This page contains a catalogue of the courses that have been offered under the History major/minor in recent years. It also provides a short description of the required course–History of History-that all History majors and minors are required to take as part of their degree requirements.

Required Course

History of History: Practitioners of every discipline benefit from having an understanding of their discipline’s history. This is especially true for historians, whose work demands familiarity with the history of the writing practices and modes of conceptualising the past to which they are heirs. The History of History introduces students to a wide range of historical approaches and seeks to develop an understanding of major historiographical traditions in Europe and Asia. Through an engagement with foundational historical texts, students will learn about the diversity of ways in which the past has been represented, narrated, and interpreted; they will also explore how historians’ interpretations of the past are themselves embedded in specific historical contexts. This course should be taken ideally in Year 4.

Survey History Courses (2000-level courses)

Survey History courses have been designed to introduce students to large themes and narratives, based on a region, either defined by territory or by ocean. These courses are chronologically and geographically broad in nature. Some of these courses may act as prerequisites for 3000 and 4000-level courses offered in the major.History and Culture of Southeast Asia

• History and Culture of Southeast Asia
• Chinese Migrations to Southeast Asia
• Atlantic World
• The Mediterranean World
• Northeast Asia and the Pacific World
• The Indian Ocean World

Intermediate History Courses (3000-level courses)

Intermediate History courses focus on research methods and the writing of history. Students will explore various methodologies and approaches to history, such as cultural history, social history, economic history, intellectual history, gender history, and micro-history. They will also examine the different ways in which historians have written about and conceived of the past.

Sample Intermediate courses:

• Arts of Myanmar
• Asian Religions
• Modern Vietnamese History and Literature
• Drug Empires in History
• Empire, Slavery and the Making of the Americas
• Empires in Modern East Asia
• Pompeii : Art, Urban Life and Visual Culture in the Roman Empire

Advanced History Courses (4000-level courses)

Advanced courses can be thematically, and, or, methodologically based, and emphasise a sophisticated level of engagement with historiography, as well as a deeper probing of primary sources. Students will be expected to write a research paper, on a topic of their own choice, conducting extensive primary sources research in the process. Advanced History courses are usually taken in the fourth year, unless prior approval has been given by the instructor teaching that course. Please note that some 4000-level courses have prerequisites.

Sample Advanced courses:

• Ancient Economies of the Mediterranean and Western Asia
• Comparative Empires and Colonialisms
• Rise of the West and the Great Divergence
• India as a Rising Power, 1947 to Present
• The Problem of Evil from the Enlightenment to Auschwitz
• Signs and the State
• Imperial Outlaws: Social Deviants in the Age of Empires