Department of History

Students attend and write responses to papers by visiting lecturers on topics in various fields of Medieval Studies. Themes will vary from year to year.

Enrollment Comments: Students enroll in the course for the entire Academic year. They attend and write papers on quarterly colloquia. A three- quarter in-progress sequence course with grades for all quarters issued upon completion of Medieval Studies 200C.

The course will meet about five times a quarter. It is a three-quarter in-progress course, so students will be expected to take it throughout the academic year. The topics of our discussion will be on the current and evolving interests of research in interdisciplinary Medieval Studies such as gender in Medieval culture, plague and society, the use of concepts of Medieval Europe in contemporary politics, ideas about race in Europe, and Europe and the wider world, among others. 

Survey of the peoples, cultures, and social, economic, and political systems that have characterized the world’s major civilizations in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania from prehistory to 1000 CE.

Enrollment Comments: Not open for credit to students who have completed History 2BH.

Survey of the peoples, cultures, and social, economic, and political systems that have characterized the world’s major civilizations in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania from 1000 to 1700 CE.

Deals with major issues in Latin America’s historical formation: pre-Hispanic cultures, Spanish conquest, role of colonial institutions, development of trade, eighteenth- century reform, independence, formation of nations; and identify major issues in current Latin American affairs.

Through studying a particular topic in history, students gain insight into historical methods and skills. Course designed for freshmen and sophomore history majors or prospective majors. Others may enroll by permission of instructor. Topics vary by quarter and instructor.

Explores the social dimensions of modern biology and the biological dimensions of some of the contemporary social issues. A range of topics will vary year to year, including eugenics in the US and the Lysenko affair in the Soviet Union, the entanglements of biology and society in the early Cold War, and the commercialization of biology in the 1970s, as well debates that have taken place in the wider community about identity, citizenship, governance, ownership, human well-being, and expertise in relation to these developments in modern biology.  

Undergraduate research seminar focusing on ancient Greece and West Asia. Students select research topic in consultation with instructor, conduct individual research, write multiple paper drafts, and submit final research paper of 15-20 pages.

Explores the rich multicultural worlds of medieval Italy, 1000-1300: the Greek south and Muslim Sicily; Norman military conquest and their extraordinary multiethnic aristocratic courts; the commercial revolution and the fluid society of the towns; papal monarchy and religious reactions: saints and heretics; the brutal factional wars of the thirteenth century; popular stories and poetry. The course ends with Dante?s Inferno.

The cultural, political, social, and gender history of the Italian city republics and court societies. Examination of how contemporaries viewed their own society, in an attempt to answer the intriguing question of what was the Italian Renaissance.

A hybrid undergraduate/graduate student seminar. 

HIST 123Q: Topics in twentieth-century European history. Format varies according to topic.

HIST 201C: A reading course in a field of the professor’s specialty. Introduces students to the sources and literature of the field in question. Written work as prescribed by the instructor.

Comparative Revolutions and Communism

This course will examine the history of revolutions and communism in comparative perspective, with a particular focus on the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.  Topics will include the influence and memory of the French revolution among 20^th century revolutionaries; constitutional revolutions in Russia and China; the evolution of communist ideology; communist revolutions in Russia and China; cultural revolution and personality cults; peasants under communism; political terror; nations and nationalism under communism; and the interrelations of the world’s two largest communist states.

European history from the end of World War II to the present.  

Economic, social, political, and intellectual history of the eighteenth century. 1715 to 1763.

Recommended Preparation: Hist 9 and Writ 109HU

This course will be a discussion, reading of a single document, and critique of your peers’ papers. Certain principles and rules for the study of history will be discussed. The main thrust of the course, however, is the analysis and writing of one or two short (500 to 600) word papers on some excerpts translated from one of Richelieu’s most famous writings, The Political Testament.

Read more about the Fall 2020 offering here: For-whom-did-the-Bayle-Toil (2)

Examines how and why a small nation in the North Atlantic developed and lost a vast empire whose influence was felt across the globe and is still detected today. Also examines the role of violence, slavery and other systems of unfree labor, state politics, gender and race, as well as the exchange of commodities, ideas and people in forging and breaking imperial ties. Considers shifting power dynamics between colonizer and colonized and the nature of local experiences in the colonies. By focusing on imperial encounters in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and the Pacific, we ask how Britain and its colonies shaped each other’s histories before, during and long after the heyday of European overseas empire. 

Recommended Preparation: Hist 9 or WRIT 109HU

Recommended Preparation: History 145A.

A history of the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century. Emphasis is placed on the causes of the Civil War, the outstanding developments of the war itself, and the major consequences of the reconstruction period.

A survey of American workers from the turn of the century to the present period. Topics include workers and American socialism, the 1919 steel strike, the rise of the CIO, labor and the cold war, and deindustrialization and workers.

Recommended Preparation: History 9 or WRIT 109HU

Studies in selected aspects of Chicano history and the United States-Mexico borderlands with an emphasis on social and economic history.

Changing patterns and conceptions of inequality, seventeenth century to present. Examines influence of economic transformation, race, gender, class, attitudes towards work and welfare, social movements, social knowledge, law and public policy on opportunity, income, status, and power.Divides at Civil War and World War II.

California as a case study of national trends, and as a unique setting with its special problems and culture.

The Qing period saw the doubling of China’s territory, the enormous population growth, and the many encounters with the West. We will examine the politics, cultures, social norms, and different peoples, with a focus on the problem of modernization.

Enrollment Comments: This course is cross-listed with Chinese 185A. History department majors/minors can sign up for either side of the course, and it will still apply to your major requirements. 

A survey of Japanese social and cultural history from the mid-sixteenth century to the nineteenth century.

Recommended Preparation: Writing 109HU.

Through this year-long internship, students will work under faculty direction to produce an issue of the UCSB History Department’s Undergraduate Journal. Students will meet every two weeks and gain practical experience in scholarly publishing disseminating calls for papers, soliciting undergraduate contributions, locating peer reviewers, facilitating revisions with authors, and bibliographic and copywriting work. They will also gain a working knowledge of the UCSB Library’s online publication platform, which will host the journal. Students will utilize various digital humanities tools – podcasts, social media, websites – to promote the undergraduate research being published in Journal as well as host an annual showcase of scholars’ work.

Enrollment comments: This is part one of a two quarter internship. Students will earn 4 units total upon completion of HIST 196JA and 196JB. Use HIST 196JC to earn credit for journal participation beyond two quarters. 

A reading course in a field of the professor’s specialty. Introduces the student to the sources and literature of the field in question (Japanese history). Written work as prescribed by the instructor. (Usually offered quarterly.)  

Same course as East Asian Cultural Studies 201AS.

Fall 2020: 

A reading course in a field of the professor’s specialty. Introduces the student to the sources and literature of the field in question. Written work as prescribed by the instructor. ME. Middle East.  

A two-quarter course.

Fall 2020: This two-quarter course is designed to aid students to build research and writing skills, through developing and writing a research paper. The seminar is a community of scholars at various stages in their research.  It draws students of premodern Europe and the Mediterranean, including people in ancient history, history of art, religious studies, English, French and Italian, even one brave (now very successful!) musicologist. Students in consultation with their advisors and the instructor use the seminar to test possible dissertation topics, which sometimes become articles. More advanced students often continue to work within the seminar as they write dissertation chapters.  We develop bibliographies, discuss research guides and source collections, and work on translations. We also debate theoretical approaches to our work.  During the first quarter students develop a prospectus and bibliography for their papers.  In the second quarter they write them: the seminar becomes a writing group as we meet to discuss problems and challenges and read and comment on two rounds of rough drafts.

Research seminar in recent U.S. history. A research seminar for graduate students interested in any aspect of recent U.S. history.

Fall 2020:

History 266A is the first half of a two-quarter (F/W) research seminar designed to give graduate students an opportunity to explore a significant, originally-conceived topic in recent U.S. history, defined here as spanning 19^th through the early 21^st century. The course aims to provide a structured setting within which students can define, justify, and map out an approach to investigating a significant research topic; identify primary source materials and appropriate methods for accessing and analyzing them; develop an argument with reference to the existing secondary literature; prepare and receive comment on drafts; and participate in a workshop-like process of oral presentation and peer review of work in progress.  Given the diversity of topics, approaches, and time periods this course aims to accommodate, assigned readings and discussion are meant to illustrate and explore the pragmatics of approach, method, organization, use of evidence and the like as much as to emphasize important developments and themes in U.S. history broadly conceived. Students will also have the opportunity to learn about the topics others are pursuing in the course, in discussions of background readings assigned by their peers. And throughout we will talk about history as a way of writing as well as thinking and conducting research.

During the first quarter, students will concentrate on selecting and refining a viable research topic, preparing bibliographies of secondary and primary sources, identifying appropriate research strategies and methods and, by the end of the quarter, producing a 10-12 page prospectus that describes the substance and significance of the topic as a contribution to historical knowledge, presents the central research questions, identifies the key primary and secondary sources, reviews the relevant historiography, and lays out a coherent, feasible strategy for completing the project during the second half (266B) of the two-quarter sequence.

This year long interdisciplinary colloquium brings together graduate students who study Japanese history and culture. It introduces current scholarship on Japan via readings, discussions and presentations by visiting scholars, UCSB scholars and graduate students. The colloquium meets bi- weekly. Students will prepare readings for discussion, write a seminar-length paper and present their paper to the colloquium once during the year.  

A colloquium introducing the important issues, themes, and literature in the history of the United States, from colonial origins to 1846. Historiographical in nature, the course assumes a basic familiarity with the period.

This year-long interdisciplinary colloquium brings together graduate students and UCSB scholars who study the histories of women, gender, or sexuality across time and space. It introduces students to current literature and contemporary debates through readings, discussion, and public presentations by visiting scholars, UCSB scholars, and graduate students. Participants will meet twice a month. Preparation might include coordinating readings for discussion, writing a chapter/article for peer review, or presenting original research to colloquium members.  

A year-long professional colloquium on major topics and new work in Public History. Leading practitioners share theory and practice of the discipline in talks, workshops and occasional field visits. Relevant reading and writing assigned. Meets three to four times per quarter.  

Fall 2020:

HISTORY 295PH (1 or 2 units), meets Fridays, 12-2:50 via Zoom;

One meeting per month (TBD), with public presentation from a working public historian/scholar/activist with faculty, students, staff and community covering major topics and new directions in Public History.  Additional meetings as recommended, but not required. The last hour of each session (1:50-2:50) is reserved for enrolled students and instructor with (usually) the guest(s) to provide deeper response to and/or analysis of the required readings.  Topics vary but are intended to represent some of the breadth and depth of public history scholarship and practice, both nationally and internationally. Brief response papers required (2-3 pp of all enrolled students) with those enrolled for 2 units completing a slightly longer (6-8 page) analysis on a mutually agreed-upon topic of public history literature.  Colloquium runs all year, and students enroll each quarter for the number of units they prefer; students not enrolled may also, of course, attend the colloquium, which is open to the entire campus community.