Undergraduate
Summer Course Descriptions - 2023
The Department offers 100-level, 200-level, 300-level, and 400-level History (HIS) courses.
PLEASE NOTE
- Course descriptions are not final and may be changed at or before the first class.
- For enrolment instructions, students should consult the Faculty of Arts & Science Summer 2023 Timetable.
- Prerequisites will be enforced rigorously. Students who do not have the relevant prerequisite(s) may be removed from the course after classes begin. Specific questions regarding prerequisites for a course can be answered by the course instructor. Where there are two instructors of a course, an asterisk (*) indicates the Course Coordinator.
**This page will be updated regularly. Please check here for curriculum changes.
Course Nomenclature
- Y1-Y is a full course, both terms.
- Y1-F is a full course, first term (fall session)
- Y1-S is a full course, second term (winter session)
- H1-F is a half course, first term (fall session)
- H1-S is a half course, second term (winter session)
100 Level Courses
100-level HIS courses are designed for students entering university. They take a broad sweep of material, and introduce students to the methods and techniques of university study. Each week, students will attend two lectures given by the course professor, and participate in one tutorial led by a teaching assistant. First year courses are not considered to be in an ‘area’ for program requirements.
All 100-series HIS courses are mutually exclusive, with the exception of AP, IB, CAPE, or GCE transfer credits. Students may enrol in only one 100-series History course. Students enrolled in more than one of these courses (or who have completed one of these courses or a previous HIS 100-series course with a mark of 50% or greater) will be removed at any time. First-Year students can also enrol in 200-series HIS courses. ALL students enrolled in a History Specialist, Major, or Minor program must take ONE 100-level HIS course.
HIS103Y1-Y, LEC0101 Strategy and Statecraft: War and Diplomacy in European History
An analysis of the development of the international system, from 1648 to 1945, which highlights the role of war as an instrument of national policy, as a determinant of the system of states and as a threat to international society.
Exclusion: HIS100Y1, HIS101Y1, HIS102Y1, HIS106Y1, HIS107Y1, HIS108Y1, HIS109Y1, HIS110Y1
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
Instructor: V. Dimitriadis
Lecture: Monday & Wednesday 5-7
Tutorials: Monday 7-8; Wednesday 4-5; Wednesday 7-8
Temporal: ½ credit
200 Level Courses
200-Level HIS courses are surveys that introduce in broad outlines the history of a particular country, region, continent, or theme. Most are essential background for further upper-level study in the area. Students will generally attend two lectures and participate in one tutorial each week. The 200-level courses are open to first year students as well as those in higher years.
HIS242H1-S, LEC5101 Europe in the 20th Century
The evolution of European politics, culture, and society from 1914: the two world wars, Fascism and Nazism, the post-1945 reconstruction and the movement towards European integration.
Exclusion: EUR200Y1/EUR200Y5/FGI200Y5/HIS242H5/HISB94H3
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
Instructor: J. Stollenwerk
Lecture: Tuesday & Thursday 5-7
Tutorials: Tuesday 7-8; Thursday 4-5; Thursday 7-8
Geographical Area: c
HIS 264H1-F, L5101 Critical Issues in Canadian History
This course introduces the history of Canada through an exploration of key themes and methods. It will cover several time periods, but it is not a standard survey that begins with New France and proceeds forward to next week. Rather, we will focus on some the key forces that shaped Canada over time. We will also study some of the important skills of historical research and writing. Possible topics include treaties with First Nations, immigration, empire and nationalism, welfare, and environment. All students are welcome, but a key aim of the course is to help prepare students for upper year Canadian History courses.
Exclusion: HIS262H1, HIS263Y1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
Instructor: H. Cooley
Lecture: Tuesday & Thursday 5-7
Tutorials: Tuesday 7-8; Thursday 4-5; Thursday 7-8
Geographical Area: b
HIS283Y1-Y, LEC0101 History of Southeast Asia: How the Lands Below the Winds Reshaped the World
This course examines how the cultural, economic, religious, and social histories of "Southeast Asia" [Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Thailand, & Vietnam] shaped the world as we see it today. Lectures will demonstrate how the millennia-long cultural and material exchanges Southeast Asians engaged via water across the Indian and Pacific Oceans and the lands across Eurasia affected the lives of its inhabitants and the proximal and distant regions with which it had contact. In Tutorials, students will be trained to read primary sources. Themes to be explored include economic exchange, colonialism and its impact, gender and sexual diversity, and religion and society.
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
Instructor: N. Tran/S. Yeo
Lecture: Monday & Wednesday 10-12
Tutorials: Monday 12-1; Monday 1-2; Wednesday 12-1
Geographical Area: a
Temporal: ½ credit
HIS293H1-F, L0101 The Making of the Atlantic World, 1480-1804
This course introduces students to the social, economic, cultural and political history of the Atlantic world resulting from European exploration and colonization in the Americas beginning in the 1490s and the growth of the transatlantic slave trade. It focuses on interactions between Africans, Europeans, and Amerindians around the Atlantic Ocean.
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
Instructor: C. Baldwin
Lecture: Monday & Wednesday 2-4
Tutorials: Monday 4-5; Wednesday 1-2; Wednesday 4-5
Geographical Area: b
Temporal: ½ credit
300 Level Courses
300-Level HIS courses are more specialized and intensive. They deal with more closely defined periods or themes. They vary in format, with some being based around lectures, and others involving tutorial or discussion groups. Most 300-level courses have prerequisites, which are strictly enforced. First year students are not permitted to enrol in 300 or 400-level HIS courses. Although some upper level courses do not have specific prerequisites, courses at the 300- and 400-level are demanding and require a good comprehension of history.
HIS389H1-F, L5101 Topics in History: The Material Cultures of Slavery in the Black Atlantic
In the histories of slavery and colonialism, the text-based archives have been well explored. However, historians have given academic less attention to the material cultures of Atlantic slavery and the immediate post-emancipation period. We will approach this course with the notion that material 'things' mattered immensely to those who engaged in daily struggles over the multiple dimensions of slavery and those who subsequently contested the meanings of freedom in post-emancipation. This course will investigate material culture as it refers to the physical objects, resources, and spaces used to define cultures. This includes a wide range of source material exploring the practices and relations through which objects become meaningful.
This course is designed to introduce you to the study of material culture and to encourage you to think about how materiality mediates our relationship to the past. We will read studies produced by scholars across multiple academic disciplines to explore the various theories, methodologies, and interpretations of the material cultures related to Atlantic slavery across the Americas, Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. In addition, you will be asked to think critically about the histories of ethnographic collecting, museums, and consumption to examine how they continuously shape the material and intellectual dimensions of our present. In this way, we will think about objects, meaning making, and the writing of history.
Prerequisite: 4.0 credits, including 1.0 HIS credit excluding HIS262H1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Instructor: C. Manners
Lecture: Tuesday & Thursday 5-7
Geographical Area: b
Temporal: ½ credit
HIS389H1-S, L0101 Topics in History: The Middle Ages and video Games
We know the Middle Ages when we see it. We can spot the time period by its language (verily!), its art, its colours, and so much more. But what comes from history, and what comes from us?
This course explores representations of the medieval past as we find them in one of the most integrative and widespread forms of modern media- video games, alongside other forms of popular culture. Due to the predominating cultural narrative in popular perceptions of the medieval past, the games selected are set in medieval England and Scandinavia. Together we will play and discuss these games alongside historical documents and sources, and you will learn how to critically analyze cultural fantasies of the past and where they came from, how to close read historical texts and dissect modern media, and how to use Omeka, an online exhibit creation software.
In this course we dive into the Middle Ages through reading, playing, and examination. We will work to answer the question: “When what we’re seeing isn’t accurate, why have we made it that way?”
Prerequisite: 4.0 credits, including 1.0 HIS credit excluding HIS262H1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Instructor: A. Ellis
Lecture: Monday & Wednesday 3-5
Geographical Area: c
Temporal: ½ credit
HIS389H1-S, L5101 Topics in History: The Plantation: A Global History
The plantation complex - including plantations and the networks of landowners, merchant-bankers, politicians and laborers that sustain them - was a crucial institution of European colonialism and empire. Plantations were not just large farms using coerced labor but institutions that enabled the spread of European rule to colonial frontiers. The wealth generated by the exploitation of conquered lands and trafficked and under-paid workers was central to global trade and the development of European metropoles like London, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Paris, and Madrid, among many others. The tropical bounties of plantations, from foodstuffs to industrial inputs, enabled the long hours of industrial workers and later the automobile society, suburban life, and cheap shoes, soaps, oils, and more.
Prerequisite: 4.0 credits, including 1.0 HIS credit excluding HIS262H1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Instructor: S. Sridhar
Lecture: Tuesday & Thursday 5-7
HIS394H1-F, LEC0101 20th and 21st Century African Icons: Media and Biography
Superseding 19th century European missionary and explorers' accounts of Africa; media in the 20th and 21st centuries have unequivocally played a key role in shaping the globe's views of Africa and Africans. In 2005, BBC Focus on Africa put out an impressive list of more than 100 "African Icons". Since then, a number of websites have come up with various lists of African icons. Who are the African icons and what makes them icons? How have the media contributed in making them icons?
Prerequisite: HIS295Y1/ HIS297Y1/ HIS383H1/ HIS383Y1/ HIS386H1/ HIS481H1/ NEW160Y1/ NEW261Y1/ AFR351Y1/ POL301Y1/ POL361H1 or by permission from the Instructor.
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
Instructor: J. Kamau
Lecture: Monday & Wednesday 2-4
Geographical Area: a
400 Level Courses
400-Level HIS courses are two-hour seminars that deal with very specialized subjects and are often closely connected to a professor's research. Most have specific course pre-requisites and require extensive reading, research, writing, and seminar discussion, and in most you will have the opportunity to do a major research paper. All 400-level HIS courses have enrolment restrictions during the FIRST ROUND (must have completed 14 or more full courses, be enrolled in a HIS Major, Specialist or Joint Specialist program and have the appropriate prerequisite). During the SECOND ROUND of enrolment, access to 400-level seminars is open to all 3rd and 4th year students with the appropriate prerequisite. IMPORTANT: Due to significant enrolment pressure on 4th year seminars, during the first round of enrolment, the Department of History reserves the right to REMOVE STUDENTS who enrol in more than the required number for program completion (Specialists – 2; Majors, Joint Specialists – 1) without consultation. First year students are not permitted to enrol in 300 or 400-level HIS courses.
Students in 400-level seminars MUST ATTEND THE FIRST CLASS, or contact the professor to explain their absence. Failure to do so may result in the Department withdrawing the student from the seminar in order to "free up" space for other interested students. Additional 400-level seminars for the 2023 Summer Session may be added at a later date. To fulfill History program requirements, students may also use 400- level courses offered by other Departments at the U of T that are designated as 'Equivalent Courses'.
HIS496H1-F, L5101 Topics in History: Global Histories of Water
Human history has a terrestrial bias. Environmental history has long been concerned with the interrelationship between people and land; how individuals, societies, governments, and ideologies interact with and in turn are shaped by the physical geography of the planet. A rising tide of scholars of environment and technology, however, have called for a reframing of the earth in terms of its dominant surface feature, water – seeing oceans and rivers not as borders, conduits, or obstacles but as historical objects and actors themselves. How can centring human interaction with oceans, rivers, and water in history more broadly reshape the questions we ask and the answers we find about the past?
This course introduces students to the methods and theories of environmental history through the theme of water. Looking critically at 3 places where people and water meet – rivers, oceans, and in bodies – this course ask students to consider how access to water, quality of water, ideas about water, and regulation and control of water are at once political, cultural, technological, and environmental concerns. This course also asks students to consider the different scales – molecular, individual, local, (trans)national, and global – where water history happens. Students will be introduced to key themes, central texts, and research methods in environmental history. This course will introduce students to historical research methods and the use of primary source materials, including methods of closely reading local environments. Students will develop the ability to use an environmental lens in their studies - a skill that is transferrable across disciplines.
Prerequisite: 14.0 credits including 2.0 HIS credits.
Exclusion: Students may not take both L0601 ("Critical Histories of the Black Canadian Experience") and L0701 ("Race in Canada") offered in 2016-17 Fall/Winter.
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Instructor: K. Bauer
Seminar: Tuesday & Thursday 5-7