The following courses will be offered Spring Semester 2013. For more information, contact the faculty member teaching the course. Times listed are tentative, and subject to change by the Registrar, who will issue the official time schedule.

History 126:  Human Geography
Mark Rhodes
Mondays, 6:30 - 9:30 p.m.
A survey of world geography combining the regional and topical approaches, the natural factors that shape the environment, such as climate, landforms and resources, will be considered, along with their impact on people, as studied in the fields of political, economic, and cultural geography. The primary focus of the course will be on basic concepts in cultural geography that will be of greatest use for students preparing to teach middle school and high school social studies. (HBSSM, Intcl)

History 112: Survey of US History Since 1877
Lauren Kientz Anderson
M-W-F 11:00 - 12:00
This course surveys American history since Reconstruction, exploring transformations in American politics, society, and culture. Though it is wide-ranging, it has as a unifying theme the question of how and why people have defined the American nation in different ways, and how those ideas have related to race and gender. Topics covered include the end of the westward expansion after the Civil War and Indian resistance, industrialization, immigration, World War I, African American migration and cultural innovation, the cultural turmoil of the 1920s, the Depression and New Deal, the Second World War at home and abroad, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, feminism, other social movements, the Vietnam war and the anti-war movement, cultural politics in the 1970s, the new conservatism and 1980s culture wars, the 1990s, 9/11, the Gulf War, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. (HBSSM, Hist, Intcl)

History 150: Europe Since 1648
Marvin G. Slind
M-W-F 11:00 - 12:00
An introductory survey of European history from the end of the wars of religion in the seventeenth century to the present. Topics will include: the Scientific Revolution; the Enlightenment; Absolutism and the Emergence of the Parliamentary Government; the French Revolution and Napoleon; Reaction and Revolution in the early Nineteenth Century; the Industrial Revolution; Nationalism and Unification; the "New Imperialism" and the Coming of World War I; the "Thirty Years War of the Twentieth Century"; Postwar Europe: Cold War and Integration. (HBSSM, Hist, Intcl)

History 162: South Asian History
Brian Caton
M-W-F 9:15 - 10:15
An introduction to the basic themes and content of South Asian history from the earliest times to the present. Students will explore the lives of both great and ordinary people who lived in what are now Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Students will consider how empire, international trade, relations of production, and ideologies affected the construction and reproduction of social and cultural groups. Offered alternate years. (HB, Hist, Intcl)

History 172: History of Modern Africa
Richard Mtisi
M-W-F 12:15 - 1:15
This course surveys the history of sub-Saharan Africa from the 1880s to the present. The course examines African life under European colonial domination (from about 1880 to about 1960) and under independent states which succeeded colonial governments after 1960. A primary aim of this course is to explore the diversity of human experience in Africa during the colonial and post-colonial periods. The course makes use of several primary documents to portray ways in which men and women have dealt with the challenges of living in twentieth- and twentifirst-century Africa. (Same as AFRS 172) (HB, Hist, Intcl)

History 227: Public History
Edward Tebbenhoff
Tu-Th 11:00 - 12:30
This course explores the various ways in which history is created, incorporated into and presented in U.S. popular culture. The course will combine hands-on work with local historical societies, museums, and other public history venues with academic study of public history techniques and ethical challenges. Topics may include the ways in which historical road markers, entertainment corporations (such as the History Channel and Disney), local and regional history associations present history to the public and how the public interacts with these discourses on history. A comparison of the differences in purpose and audience between public and scholarly presentations of history is a central theme of the course. Offered alternate years. (HBSSM, Hist)

History 241: Rome: Republic and Empire
Robert Christman
M-W-F 9:15 - 10:15
A survey of the Roman Republic and Empire, concentrating on the social and economic background of Rome's rise and fall as well as on the military and political aspects of expansion and decline. Special emphasis on the Punic and Macedonian Wars, civil war and the end of the Republic, Roman influence on France and Britain, Christianity in the imperial period, and Roman interaction with the Germans. Offered alternate years. (HBSSM, Hist)

History 321: Black Internationalism: African Americans Encounter the World
Lauren Kientz Anderson
M-W-F 2:45 - 3:45
How does travel change a person's understanding of themselves? What happens when a person facing discrimination at home feels greater freedom abroad, like most of the African Americans who traveled abroad in the 19th and 20th centuries? This course will explore different ideas of internationalism, both political and personal, among African Americans. Travels abroad, physically and textually, have been essential to the process of building an African American identity. African Americans approached their journeys with many different philosophies, including Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, cosmopolitanism, Christianity, pacifism, and militancy. They developed ideas of missionizing Africa as well as joining with Africans to challenge white supremacy. They criticized inequality in Asia, rejoiced in the Japanese triumph over Russia in 1905, and eventually built a spirit of common cause with other colonized peoples. Ideas about internationalism transformed over the two hundred and fifty years since the United States and Haitian revolutions; this course will interrogate those changes and their influence on global politics and personal identities. Prerequisite: PAID 112 or equivalent. (HBSSM, Hist)

History 348: Vikings in History
Marvin G. Slind
Tu-Th 12:45 - 2:15
This course covers the "Viking Era," approximately 780–1070 CE. It will examine Viking society, religion and mythology, social structure, maritime technology and shipbuilding, political developments, literature and arts, and Viking expansion. Prerequisite: PAID 112 or equivalent. (HBSSM, Hist)

History 351: Topics in European History: Conquering Mind, Body, and Soul, A History of Early Modern Spain
Victoria Christman
M-W-F 1:30 - 2:30
This course explores the history of the Iberian peninsula through the study of three themes.  We will begin with a consideration of the coexistence of Muslims, Jews, and Christians in early modern Iberia, known as convivencia.  How did these separate, religiously exclusive communities manage to live peacefully together for so long, and what forces caused their peaceful coexistence to end?  We will then study the history of the Spanish Inquisition, quite a different experience of religious pluralism in the territory.  Our final theme will be the early modern voyages of exploration, through which the Spanish crown extended its influence from Europe to the New World.  By the end of the course, we will have compiled a brief survey of Iberian history from the Muslim invasions of 711 to the voyages of the sixteenth century. Prerequisite: PAID 112 or equivalent. (HB, Hist)

History 361: Topics in East Asian History: East Asian Environmental History
Brian Caton
Tu - Th 11:00 - 12:30
Students in this course will consider the impact of environmental conditions on human history and human transformations of environments over both a long term of 4000 years and shorter terms of the past fifty to one hundred years. Special attention will be given to themes such as industrialization, colonialism, climate variation and change, irrigation and food production, and ideological change. Course units cover China, Japan, and the Mekong Delta, but students may pursue research projects on other areas of East Asia as desired. Prerequisite: PAID 112 or equivalent. (HBSS, HIST) 

History 485: Junior-Senior Seminar, "Era of the American Revolution"
Edward Tebbenhoff
M-W-F 1:30 - 2:30
This course on the American Revolutionary era begins in 1763 and goes to the election of Jefferson in 1800.  Among the specific topics we will examine are the circumstances of the colonies in British America after the French and Indian War, the growing crisis between England and the colonies from 1763 to 1776, the movement for independence, the course of the war, the reasons for American military success and British failure, the Articles of Confederation government, the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, the increasingly harsh party battles of the 1790s, and finally, the so-called "Revolution of 1800."  We will also explore issues of large-scale historical meaning: What exactly, was the American Revolution?  When was it?  Were Britain’s American colonies born modern and therefore different from Europe from the beginning?  Were the events we normally associate with the American Revolution simply the political acknowledgement of de facto economic and social circumstances?

History 485 aims at contributing to your knowledge of this period of American history but also serves as the history department’s writing intensive course (which are part of the Luther’s all-college requirements).  A critically important aspect of this course aims at increasing your analytical and writing skills by producing an extensive research paper.  So we will be looking in some detail at the historiographic debates but also discussing your research topics and the how the research and writing of your papers is proceeding.