HIS - History

This course examines topics from the Paleolithic Era to the dawn of the Age of Globalization, including: early foraging, pastoral, and agricultural societies; the emergence of urban societies in Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas; trade and cultural transmission; concepts of gender; technological transfers; and the emergence of transcontinental and global interconnections through the Saharan trade, the Pax Mongolica, and Malay, Chinese and Iberian ocean explorations. Equally importantly, the course introduces students to the methods of the historian, involving critical thinking, the analysis of source texts, and the use of evidence to address historical questions.

This course examines topics from the 16th through 20th centuries, including: state-building, commerce, and society in Eurasia and Africa; the creation and integration of the Atlantic World; new ideologies; industrial revolutions; changing conceptions of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and nation; political revolutions, genocides, and wars; imperialism and decolonization; and the global impact of the Cold War. Equally importantly, the course engages students in the methods of the historian, involving critical thinking, the analysis of source texts, and the use of evidence to address historical questions.

Surveys the cultural, political, social and economic developments in this country from the discovery of America through Reconstruction.

Surveys the urbanization and industrialization of the nation and its rise to world power.

A study of Muslims in world history from the 7th to the 21st centuries. This course explores the history of Islamic societies and of Muslims in local and global contexts, including the Middle East, Africa, Central and South Asia, and the West. The course addresses selected topics such as politics and statecraft; religious and cultural traditions and varieties; gender roles; and the challenges and choices that Muslim societies and individuals have faced in classical, early modern, and modern times. Materials include film, fiction and political writing as well as primary historical documents and secondary history textbooks.

This course introduces undergraduate majors and minors to the exercise of thinking, researching and writing historically, focusing on the technical, methodological and theoretical skills that guide professional practice in diverse settings: museums, archives, secondary education and universities. Students will learn how to distinguish between evidence and interpretation and how to assess different kinds of evidence. Class meetings will sample representative fields, approaches and primary sources to provide the foundations for independent research in the capstone course.

European History in the 1900s.

A survey of the history of Native Americans in the Caribbean, North America, and South America from the pre-Columbian period through the twentieth century. By focusing comparatively on the themes of colonialism and resistance over five centuries, students will study the range of tactics that Native Americans have adopted to create and preserve their communities, cultures, and sovereignty since 1492.

A study of the development of slavery and relations between European Americans and African Americans in British, Spanish, and Portuguese America from the beginning of European settlement in the New World until the abolition of slavery in the mid-19th century.

A study of the development of witchcraft accusations, beginning with continental Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries and continuing with the later scares in England and New England. Particular emphasis will be given to international comparisons and to the changing social, cultural and economic positions of women.

A survey of women's accomplishments, lifestyles, changing image and struggle for equality and recognition from colonial times to the present.

Napoleon Bonaparte said: “China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will move the world.” This course will explore how prophetic his words were by exploring China’s often torturous search for modernity. It surveys the interplay between China and the outside world from before the Opium War through the collapse of two millennia of dynastic rule, the rise of the Communist movement, decades of Japanese aggression, the Maoist years of almost constant revolution, and its gradual transition to a socialist-style entrepreneurial state, and its emergence on the world stage as a major power.

The term “discovery” is an ambivalent and charged word when discussing the arrival, military occupation and colonization of the Americas during the late 15th and 16th centuries. Who discovered whom in 1492 and what were the economic, demographic, ecological, political and cultural consequences brought about by the New World/Old World encounter? How were Europe and the Americas transformed by this seminal event, and how were the foundations of modern Latin America (and modern Western civilization) laid during this fascinating period? These questions and many others will be studied and analyzed through exposure to the primary texts and artifacts of that era, in an attempt to understand the Spanish and Indigenous mindset on the eve of conquest and their mutual transformation throughout the 16th century, when a New World — a world still in formation — was born.

An exploration of the history of Africa from the rise of the great Sahel empires to the struggle for independence from European imperialism, with an emphasis on the period from 1500 to 1975. Major topics include the role of Islam, colonialism, nationalist movements, Pan-Africanism, decolonization and the challenges facing newly independent states and societies.

This course surveys Japanese history from the coming of the Western gunboats in the 1850s through the Meiji restoration, the early development of international trade and democracy, the rise of militarism in the 1930s, World War II, the American Occupation, the economic "miracle" and the troubled 2000s.

A study of mid-19th century America, with particular emphases on the political developments, changing regional economies, patterns of interracial, interethnic and interclass relationships, as well as the course of military events during the Civil War.

China is frequently represented as a monolithic civilization, ethnocentric, and static in pre-modern times. This course challenges those stereotypes. It is a descriptive and analytical survey of China’s dynamic history from its historical origins in the 2nd millennium to 1800. It focuses on the evolution of the state, emphasizing cultural and political interactions with both neighboring and more distant societies. It further examines how China’s civilization influenced the emergence of the East Asian family of nations. This is a writing intensive course in which writing is a mode of learning and written assignments are a substantial part of the course grade.

This course examines the history of Japan from its pre-historical origins until the rise of modern Japan in the mid-nineteenth century. Special focus is given to indigenous Japanese beliefs, the influence of Chinese political and social values on Japanese life, Buddhist religious culture, the military ethos of the samurai, and the material cultural and artistic achievements of the Tokugawa period. In addition to a conventional textbook, literature and film are used to immerse students in the worldviews of traditional Japan. Group work and collaborative learning is emphasized. 

This course surveys major trends and turning points in the history of sexuality since 1500. We will examine the governing regimes (legal, religious, medical, etc.) that defined sexual behavior and reproductive practices in mainland North America, paying particular attention to the changing relationship between sexual regulation and politics over time. The course will also explore the ways that official pronouncements differed from the actual practices and perceptions of ordinary woman and men. We will ask how factors such as race and ethnicity, class, and gender shaped sexual understandings and behavior.

A study of Latin American history from the colonial period to the present.

The course traces the diplomatic and economic events leading to the outbreak of war in 1914 and follows the progress of the war, revolution and peace.

The course traces the political, economic, social and diplomatic events leading to the outbreak of hostilities and the military and diplomatic aspects of the war itself. It concludes with the Nuremburg Trials.

This course covers the persecution and systematic extermination of Jews, Romany, Slavs and other targeted populations of Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators. The course will explore antisemitism in modern European history, the ways in which antisemitism was legalized in Nazi Germany and the consequences of those policies in Nazi-occupied Europe. 

This course focuses on the struggle for racial equality and freedom in the American South after World War II. It also helps students comprehend this struggle within the broader context of post-Civil War American race relations.

Special courses are offered each year.

This course examines the Modern Middle East and North Africa from the 1500's to the era of modern revolutions and recent conflicts.

Revolutionary thought and action in Europe from the birth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the death of Rosa Luxemburg. This course examines revolutionary ideas, groups, and individuals, from the French Revolution to the Russian Revolution and post-WWI Europe. Students will develop their abilities to write essays analyzing the ideas of the women and men who shaped Europe in the revolutionary era.

The objectives of this course are to develop historical analysis beyond the level of the lower-division survey and to introduce students to experiential learning within the arena of local history practice. Students should master the historiography that structures the study of Florida’s past, gaining an awareness of how, over time, political history, social history, spatial theory and transnational studies have altered state history. Student research topics will be drawn from local history sources and celebrations, encouraging community engagement as well as independent analysis.

HIS 305 surveys the political, social, economic, and cultural development of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world from the prehistory to the fall of the Roman Empires. Students will learn about the rise and fall of ancient and classical civilizations, their political and social institutions, their economic and trade practices, their religions and cultural traditions. Readings will be extensive and include text, scholarly articles, primary sources, art and archeology. This is a writing intensive class and students will be expected to produce papers in style of historical writing.

A study of European society from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance.

A study of the origins, progress, interrelationships and impact of new forms and ideas that characterized the Renaissance and the Reformation in Europe from 1400 to 1650.

This course examines China’s revolutionary century with a particular emphasis on four definitive events: the Boxer Rebellion (1900), the Communist revolution (1934-1949), the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and the 1989 Democracy Movement. It explores both the cause and course of these revolutions, how they become embedded in cultural memory and the ways in which they shaped state-society power relationships.

This course offers an introduction to the methods and approaches that structure the presentation of history in public venues, including museums, historic venues and archives. Tools that facilitate collaboration between historians and communities to preserve local memory will also be examined. Finally, we will explore critically the political, financial and professional pressures that have shaped some of the most prominent displays of the nation’s past as well as the pressures that structure representations of history in Tampa. Students will attempt to reconcile these concerns by crafting exhibition proposals that would allow a local museum to engage multiple history publics.

A study of the history of the United States before, during and after the Revolutionary War. Focuses on the role of ideology and the patterns of change in religion, racial relations and the status of women.

This course surveys the Spanish-speaking Caribbean (Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic) from the Taino world of the pre-Columbian period to today. Topics include the creation of colonial plantation societies and the rise of sugar and coffee economies; movements for abolition, reform, and national self-determination; the persistence of Caribbean borderlands in the U.S. gulf south; the Caribbean’s neo-imperial economies, social structures, and political institutions; the impact of the Cuban Revolution; and the Caribbean’s tourist trade and diasporas in the global economy.

A comparative study of the revolutions and independence movements that swept the Americas between 1776 and 1826, focusing on the American, Haitian, and Latin American Revolutions. Topics include the political, economic, social, and cultural changes experienced by white, black, and indigenous Americans.

Studies the formulation of American foreign policy and issues in American diplomatic history.

This course examines the British rule in India as a case study of how imperial rule is imposed and maintained, and the Indian independence movement as a model of colonial resistance.  It then examines the different imperial systems imposed on Africa, the struggle by African colonies for self-determination, and their search for identity and stability after independence.

This class broadly surveys the chronological span of U.S. Constitutional history, from the 18th century to the 1970s, studying Supreme Court decisions and dissenting opinions as primary documents that can be used to understand the past. Students will determine how relationships between people and legal regimes changed over time, and they will assess the ways that specific political, economic, social and cultural contexts affected the development of American constitutional thought, the role of the Supreme Court and the evolving relations between law and society.

This course represents the culmination of the History major. With the guidance of the instructor, students consider historiographical and methodological models and carry out a complete research project related to a common theme or body of source material. This course is normally taken in the Senior year. 

Involves practical work in museums, historical preservation and historical archives. Requires permission of area coordinator. Graded on a pass/fail basis. This course counts as a history major elective.

This course investigates the impact of catastrophes — earthquakes, epidemics, hurricanes, fires, accidents — on society, politics and culture in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas since 1624. Natural disasters often transform relations between nations and among social groups, while revealing social conditions and cultural attitudes kept hidden under normal circumstances. Natural disasters can create the conditions for revolutions, lead to wars over scarce resources, provide pretexts for imperial intrusions and expose the inequalities and tensions in society. Students will develop their knowledge of world history and disaster studies by reading and writing about selected case studies.

Involves guided readings, research and criticism.  Materials covered must be different from those included in current courses.  May be repeated for credit if subject matter varies.

A substantial research and writing project.  The subject matter must be determined through student-faculty consultation.  A senior thesis can be written under the guidance of any full-time professor in the HIS department.

Advanced study of a selected historical topic. This course will count toward the upper-level requirement for the History major, and, depending on the topic, may fulfill other requirements, with approval of the Associate Chair for History, Sociology, Geography and Legal Studies. May be repeated for credit if the topic differs.