History Department

Chair: Ismail O. D. Rashid;

Professors: Nancy Bisaha, Robert K. Brigham, Mita Choudhury, Lydia Murdoch, Ismail O. D. Rashid, Joshua Schreier^a;

Associate Professors: Michaela Pohl; 

Assistant Professors: Yu-chi Chang^b, Whitney Fields, Daniel Mendiola^b, Ashanti Shih, Noel Smyth^a, Anna Solovy;

Adjunct Associate Professor: Ronald Patkus.

^a On leave 2026/27, first semester

^b On leave 2026/27, second semester

Advisers: The department.

Programs

• History Major

• History Correlate Sequence

Courses

• HIST 104 - Asian American History
• HIST 109 - Becoming Taiwan
• HIST 112 - Modern European History
• HIST 115 - Russian Revolutions: Metropolis and Borderlands
• HIST 116 - The Dark Ages 400-900 CE
• HIST 117 - High Middle Ages 950-1300
• HIST 125 - Infamy on Trial: Famous Trials in Early Modern Europe
• HIST 129 - The First World War
• HIST 131 - Narratives of Black History: Lives and Archives
• HIST 150 - Revolution, Evolution, and the Global Nineteenth Century
• HIST 151 - British History: James I (1603) to the Great War
• HIST 152 - Smallpox: The Biology and History of a Disease
• HIST 158 - The Making of Modern East Asia
• HIST 160 - American Moments: Rediscovering U.S. History
• HIST 161 - Violent Economies: Rewriting the American West
• HIST 164 - Environmental History of Latin America
• HIST 168 - Black Histories in the United States
• HIST 170 - Introduction to Native American History
• HIST 174 - The Emergence of the Modern Middle East
• HIST 175 - Mandela: Race, Resistance and Renaissance in South Africa

The prerequisite for courses at the 200-level is ordinarily 1 unit in history.

• HIST 203 - How We Got Here
• HIST 205 - Vecinos Poughkeepsie
• HIST 206 - Women Warriors of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
• HIST 210 - Dangerous Liaisons, Dangerous Selves
• HIST 211 - Life and Work in New York
• HIST 212 - Indigeneity, Race, and Gender in the Native American South
• HIST 214 - The Roots of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
• HIST 215 - African American History to 1865
• HIST 216 - History of the Ancient Greeks
• HIST 217 - History of the Ancient Romans
• HIST 218 - The Origins of Totalitarianism
• HIST 219 - Deceptive Maps and Where to Find Them
• HIST 221 - Medieval Science and Technology
• HIST 222 - The Politics of Borders
• HIST 223 - The History of the Holocaust
• HIST 224 - Intersectionality in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
• HIST 225 - Renaissance Italy
• HIST 226 - Northern Europe in the Renaissance, c. 1300-1550
• HIST 227 - Chinatowns
• HIST 229 - Paris and London: Society and Culture in the Early Modern City, 1500-1800
• HIST 230 - The French Revolution: Local Origins and Global Impact
• HIST 231 - Algeria/France:Race, Religion & Citizenship
• HIST 234 - Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Crisis, Politics, and Culture in a Modern City
• HIST 235 - Ending Deadly Conflict
• HIST 239 - Warfare in Modern China
• HIST 241 - Asian American Women and Gender History
• HIST 242 - The Russian Empire to 1812
• HIST 243 - Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900-Present
• HIST 246 - African American History since 1865
• HIST 247 - Albert Einstein
• HIST 249 - Global Science and Empire
• HIST 250 - Palestine, Christian Zionism, and the Evangelical Empire
• HIST 251 - A History of American Foreign Relations
• HIST 254 - Victorian Britain
• HIST 255 - The British Empire
• HIST 257 - Comics and History
• HIST 260 - Sex & Reproduction in 19th Century United States: Before Margaret Sanger
• HIST 263 - Conquest and Borderlands in Colonial Latin America
• HIST 265 - Cold War America
• HIST 268 - Religion, Repression, and Resistance in Latin America
• HIST 272 - Modern African History
• HIST 274 - Early America, 1500-1750
• HIST 275 - Revolutionary America 1750-1800
• HIST 276 - Democracy in America? Parties, Politics and Grassroots Change, 1828-1912
• HIST 277 - History and the Politics of Grief
• HIST 278 - Women’s History of Latin America
• HIST 279 - The Viet Nam War
• HIST 281 - Immigration Policy in America: The Cost of Borders
• HIST 290 - Community-Engaged Learning
• HIST 298 - Independent Work

Prerequisite for advanced courses is ordinarily 2 units of 200-level work in history, or by permission of the instructor. Specific prerequisites assume the general prerequisite.

• HIST 213 - Art, Spirituality and Power in Precolonial African History
• HIST 300 - Thesis Preparation: Sources, Methods, and Interpretations
• HIST 301 - Senior Thesis
• HIST 302 - Senior Thesis
• HIST 303 - Senior Thesis
• HIST 311 - Trauma, Memory and Justice: Quests of Modern East Asia
• HIST 314 - History of Asian American Social Movements
• HIST 315 - Crusading and the Holy Land (1095-1291)
• HIST 316 - Constantinople/Istanbul: 1453
• HIST 317 - Youth Culture and Politics in Africa, 1930s to Present
• HIST 319 - Military, War and Society
• HIST 321 - Bordering China
• HIST 326 - Machiavelli and his Contemporaries
• HIST 333 - The Question of Palestine and Israel: A Dialogical Approach
• HIST 336 - Black Ecologies
• HIST 340 - From Patriarchy to Family Romance: The Family and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe
• HIST 344 - Living for the City: Race, Space, and Place in Urban American
• HIST 349 - U.S. Strategic Thinking in Global Affairs
• HIST 351 - Problems in U.S. Foreign Policy
• HIST 354 - History and the Politics of Grief
• HIST 355 - Childhood and Children in Nineteenth-Century Britain
• HIST 357 - The First World War
• HIST 360 - Fascism in Twentieth Century Europe
• HIST 363 - Bordering the Americas
• HIST 366 - The Indigenous Caribbean
• HIST 374 - The African Diaspora
• HIST 375 - Nineteenth-Century America at War
• HIST 379 - War and Adoption
• HIST 380 - Ukraine/Russia: War and Peace
• HIST 382 - Marie-Antoinette
• HIST 385 - Colonialism, Nationalism, and Social Identities in the Modern Middle East