400 Level Course Descriptions

Undergraduate

400 Level Courses (2025-2026)

Course Designators

Below are descriptions of courses with the following designators (the 3 letter code in front of the course number):

Course Nomenclature

• H1-F = "First Term"; the first term of the Fall/Winter Session (September - December)
• H1-S = "Second Term"; the second term of the Fall/Winter Session (January - April)
• Y1-Y = full session (September - April)
• Students should note that courses designated as "...Y1F" or "...Y1S" in the Timetable are particulary demanding.

400-level HIS courses are two-hour seminars that deal with very specialized subjects ad 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 Prerequisites). During the SECOND ROUND of enrolment, access to 400-level seminars is open to all 3rd and 4th year students with the appropriate Prerequisites.

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.

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 2025-2026 Fall/Winter 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’.

The Department also offers a few joint undergraduate-graduate seminars. These are indicated in the course description. Undergraduate enrolment in joint seminars is restricted, and the expected level of performance is high.

HIS401H1 The Cold War through its Archives
(Joint undergraduate/graduate course - HIS401H1/HIS1289H)

The course reviews the history of the Cold War in light of formerly secret archival documents. Examples include the US White House Tapes and Venona decrypts; massive declassification of records in the ex-Soviet bloc; and parallel developments in China, Cuba, and other Communist states. Archival discoveries have cast new light, not just on individual episodes (e.g., Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979) but on the origins, strategies, and driving forces of this 45-year conflict. The focus will be mainly on the superpowers and their alliance systems.

Prerequisite: HIS311Y1/HIS344H1/HIS344Y1/HIS377H1
Exclusion: HIS401Y1, HIS306H5
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS402H1 Sephardim: The Jews of Spain and their Diasporas

This course follows the journey of Sephardic Jews from their beginnings in Iberia to their diasporas in the Ottoman Empire and the New World. We begin by studying Jewish life and culture in Iberia itself. We then study the expulsion from Spain and Portugal and how Sephardic Jews managed to reconstruct their communities and maintain their identity in new lands until the Nineteenth Century. Themes discussed include mysticism and messianism, conversos and heresy, and trade and exploration. We will conclude by looking at how Sephardic Jews shaped ideas of modernity that were distinct from those of their Ashkenazi coreligionists.

Prerequisite: 9.0 credits including 1.0 HIS/ JHA/ JHM/ JHN/ JIH/ JSH credit
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

Geographic Area: a
Temporal Requirement: 0.5 credit

HIS 404H1 Advanced Topics in U.S. History: Care Work, Disability and Abolition in US History

This seminar considers the carcerality of state and corporate administrations of care work, with a focus on racial and sexual license for people’s containment, discipline, and punishment within healthcare and state welfare. Our weekly readings and class discussions will seek to question the contradictory impulses of racial integration under neoliberalism, where the movement for civic inclusion came with state divestment from working class Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian communities. We will also learn from disability justice movements towards deinstitutionalization and decarceration to ask how community care networks have struggled for equitable life chances without the reproduction of violence.

Prerequisite: HIS271Y1
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS 406H1 Advanced Topics in Gender History: Trends in Women and Gender History in the Global South

This seminar is intended as an introduction to key issues, debates, and themes in the historiography of women and gender in the global south. The course focuses on the intersections of gender, sexuality, nationalism, and historical representation in Africa, Asia, South America, and the Caribbean from the late 19th century to the early 21st century. Case studies range from gender and tradition in colonial and nationalist discourses; gendered identities and decolonial imaginations; body politics and the representation of gendered bodies; sexuality, the state and citizenship; and networks of feminism, nationalism and transnationalism. This seminar interrogates what it means to do history in the context of gendered and sexual (inclusive and exclusive) discourses and practices. The seminar will be a space for intellectual exploration and learning, for the formation and sharpening of ideas, and for discussing some of the ways women and gender historians have produced histories by working with a variety of theories, methodologies, and archives.

Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS 406H1 Advanced Topics in Gender History: Transnational Gender Histories

An in-depth examination of issues in gender history. Content in any given year depends on instructor. See History website for more details.

Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS 411H1 Great Trials in History

This seminar course will study a handful of great trials in close detail. Using materials from the modern period in Europe and North America, we will look at the clash of ideas represented in these high-profile cases, the historical setting in which they were embedded, the human drama, legal and sometimes constitutional issues, and their impact both on their societies and our own.

Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS414H1 Down and Out in Medieval Europe

Explores the life conditions of individuals on the lower echelons of medieval society (the poor, servants and apprentices, the exiled, prisoners, slaves, foreigners and lepers). In parallel, we will discuss the various conceptions of poverty that prevailed in the Middle Ages. These objectives will allow us to glimpse the European Middle Ages from an unusual angle as well as reflect on important socio-economic and religious changes.

Recommended Preparation: A course on the Middle Ages in any discipline
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS417H1 Sex Work History in North America, 1763 onwards

This seminar explores the historical effects of the "world's oldest profession" in Canada and beyond. Using a range of texts, including film, memoirs, oral history and visual culture, it seeks to enhance both historical and contemporary discussions of the sex trade by examining its rich, difficult and problematic pasts. Seminar readings and discussions will examine the lives and experiences of multiple sex trade-involved populations, from affluent 19th-century madams to streetwalkers and queer and trans communities.

Prerequisite: HIS263Y1/ HIS264H1
Exclusion: HIS417Y1
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS422H1 Early Modern English Popular Culture, 1500-1800

Deals with issues of orality, literacy, gender, class, cultural bricolage and vernacular epistemology – the constituents of popular, as opposed to elite knowledge - through the study of folklore, magic, religion, drink, sex, riot and festivity in early modern England. Some background in medieval and/or early modern history or literature is highly recommended. Extensive work will be undertaken with primary printed sources.

Prerequisite: HIS101Y1/ HIS109Y1/ HIS220Y1/ HIS243H1/ HIS244H1/ HIS368H1/ HIS337H1/ HIS349H1/ HIS357Y1
Exclusion: HIS496H1 (Topics in History: Early Modern English Popular Culture, 1600-1800), offered in Summer 2018
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS426H1 Early Medieval Italy, 300-1000 CE

This seminar examines major developments in Italy 300-1000, including the Christianization of Italy, the collapse of Roman rule, the establishment of several barbarian successor kingdoms, and changes in architecture, art and literature in a period known as Italy's Dark Ages.

Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

Geographic Area: c
Temporal Requirement: 0.5 credit

HIS433H1 Polish Jews Since the Partition of Poland

To explore the history of Polish Jews from the Partitions of Poland to the present time, concentrating on the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries: situation of Polish Jews in Galicia; Congress Kingdom of Poland; Prussian-occupied Poland before 1914; during World War II; and post-war Poland. Focus on an analysis of primary sources. (Joint undergraduate-graduate)

Prerequisite: HIS208Y1/ HIS251Y1/permission of the instructor
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS439H1 Russia's Empire

The collapse of the Soviet Union along national lines brought about a renewed interest in the non- Russian parts of the Imperial Russian state. This so-called “imperial turn” has altered the ways that we think about Tsarist Russian rule. In this course we address different approaches to the study of Empire as reflected in the Russian case from its origins in the sixteenth century until the collapse of the Tsarist state — but not precisely of its empire — in 1917.

Prerequisite: HIS325H1, HIS351H1. Students who do not meet the prerequisites are encouraged to contact the Department.
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

Geographic Area: c

HIS443H1 Space and Sense in the Early Modern World

How did early moderns experience sense and space and how did the expanding cultural, political, and social horizons of the period emerge from and shape those experiences? This course explores Florence, Amsterdam, Boston, Manila to compare how experiences of space and sense varied by age, gender, race, and class.

Prerequisite: HIS243H1/ HIS244H1/ HIS357Y1. Students who do not meet the prerequisite are encouraged to contact the instructor.
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS446H1 Gender and Slavery in the Atlantic World

The course examines the relationship between gender and the experience of slavery and emancipating several Atlantic world societies from the 17th-19th centuries. Areas to be covered are the Caribbean, Brazil, the U.S. South, West and South Africa and Western Europe.

Prerequisite: HIS291H1/ HIS294Y1/ ( HIS230H1, HIS231H1)/ HIS295Y1
Exclusion: HIS446Y1
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS447H1 Globalization & Empire

What is globalization? What is empire? What are the relationships between them? Globalization, one of the most widely-used concepts today, is often taken out of the historical contexts out of which it arose. This course analyzes its connections with European imperial projects (British, French, German and Russian) of “world making” and the types of connections--economic, political and cultural--that they fostered. The connections between globalization, the forging of the world economy and the histories of capitalism are a central focus of the course. The goal is to seek to understand the types of globalization active today, including the creation of a world based on global inequality and environmental degradation in which older colonial relationships of power (vis a vis the global south, for example) continue to hold sway. In other words, through a historical analysis of globalization and empire the course explores processes of economic and political transformation that created the modern present.

Methodologically the course is an introduction to the field(s) of transnational and global history.

Prerequisite: 14.0 credits
Recommended Preparation: Two of the following: HIS112H1, HIS241H1, HIS242H1, HIS245H1, HIS344H1, HIS377H1, HIS388H1
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS450H1 Advanced Seminar in African Histories: Art and Artifacts in African History

Ritual and cultural objects have played an important role in African history as elsewhere. However, the power of material objects and belief in forces beyond human agency were pathologized to an unprecedented extreme by Western observers of Africa from the 18th century onward.  These “things,” despite being deemed both worthless, were also often stolen or “collected” and then displayed in European museums. Taking advantage of insights from a contemporary philosophical movement known as New Materialism, this course seeks to show that ontological thinking in African cultures once criticized as irrational anticipated what many Western thinkers have only recently come to recognize.

Prerequisite: HIS295Y1 or 1.0 credit alternative African History course
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS452H1 Advanced Topics in European History: War and Sites of Memory in Poland and Ukraine Since 1914: Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews

Selected topics in a specific period of European History. Content in any given year depends on instructor. Please see the History Department website for complete description.

Prerequisite: 9.0 credits including one of HIS241H1, HIS242H1, HIS243H1, HIS244H1, and a minimum 1.0 HIS credit
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS452H1 Advanced Topics in European History: War and European Society, 1792-1945

This course examines the relationship between warfare and European society from the Wars of the French Revolution to the Second World War. Topics covered include mobilization of populations and economies; technological innovations; ideological forces; gendered experiences; imperialism and colonial conflicts; genocide and war crimes; and international law.

Prerequisite: 9.0 credits including one of HIS241H1, HIS242H1, HIS243H1, HIS244H1, and a minimum 1.0 HIS credit
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS457H1 The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire

Explores the central themes in the history of the French Revolution: the causes of the Revolution; the contested varied efforts to build a new regime; the invention of a novel republican political culture; counterrevolution and Terror; the Haitian Revolution; Napoleon and the Empire; the Revolution as a global phenomenon; the Restoration; the Revolution's legacy today.

Prerequisite: HIS243H1/ HIS244H1/ HIS319H1/ HIS341Y1/ HIS387H1
Exclusion: HISC26H3
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

Geographic Area: c
Temporal Requirement: 0.5 credit

HIS468H1 Commemorations and Public History in Canada, 1800 - 2000

This course explores selected topics in the history of commemoration, public memory, and public history in Canada. Remembering the past has often involved various groups - political, economic, and social elites - who have attempted to create ‘pasts’ or ‘traditions’ for themselves and others in society, often as part of creating socio-economic and political hegemony. We also will read about their contestation by women, working-class people, and ethnic and racialized groups to counter the powerful’s apparent monopoly on public memory. As well, we will explore how historical memories have shaped and created landscapes, in ways both discursive and material.

Prerequisite: HIS264H1
Exclusion: HIS466H1 (offered as "History of Commemoration in Canada") taken in Winter 2015, Fall 2016 or 2018, (offered as "Commemorations and Public History, Canada, 1800s-2000") taken in Fall 2020 or 2021, (offered as "Commemoration in Canada") taken in Fall 2022.
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS469H1 Upper Canada: Creating a Settler Society, 1790s-1860s

This course explores selected topics in the history of Upper Canada: its formation in the crucible of transatlantic and imperial warfare, relationships with Indigenous people, the creation of multiple institutions, and colonial leisure and culture. As well as having its own particular local characteristics and features, not least its proximity to the United States, Upper Canada was one of a number of settler societies within the British Empire. The course explores various dimensions of these aspects and considers the relationships between local dynamics and imperial currents.

Prerequisite: HIS264H1/ HIS263Y1
Exclusion: HIS466H1 (offered as "Upper Canada: Creating a Settler Society") taken in Fall 2014, Winter 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 or 2023, (offered as "Upper Canada") taken in Fall 2019, (offered as "Upper Canada: Creating a Settler Society, 1790s-1860s") taken in Winter 2021. 
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS475H1 Senior Research Seminar

In this seminar, students will learn the historical methodology skills required to undertake their major independent research project for future professional use or graduate studies, including the development of a topic, formal literature reviews, and the writing of research and grant proposals. History Specialists & Majors only (priority enrollment for Specialists). Not eligible for CR/NCR option. See department website for prerequisite details and registration instructions. Students may count HIS475H1 towards the Specialty methodology pathway or carry on to HIS476H1: Senior Thesis.

Prerequisite: Consent of supervisor and department
Exclusion: HIS476Y1, HIS491Y1, HIS498H1, HIS499Y1
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS476H1 Senior Thesis Seminar

Students research and write a primary-sourced based thesis of approximately 7,000 words, building on the prospectus and literature review developed in HIS475H1. Students attend seminar meetings to discuss the hypotheses they have formulated, present their work in progress and engage in constructive critique of other students’ work. History Specialists & Majors only (priority enrollment for Specialists). Students must find topics and thesis supervisors. Not eligible for CR/NCR option. See department website for prerequisite details and registration instructions.

Prerequisites: HIS475H1 and consent of supervisor and department
Exclusions: HIS476Y1, HIS498H1, HIS499Y1, HIS491Y1
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS477H1 Topics in the Social and Cultural History of Victorian Britain

Examination of the impact of industrialism on Victorian society and values. Concentration on Victorian social critics including Engels, Owen, Mayhew, Dickens and Morris.

Prerequisite: 9.0 credits including 1.0 credit in History
Recommended Preparation: A course in modern British History/Victorian literature
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS484H1 The Car in North American History

This seminar examines the history of the car in North America from the perspective of technology, business, landscape and popular culture. Particular attention is paid to issues of production, consumption, geography, and daily life, and to the importance of class race, gender, region, and age in shaping the meaning and experience of car culture.

Prerequisite: HIS263Y1/ HIS264H1/ HIS271Y1
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

Geographic Area: b

HIS488H1 Advanced Topics in Latin American Histories: The Politics of Race

A seminar course in which students engage in advanced reading and discussion of topics, themes, periods or problems in some aspect of Latin American history. The focus in any given year will depend upon the instructor offering the course. Students should have existing coursework in Latin American History. Please see the History Department website for complete description and course specific recommended preparation.

Prerequisite: 14.0 credits and one of HIS291H1, HIS292H1
Recommended Preparation: HIS291H1 or HIS292H1
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

HIS494H1 Gandhi's Global Conversation

Primary source analysis of global circuits of ethico-political thought via work and life of Gandhi.  Charts transnational environment of Gandhian thought (eg. Ruskin and Tolstoy), its critics (advocates of minority rights, also revolutionary violence) and global afterlife (eg. King, Mandela).  Teaches methods in intellectual and political history of the global.

Prerequisite: HIS282Y1 with a mark of 76% or above

HIS495H1 Advanced Topics in History: Modern History of Terrorism

“What is terrorism?”–a seemingly simple question, but one to which there is apparently no simple answer. Few words in our language are used so often and so carelessly as the term “terrorism”. In our seminar we will examine the complex phenomenon of “modern” terrorism, its various forms, and its transnational connections from a historical perspective.  
With the help of illustrative examples and current references from Europe and Germany, we will draw a chronological arc from the emergence of “modern” terrorism in the 19th century, the terrorist violence in the age of the world wars, to the transnational terrorism of the 21st century. Groups and events we will discuss include, for example, anarchist terrorism, the Organisation Consul, the Munich Massacre (1972), the Red Army Faction, the Oktoberfest Massacre (1980), the National Socialist Underground, and the Islamic State.  
Our seminar will focus on questions concerning the radicalization process of terrorists, their self-perception, and goals, as well as similarities and differences between the different forms of terrorism and between groups of the same kind. Furthermore, we will also look at how nations and the international community reacted to the terrorist challenge, since the “anti-terrorism policies” are a key factor in the emergence and development of terrorist groups.

Prerequisite: 14.0 credits, including 2.0 HIS credits excluding HIS262H1. Further prerequisites vary from year to year, consult the department.
Recommended Preparation: Varies from year to year

HIS496H1 Advanced Topics in History: Life and Death in the Soviet Union

This seminar examines everyday life from the fall of the Russian Empire to the fall of the Soviet Union, focusing on how ordinary people lived through the dramatic changes and crises of the twentieth century. We will consider everyday life throughout this eventful time period but will pay close attention to experiences during four moments of historical rupture and crisis: the end of the Russian Empire during the First World War, Russian Revolution, and Russian Civil War; the rapid transformation of the Soviet Union through Stalinist industrialization and terror; the mass violence and collective trauma of the Second World War; and the political, social, and economic collapse of the Soviet Union. We will approach these topics through personal accounts and primary sources such as memoirs, diaries, and oral histories, which we will read in combination with historians’ interpretations of everyday life.

Prerequisite: 14.0 credits including 2.0 HIS credits. Further prerequisites vary from year to year, consult the department.

Recommended Preparation: HIS351H1

HIS 497H1 Animal Politics and Science

Why is thinking about the animal unsettling for some or strange for others? Especially since Darwin, the question of the animal-what it says about being or not being human-has been at the core of important philosophical and scientific debates. This course examines the ways that question has been answered over time.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in political theory, history of science, or intellectual history. Students who do not meet the prerequisite are encouraged to contact the Department.
Breadth Requirements: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)