Overview of the political and social developments that produced the modern United States in the half-century after 1877. Topics include urbanization, immigration, industrialization, the rise of big business and of mass culture, imperialism, the evolution of the American colour line, and how Americans used politics to grapple with these changes.
United States and Latin America Area

This transnational history course explores the origins, consolidation, and unmaking of segregationist social orders in the American South and South Africa. It examines the origins of racial inequality, the structural and socio-political roots of segregation, the workings of racial practices and ideologies, and the various strategies of both accommodation and resistance employed by black South Africans and African Americans from the colonial era up to the late twentieth century.

Transnational Area

Overview of the waves of immigration and internal migration that have shaped America from the colonial period to the present. Topics include colonization and westward migration, immigrants in the industrial and contemporary eras, nativism, stances towards pluralism and assimilation, and how migration experiences have varied by race, class, and gender.
United States and Latin America Area

This course examines black life and culture in the cotton South through the medium of the blues. Major topics include: land tenure patterns in southern agriculture, internal and external migration, mechanisms of state and private labour control, gender conventions in the black community, patterns of segregation and changing race relations.

United States and Latin America Area

An examination of aspects of the history of immigrants and race relations in Canada, particularly for the period 1840s 1960s.
The course covers various immigrant and racialized groups and explores how class, gender and race/ethnicity shaped experiences and racial/ethnic relations.
Canadian Area

A look at Canada's evolution in relation to developments on the world stage. Topics include Canada's role in the British Empire and its relationship with the U.S., international struggles for women's rights, Aboriginal peoples' sovereignty and LGBT equality, socialism and communism, the World Wars, decolonization, the Cold War, humanitarianism, and terrorism.
Canadian Area

This course addresses literary, historical, ethnographic, and filmic representations of the political economy of China and the Indian subcontinent from the early 19th century to the present day. We will look at such topics as the role and imagination of the colonial-era opium trade that bound together India, China and Britain in the 19th century, anticolonial conceptions of the Indian and Chinese economies, representations of national physical health, as well as critiques of mass-consumption and capitalism in the era of the ‘liberalization’ and India and China’s rise as major world economies. Students will acquire a grounding in these subjects from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives.

Same as GASC51H3

Asia and Africa Area

This course uses a focus on material history and visual culture to explore Ethiopia from the fourth through the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the Christian Church, the monarchy, links with both the Mediterranean world and the Indian subcontinent, and the relationship of individuals to their social, economic, artistic and geographic environments.
Same as AFSC52H3 and VPHC52H3
0.50 pre-1800 credit
Africa and Asia Area

Conflict and social change in Africa from the slave trade to contemporary times. Topics include the politics of resistance, women and war, repressive and weak states, the Cold War, guerrilla movements, resource predation. Case studies of anticolonial rebellions, liberation wars, and civil conflicts will be chosen from various regions.
Same as AFSC55H3
Africa and Asia Area

An introduction to the distinctive East Asian legal tradition shared by China, Japan, and Korea through readings about selected thematic issues. Students will learn to appreciate critically the cultural, political, social, and economic causes and effects of East Asian legal cultures and practices.
Same as GASC50H3
Africa and Asia Area

A study of the history of China's relationship with the rest of the world in the modern era. The readings focus on China's role in the global economy, politics, religious movements, transnational diasporas, scientific/technological exchanges, and cultural encounters and conflicts in the ages of empire and globalization.
Same as GASC57H3
Africa and Asia Area

This course explores the transnational history of Tamil worlds. In addition to exploring modern Tamil identities, the course will cover themes such as mass migration, ecology, social and economic life, and literary history.
Same as GASC59H3
Africa and Asia Area

An exploration of how medieval and early modern societies encountered foreigners and accounted for foreignness, as well as for religious, linguistic, and cultural difference more broadly. Topics include: monsters, relics, pilgrimage, the rise of the university, merchant companies, mercenaries, piracy, captivity and slavery, tourism, and the birth of resident embassies.

0.5 pre-1800 credit
Transnational Area

Social and cultural history of the Venetian Empire from a fishermen's colony to the Napoleonic Occupation of 1797. Topics include the relationships between commerce and colonization in the Mediterranean, state building and piracy, aristocracy and slavery, civic ritual and spirituality, guilds and confraternities, households and families.

0.5 pre-1800 credit
European Area

This course examines the history and historiography of the formative period of Islam and the life and legacy of Muḥammad, Islam’s founder. Central themes explored include the Late Antique context of the Middle East, pre-Islamic Arabia and its religions, the Qur’ān and its textual history, the construction of biographical accounts of Muḥammad, debates about the historicity of reports from Muḥammad, and the evolving identity and historical conception of the early Muslim community.

Same as CLAC67H3
Pre-1800 course
Ancient World Area

This course reflects on the concept of Orientalism and how it informs the fields of Classical Studies and Anthropology. Topics to be discussed include the Orientalization of the past and the origin, role, and significance of ancient representations of the "Other" in contemporary discourses.
Same as ANTC58H3 and CLAC68H3

The migration of Caribbean peoples to the United States, Canada, and Europe from the late 19th century to the present. The course considers how shifting economic circumstances and labour demands, the World Wars, evolving imperial relationships, pan-Africanism and international unionism, decolonization, natural disasters, and globalization shaped this migration.
Same as AFSC70H3
Transnational Area

Using the methods of intellectual history, this course explores the connected histories of two distinct systems of social oppression: caste and race. While caste is understood to be a peculiarly South Asian historical formation, race is identified as foundational to Atlantic slavery. Yet ideas about race and caste have intersected with each other historically from the early modern period through the course of European colonialism. How might we understand those connections and why is it important to do so? How has the colonial and modern governance of society, economy and sexuality relied on caste and race while keeping those categories resolutely apart? How have Black and Oppressed caste intellectuals and sociologists insisted on thinking race and caste together? We will explore these questions by examining primary texts and essays and the debates they provoked among thinkers from Latin America, the Caribbean, the American South, South Africa, and South Asia.

African and Asia Area

What is imperialism? What are its social, cultural, political, and economic effects? What is the relationship between imperialism and capitalism? Or imperialism and authoritarianism? This course focuses on the intellectual history of modern imperialism. We will read the writings of imperialists themselves alongside critical accounts of imperialism and its effects.

Transnational Area

The course will explore the history and career of a term: The Global South. The global south is not a specific place but expressive of a geopolitical relation. It is often used to describe areas or places that were remade by geopolitical inequality. How and when did this idea emerge? How did it circulate? How are the understandings of the global south kept in play? Our exploration of this term will open up a world of solidarity and circulation of ideas shaped by grass-roots social movements in different parts of the world

Same as GASC73H3
Africa and Asia Area

A survey of human mobility from the era when humans first populated the earth to the global migrations of our own time. An introduction to the main categories of human movement and to historical and modern arguments for fostering or restricting migration.

Transnational Area

Over millennia, urban communities globally have existed alongside, produced, harboured, and found ways to deal with whatever they considered dirty and disease-carrying – from sewage and smoke to cholera and COVID-19 to sex workers and pilgrim travellers. This course explores the history of urban sanitation and health in a variety of global cities, with a focus on the 16th to 21st centuries. You will travel through course your reading of research and primary sources we will travel to cities like London, Bombay, Hong Kong, New York, Mexico City, Istanbul, and Dar Es Salaam. Over the semester, you will follow the journeys of germs, pollutants, waste, and the humans and animals seen as their carriers or causes, as they were made subject to governments, the law, science, medicine, and technology striving to control or eliminate everything understood as dirt and disease, toward the goal of making cities that reflected frequently colonial, capitalist and nationalist ideals. Assessment will be through a combination of class participation, reading notes, primary source analysis and essays.

Transnational Area

Soccer (“football” to most of the world) is the world’s game and serves as a powerful lens through which to examine major questions in modern world history. How did a game that emerged in industrial Britain spread so quickly throughout the globe? How has the sport been appropriated politically and become a venue for contests over class, ethnic and national identity? Why have wars been fought over the outcome of matches? In short, how does soccer explain the modern world?

Transnational Area

The Qur'an retells many narratives of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. This course compares the Qur'anic renditions with those of the earlier scriptures, focusing on the unique features of the Qur'anic versions. It will also introduce the students to the history of ancient and late antique textual production, transmission of texts and religious contact. The course will also delve into the historical context in which these texts were produced and commented upon in later generations.
Same as CLAC94H3

An examination of the relationship between language, society and identity in North Africa and the Arabic-speaking Middle East from the dawn of Islam to the contemporary period. Topics include processes of Arabization and Islamization, the role of Arabic in pan-Arab identity; language conflict in the colonial and postcolonial periods; ideologies of gender and language among others.

Asia and Africa Area

This option is available in rare and exceptional circumstances to students who have demonstrated a high level of academic maturity and competence. Qualified students will have the opportunity to investigate a historical field which is of common interest to both student and supervisor. Only standing faculty may serve as supervisors, please see the HCS website for a list of eligible faculty.

This option is available in rare and exceptional circumstances to students who have demonstrated a high level of academic maturity and competence. Qualified students will have the opportunity to investigate an historical field which is of common interest to both student and supervisor. Only standing faculty may serve as supervisors, please see the HCS website for a list of eligible faculty.

This seminar will expose students to advanced subject matter and research methods in history. Each seminar will explore a selected topic.

A seminar exploring the social history of translators, interpreters, and the texts they produce. Through several case studies from Ireland and Istanbul to Québec, Mexico City, and Goa, we will ask how translators shaped public understandings of "self" and "other," "civilization" and "barbarity" in the wake of European colonization.
Transnational Area

An exploration of the global problem of crime and punishment. The course investigates how the global processes of colonialism, industrialization, capitalism and liberalization affected modern criminal justice and thus the state-society relationship and modern citizenry in different cultures across time and space.
Same as GASD06H3
Transnational Area