North America / United States
Fall 2025
When British colonists arrived on the North American continent, they met an array of people who made the French and the Germans look familiar, so different were their cultures, material practices, and social and political systems. Within decades people from a third continent were added to the mix, as the trade in African chattel slaves became a standard feature of trans-Atlantic commerce and colonial economies. We will explore various encounters between Europeans, Africans, and original Americans, asking how they interacted with, adapted to, and influenced each other, and compare experiences both within and between these complex groups (poorer and richer Englishmen; Catawbas and Pequots and Algonkians; people enslaved in Pennsylvania or Virginia; more). Finally, we will examine the growth, government, economy, institutions, and social structures of British North America in the 18th Century, the changes and continuities of Revolutionary America, and the making of the "new" United States, the nation emerging from this complex colonial past.
Prof. Lerman, 4 credits, TTh 10-11:20 a.m.
- Fulfills Cultural Pluralism, Social Sciences, Global Cultures & Languages, Individual & Society, and/or Studying the Past distribution.
- History major: premodern history; Empires & Colonialism; Revolution/War/Politics; Before Modernity
Sex and pleasure-work are not uniquely exploitative. This course explores the intersectionalities involved and agencies re-inflected in various global context(s). Grounded in historical approaches to gendered labor under capitalism, this course overturns otherwise assumed notions of power dynamics. Sex and pleasure-work afforded certain women money, wealth, opportunities, and fame under European 'exploration,' settler-colonialism, enslavement, and hip-hop culture - all exploitative and coercive conditions. Students will read widely to understand the motivations and opportunities of Indigenous, African, and poor and imprisoned white women. This approach further shows how gender operated for women of different cultures and social classes across time and place. This literature addresses the course's central questions: Under what conditions did women find opportunities and power in sex and pleasure work? How did women draw on their understanding of gender to gain influence and wealth for their families and communities? In answering these questions, students will learn how Indigeneity, race, and class intersect with sexual practices. Indeed, certain women had greater body sovereignty and operated outside systems of heteronormativity and heteropatriarchy to commodify sex and pleasure that was widely accepted in certain societies. For other women, living in remote places away from a large white female population afforded opportunities to sell pleasure.
Prof. Ulep, 4 credits, MWF 1-1:50 p.m.
- Fulfills Cultural Pluralism, Social Sciences, Global Cultures & Languages, Textual Analysis, Power & Equity, and/or Studying the Past distribution, as well as Gender Studies elective.
- History major: modern history; Cultures & Ideas; Social Justice
Spring 2026
The United States is known as a nation of consumers, of people who fill their lives with lots of "stuff," and who rely on an extensive technological infrastructure in creating what they think of as a normal lifestyle. But the particular material configurations we aggregate under terms like "stuff" and "infrastructure" have intended (and unintended) uses, users, costs, origins, and histories; they carry associated meanings and embed some set of human relationships. Thinking critically about things demands thinking simultaneously about their social and cultural context, and about the ways people make (and constrain) choices about the material dimensions of their experience. Using historical examples and museum artifacts, this course will explore the relations and techniques of production and consumption; the ways physical objects and social categories like gender, race, and class are intertwined both materially and symbolically; and changing ideas about disposability, convenience, waste, work, and energy.
Prof. Lerman, 4 credits, MWF 2:30-3:50 p.m.
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Fulfills Social Sciences, Individual & Society, and/or Studying the Past distribution
- History major: modern history; Cultures & Ideas; Social Justice
Race, Violence, Health: these keywords highlight core elements of the vast system of racialized slavery in the United States, and can also point us to potential sites of resistance. Violence was an accepted tool of white enslavers’ control; enslavers viewed health in terms of energy to work, control of production, and human property values. Resistance, in this view, had to be multifaceted: protecting one’s children, nurturing family and community, negotiating and navigating the relentless coercion and surveillances of the system… these could all feature in a lifetime of strategy. Such options, of course, did not preclude escape (effectively stealing one’s own self) or, increasingly, the belief that a violent regime could only fall by reciprocal violence. This is “hard history”; this is U.S. history.
Prof. Lerman, 4 credits, TTh 10-11:20 a.m.
- Fulfills Social Sciences, Individual & Society, Power & Equity, and/or Studying the Past distribution, as well as IRES elective.
- History major: modern history; Cultures & Ideas; Revolution/War/Politics; Social Justice
This course centers Indigenous women and genders in histories of early America(s) into the present day. In doing so, the class foregrounds methods and sources. This approach interrogates ways Indigenous women have been portrayed in the historical narrative and their lasting effects. It further shows innovative ways scholars have centered Indigenous women and their histories that were often left out of colonial sources. Students will be introduced to such topics as: cross-cultural exchange and relationships, European exploration, and colonialism. The central questions for this class are: how did Indigenous women move through their world? How did Indigenous gender roles afford greater autonomy? And how are Indigenous women at the forefront of political, environmental, and sovereignty issues? In answering these questions, students will learn how Indigenous women across the globe were and continue to be powerful leaders, mediators, and traders. To this end, this class will take a global approach to foreground the wide-reaching authority Indigenous women have and continue to wield. Given this framework, the themes for this class are: erasure, power, body sovereignty, and Indigenous epistemologies.
Prof. Ulep, 4 credits, TTh 11:30am-12:50 p.m.
- Fulfills Cultural Pluralism, Social Sciences, Global Cultures & Languages, Textual Analysis, Power & Equity, and/or Studying the Past distribution, as well as Gender Studies elective. May be taken as IRES 266.
- History major: modern history; Cultures & Ideas; Social Justice
This course examines the history of the United States, from Reconstruction to the present, through the lens of social movements. Analyzing a combination of primary and secondary sources, the class looks at significant moments and aspects of the Black Freedom Struggle, feminism and women's liberation, the labor movement, indigenous struggles for self-determination, antiwar and anti-imperialist organizations, Chicanx and Puerto Rican nationalisms, the empowerment of LGBTQ communities, as well as the environmental and climate justice movements. The course explores these movements' ideologies, goals, and strategies as they challenged and were shaped by US political and social developments. We will analyze intersections of race, class, and gender, focusing on the formation of movements and the interactions between national leaders, grassroots organizers, and state institutions. Assignments will include primary source analyses, book discussions, and a short research paper.
Prof. Lund-Montaño, 4 credits, MW 2:30-3:50 p.m.
- Fulfills Social Sciences, Power & Equity, and/or Studying the Past distribution, as well as Gender Studies elective. May be taken as IRES 267.
- History major: modern history; Revolution/War/Politics; Social Justice
This class explores the uses and meanings of gender categories and understandings of sexualities in the history of the United States. It explores how gender categories have been deployed in a multicultural nation, and in what ways people of the past understood what we would call sexuality. It also asks in what ways other kinds of social and geographic boundaries -for example race, class, region, ethnicity, citizenship -have shaped gendered and sexual experience, and when. In the past half-century, constructing and rewriting histories of binary categories and silenced experiences has led to an interrogation of gender categories and boundaries and layers of rethinking sexuality. More recent histories add intersections with other ways of delineating difference and power. We will explore histories of ideologies and experience in a range of contexts from the 18th through the 20th centuries.
Prof. Ulep, 4 credits, MW 1-2:20 p.m.
- Fulfills Social Sciences, Individual & Society, Power & Equity, and/or Studying the Past distribution, as well as Gender Studies elective.
- History major: modern history; Cultures & Ideas; Social Justice