Humans are obsessed with the past. We study it in schools, reference it in speeches, trace family genealogies, and make movies about pivotal events and heroic people. Slogans demand that we “never forget” and people routinely dress in period outfits to reenact battles or to show us how people lived “back then.” This course critically examines various ways that people think about the past, focusing in particular on scholarly history, historical fiction, and documentaries. Over the course of the term, students will attempt these three types of history themselves and we’ll meet with historians, fiction writers, and filmmakers to hear directly from practitioners about what they do.

Topics in history scheduled on a one-time basis when faculty and student interest justifies. Spring 2022 What we eat, shines light on who we are. In this class, we'll explore food in American culture. In studying what are called foodways, we'll see how what we eat (and how we eat it) reflects ethnicity, religion, gender, region, and race--in complicated and intersecting ways. We'll explore how historians use food and food technologies to understand the past, and we'll uncover the connections between food choices and technology, leisure time, and immigration, as well as how new ideas such as "scientific cooking," "home economics," and "dieting" changed the American diet, and thus, how Americans thought, and think today, about themselves. Along the way we'll consider such food-related innovations as written recipes, cookbooks, TV Dinners, midnight snacking for college students, and cooking competition shows.Spring d of reasons. Maps have a great visual power, capable of conveying information with incredible authority, wheather real or illusionary.

From "sugar and spice and everything nice" to "a woman's place is in the House... and Senate" the expectations for a girl's life mirror the ever-changing social, cultural, religious, and political conditions in the United States. In our examination of girlhood from the 19th to the 21st century we will learn of society's changing expectations for those who identify as female, and the political and cultural roles Americans believed girls played in society.

A theme-based exposure to the earlier periods of US history. Possible themes could include paradox or irony in US history, US history as the construction of empire, US history as progress or regression, US history as escape from the past. A variety of primary and secondary sources will be employed.

A thematic exposure to the latter century and a half of US history. Possible themes could include the paradox of race in US history, the architects and managers of the American Century, or consensus and conflict in the US history. A variety of primary and secondary sources will be employed.

This lab complements HIS 299, SOC, 290 and HIS 410 and provides a one-credit study abroad experience in London. Students will explore themes and issues of British history and culture in London in May 2014. Students must be formally accepted into the London Study Abroad Group and be enrolled in HIS 299, SOC 290, or HIS 410 during the Spring 2014 semester. Enrollment in HIS 228 is by permission of the Global Education Office only.

European civilization from the Greeks through the Renaissance, addressing the intellectual, cultural, political, social, and economic developments that shaped European society before the dawn of the modern era . The historical themes of continuity and change and the interdependent development of the various European cultures will be the focus of the course. A variety of source materials will be used.

European history from the Renaissance to the present, addressing the intellectual, cultural, political, social, and economic developments that have shaped the modern age. Emphasis is on the intellectual responses to science, the evolution of the nation-state, and industrialization, along with their impact on society and politics. What has changed over time and what has remained the same will be two of the principal questions asked throughout the course.

This course is an introduction to major themes in the history of Spanish and Portuguese colonization of the Americas (16th through 18th centuries). Themes might include ecological change, exploitation and resistance, Latin America as evolving periphery, or continuity and change. Students will gain knowledge of the social, political, and economic foundations of Latin America.

This course is an introduction to major themes in the history of modern Latin America (19th and 20th centuries) Themes might include class conflict and power, imperialism and dependence, or national identity at the periphery. Special emphasis will be placed on Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.

In this class we will examine key moments in American history through the eyes of women. Our timeframe is the period from 1890 to present day and our approach to this vast history will be selective; that is, we will dive deeply into a few selected moments to examine American women’s lives.

This course examines how drugs have shaped societies and cultures in the Americas - from the United States to the southern mountains of Peru and Bolivia - in the last hundred or so years. We will begin by considering the social and cultural origins of drugs, as well as how societies have applied and regulated them, before proceeding to assess their social, cultural, and political implications.

Human Traditions courses introduce students to the broad range of human cultures from prehistory to the present, taking a thematic approach rather than a strictly chronological one. Its framework reflects our commitment, expressed in the second year theme of our core curriculum, to cultivate social and global awareness. We ask questions such as the following: what are the epochal developments in the history of the world? What are the forms of religious belief and practice? What are the artistic and literary achievements of the world? What yearnings do these traditions express? What are the political, literary, philosophical and cultural connections among them? What are the assumptions they make? What questions do they raise? For example, when does civilization arise? Where? Why? What are its characteristics and enduring challenges? What does the emergence of urban societies mean for relations between rich and poor, between men and women and between humans and their natural environment? These courses ask students to think critically about ideas within their historical contexts and to examine ways in which human expressions and responses relate to and reflect broad intellectual and cultural patterns. The title of the courses reflects a commitment to think globally, to acknowledge that the range and richness of the human experience carries beyond the narrow, binary scope of a worldview that too easily separates East from West and privileges the latter - and its traditions - over the former. 1) "Women in the Ancient World" We will trace the emergence of civilization from the river cultures of the Near up to the global world of 1500 CE. Our focus is on the role of gender in both the lives of those who lived in the ancient world and in the continued role gender plays in how we, today, look to and understand the past. Our goal is to recover the all but invisible lives of women in the ancient world, drawing on art, literature, history, archeology, and other humanities. 2) "Cultural Change in the Ancient World" This course asks students to step away from their everyday routines to imagine the origins and course of civilization, from the first hunter gathers to the complex states and societies of the 16th century. We will make connections between peoples and cultures in what we today call Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Topics will include: the development of agriculture and cities, the origins of religion, the expansion of empire, the role of art, writing and thinking in the development of civilization, among others. 3) "An Environmental History of the World to 1500 CE" For a very long time, historians wrote about humans as though they were separate from the environment. Likewise, environmentalists tended to see nature as “normal” and humans as an invasive species. Environmental history is about exploring the way that the environment shapes humans and vice-versa. This course examines those interactions beginning in pre-history and working forward to about 1500CE when Europeans started the process of creating global empires. Through lectures, readings, discussions, and fieldtrips into the woods and the archives, we will seek to gain a better understanding of the environmental history of our world. 4) "Origins, Expansion, and Connections" The second-year theme of the UNE core curriculum concerned with social and global awareness, surveys the first half of global history, from the foundation of human development until the age of exploration. The main themes of the course include: the origins of humankind; the rise of societies and civilizations; the development of ideas, religions, and technologies; the growth of gender and class inequality; and the expansion of cross-cultural interaction and exchange. 5) "History of Scientific Revolution" This course is about the history and philosophy that led to the scientific revolution of the 16th–18th centuries. Students will learn what was so revolutionary about the practices of famous figures such as Galileo and Newton, and how they shared continuities with ancient thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. The course also provides a global comparison of the study of the natural world in different cultures. By the end of the course, students will better understand how the concept of science was invented and evolved over time.

Human Traditions courses introduce students to the broad range of human cultures from prehistory to the present, taking a thematic approach rather than a strictly chronological one. HIS Human Traditions II sections are offered under a range of topics. 1) “Women in the Modern World.” In this section we will focus on how gender structures, defines, and challenges the lives of women in diverse societies from 1500 to present day (and beyond). How are women captured in the historical record? Where are they absent and what factors make women's lives invisible? What strategies can we employ to understand the place of women in world history when so much of women's perspective has been obscured? 2) “Domination and Resistance in the Modern World.” This course asks students to read and think about the origins and development of our modern global world. We begin by learning how Europe, Africa and the Americas became socially, culturally, and economically linked, and how these developments set the stage for what we now call “globalization.” 3) “An Environmental History of the World from 1500 CE to the Present.” For a very long time, historians wrote about humans as though they were separate from the environment. Likewise, environmentalists tended to see nature as “normal” and humans as an invasive species. Environmental history is about exploring the way that the environment shapes humans and vice-versa. This course examines those interactions from the point at which Europeans established the first truly global empires through the present day, paying particular attention to the implications of globalization for our planet. Through lectures, readings, discussions, and fieldtrips into the woods and the archives, we will seek to gain a better understanding of the environmental history of our world. 4) “Globalization, Inequality, and Revolution.” The second-year theme of the UNE core curriculum concerned with social and global awareness, surveys the second half of global history, from the age of exploration to the present. The main themes of the course include: expansion and globalization; racism and inequality; revolution and upheaval; urban and industrial growth; warfare and conquest; and change and continuity over time

An internship is a high impact learning experience where knowledge and theory from students’ program of study are integrated with shadowing, volunteering, or paid employment with a private company, not-for-profit organization or government agency toward the intentional development of transferable knowledge, skills and abilities and practical application of professional competencies. Prior to registering for the class, students must work with the Internship Coordinator and course instructor to identify, apply for, and secure an internship. In addition to the hands-on experiential learning that occurs at the internship site, students attend class to discuss the experience, reflect on their learning, and explore ways the internship extends course-based learning. Through guidance, support and regular feedback from the mentor and the course instructor, students learn and practice their internship position and achieve their learning objectives.

This course is an introduction to the ways historians study the past. Students will learn how historians formulate research questions, how to use historical evidence, and how to tell historical stories. Each semester, this course will examine a different historical theme or question. A description of the specific topic offered will be posted prior to the registration period. Students may take multiple versions of this course.

In this course we will study the discipline of history by “doing” history. Our focus will be on letters from World War II from soldiers, nurses and those on the homefront, drawn from the war letter archive in the UNE library. As we explore this rich archive of primary source documents we will focus on three areas of study: letters as a historical source; the content & context of war letters; and the historical stories we can tell based on war letters.

In the 19th century, when a loved one died, you wore solid black for a year. You saved locks of their hair and made it into jewelry. You might have taken a photograph of your dead child, propped up between the still living ones. Death is a part of life. In this class, we will explore how Americans have mourned and remembered the dearly departed. We will examine gravestone carvings, mourning fashion and jewelry, memorial poems, and funeral rituals among diverse populations. We'll also explore the very old burying ground right here on the UNE campus. Who were these people who lived -- and died -- here three hundred years ago?

The subject matter of this course varies from year-to-year and is based on the interests and expertise of the faculty who teach the course. Recent titles: College Stories; Building the Oral History of UNE; Science on Trial; Latin American History & Film; The Holocaust. For information about the course topic in a particular semester, please contact the faculty member who is teaching the course.

Many Americans believe that Native people have disappeared, when in fact Indigenous communities everywhere are asserting their culture, their sovereignty, and their demands for justice. This course will introduce students to the history of American Indians from the advent of European colonization to the present day. We will focus on the people of New England and especially the Wabanaki, who are Maine’s indigenous people. We will learn how to use conventional historical methods to uncover this history while also prioritizing Indigenous voices and perspectives. Most importantly, we will emphasize not only the familiar story of Native loss, but also survival, revitalization, and transformation.

This course examines the major revolutionary movements in Latin America during the twentieth century-particularly-but not exclusively-those movements that developed in Mexico (1910), Cuba (1959), Chile (1973) and Nicaragua (1979). This course asks what were the political, economic, and cultural forces at work that compelled ordinary people in these countries to rebel against their government and the status quo. We will begin by questioning the meaning, or meanings, of ¿revolution¿ in order to give us a theoretical framework for understanding our Latin American case studies. We will then proceed by discussing how each revolutionary movement unfolded, paying close attention to the causes that led people to mobilize, as well as to the declared objectives of revolutionaries and the revolutions' final results. We will ask who stood to benefit from revolutionary programs, and how everyday life changed for people once a push for revolutionary change took place. These questions will urge us to consider divisions within revolutionary movements, such as the differences between women and men, young and old, as well as divisions between those who formed a revolution¿s leadership and those who supported revolution through grassroots political activism. Along the way, students will be asked to think comparatively in order to assess how and why revolutionary strategies and outcomes in one country resembled or differed from those in another. Students who demonstrate responsibility, hard work, and curiosity will do fine in this course. I want you to do well, so please see me if you have any questions or concerns.

Medical breakthroughs are often described as “revolutionary,” but medicine has also helped to spark other kinds of revolutions. Physicians have become political leaders; disease has steered the course of military campaigns; and medical theories have influenced political theories. The influence goes both ways, as medicine has itself been shaped by other kinds of revolutions. This course will examine the role that medicine has played in revolutions, especially (but not exclusively) the American Revolution and other revolutions from the 18th-century.

As European empires spread around the world, they brought medical practitioners with them. They journeyed in search of new medicinal plants, new medical knowledge, and even new diseases to study, and they had an important influence on the development of scientific and medical knowledge. Yet these ventures cannot be understood apart from the broader context of imperial power and control, a dynamic that persists to this day. This course will explore the interconnectedness of medicine and empire through an exploration of case studies located around the world and ranging from the 1500s to the present.

This course will explore the northern Moroccan city of Tangier with regard to the richness and diversity of its history as well as its cultural, literary, and artistic landscape. Historically speaking, a plethora of civilizations and empires have settled or passed through Tangier: Berbers, Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, and Europeans. Tangier’s diversity reached its peak when it became an international zone in 1923, a status that would remain intact until 1956. This is the period that best embodies the encounters between East and West or North and South in the city, as a significant number of Westerners, including writers and artists, would take Tangier as their residence. In the decades that followed, young people from Europe and North America made their way to Tangier in large numbers, as part of the Hippie movement. The course takes the 20th century as its main temporal focus, exploring the cultural and literary productions in or on the city of Tangier. We will study literary and artistic works by writers and artists from a number of countries. The course will also include works from the 21st century, the goal being an assessment of the Tangier space as the city moves along the third millennium.

This course will explore the environmental history of New England. After an introductory survey of environmental history literature, we will explore several New England case studies using a combination of literature, archival materials, and field trips. Students will apply environmental historical research skills to a team-driven podcasting project about the environmental history of UNE and its environs.

Before there were movies, TV or the internet, books were mass media. In this course, we will read books pamphlets and tracts written for or eagerly embraced by large numbers of readers. By looking at bestsellers, we will seek insights into the American cultures which produced and received these texts by attempting to understand not only why these narratives were so popular, but also what relationship they had to American politics, religion, labor relations, and the family. Our readings will focus on tales of the city-its dangers, its promises, and its power. While we focus on bestsellers of the nineteenth century, we will also consider how the themes and issues addressed by nineteenth-century popular literature play out in the twenty-first century.

From beaches to lunatic asylums, mountains to urban centers, tourism both shaped and was shaped by the modern world. Although now a cornerstone of our lives, modern tourism is only about two hundred and fifty years old. This class explores the development of touristic practice, beginning in a time when beaches were an intermediary space between heaven and hell, mountains were so terrifying that those who could afford it were carried through them while blindfolded, and most people could not even imagine the idea of "free time." As years passed, aesthetic revolution, technological developments, and growing economies utterly transformed how we look at our surroundings and how we think about time. This class will use lectures, readings, discussions, and field trips to explore the history of modern tourism, while at the same time giving students an opportunity to play a role in shaping understanding of this vital part of modern life.

This course challenges students to rethink traditional paradigms that place politics or economics at the center of historical change by exposing students to the latest literature of the history of gender and sexuality in Latin America. We begin by closely reading about gender and sexuality as categories of analysis and then proceed to interrogate how scholars have used these concepts to better understand modern Latin American history. Covering a broad range of themes - from medicine to slavery - this course will help students understand not just how gender and sexuality affect historical change, but how these categories shape their own lives.

In the nineteenth century eager young man and daring young women headed to the rapidly growing cities for adventure, for jobs, for romance, and to experience a new independence previous generations had not known, In this seminar, we will explore how urban life shaped and challenged proper young men and women. We'll examine swells, fops, dandies, and confidence men as well as painted ladies, prostitutes, debutantes, and It Girls. We'll examine the daily toll of the working class, the pampered world of the elite, and the anxiety of the middle class as they struggled to find their place. Our sources will include period novels, etiquette manuals, city guides, and sensational fiction as we consider the opportunities and dangers the city presented to young men and women. Will will pay particular attention to sex in the city - how virtuous women avoided it, where men sought it, and how a thriving industry developed around it.

History and Politics in Morocco introduces students to the forces shaping contemporary Morocco through lectures combined with immersive, place-based learning in Tangier. Students explore how historical legacies intersect with current political structures, constitutional developments, economic change, and Morocco’s expanding regional influence. Field visits to cultural institutions, community organizations, and historically significant sites allow students to observe political and social dynamics first-hand and connect course concepts to students’ lived experiences. The course offers an engaging, on-the-ground understanding of Morocco’s modern identity and its evolving role in the world.

This course examines the role of Africans and their descendents in the making of the New World. We begin by learning about the lives of Africans in Africa before their coerced migration to the Americas and the Caribbean. After briefly examining the process of enslaving Africans and transporting them to the New World, we proceed to learn about the lives of Africans in a variety of different geographical settings and contexts, from slaves engaged in the production of tobacco in South Carolina and Cuba to free(d) blacks in Brazil and Mexico. Over the course of the semester, we will examine how notions and customs regarding race, gender, class, and religion shaped the lives of everyday Africans and their descendents in the New World.

Topics vary from semester to semester. Contact the History program for current offerings.

HIS 399 courses address various subjects of interest to the faculty and they vary by year. Please contact the department for information about current offerings.

An internship is a high impact learning experience where knowledge and theory from students’ program of study are integrated with shadowing, volunteering, or paid employment with a private company, not-for-profit organization or government agency toward the intentional development of transferable knowledge, skills and abilities and practical application of professional competencies. Prior to registering for the class, students must work with the Internship Coordinator and course instructor to identify, apply for, and secure an internship. In addition to the hands-on experiential learning that occurs at the internship site, students attend class to discuss the experience, reflect on their learning, and explore ways the internship extends course-based learning. Through guidance, support and regular feedback from the mentor and the course instructor, students learn and practice their internship position and achieve their learning objectives.

A theme-based exposure to the earlier periods of US history. Possible themes could include paradox or irony in US history, US history as the construction of empire, US history as progress or regression, US history as escape from the past. A variety of primary and secondary sources will be employed.

A thematic exposure to the latter century and a half of US history. Possible themes could include the paradox of race in US history, the architects and managers of the American Century, or consensus and conflict in the US history. A variety of primary and secondary sources will be employed.

This course examines how drugs have shaped societies and cultures in the Americas—from the United States to the southern mountains of Peru and Bolivia—in the last hundred or so years. We will begin by considering the social and cultural origins of drugs, as well as how societies have applied and regulated them, before proceeding to assess their social, cultural, and political implications.