��������

Department Policy on In-Person Attendance

All Spring 2026 History courses will be taught in-person, unless indicated by the (*course note).��By signing up for a class, you have agreed to attend and participate in the��class. You should not expect to be able to attend an 'in-person' class remotely or to access class recordings. Exceptions to this policy may be granted at the instructor’s discretion. If you are unwilling or unable to commit to attending and participating in person over the duration of the semester, you should seek alternative options for all-remote or online courses. (For assistance with finding alternative classes, please contact your advisor and/or the History Advisor, Hayes Moore,��hayes.moore@colorado.edu.)

Expanded course descriptions

This page does not list all Spring 2026 History courses, only those for which we have expanded descriptions. To see all courses, please use the Course Search button above. If you would like an expanded description of a course which is not on this list, please reach out to the instructor.

HIST 1113-001: Introduction to British History to 1660 - Paul Hammer

This course is an introduction to the history of England (and, to some extent, Britain and the British Isles) from Roman times to the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660. During the semester, we will discuss important political, social, religious, and cultural
developments that helped to shape the course of English and British history.

HIST 1218-001: Introduction to Sub-Saharan African History to 1850 - Henry Lovejoy

(*) This class will be taught online and delivered asynchronously which means there are not scheduled days and times. Instructor may determine pacing and deadlines for coursework completion. See course syllabus for more information.

This course introduces students to African history in global perspective in the pre-colonial period during the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Examines forgotten kingdoms and caliphates through the biographic lenses of Africans and their descendants in diaspora. Includes topics on the meaningful impact that Africans have had on our world through involuntary global migrations.

HIST 1708-001: Japan From Clay Pots to Robots - Miriam Kadia

(*) This class will be taught using a combination of online and remote instruction modes. This means that while some coursework may be completed online at a student’s own pace (asynchronous), the class will also meet remotely at designated days/times each week. Course will meet remotely 9:05-9:55am on Wednesdays, and online asynchronously for the remaining meetings.

What is Japan? From the perspective of geography, the land thought to belong to “Japan” has ranged from a small portion of a southern island, to an empire including Korea and Taiwan, to contemporary borders still under dispute. Who are the Japanese people? To outsiders, they have been “eastern barbarians,” beloved liberators, reviled colonial masters, economic robots, and arbiters of cultural cool. To themselves, they have been Shintō, Buddhist and Christian; backward traditionalists in a modernizing world; the civilizing force of Asia; an unlikely economic superpower twice over; and the alienated vanguard of global post-capitalist society. In this course, we trace the course of Japanese history to understand these descriptions and more.

HIST 1830-001: Global History of Holocaust and Genocide - Thomas Pegelow Kaplan

This course will examine the interplay of history, religion, politics, culture, and psychology to try to understand why the great philosopher Isaiah Berlin called the 20th century, "the most terrible century in Western History." Our focus will be on the Holocaust as the event that defined the concept of genocide, but we will locate this event that come to define the 20th century within concepts such as racism, imperialism, violence, and the dehumanization of individuals in the modern world. Topics covered include Native American and Indigenous genocide; HIV/AIDS; sexual violence; and the question of "just war."

HIST 2119-001: From Attila the Hun to Genghis Khan: Nomadic Wars and Warriors in Eurasian History - Sanjay Gautam

This course focuses on the history of Eurasian nomad warriors, their ways of warfare, and their Pan-Eurasian military campaigns and empires from the fourth century to the fifteenth century. It approaches the nomad--from Attila the Hun to Genghis Khan--as a powerful historical agent of globalization. The course also makes students familiar with Eurasia as an indispensable historical-geographical notion that goes beyond the conventional bounds of national history.

HIST 2326-001: Issues in the History of U.S. Society and Culture: Nature and the Apocalypse - Miles Hubble

This course focuses on the history of American thinking concerning the natural world and the end of the world. In the first part of the course, we ask questions such as what is nature, and how do we distinguish it from culture? What is natural, and how have these definitions inflected Western understandings of God, gender, economics, and the good life? In the second half of the course, we will apply these insights to the specter of the apocalypse in the postwar United States. We look at the ways that Americans have imagined and prepared for the end of the world, be it by nuclear war, economic or ecological collapse, or biblical Armageddon. Throughout the course, we will compliment textual sources with film, television, video games, and music.

HIST 3020 Historical Thinking & Writing

(001) Democracy on the American World War II Home Front - Natalie Mendoza

This course introduces students to historical research methods through an examination of the popular belief that World War II was a democratizing and progressive moment for marginalized communities in American society. We will explore the tension between wartime democratic rhetoric and the various forms of discrimination Japanese Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and gays and lesbians experienced by considering events such as Japanese American removal and confinement, African American efforts to end discrimination in the wartime industry and military, Mexican American civil rights diplomacy, and the policing of gender norms and sexuality in the U.S. military. In particular, we will consider under what circumstances democracy did or did not work, the government's role in hindering or promoting a sense of belonging in the nation, the way marginalized communities fought for equality, and how broader society defined "American"--in terms of identity as well as the ideals and priorities of the era. Our inquiry over the course of the semester will be guided by questions we will answer through our close reading and analysis of primary and secondary sources, among other skills central to demonstrating fluency in historical literacy. To achieve this, students can expect to write every week, in an effort to gain a familiarity and comfort with using historical literacy in the research writing process. By the end of the semester, students will produce a research proposal (annotated bibliography + historiography + research question) that will draw upon both course materials and sources they locate through independent research on our common examination of World War II as a democratizing and progressive moment in American society.

(002) The Cold War in Latin America - Tony Wood

��This course explores the history of the Cold War in Latin America, focusing mainly on the years between 1945 and 1990. We will look in depth at cases such as Guatemala and Cuba and will address the repercussions of events such as the Cuban Revolution on regional and global developments. We will draw on a range of primary sources and secondary readings, including declassified government documents that shed light on the U.S.'s deep involvement in the region. Throughout, we will discuss key historiographical questions and develop students' research and writing skills.

HIST 4139-001: History of Asian Environments - Kwangmin Kim

This course will examine the relations between the human and natural worlds in Asian history. We will pay special attention to the impact of Asian farmers, merchants, indigenous peoples, and states on the natural world. The main focus is on China in the early modern and modern periods, but there will be some discussion of Japan, South, Southeast Asia, and Inner Asia. The basic themes include frontier conquest, land clearance, water conservancy, urban footprints, animals, and relations between agrarian and non-agrarian peoples.

HIST 4328-001: The Modern Middle East, 1600 to the Present - John Willis

This course is designed to introduce students to the histories, societies and cultures of the modern Middle East covering the period from late Ottoman Empire to Arab Uprisings of 2011. ��We will pay particular attention to the way people in the region experienced the profound transformations their societies underwent from the nineteenth century onward, especially the expansion of European economic, political, and cultural power, European colonialism, the rise of the nation-state, and forms of popular opposition. ��We will conclude by discussing the contemporary Middle East, some of the issues its peoples face, and how these can be understood historically.

HIST 4623-001: History of Eastern Europe Since 1914 - John Hatch

How can a small nation-state survive? Why do people support communist or fascist regimes, and why do they then rebel? How does one build a democratic society? These questions have been central to the East European experience throughout the 20th Century. This course will examine the upheavals in the region from World War 1 through the revolutions of 1989-90 and the Yugoslav wars, the region's subsequent integration into the European Union, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as a way to gaining a better understanding of historical processes of revolution and modernization and the ideologies of nationalism, populism, communism, and liberal democracy.

HIST 4648-001: Inventing Chinese Modernity, 1800 to Present - Timothy Weston

This class focuses on China's last era of greatness and the collapse of that order in the early twentieth century; on Western and Japanese imperialism in China and the so-called "Century of Humiliation" (1842-1949); on efforts to define and acuate Chinese modernity; and on the forces that led to the Communist Revolution of 1949, one of the truly seismic events of twentieth century global history.

HIST 4806-001: Special Topics in American History: Applied History - Patricia Limerick

This course positions CU Boulder students to unleash the full force of the skills and insights they have acquired in their study of history. In the first half of the course, students will take possession of a toolkit of techniques to turn hindsight into foresight, bringing historical perspective to bear on contemporary dilemmas and conflicts. In the second half of the course, students will put Applied History's practices to work on down-to-earth, real-time case studies, ranging from the management and interpretation of a Boulder site connected to the atrocity of the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 to the rethinking and reconfiguring of the core exhibit at the Longmont Museum, from the mandated 2026 revision of the century-old arrangements for allocating water from the Colorado River to the activities planned for the 150th anniversary of Colorado statehood. Concluding the course, students will assemble an inventory, to be distributed nationwide, of the ways Applied History that can enhance the employability of emerging historians while also offering hope to a society struggling with a chronic affliction of historical amnesia.

��

MORE COURSES POSTING SOON