Spring 2025 Graduate Courses

HIST 5129-801 – Colloquium in Modern Asian History: Northeast Asia – Sungyun Lim

Narrating the Ruins - memory, trauma, and the environment
Upon reviewing recent publications on the modern history of Korea and Japan, I notice a marked rise in attention to what I would loosely call “remnants.” Memory and trauma loom large in the narration of wars, be it the Second World War or the Korean War. Rather than the origins of these wars or their process, new scholarship focus on what happens afterwards — the POW’s, the war crimes trials, and lasting trauma of war experience. Environment has also emerged as a popular site, but this also has largely functioned as a repository of the past. Foregrounding memory and trauma has daringly pulled historical narrative to the individual level of experience and have pushed historians to challenge the universal - law, medicine, science, and even time has been relativized as they were historicized.
Reading together some notable recent scholarship in Korean and Japanese history, we will ponder together what these newer trends tell us about the changing state of the field, including new sources and methodologies that these authors are engaging with.

HIST 6000-801 -Teaching History in the University – Natalie Mendoza

This courseintroduces history graduate students to basic pedagogy methods and practices at the college level, paying special attention to the particular challenges in teaching history. The learning goals for the course are both immediate and long-term. Upon completing HIST 6000, graduate students will be able to:

  • explain what it means to have “historical literacy”—the skills and concepts specific to studying history and as described inour department’s student learning objectives (SLOs);
  • evaluate the relationship between high school and university history instruction so they can decide the precise moves they can make to support undergraduates;
  • develop a lesson plan (for a single class meeting);
  • develop a syllabus (for an entire course) that is aligned, meaning it has specific learning goal(s) and includes instructional activities and assignments that work together to support student learning;
  • engage in “scholarly teaching,” the self-reflective process of using evidence of student learning and pedagogical research to assess the effectiveness of instructional practices and course design;
  • explain how their social identities and positionality as a teacher shapes the way they design lessons and courses.

As a course that touches upon and integrates the several stages of teaching in a graduate student’s career and after, HIST 6000 provides a solid foundation for students to continue their pedagogical development as their instructional experience and skills become more advanced. The course also lends itself to other types of doctoral training and professional development, such as preparation for qualifying exams and the academic job market. Graduate students will leave HIST 6000 with a robust knowledge of and experience applying basic pedagogical methods and practices for effectively teaching history at the college level.

HIST 6427-801 – Readings in African American History – Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders

This course introduces students to African American history and historiography and spans the entire history of African Americans in the United States. The course explores the rise and fall of slavery, African American life during Reconstruction and Jim Crow, the history of Black intellectuals and Black radicals, as well as twentieth-century Black migration and urbanization and accompanying social movements including the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement. Readings will cover both classic and recent scholarship.

HIST 7000-801 – Seminar in Historical Research and Writing – Miriam Kadia

This course prepares students to undertake independent research in history. With support from the professor and each other, students will master the steps of producing an original research paper: identifying a viable topic/question, responding to historiographical issues, selecting and interpreting appropriate primary sources, and revising successive drafts. Students from all historical fields are welcome and will be encouraged to consult with their advisor(s) in progressing their research agenda.