This course provides a general introduction to digital methods in History through the study of the rise of information as a concept and a technology. Topics include the history of information theory, the rise of digital media, and, especially, the implications of digital media, text processing, and artificial intelligence for historical knowledge. Using simple tools, students learn to encode texts as data structures and transform those structures programmatically.

A course to introduce students of history and classical studies to the world of late antiquity, the period that bridged classical antiquity and the Middle Ages. This course studies the period for its own merit as a time when political structures of the Medieval period were laid down and the major religions of the Mediterranean (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism) took their recognizable forms.

Same as CLAB09H3

Ancient World Area

A survey of the history and culture of the Greek world from the Minoan period to the Roman conquest of Egypt (ca 1500-30 BC). Special attention will be dedicated to the nature, variety and limits of the available evidences, to socio-cultural interactions as well as to historical processes of continuities and ruptures.
Same as CLAB05H3
0.50 pre-1800 credit
Ancient World Area

A survey of the history and culture of the ancient Roman world, from the Etruscan period to the Justinian dynasty (ca 800 BC-600 AD). Special attention will be dedicated to the nature, variety and limits of the available evidences, to socio-cultural interactions as well as to historical processes of continuities and ruptures.
Same as CLAB06H3
0.5 pre-1800 credit
Ancient World Area

The representation of the classical world and historical events in film. How the Greek and Roman world is reconstructed by filmmakers, their use of spectacle, costume and furnishings, and the influence of archaeology on their portrayals. Films will be studied critically for historical accuracy and faithfulness to classical sources.
Same as CLAB20H3

Ancient World Area

This introductory survey course connects the rich histories of Black radical women’s acts, deeds, and words in Canada. It traces the lives and political thought of Black women and gender-non-conforming people who refused and fled enslavement, took part in individual and collective struggles against segregated labour, education, and immigration practices; providing a historical context for the emergence of the contemporary queer-led #BlackLivesMatter movement. Students will be introduced, through histories of activism, resistance, and refusal, to multiple concepts and currents in Black feminist studies. This includes, for example, theories of power, race, and gender, transnational/diasporic Black feminisms, Black-Indigenous solidarities, abolition and decolonization. Students will participate in experiential learning and engage an interdisciplinary array of key texts and readings including primary and secondary sources, oral histories, and online archives.

Same as WSTB22H3
Canadian Area

This class will examine Latin America’s social and cultural history from the ancient Aztecs and Incas to the twentieth-century populist revolutions of Emiliano Zapata and Evita Perón. It will also focus on Latin America’s connections to the wider world through trade, migration, and cuisine.

A survey of American history from contact between Indians and Europeans up through the Civil War. Topics include the emergence of colonial societies; the rise and destruction of racial slavery; revolution and republic-making; economic and social change in the new nation; western conquest; and the republic's collapse into internal war.
United States and Latin America Area

This course offers a survey of U.S. history from the post-Civil War period through the late 20th century, examining key episodes and issues such as settlement of the American West, industrialization, urbanization, immigration, popular culture, social movements, race relations, and foreign policy.
United States and Latin America Area

The history of northern North America from the first contacts between Europeans and Aboriginal peoples to the late 19th century. Topics include the impact of early exploration and cultural encounters, empires, trans-Atlantic migrations, colonization and revolutions on the development of northern North America.
Canadian Area

Students will be introduced to historical processes central to the history of Canada's diverse peoples and the history of the modern age more generally, including the industrial revolution, women's entry in social and political "publics," protest movements, sexuality, and migration in the context of international links and connections.

Canadian Area

Slavery was the dominant condition for Black women, men, and children in Canada from 1629 to 1834. Both the French and British colonial regimes enacted laws and ordinances that legalized slavery and gave enslavers property rights in and over Black people. This course probes the experience of enslaved Black people in New France, the five older colonies of Canada (Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario), with attention also paid to Newfoundland and the Ohio and Illinois valleys. Links will be drawn between slavery in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean.

How have relationships between humans and animals depended on and shaped the development of science? This course examines precisely how these relationships have been mediated through various forms of science – veterinary science, laboratory and biological sciences, medical sciences, agricultural sciences, and zoology, among others – and how these scientific modes interact with broader socio-cultural understandings of animal life across the globe.

An introduction to the history of Sub-Saharan Africa, from the era of the slave trade to the colonial conquests. Throughout, the capacity of Africans to overcome major problems will be stressed. Themes include slavery and the slave trade; pre-colonial states and societies; economic and labour systems; and religious change.
Africa and Asia Area

Same as AFSB50H3

Modern Sub-Saharan Africa, from the colonial conquests to the end of the colonial era. The emphasis is on both structure and agency in a hostile world. Themes include conquest and resistance; colonial economies; peasants and labour; gender and ethnicity; religious and political movements; development and underdevelopment; Pan-Africanism, nationalism and independence.

Same as AFSB51H3

Africa and Asia Area

An interdisciplinary introduction to African and African diasporic religions in historic context, including traditional African cosmologies, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, as well as millenarian and synchretic religious movements.

Same as AFSB01H3
Africa and Asia Area

Why does Southern Asia’s pre-colonial history matter? Using materials that illustrate the connected worlds of Central Asia, South Asia and the Indian Ocean rim, we will query conventional histories of Asia in the time of European expansion.
Same as GASB53H3
0.5 pre-1800 credit
Africa & Asia Area

Africa from the 1960s to the present. After independence, Africans experienced great optimism and then the disappointments of unmet expectations, development crises, conflict and AIDS. Yet the continent’s strength is its youth. Topics include African socialism and capitalism; structural adjustment and resource economies; dictatorship and democratization; migration and urbanization; social movements.

Same as AFSB54H3

Asia and Africa Area

A survey of South Asian history. The course explores diverse and exciting elements of this long history, such as politics, religion, trade, literature, and the arts, keeping in mind South Asia's global and diasporic connections.
Africa and Asia Area
Same as GASB57H3

This course provides an overview of the historical changes and continuities of the major cultural, economic, political, and social institutions and practices in modern Chinese history.
Same as GASB58H3
Africa and Asia Area

This is a gateway course to the study of the history of science, technology, and medicine, examining the development of modern science and technology in service of and as a response to mercantile and colonial empires. Students will read historical scholarship and also get a basic introduction to the methods, big ideas, and sources for the history of science, technology and medicine. Such scientific and technological advances discussed will include geography and cartography; botany and agricultural science; race science and anthropology; tropical medicine and disease control; transportation and communication technologies.

The development of Europe from the Late Roman period to the eleventh-century separation of the Roman and Byzantine Churches. The course includes the foundation and spread of Christianity, the settlement of "barbarians" and Vikings, the establishment of Frankish kingship, the Empire of Charlemagne, and feudalism and manorialism.
0.50 pre-1800 credit
Medieval Area

An introduction to the social, political, religious and economic foundations of the Western world, including Church and State relations, the Crusades, pilgrimage, monasticism, universities and culture, rural exploitation, town development and trade, heresy, plague and war. Particular attention will be devoted to problems which continue to disrupt the modern world.
0.50 pre-1800 credit
Medieval Area

An exploration of the interplay of culture, religion, politics and commerce in the Mediterranean region from 1500 to 1800. Through travel narratives, autobiographical texts, and visual materials we will trace how men and women on the Mediterranean's European, Asian, and African shores experienced their changing world.
0.50 pre-1800 credit
Transnational Area.

This course explores the history of early and medieval Islamic societies, from the rise of Islam in the seventh century up to the Mongol invasions (c. 1300). The course will trace the trajectory of the major Islamic dynasties (i.e.: Umayyads, Abbasids, Seljuks, Fatimids, and Ayyubids) and also explore the cultural and literary developments in these societies. Geographically, the course spans North Africa, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

Pre-1800 course

Medieval Area

This course explores the political and cultural history of early modern and modern Muslim societies including the Mongols, Timurids, Mamluks, and the Gunpowder empires (Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals). It concludes with the transformations in the Middle East in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: European colonialism, modernization, and the rise of the nation-states.

Pre-1800 course
Medieval Area

Europe from the French Revolution to the First World War. Major topics include revolution, industrialization, nationalism, imperialism, science, technology, art and literature.
European Area

Europe from the First World War to the present day. War, political extremism, economic crisis, scientific and technological change, cultural modernism, the Holocaust, the Cold War, and the European Union are among the topics covered.
European Area

The course is an introduction to some of the most radical European ideas from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. We will study ideas that challenged the existing political order and aimed to overturn the social status quo, ideas that undermined centuries of religious belief and ideas that posed new visions of what it meant to be human. This will include the study of classic texts written by well-known intellectual figures, as well as the study of lesser-known writers and people who challenged the received wisdom of the day.
European Area

An examination of the nature and uses of evidence in historical and related studies.
Historians use a wide variety of sources as evidence for making meaningful statements about the past. This course explores what is meant by history and how historians evaluate sources and test their reliability as historical evidence.