people were affected by pandemics, advances in medical technologies, and changing ideas about health care. Students will consider how ideas about medicine have been shaped by economic, military, political, and social transformations in U.S. history.

This course will explore the history of the digital revolution from the 1830s to the present. It will begin with Ada Lovelace and the conception of a general-purpose computer, and it will culminate with the creation of social networks and the sharing economy. Special attention will be paid to the three great inventions that combined to create the digital age: the computer, the microchip, and the internet. The themes will include the importance of collaboration in innovation, the need to connect the humanities and the sciences, and how networked digital technology disrupts traditional hierarchies. In that context, we will look at what makes a successful digital business.

This course introduces students to the history of women in North America from 1400 to 1865. Over the course of the semester, we will examine how women were affected by and also influenced historical change. We will consider whether key events and issues, including European colonization, the American Revolution, slavery, and the Civil War look differently when we integrate women into the historical narrative. We will study how women's interactions with work, religious practices, and family life were influenced by race, class and ethnicity. One of the guiding questions of the course will be: how has gender-understood as the meanings attached to being male and female-changed over time?

This course examines U.S. history from 1861 to the present using the history of women and gender as the primary analysis. This course will be framed around a consideration of how the history of women intersects with ideas about human rights. We will explore how transformations in American laws, politics, customs, economic and military policies affected and were influenced by women. We will also consider how race, class, region, ethnicity, and age facilitated or prevented women from being able to exercise the full rights and obligations of citizenship.

A survey of the history of Louisiana from its settlement to the present.

Survey of U.S. legal history, with a focus on how laws shaped understandings of gender and sexuality from the colonial period to the present. Through a study of scholarly monographs and legal decisions, we will evaluate how ideas about marriage, divorce, sexual practices, inheritance, sexual assault, and sexual identity have changed over time. Students will write an original research essay, complete a midterm and final exam, and offer one in-class presentation.

The Atlantic world has emerged as an important field in early modern western history in the past ten years.  It is now especially important for students of United States history to have an opportunity to become familiar with the transnational origins of the nation that are rooted in the Atlantic context.  Atlantic world history does not replace traditional colonial history, but is now a necessary complement to it. 

This course surveys the development of the North American mainland before 1800 with focus on the thirteen British colonies in mainland North America that chose to declare their independence in 1776, and attention to the broader continental and Atlantic contexts in which they were embedded, including colonial Louisiana.

A survey of twentieth century U.S. history, focused on politics, culture, and the environment. Topics include immigration, imperialism, suffrage, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, the New Deal, world wars, the Civil Rights Movement, conservatism, the War on Terror, climate change, and America's future.

Economic, cultural and political history of the South from the settlement of Jamestown through the Civil War. Emphasis is on those factors that made the South a unique section of the nation.

An examination of the economic, political, cultural, and intellectual forces that have shaped the American South since the Civil War. Central themes include the rise of sharecropping and tenancy, the struggle for civil rights, the emergence of two-party politics, and the metamorphosis of popular values and social norms triggered by the events of the 1960s. The course will explore the paradox of continued self-conscious regional identity in the face of constant internal change.

This course will investigate the history of U.S. foreign relations from the early republic until World War II. The class will span more than a century and students will be asked to consider the economic and ideological objectives embedded in U.S. foreign relations and the growth of the United States as a world power. Topics will include: the Mexican-American war, westward expansion, U.S.-Hawaii relations, the War of 1898, U.S. interventions in the Caribbean, late 19th and early 20th century immigration, World War I, and World War II. In addition, this course will consider representations of the world in domestic culture by examining the histories of world fairs tourism, travel literature, and missionaries.

Foreign relations is front page news every day: the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the threat of terrorism and nuclear proliferation, rising food and oil prices, global warming, debates over human rights practices, and even the Olympics. Although each of these topics has strong contemporary resonance, the United States role in the world has a long and complex history. In this course, we will study US foreign relations from the end of World War II through the present. The course will define US foreign relations broadly and include diplomatic policy makers, military interventions, economic policy, and non-state actors engaged in international relations. Students will learn to analyze opposing historical interpretations, evaluate primary sources, ask analytic questions, and develop arguments.

In this class students will gain a solid foundation in mid-19th and 20th century immigration in the United States and grapple with the following themes: immigrant community formation, the interplay between immigration and American labor, the changing immigration law, the intersection of immigration and U.S. racial formations, and the prominence of immigrant narratives in American culture. The course will also ask that students grapple with contemporary problems and recognize the historic antecedents and struggles behind today's current events.

A survey of American environmental history from 1491 to the present, focused on how politics, culture, and the economy have changed the way people interact with the world around them over time. Topics include Native America, capitalism, colonialism, democracy, the industrial revolution, wilderness, race, class, gender, justice, and climate change.

Students will gain a solid foundation in mid-19th and 20th century labor history and analyze the following themes: the rise of corporate capitalism, the development of a labor movement, agricultural, industrial, and service economies, the interplay between immigration and American labor, the decline of labor protections, and the emergence of the ‘gig’ economy. The course will also ask that students grapple with contemporary problems and recognize the historic antecedents and struggles behind today’s current events.

A survey of the history of people of African descent in the United States from the 17th century to the end of the Civil War. The course will explore the development of a distinct African-American experience within the context of colonial North America and the early United States. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the origins and nature of slavery not simply as a system of forced labor, but as a system of unique cultural relationships.

This course surveys the history of people of African descent in the United States from the end of the Civil War until the late twentieth century. A central theme of the course will be the varying ways in which African-Americans sought, both successfully and unsuccessfully, to achieve political, social, and economic freedom in the wake of emancipation.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

This course will explore the history of the digital revolution from the 1830s to the present. It will begin with Ada Lovelace and the conception of a general-purpose computer and culminate with the creation of social networks and the sharing economy. Special attention will be paid to the three inventions that created the digital age: the computer, the microchip, and the internet. The themes will include the importance of collaboration in innovation, the need to connect the humanities and the sciences, and how networked digital technology disrupts traditional hierarchies. We will look at what makes a successful digital business. We will also debate two schools of thought that have developed since Alan Turing asked whether machines would ever be able to think like humans: those who pursue artificial intelligence versus those who focus on ways to use machines to augment human intelligence.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Transfer Coursework at the 2000 level. Department approval may be required.

Historical Methods Lab. For description, consult the department.

Historical Methods Lab. For description, consult the department.

This course explores the connected and comparative histories and cultures of New Orleans and Senegal. The two were both founded as French colonies. They share histories, cultural traditions, and, by virtue of their geographic location at the edge of threatened estuarian landscapes, a common challenge to their future.

This methods seminar examines the origins and experience of the large population of free people of color in New Orleans from 1718-1865. Although most Africans and African-descended inhabitants of New Orleans during this period were enslaved, many attained freedom or were born free. In 1800 fully 1/4 of the free people in New Orleans were free people of color. They joined militias, acquired property, ran businesses, and produced a vibrant body of literature.

An interdepartmental seminar that employs autobiography to explore the relationship between regional culture and individual experience in the 20th-century American South. While recognizing the place of autobiography as a literary genre, the seminar will subordinate the concerns of critical theory to the more immediate task of evaluating the strengths and limitations of autobiographical testimony as a form of historical evidence. Class members will read and discuss one book-length autobiography each week.

From the Salem Witchcraft trials to the trial of 0. J. Simpson, some sensational legal contests have captured the public imagination and resonated in American history and culture. Why do some trials garner such attention while others, perhaps equally sensational, do not? Clearly, they reflect deeper anxieties and tap into larger themes in American culture. This course will focus on trials like these that have captured the public imagination and ask what these trials reveal about the larger society. Other trials, though not as sensational, also reveal important aspects of American culture. We will also explore the law itself, how it functions in society, and what sort of society it aims to foster and protect.

This reading seminar will explore the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans through the lens of popular memory. Readings will be drawn primarily from first-hand accounts of the storm. These memoirs, personal narratives, and biographies can enrich our understanding of human experience and social issues and provide insights into the larger social, economic, and cultural forces that shaped how individuals experienced the tragedy. We will also consider how individuals experienced those forces differently depending on such factors as race, gender, and class. Through careful readings of the texts, we will examine the extent to which the speakers live. We will also consider the use of first-hand accounts as historical sources and the benefits and pitfalls inherent in these sources. Other readings explore how Katrina was and continues to be understood collectively.

This class focuses on the period from the earliest Jewish settlers in mid-seventeenth century colonial America through the establishment of viable Jewish communities and institutions by the latter part of the nineteenth century. It covers the so-called Sephardic and Germanic periods of American Jewish history, prior to the wave of Eastern European immigration. Among the themes explored are the tension between Jewish identity and the pressures of assimilation; the transformation of the synagogue; the emergence of Jewish social and cultural institutions; changing religious practices and the rise of Reform Judaism. Events and themes are placed within the broader context of American history.

This course will explore the history and public memory of slavery and the slave trade in New Orleans and southern Louisiana, as well as regions of North American. Some attention will also be paid to the Atlantic slave trade and areas of the Caribbean and Latin America which shared the history of black enslavement. The focus here will be on major themes in slavery history and memory and the challenge of studying and portraying those themes in various public history venues in the present day. The course will also address debates about reparations for slavery and other contemporary public policy questions related to the history of black enslavement. The Service Learning component of the course, when offered, will involve working with local public history agencies in the preparation and presentation of slavery-related materials at their individual venues.

What happened when enslaved Africans, African-Americans and other people of African descent used organized armed resistance to fight the institution of slavery? This course will explore six different slave rebellions in the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America using documents, films and different kinds of history text books. Only in the case of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) did a slave rebellion actually succeed. But all slave uprisings left behind fascinating stories--filled with heroism, tragedy, violence; disputed evidence, and angry historical debate. This seminar-style class will delve into all of these questions mostly through weekly readings in both documents and other texts. The class will also focus significantly on questions of historical evidence: What can historians really know, especially when slave rebels themselves left behind relatively few documents? When Methods Practicum is added, this course fulfills Methods Requirement of the History Major.

This course surveys the history of African-American religious institutions, leaders, and beliefs from slavery to the present. The course examines the diversity of African-American religious expressions within the larger context of black social and political life. Topics include the transmission of African culture to the New World, slave religion, independent black churches, race relations, black nationalism, as well as gender and class, social reform and everyday resistance.

This seminar examines the historical and contemporary relationships between contagions and practices of surveillance. This course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary theories of surveillance studies using historical frameworks such as discipline, control, capitalism, media, and privacy during times of crisis, as it relates to race, gender, and class. Seminar discussions will include cases where patriarchal power and racialized systems were used to promote perceptions of security, fear, exposure, and control, while constructing medical knowledge. As praxis, students will use historical research strategies to design and produce a digital history project that uses technology tools such as maps, visualizations, textual analysis, and/or audio-visual production. All digital history skills will be taught in this course. All technical skill-levels are welcome.

This course will explore the history of reproductive health in the United States from the seventeenth century to the present. Students will read scholarly books and articles, memoirs, and films about Americans’ encounters with gynecology, midwifery and obstetrics, birth control devices, abortion, and reproductive technologies. Additionally, students will have opportunities to engage with guest lecturers who study reproductive health issues in the United States and around the world. Students will learn about the history of voluntary and coercive sterilization programs, the history of gynecological and obstetrical care, legal and illegal birth control and abortion practices, and the mobilization of the anti-abortion and pro-choice movements.

An examination of the changing meanings of "wilderness" and "wastelands" in American culture from 1492 to the present in order to explore the changing ways Americans have imagined and valued the natural world. Topics include capitalism, colonialism, race, class, gender, democracy, national parks, sacrifice zones, post-industrialism, and the anthropocene idea.

Although in the United States, the US conflict in Vietnam is most commonly referred to as the Vietnam War, in Vietnam, it is known as the American War. In this class, we will study the history of the war in Vietnam and the United States through primary sources and US historians' debates over the Cold War and decolonization. We will be reading works by both US and Vietnamese authors, including policy makers, military personnel, anti-war activists, and immigrants. In addition, students will learn to analyze opposing historical interpretations, evaluate primary sources, ask analytic questions, and develop arguments.

What does it mean to be an American? This course explores a substantial part of the long, complicated, and interesting history of answers that Americans have given this question over time. Does American have a national identity uniquely its own, or is it best understood as a container of diverse identites defined by separate ethnic and racial groups?

This course examines the intersection between the Cold War, domestic politics, and cultural change in America during the decade of the 1950s. Topics will include McCarthyism, conformity and rebellion, youth culture, the beginnings of the civil rights movement, the rise of television, and the transformation of the American family.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

For specific offering, see the Schedule of Classes. For description, consult department. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

This lecture course surveys the development of the many different religious traditions in the United States from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. The diverse origins of America's early settlers and the guarantees of religious freedom embedded in the Constitution encouraged the development in the United States of the most religiously diverse society in the Western world. We will explore that diversity and also seek commonalities between religious movements and their impact on the larger society. In such a survey, the emphasis will necessarily be on those formal religious movements that have made a major impact on American culture, but the importance of less mainline groups and popular belief will also be discussed. The course is non-denominational, non-creedal, and taught as cultural/intellectual/social history.

The course treats military, political and economic developments during the American Civil War, and examines the postwar consequences of emancipation for Southern and American history.

The course surveys the colonial origins of American racial attitudes; African adaptations to bondage; the historical evolution of plantation slavery as a social institution, labor system, and method of racial control; the nature of white antislavery sentiment; the content and meaning of proslavery ideology; and the status of free blacks in slave society.

This course explores the cultural dynamics associated with the origins of jazz in New Orleans and related historiography.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Until recently, most historians paid little attention to social relationships, race, or to the experiences of the poor. Beginning in the 1960s, scholars began to question the assumption that rituals. customs, and social practices were fixed or experienced the same by everyone. By inserting women into their analysis of U.S. history, historians quickly determined that our understanding of key historical events, economic change, and social customs was incomplete and often failed to capture the lived experiences of most Americans. Historians of women and gender have reimagined the ways we might think about the past, causing us to reconsider assumptions about labor, sex, and politics. In this course, you join the enterprise committed to enlarging our sense of what it has meant to live in or engage with the United States by investigating the experiences of women and men.

A seminar on the political, cultural, and environmental history of disasters in modern America. Topics include race, class, gender, capitalism, democracy, justice, risk, flood control, terrorism, nuclear power, climate change, fate, free will, structure, and agency.

This course draws upon historical and theoretical literature, memoir, film, and fiction to examine the history of gender-based violence in the United States. Topics will include domestic violence, sexual assault and rape, forced sterilization, and violence against LGBTQ+ people. We will study power relations related to race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender. We will analyze resistance to violence, systems that enable violence, and the legal, medical, and social discourses that have resisted and enabled gender-based violence. This course does not have any pre- or co-requisites.

The American War of Independence was one of many revolutionary movements that rocked the Atlantic world between 1760 and the 1820s.  This course familiarizes students with the major interpretations of the American revolution and situates it within the larger spasm of freedom struggles that characterized the period, including Caribbean slave rebellions and the Latin American wars of independence. 

U.S. domestic history and role in world affairs from 1945 to the present. Topics include the Cold War at home; the Vietnam War; politics and protest in the turbulent 60's; the civil rights and women's movements; and the presidency from Truman to Clinton.

An exploration of the formation of distinctive African-American cultural forms in the United States from the years of African enslavement up to the present day. The course will embrace a broad definition of culture to include religion and other community institutions, folklore and folk belief, various leisure activities as well as more obvious cultural manifestations such as music and the arts.

This reading and research seminar will explore major topics in the social, cultural, economic, and political history of the plantation South. The course will begin with the origins of the plantation system in the colonial era to its eventual decline in the 20th century. We will consider regional variations tied to the production of export crops including tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar. Major themes will include issues of race and class, changing labor systems, comparative history, and the impact of the planting system on the region's history.

Prophet or charlatan? True faith or madness? What separates a cult from any other religious movement? How do new religious movements arise? Why do some fail while others succeed? These questions have surrounded American religious movements from the colonial era to the present.

This course is an advanced seminar on the relationships between labor, capital, and migrant populations to (and within) the United States in the twentieth century. Globalization and migration are not new phenomenon. This course will begin in the late nineteenth century and explore the role of labor, industrial capitalism, and markets in the early twentieth century. It will challenge students to recognize the antecedents to today's immigration debates and consider continuities as well as changes in the US economy.

This seminar will explore the dispersion and fate of African peoples and their descendants in the United States, the Caribbean, and Central and South America with a view to developing an understanding of African-American culture as a diverse regional phenomenon rather than one confined to the United States.

What is an empire, who defines it, and does the United States have one? This class will begin by studying sites of formal US control of overseas territories, namely Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. It will then consider definitions of economic and cultural empire, particularly after the end of World War II. The course aims to provide students with several case studies in the early twentieth century and to ask students to ponder their legacies in the present.

Traces the diplomatic, economic, and cultural relations between the United States and Latin America from the American Revolution to the present. This course seeks to demonstrate the interrelated roles of diplomacy, commerce, and inter-American cultural relations throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department. Notes: For special offering, see the Schedule of Classes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

Seminar in American Colonial History.

This is a graduate-level course aimed it graduate students who will be teaching and researching in 20th century U.S. history. The course involves substantial reading in secondary sources, and its goal is to provide a foundation in 20th century political history and new trends in the historiography.

Seminar in Colonial Louisiana.

Seminar in 20th Century U.S.

Seminar Cultural Hist U.S.

Seminar U.S. Diplomatic Hist.

Seminar Comparative Hist Amers.

This pro-seminar offers a comprehensive exploration of the scholarship on the Atlantic world and is designed to expose graduate students to the major currents, themes and problems in the field.

Courses offered by visiting professors or permanent faculty. For description, consult the department.