History Department

History Department
Course Offerings & Syllabi

History 200:  Hands on History
Did you know that a series of important Revolutionary War battles were fought in and around the Charlotte area? Did you know that one of the most important and violent labor strikes in American history took place right here in the 1930s or that the sit-in strategy of the modern civil rights movement was born in nearby Greensboro? This course introduces students to the study of history by engaging them with the rich and varied history of Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont.  In-class preparation will be followed by excursions to local and regional sites of historical importance, visits to museums, and trips to area events and lectures. A time commitment outside of the normal class schedule is required.  This course is required for history majors.  With departmental approval, this course may be repeated once.  May only be taken Pass/Fail.  1 credit hour.   
History 201: The Emergence of the West
A survey of the history of civilization from the ancient world to the European crises of the seventeenth century, with an emphasis upon the political, social and intellectual development of Western civilization.  
History 202: The West in the World
A survey of the history of civilization from the end of the religious wars and the emergence of the great European powers to the crises of the twentieth century and nuclear age, with emphasis generally upon the political, social and intellectual development of Western civilization.
History 203: American History to 1877 
This course offers a survey of American history, beginning with an exploration of early Native American cultures and ending with a study of the American Civil War and Reconstruction. We will focus our attention on the important social, political, and economic issues at play that created the unique tapestry of American cultural life in the colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods of American history. An effort will be made to connect developments in early American history to contemporary events shaping our lives. Students will be introduced to a range of primary source evidence from the American past, including diaries, speeches, laws, fiction, photographs, paintings, statistics, and the like.
History 204: American History since 1877 
This course offers a survey of the meaningful events in America’s recent past that have shaped who we are as a people and a nation today. Special attention will be paid to the themes of race and the reformulation of national identity, the rise of the modern nation-state, presidential leadership, and the connection between capitalism and the rise of a consumer-based popular culture. Assignments include grading the best and worst twentieth-century presidents, debating whether the 1920s flapper was a feminist, and advising international leaders on the direction of their foreign policy during the Cold War. An effort will be made to connect each topic we examine to current events as they unfold in contemporary American life.
History 300: Introduction to Research Techniques and Argumentative Writing 
This course will serve as an introduction to the research techniques and argumentative writing employed by historians and lawyers.  Emphasis will be placed on introducing students to a wide range of primary source analysis, including standard legal materials, and exploring in depth how to craft an argumentative research paper.  Students will be required to produce a substantial and originally researched paper at the end of the semester.  This course fulfills the writing-intensive course requirement. 
    History 300 is designed as an entry-level course for freshmen and
    sophomore history majors and students with a pre-law concentration.

Upper-Level European History Courses:

History 303: Ancient Greece 
An examination of Greek history from the Mycenaeans in the second millennium B.C.E. through the Hellenistic era, with special emphasis on Classical Greece (500-323 B.C.E.).  Prerequisite:  History 201 or permission of the instructor.  
History 304: Ancient Rome
A study of the history of Rome, from its founding to the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries C.E.  Prerequisite:  History 201 or permission of the instructor.  
History 305: Medieval History 
An investigation of the thousand years known as the Middle Ages the world of castles, cathedrals and universities; ladies and knights; peasants and burghers, dragons and unicorns.  Prerequisite:  history 201 or permission of instructor.  
History 306: Early Modern Europe
A survey of the history of Europe from the Renaissance to 1789.  Topics include the 16th century rupture in Christendom, the growth of seaborne empires and national states, the scientific revolution, and the Enlightenment.  Prerequisites:  History 201 or permission of the instructor.  
History 309: Contemporary Europe
An investigation of today's Europe, from the First World War to the present.  Topics include the world wars, the holocaust, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, the Cold War and the rise of the European Union.  Prerequisites:  History 202 or permission of the instructor. 
History 310: Ideas and Imagination in Europe, 1789 to Present
This course explores European intellectual and cultural history from the 18th century to the present.  Though the course focuses on intellectuals and ideas, it places both in a wider cultural context.  While the course focuses especially on written texts, it will include materials from music, the visual arts, and cinema.  Movements to be considered range from the Enlightenment and Romanticism, to Realism and Surrealism, to Modernism and Post-Modernism.  Prerequsite:  History 202 or permission of instructor.  
History 330: British History
An investigation of the British historical experience through the study of the key moments and personalities which have shaped British history from William the Conqueror through the Tudors and Stuarts, to the Victorians and the present.  Prerequisite:  History 202 or permission of the instructor.  
History 331: Russian History  
An investigation of the Russian experience through the study of the key movements and personalities which have shaped Russian History from Kievian Russia to the present.  Prerequisite:  History 202 or permission of the instructor.  
History 332: German History  
An examination of the experience of the German speaking peoples from the devastation of the seventeenth-century Thirty Years War, through the eighteenth-century enlightenment, to the emergence of Germany as a major power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Prerequisite:  History 202 or permission of the instructor.  

Upper-Level American History Courses:

History 340: African-American History
This course concentrates on the history of African Americans from the colonial period to the present.  It introduces students to the historical literature concerning the course of slavery in the United States, its abolition and aftermath, as well as the experience of free blacks in the North and South.  It focuses on the institutionalization of segregation and African American efforts to achieve equality in an unequal system, culminating in the civil rights movement of the recent period.  Cultural history, art, literature and music are integral to the course, as is the experience of African American women.  
History 341: The Civil Rights Movement In America
In 1903 W.E.B DuBois, the great African-American scholar and activist argued that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." This course explores the unraveling of the color line in postwar America from a political and cultural perspective. Central to our task will be an analysis of the strategies and tactics grass roots political activists employed in their assault on disfranchisement and Jim Crow segregation. We will also assess the tensions which emerged between a civil rights movement based on the principle of integration and a black liberation movement which emphasized self-separation. At the same time this course will examine the creation of an African-American "movement culture" that found expression in music, traditional arts, literature, and black power.  Prerequisite: History 204, Political Science 201 or permission of the instructor.
History 345: Religion in America
This course will provide students with a survey of the most important movements, people and events in American religious history from the settlement of the colonies to the present.  The course will examine Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish traditions, as well as important cults and religious alternatives outside the traditional mainstream.  Prerequisites:  History 203 and 204 or permission of the instructor.  Students may elect to take this course as Religion 345.  
History 348: Recent History of the American South
Scholars and amateur historians have long probed the question: What is the South? This simple question has proved difficult to answer. Is there something truly distinctive about the South or are the differences between the South and the rest of the nation imagined? This course explores such questions, placing an analysis of contemporary southern life, politics, and culture in their proper and rich historical context. Our examination of recent southern history will trace events back to their late nineteenth century origins. Throughout the course we will pay close attention to changing politics of race, probe the unique expressions of southern culture, and explore the meaning of popular images of the South in our national culture – all in order to unlock the answer to the question of southern distinctiveness.  Prerequisite: History 204 or permission of instructor.
History 349: The Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction
The Civil War and Reconstruction were the defining events of the nineteenth century if not the defining events in our nation's short history. Understanding exactly how the nation arrived at the brink of war, divided, and finally, after horrible and bloody conflict, came back together again, will be the central task of this course. The course will be divided into three sections. In the first, students will explore the origins of the sectional conflict. Next we will examine the war itself, asking questions about the inevitability of the Union’s victory and the role of African Americans in the process of emancipation. In the last section of the of the course we will study the attempts to reconstruct the relationships between whites and blacks, northerners and southerners in the wake of the Confederacy’s defeat. Attention will also be paid to popular, twentieth-century interpretations of the causes and meanings of the Civil War in popular culture. Prerequisite: History 203 or consent of instructor.
History 350: Pop Culture and the Consumer Ethic in America
In the 1920s flappers and families dominated American comic strips. In the 1930s these strips were replaced by the likes of Buck Rogers, Dick Tracy, and Batman. Why the change and what does the shift tell us about America’s transition from the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression? In this course we will examine such questions, exploring the varied meanings behind expressions of popular culture and what such cultural forms tell us about the period in which they were created. This course will also explore the historical underpinnings behind the rise of mass media, paying specific attention to the interplay between industrialization and mass production and a culture based on the principle of consumption. 3 credit hours.
History 352: History of American Journalism 
This course explores the history of journalism in America from the colonial period to the present.  Though it will focus especially on print journalism, it will consider as well the revolutionary significance of electronic journalism.  This course will trace the continuities and changes in the ways in which news is defined, gathered, produced, and critiqued in American life and politics; and it will investigate in detail the lives and times of some of America's most intriguing journalists, from Peter Zenger to William Lloyd Garrison; from Ida Tarbell and the "muckrakers" to H.L. Mencken; from early radio to TV news to the World Wide Web.  Prerequisite:  History 203 or History 204 pr permission of the instructor.  
History 385: Law and Society in America
The crime of witchcraft was not unusual throughout the early American colonies. However, by the Revolutionary War it had virtually disappeared from criminal dockets. Why? This course will explore the answer to this and like questions by examining America’s legal system through the lens of social history. Particular attention will be paid to studies in criminal justice and society’s shifting concepts of crime, deviance, and social mores. Prerequisite: History 203 or History 204 or Political Science 313 or permission of instructor.
History 392: American Women 
Derived from primary sources of women themselves, this study examines the central role of women in U.S. history.  The study focuses on the period 1830 to the present, with particular attention given to race, region and class.  
History 389: Topics in United States History
Topics are announced annually and vary from semester to semester.  Prerequisite:  History 203 or History 204 or permission of the instructor. 
Recent 389 topics courses include the following:

• History 389: The Roaring Twenties
  From bootleggers and baseball players to fundamentalists and flappers, the 1920s had it all and more! 1920 was the first decade in American history when more people lived in urban centers than in rural areas.  As such, historians have pointed to the 1920s as the first truly modern decade in American history.  The Roaring Twenties did possess many of the features of modern American society but it also was a decade where traditionalists worried about the decline of age old American values.  This course will explore the social, cultural, and economic tensions at play in the 1920s and shaped America for the rest of the twentieth century. 
   
• History 389: American Capitalism
   
• History 389:  "I Am Not A Crook":  Political Leadership and Political Scandals in American History
   
• History 389: Individuals & Society in the Early Republic, 1780-1840
  Throughout the era of he Early American Republic Americans debated precisely what kind of society would best suit the American experiment.  Should the United States continue to hold on to its aristocratic and hierarchical roots, pursue a more republican social order, or open the floodgates of democracy?  Whatever people concluded, they agreed that the stability and future prosperity of the new nation was intimately linked to the character of the people.  In this course, we will investigate how Americans contributed to the production of anew American national identity.  As we explore the political and cultural issues that both facilitated and complicated this enterprise, we will employ a biographical approach, using the lives of particular individuals to flesh out larger themes in the history of the Early American Republic.
  
  

Upper-Level Methodology and Intellectual History Courses:  

History 301:  History Conversations
History Conversations is a companion course to History 300, the Practicum in historical research.  It is a required course for history majors. History conversations will be team-taught by members of the history faculty.  The instructors will select several current issues, texts, and problems of current interest and study them in seminar fashion with students.  Topics and materials will vary semester by semester.  Class meetings will be both on and off campus.  This course is designed for students mid-way through their history major. Prerequisite: History 201, 202, 203, 204, 300, or permission of the instructors. 3 hrs.
*History 310: Ideas and Imagination in Europe: 1789 to Present
See above for course description 
History 315: Oral History  
Examination of ways in which cultures were preserved in the past (folklife, handicrafts, etc.) and the study of and practice in the methodology of gathering and preserving historical information in oral form.  3hrs. 
History 351: History and Film
Contemporary Hollywood films serve the purpose that religious paintings played in medieval times. Like the medieval church, movie theaters today function as our popular houses of worship. And like medieval church paintings, movies instruct a largely ignorant public on how to understand and think about our past – about our cherished national individuals and events, and they tell us what people and incidents of the past we should consider important. In this way, then, movies often tell us how to use the past in order to understand who we are as a nation.  This course will consider films as historical documents and the filmmaker as historian.  The purpose of the course is to explore major historical events and thematic topics in history as they are reflected in film.  We will examine not only what interpretation of the past films with historical-themed topics offer but we will assess the ways in which every film comments on the time period in which it was made.  There currently is no prerequisite for this course, though History 203 or History 204 is strongly recommended.  
History 361: Ideas and Values in Conflict in History
A study of decisive intellectual and moral conflicts involving individualism, humanism, obscurantism, fundamentlaism, racism, nationalism, totalitarianism, socialism, Nazism, Communism, materialism and fanaticism.  Seminar format.  3 hrs. 
History 362: Contemporary Ideas and Values
Like its companion seminar, History 361, this seminar investigates those ideas and values which shape human events and perspectives.  This course focuses on contemporary ideas and values, that is, those issues which shape today and will shape tomorrow.  While Hist. 361 is an excellent preparation for this course, it is not a prerequisite.  Prerequisite:  Hist. 201 or 202 or permission of the instructor.  3 hrs. 
History 363: The History of Our Time
This seminar is an exercise in historical imagination.  It considers thoes events and persons which dominate today's headlines, and considers them from an historical perspective.  Specific themes will vary from semester to semester, but may include, for examples, investigations of world conflicts, political controversies, social and economic developments, and cultural debates.  Prerequisite:  Hist, 201 or 202 or permission of the instructor.  3 hrs. 
*History 395: Intellectual History of the United States
See above for course description 
History 449: Directed Readings in History
Independent investigation of a topic through a program of directed readings.  There will be an interpretative paper and oral examination conducted by the department members.  Open to majors with a B average in history after departmental approval of the topic.  1, 2, or 3 Hrs. 
History 450: Independent Study in History
Independent investigation of a topic through the writing of a research paper; oral examination conducted by department members.  Open to majors with a B average in history after departmental approval of the topic.  1, 2, or 3 Hrs. 
History 499: Masterworks
Masterworks is the History Department’s “capstone” course, and is required of all history majors.  It is required of senior history majors who will complete their study of history by creating a serious work of historical scholarship.  Each student will complete this work under the personal guidance of a member of the Queens history faculty, and present this work both to the faculty and to other history students.  Prerequisite: senior history major standing, History 300, & permission of the department.  3 hrs.

"*" = a course that also belongs to another category

Upper-Level Non-European or American History Courses:

History 307: History of Latin America
A survey of the forces and events which have shaped Latin American experiences from the sixteenth century to the present.  3hrs. 
History 391: Topics in World History
Topics are announced annually.  Prerequisite:  Hist. 203 or 204 or permission of the instructor.  3 hrs. 

Recent 391 topics courses include the following:

Courses Taught by History Professors Through Other Departments:
Political Science 335: Social and Political Thought

course introduction form