HIST 523 - Tudor-Stuart England | 2025-2026

This course is designed to survey a historical period in greater depth while introducing students to related primary and secondary sources. Students are familiarized with major themes, events, and issues of interpretation in the history of early modern England. Particular attention is paid to two developments that transformed English life: the religious reformations of the sixteenth century, and the civil war and political revolutions of the seventeenth century. These and other topics are explored through close readings of primary sources.

HIST 522 - History of the Family after 1600 | 2025-2026

Examines the historical development of the family from 1600 to the present day. A central inquiry is the formation of families and households, as well the impact of religion on gender and family roles. The course also explores the use of power and coercion in the organization of family and includes an inquiry into contemporary gender theory but concentrates on the lives and ideas of actual persons insofar as the historical record reveals them.

HIST 521 - Family, Gender, and Power | 2025-2026

Examines the historical development of the family beginning with the ancient world up to 1600. A central inquiry is the formation of families and households, as well as the impact of religion on gender and family roles. The course also explores the use of power and coercion in the organization of family and includes an inquiry into contemporary gender theory but concentrates on the lives and ideas of actual persons insofar as the historical record reveals them.

HIST 515 - History of Science and Religion from Copernicus to Creation Science | 2025-2026

Examines the engagement of science and religion in western culture over the past five centuries. In 1896, Andrew Dickson White published his famous History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, a work that helped establish the belief that science and religion were irreconcilable domains. This course examines the validity of that claim from the Copernican revolution in the sixteenth century to the rise of the modern Creation Science movement, and aims to place the relationship between science and faith in a mature historical, scientific and theological context.

HIST 510 - History in Practice | 2025-2026

An analysis of the practice of history in the public sphere including the ways in which communities, regions, nations, and other entities collect, manage, create, present, and understand their histories and stories. How forms of historical consciousness show themselves in archives, museums, films, monuments, anniversaries, government policies, genealogy, etc. Practical application of historical skills and tools through communication with public historians, visits to local historic sites, and relevant assignments and experiential learning.

HIST 509 - Early Modern Europe: 1600- 1789 | 2025-2026

An examination of developments and events from 1600 to 1800 including religious wars, the witch craze, growth of absolutism and political rights, enlightened despots, movements within the church and the culture of the enlightenment. In addition, wealth and poverty, social hierarchies, popular customs and culture, marriage, the family, and gender are examined.

HIST 508 - Reformation Europe | 2025-2026

Examines the nature of religious reform in the sixteenth century. Religious ideas are the starting point for an examination of economic conditions, the existing social structure, the family, and the state. Examines how ideas were communicated to and received by the common people. It also examines displays of intolerance and tolerance, coercion and power, and relations between government and society and between women and men

HIST 507 - Renaissance Europe | 2025-2026

A graduate-level course designed to survey a historical period in greater depth while introducing students to related primary and secondary sources. Students will be familiarized with major themes, events, and issues of interpretation in the history of European history from approximately the mid-fourteenth through to the sixteenth century. Particular attention will be paid to the “rebirth” of ancient Greek and Roman culture that began in the Italian commercial and educational centres of Milan, Florence, Venice and Rome.

HIST 506 - War, Peace, and Society | 2025-2026

Surveys the changing nature of and approaches to war and its effect on society from the Middle Ages to the present including an examination of various visions and proposals for peace. Includes an assessment of relatively recent armed conflict in Africa, Central Europe, and the Middle East, exploring the causes of contemporary conflict and some of its distinctive characteristics. Also evaluates the effectiveness of various strategies for preventing, abating, and terminating current forms of conflict. Some of the questions discussed are: Why do states go to war?

HIST 504 - Late Medieval Europe | 2025-2026

An inquiry into a period of Europe's past in which beliefs, attitudes and institutions, moulded in the previous centuries, were consolidated into shapes that mark modern European (and North American) culture. The outlines of the modern state and of the modern family are examined. It is also an examination of late medieval civilization for indications of decline and rebirth. The course looks for signs of struggle between forces of tradition and of innovation, and between idealism and material or corporeal realities.