An introduction to the revolutionary events in politics and the economy, principally the industrialization of society, and the national, class, ethnic, and gender conflicts that dominated the period, including their cultural and ideological aspects. The course begins with the wars and revolutions of the 18th c., including the French Revolution, characterized by high hopes for the rational mastery of nature and society. It concludes with the Second World War, a period of mass destruction and total war, and the construction of the institutions of post-national Europe.

Satisfies: DIV, SBS, USA 
Instructor: Professor Mark Chambers
Lecture: Mo/We 11:00aM - 11:55AM
Recitation(s): Check SOLAR for more information

This course surveys American history from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the end of the first Trump presidency. Topics covered include the rise of Jim Crow; varied 19th and 20th century immigration flows and legislation; corporate capitalism and consumption culture; economic booms and depressions; World Wars I and II and the Viet Nam War; civil rights, peace, labor, feminist, racial empowerment, and LGBTQ movements; heightened border militarization and restrictions; liberalism and conservatism; and the turn towards a populist Far Right movement. Analyzing geo-political formations and major historical shifts alongside social movements, this course reconsiders the notion of “American exceptionalism” by deconstructing mythologies and emphasizing historical change demanded by the people themselves. 

This course surveys the modern history of Africa, roughly from the 1400s to the present. The continent was involved in global interactions that built the modern world, including but not limited to the trade in slaves across the Trans-Saharan networks, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean and later the Atlantic. Topics to be covered include slave trade and abolition, African political and economic transformations, and African responses to European imperialism. The course will also examine African resistance and independence movements, the formation of independent nations, and postcolonial development in fields including education, art, science, and medicine. Course materials may include films, novels, and oral histories alongside written texts. This is an excellent introduction for students interested in Africa and the Diaspora, global and international history, and the study of social movements.

Satisfies: GLO
Thematic Cluster:  "Arts, Ideas & Culture; Empires," "Empires, Violence & Global Connections," "Race, Religion, Gender & Sexualities"
Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Jordan
Lecture: MoWe 2:00PM - 2:55PM
Recitation(s): Check SOLAR for more information

This course has two main purposes. One is to give you a broad perspective on the history of Medieval Europe from the eleventh through fifteenth centuries by reading selected primary sources in English translation. The second is to teach you how to analyze and contextualize narrative, non-narrative, and visual primary sources as we chart the major political, intellectual, social, religious, and economic developments in Europe during the Later Middle Ages. During the centuries between the first millennium and the beginning of the early modern period, Europe was repeatedly transformed in the political, social, and religious spheres, and the framework was laid for modern conceptions of the state, law, and family.  Major topics to be covered include economic expansion, the revival of urbanism; the medieval Church; the Crusades; the relationships between secular and ecclesiastical power structures; the twelfth-century intellectual Renaissance; the rise of national monarchies, constructions of orthodoxy and heresy; the status of women, Jews, and workers; later medieval warfare, plague, and schism; and the beginnings of European exploration, conquest and colonization during the fifteenth century

How was it possible for mass genocide to occur in the midst of one of the most cultured societies of Europe in the twentieth century? This course will examine the centuries-long social, cultural and religious context that fed into the 20th-century environment in which the Holocaust became possible, as well as the contemporary political events, and the gradually unfolding actions by the Nazi government in Germany and territories under their influence from 1933-1945, which ultimately culminated in the Holocaust. We will also examine the Jewish experience under the Nazis in the 1930’s, as well as the life in the ghettoes and concentration camps from the perspective of both the victims and the persecutors. Additionally, we will analyze major issues and questions that arise in the wake of the Holocaust. The course will be conducted through a series of lectures and class discussions.

Satisfies: GLO, SBS, HUM
Thematic Cluster:  Arts, Ideas & Culture, Law, Politics & Social Justice
Instructor: Dr. Heejeong Sohn
Lecture: TuTh 11:00AM - 12:20PM
Recitation(s): None

Examines Korea’s historical experiences and social transformation from mid-nineteenth century to present through visual materials such as photographs, films, postcards, print materials and paintings as well as historical texts and secondary analysis. Students will acquire in-depth knowledge of Korea’s modern experiences as well as its contemporary society and culture. The course aims to cultivate students’ visual literacy on modern Korea through interpreting and analyzing historical visual documents and creating their own visual essays.

Satisfies: USA, SBS, DIV
Thematic Cluster: Arts, Ideas & Culture,” “Law, Politics & Social Justice,” “Race, Religion, Gender & Sexualities”
Instructor: Professor Ricky Tomczak
Lecture: Check SOLAR for more information

This course examines the period when the United States became a Modern Nation during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and into the early years of the twentieth century.  Railroad lines crisscrossed the nation, and large numbers of immigrants, from Eastern Europe and Mexico, arrived in the United States.  Developments at home and abroad seemed to promise a new era of prosperity and progress.  The mass manufacturing of automobiles and other products proved a boon to the economy and transformed patterns of travel, leisure, and consumption.  In connection with these changes the subjects to be discussed include the uses of vast reserves of coal, timber, and water that helped fuel a growing industrial economy, and the rise of social reform movements to address these changing conditions.  Requirements include attendance and participation as well as writing assignments.  In addition, there will be a mid-term, a final, and a short paper.

In this course we will explore, analyze, and interrogate the ways disease, and responses to it, have both reflected and determined the course of American history from the late 19th C. to the present. From the “Age of Epidemics” to the revolution in genetics, to the AIDS epidemic, and the current COVID-19 pandemic, we will examine how our understanding of disease changed over time, how different diseases were seen and approached differently (hereditary, communicable) and how those changes related (or contradicted) the science and why.  We will explore the public communication of science and the growth of government concern and involvement in all aspects of public health and how these programs were shaped in relation to questions of citizenship, race, class, and gender.  In this course we will consult a variety of primary and secondary sources, including books, journal, news, and magazine articles, images, as well as documentary films.  

Satisfies: GLO, SBS+
Thematic Cluster: "Arts, Ideas & Culture," "Empires, Violence & Global Connections," "Race, Religion, Gender & Sexualities"
Instructor: Dr. Eric Beverley
Lecture: MoWe 11:00AM - 12:50PM

This course is an examination of major territorial empires from 1500 to the present. The course focuses not only on expanding empires, officials, and colonists but emphasizes the experiences the diverse populations and polities across world regions that grappled with the fact of imperialism, as well as ideas and commodities that circulated through expanding global networks. The class begins by developing a framework of key concepts and broad trends, and a brief survey of ancient and medieval empires and their legacies, and then proceeds to a broad chronological and geographical exploration of major imperial formations over three periods. First, we examine empires of the early modern period (c. 1500-1750) in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, emphasizing parallel and divergent trends among a diverse array of expanding imperial states. Second, we turn to the period from the mid-eighteenth century to the Second World War when European empires increasingly established global dominance and developed a repertoire of shared political strategies. Third, we consider global decolonization beginning in the mid-twentieth century, legacies of European imperialism, and new forms of empire from the Cold War era to the present. Case studies will be drawn from early modern Muslim and Catholic imperialism (Mughal, Iberian), modern overseas (British, French) and land-based (Russian, Chinese) empires, and US imperialism in the twenty-first century. Key themes include accommodation of cultural difference, centralizing and decentralizing tendencies, ideas of race and social hierarchies, technological change and environmental impact, imperial economic systems and inequality, and colonial and anti-colonial violence. Course requirements include active participation in class discussions, a geography project or quiz, and take-home essay assignments.

What is financialization, where can we find it, and how does it shape our personal lives and societies? While the term has become ubiquitous, it was used little before the 2007 financial crisis. Since then, people have become particularly concerned by the power, volatility, and potential effects of financial markets, just as they are increasingly anxious about the ways in which financial interests might underpin their lives. This course takes the Wall Street bull by the horns, enabling us to grasp the meaning, function, and consequences of processes of financialization today. The course is organized in weekly, thematic modules. Each week, you will be introduced to an area that has come to be driven by securitized debt and secondary markets. We will explore the phenomenon of financialization in the spheres of housing, education, healthcare, corporations, consumption, development, and state-making, gaining insight into the causes and real-world effects of financialization. In doing so, our goal is to demystify financialization, moving away from the popular tendency to either naturalize or demonize financial markets. Instead, this course invites you to analyze financialization as a cunning ‘fix,’ a lucrative device, and a problematic but universalist project in the context of shifting political-economic structures and gaping inequality. Throughout, we will maintain a social perspective that puts ordinary people at the center of this phenomenon. How does financialization affect going to college and getting a degree? Making home and holding property? Falling ill and receiving healthcare? Getting a job and making a living? Gaining and exercising rights as citizens of states? Together, we will find answers for these questions in conversation with a diverse line-up of scholars and practitioners.

What is financialization, where can we find it, and how does it shape our personal lives and societies? While the term has become ubiquitous, it was used little before the 2007 financial crisis. Since then, people have become particularly concerned by the power, volatility, and potential effects of financial markets, just as they are increasingly anxious about the ways in which financial interests might underpin their lives. This course takes the Wall Street bull by the horns, enabling us to grasp the meaning, function, and consequences of processes of financialization today. The course is organized in weekly, thematic modules. Each week, you will be introduced to an area that has come to be driven by securitized debt and secondary markets. We will explore the phenomenon of financialization in the spheres of housing, education, healthcare, corporations, consumption, development, and state-making, gaining insight into the causes and real-world effects of financialization. In doing so, our goal is to demystify financialization, moving away from the popular tendency to either naturalize or demonize financial markets. Instead, this course invites you to analyze financialization as a cunning ‘fix,’ a lucrative device, and a problematic but universalist project in the context of shifting political-economic structures and gaping inequality. Throughout, we will maintain a social perspective that puts ordinary people at the center of this phenomenon. How does financialization affect going to college and getting a degree? Making home and holding property? Falling ill and receiving healthcare? Getting a job and making a living? Gaining and exercising rights as citizens of states? Together, we will find answers for these questions in conversation with a diverse line-up of scholars and practitioners.

“The way we see things is affected by what we know and what we believe.” (John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972)

Art is a product of history. It acquires its form, content, and meaning from the immediate conditions of its production and reception. This course will examine art works as historical documents. It will look at the shifting social, economic, political and cultural structures, both institutional and ideological, that supported and gave meaning and value to certain kinds of visual and performance arts, at the processes of art production, and at the changing definitions of “art” and “the artist” in nineteenth-century America. During the semester, students will be introduced to concepts and readings from a variety of disciplines, and to some amazing works of visual art, music, and theater. The classes will be a mixture of lectures and discussions or workshops. We will also visit an art studio on campus. Attendance and class participation are mandatory. Other forms of student assessment will include a weekly quiz, one midterm exam, miscellaneous assignments, one 5-page paper, and one 3-minute spoken presentation illustrated with PowerPoint slides.

This course explores the making of Qing Inner Asia from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Moving westward from China proper, we examine how Qing expansion brought together diverse peoples, languages, religions, places, and political traditions across Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the wider Inner Asian world. Through primary sources and recent scholarship, the course considers multilingualism, religion, mobility, war, trade, environment, and cultural exchange, while asking how an Inner Asian perspective changes our understanding of Qing and Chinese history. More broadly, the course introduces students to central questions in the study of early modern empires and the histories of cultural and political encounter. Designed for history majors as well as undergraduate students interested in Asian, empire, and global history, it requires no prior knowledge of China or Inner Asia.

Did you know that the most vital workers in British Burma’s lucrative teak industry were elephants? Or that the most populous colonizers of Australia were sheep, first introduced in 1797? Is history solely the purview of humans and human activity? Can we include animals in our historical narratives, and if so, how? We are still coming to terms with how the “Age of Empire” has dramatically changed our view of the nonhuman, especially animals. Ranging across time and space, we will meet animals, both real and imagined, including white ants in India, elephants in Myanmar and tigers in Malaya. We will ask how the burgeoning field of animal studies helps us to approach older concerns of power, race, capitalism, and environment in the context of empire. As debates about climate, race, species, and our place in an increasingly interconnected world grow more urgent, this course invites you to leave behind the comfortable anthropocentric view of world history.

Few decades in American history have been as contested, unsettled, and revolutionary as the 1960s. By using the term “the Sixties,” this course will analyze the decade of the 1960s as both a watershed in modern U.S. history and as a contested public memory and history that continues to preoccupy scholars, political pundits, and the general public.  In addition to offering a narrative of this “long decade” that stretches from the late 1950s through the early 1970s, this course will also analyze how recent scholarship and political and social dialogues have challenged the history of the 1960s.  A study of the 1960's, emphasizing conflict within American liberalism between cold warriors and antiwar activists, advocates of the bureaucratic welfare state versus those favoring small-scale community control, and idealized liberalism versus a rising tide of street and student radicalism.  Course topics include: 1) Cold War politics and culture; 2) the U.S.-Vietnam War; 3) consumerism and the American economy; 4) the “War on Poverty” and struggles over ideas of social welfare; 5) the political and ideological struggles between liberalism and conservatism; 6) the struggle for civil rights and black freedom; 7) ethnic and racial movements for political power; 8) counterculture, radicalism, and youth movements; and, 9) feminist movements, gender, and the “sexual revolution.” Special attention is given to the paradigmatic qualities of the civil rights movement, the domestic side of the Vietnam War, and the relationship of liberalism to radicalism. This is a lecture-based course where regular attendance is necessary to prepare for mid-term and final exams. Course work will include a midterm, a final, and two critical review essays of secondary sources and primary documents. By drawing upon primary documents, course readings, political speeches, music, pictures and videos of the era this course will reflect on what made this decade so “unsettled. 

September 11, 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center’s twin towers, damaged the Pentagon, and led to the crash of an airplane meant for the U.S. Capitol or the White House in a Pennsylvania field. In this course, students will have the opportunity to explore the history of 9/ll, in particular its impact on New York City and Long Island, through hands-on historical work. They will be trained to conduct oral histories and do interviews with SBU alums and faculty about their experiences of 9/11; those oral histories will become part of a new Stony Brook 9/ll archives. They will learn how to do podcasts and create some 9/ll themed episodes around topics of their choice. Finally, they will learn how to create StoryMaps around 9/ll themes, again of their choice. Students will be encouraged to follow their own interests. Possible themes  include: the evolving “War on Terror,” expanding surveillance technologies, political aftereffects, impact on community policing and immigration policies, racial profiling and free speech issues, and 9/ll’s long term health and mental health consequences. Prior knowledge of the history of 9/ll is not required to take this course. We will be learning that history along with the hands-on skills. But students who took HIS 396, “The Historical Perspectives on the September 11 terrorist attacks,” are welcome to take this course as a follow up. Students can also enroll for an additional one credit of HIS 444 to get EXP+ credit for the course.

For the formal work in the course, students will be required to produce the equivalent of two hour long oral histories, including transcriptions,  one twenty minute podcast, and one 10-12 page Story Map. Ideas for alternate projects, such as pop up exhibits and short videos, will be gladly entertained. All required readings will be made available via Brightspace.

Although approximately 70% of Earth’s surface is covered by water, this vast expanse is often regarded as an unfathomable space with no history. Despite intensive scientific investigation, there is still much about these submerged realms that remains mysterious. Yet for thousands of years, humans have negotiated the oceans' currents, plumbed their silent depths, harvested their natural bounty, and been humbled by their waves’ awesome force. In many ways, the modern world was profoundly shaped—and continues to be shaped—by human engagements with the oceans. In this course, we’ll explore the historical significance of oceans (and adjacent coastal zones) from social, economic, and environmental perspectives. We’ll also learn about the diversity of people's maritime experiences from the pre-modern period to today. Some of the subjects that we’ll investigate include: ocean exploration from the Atlantic to the Pacific; development of maritime technologies, navigation, and mapping; social history of sailors, pirates, fishermen, whalers, pirates (male and female), and other seafarers; and the development of oceanography and marine ecology. This interdisciplinary course incorporates videos, music, literature, visual and material culture. Requirements: attendance; class participation (including discussion and in-class activities); reading approximately 4 chapters/articles per week; 3 short writing assignments; and a final research project (8-10 pages), completed in stages during the semester.

This course examines the relationship between the Roman Empire and the Jewish and Christian communities in the lands under its rule. The relationship between the Roman government and the emerging rabbinic movement will be explored, as well as the transition of Rome from a power that persecuted Christians to a power that accepted and then adopted the Christian faith will also be examined in detail. The impact of this change on Jewish communities in the fourth century C.E. led to surprising developments, many of which are not commonly understood. The course will examine some of the many forms of Christianity and Judaism that developed until there was a clear separation between the two religions, both of which underwent continual revisions of group identity during these formative centuries. The course will cover material from the second century C.E. through the fifth century C.E., examining the evidence from Jewish and Christian texts as well as other historical documents and material remains. The focus in the readings will be on certain prominent figures and their writings. The class lectures will fill in much of the surrounding context and history, which makes attendance in class all the more essential. The class is in lecture format with class discussions.