History

Annemarie H. Sammartino, Professor of History; chair

Zeinab Abul-Magd, Nancy Schrom Dye Professor of Middle East and North African Studies
Matthew R. Bahar, Associate Professor of History
Andrew W. Bell, Visiting Assistant Professor of History
Victoria R. Broadus, Visiting Assistant Professor of History
Nicholas Bujalski, Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian History
Yu-Chi Chang, Visiting Assistant Professor of Chinese History
Rishad I. Choudhury, Assistant Professor of History
Pablo R. Mitchell, Professor of History
Caroline W. Newhall, Assistant Professor of History
Emer S. O’Dwyer, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies and History
Renee C. Romano, Robert S. Danforth Professor of History
Leonard V. Smith, Frederick B. Artz Professor of History
Ellen B. Wurtzel, Associate Professor of History

Appointed by Courtesy
Laura Herron, Assistant Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Standing

Visit the department web page for up-to-date information on department faculty, visiting lecturers, and special events.

History encompasses the study of peoples, cultures, and institutions across many periods of time. The Department of History at Oberlin College offers courses on the United States; Latin America; Europe; Russia; the Middle East; and South, East, and Central Asia.

See information about Research, Internships, Study Away, and Experiential Learning (RISE).

Explore Winter Term projects and opportunities.

Departmental Policies

Advanced Placement Credit

The following score(s) will correspond to credit for the following course(s), fulfilling corresponding prerequisite requirements (if applicable) and counting toward total credits needed for graduation:

• AP European History, 4 or 5  →  HIST 098 (one full course)
• AP U.S. History, 4 or 5  →  HIST 099 (one full course)
• AP World History, 4 or 5  →  HIST 097 (one full course)
• IB HL Americas, 6 or 7  →  HIST 099 (one full course)
• IB HL European, 6 or 7  →  HIST 098 (one full course)

To apply for graduation credit for other IB HL history courses, students should bring the transcript, the syllabus, and a sample written work to the department chair for review. Students may not receive credit for both AP and IB courses in overlapping areas. No student may receive credit toward graduation for any combination of more than two courses in either the AP or IB programs in history.

Note: Transfer credit received for HIST 097, HIST 098, and HIST 099 does not count toward the history major or history minor.

Majors and Minors

• History Major   
• History Minor  

Curriculum

History courses examine many diverse geographical areas from a variety of historical approaches, including political, social, cultural, intellectual, economic, and environmental perspectives. Many also focus on gender, religion, labor, race, and/or ethnicity. Some courses concentrate on particular national or regional histories, while others are comparative, transnational, or global.

Private Reading Courses in the Department

Students may request that individual faculty members supervise private readings. Private readings must focus on material that is not covered in the regular history department curriculum.

Courses

• HIST 101 - Medieval and Early Modern European History
• HIST 102 - Modern European History
• HIST 103 - American History to 1877
• HIST 104 - American History, 1877 to the Present
• HIST 105 - Chinese Civilization
• HIST 106 - Modern China
• HIST 107 - Russian History I
• HIST 108 - Russian History II
• HIST 109 - Latin American History: Invasion to Independence
• HIST 110 - Latin American History: State and Nation Since Independence
• HIST 121 - History of the Middle East and North Africa, from the Rise of Islam to 1800
• HIST 122 - Middle East and North African History from 1800 to the Present
• HIST 129 - History of Rome
• HIST 130 - History of Greece
• HIST 159 - Japan: Earliest Times to 1868
• HIST 160 - Modern Japan
• HIST 162 - Premodern India
• HIST 163 - Modern South Asia
• HIST 181 - Korea and East Asia: From Ancient Times to the Present
• HIST 204 - From Gold to Guacamole: Latin American Commodity History
• HIST 205 - Heavenly Histories: The Making of Western Cosmology from Antiquity to the Trial of Galileo
• HIST 207 - Cinema, Memory, and Politics in Egypt
• HIST 208 - Of Miracles and Microscopes: A History of Science from 1200-1800
• HIST 209 - The City in Europe, 1100-1789
• HIST 214 - Oberlin Oral History: Community-Based Learning & Research Practicum
• HIST 216 - European Socialisms and Post-Socialisms
• HIST 218 - The American Revolution
• HIST 219 - The American Civil War
• HIST 226 - WW II
• HIST 227 - The History and Practice of Whiteness in the United States
• HIST 230 - Jewish Communities of the Ottoman Empire, 1453-1914
• HIST 232 - History of Race in American Cities and Suburbs
• HIST 233 - The Long War in Modern China
• HIST 234 - Bandits, Terrorists, Partisans: Non-State Political Violence in Modern Europe
• HIST 236 - Orientalism and the Jewish Question
• HIST 238 - Slavery in the U.S.
• HIST 244 - The U.S. in World War II
• HIST 249 - Postwar Japan through Music and Film
• HIST 251 - U.S. Foreign Policy
• HIST 256 - Immigration in U.S. History
• HIST 260 - Asian American History
• HIST 261 - On the Edges of China
• HIST 262 - Muslim Political Thought: From 600s to the Present
• HIST 265 - Sacred and Secular in an Islamic Republic: Pakistan
• HIST 268 - Incarceration in the Modern MENA
• HIST 270 - Latina/o History
• HIST 271 - History of Rio de Janeiro
• HIST 274 - History of the Holocaust
• HIST 276 - Slavery in Latin America
• HIST 278 - The Productive Past: Innovation and the Early Modern World
• HIST 280 - Brothers at War: The Unending Korean War
• HIST 281 - Ethnicity and Nation
• HIST 282 - The French Empire: 18th Century to the Present
• HIST 285 - American Indians: Pre-Columbus to the Present
• HIST 286 - Jewish Italy from Antiquity through Modernity
• HIST 291 - Anti-Semitism in European History and Literature
• HIST 299 - Introduction to Historical Methods
• HIST 301 - The Politics of Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
• HIST 303 - Seminar: Possession and Property in Medieval Europe
• HIST 305 - Research Methods in Black Women’s Intellectual History
• HIST 307 - Occupied Japan, 1945-1952
• HIST 310 - Marx and Marxism
• HIST 314 - Existentialism
• HIST 318 - American Orientalism
• HIST 322 - American Contact, 1492-1620
• HIST 326 - Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Latin America
• HIST 327 - Mapping China and East Asia
• HIST 328 - The Great War and Asia, 1914-1925
• HIST 335 - Seminar: Crusades - Contact and Conflict in the Mediterranean World
• HIST 337 - From the Great War to the Great Depression: America in the 1920s
• HIST 340 - Doing Local History–Community-Based Learning in Elyria
• HIST 341 - Research Seminar: The Korean War
• HIST 343 - Research Seminar: War, the Military, and the American Nation
• HIST 347 - The African Diaspora in Contemporary Latin America
• HIST 354 - The British Empire and the Indian Ocean
• HIST 358 - Memory and Justice in East Asia
• HIST 360 - Constructing the Russian Revolutionary Self
• HIST 363 - The Global Sixties in Latin America
• HIST 367 - The Other Great Game, 1860-1905
• HIST 371 - Muslim Politics in Modern South Asia
• HIST 375 - Beyond Indiana Jones: The History, Politics, and Culture of Archaeology
• HIST 376 - Westworlds: Research Seminar in Western History
• HIST 382 - Afro-Asian America: Intraminority Connections in Historical Perspective
• HIST 383 - Borders, Wars, and Refugees from the Ottoman Empire to ISIS
• HIST 389 - Archaeologies of China
• HIST 392 - Soviet History and Cinema: Art, Propaganda, and Politics, 1908-1949
• HIST 396 - Seminar: U.S. Foreign Policy and MENA
• HIST 398 - Seminar: Archiving Sex - Researching America’s Sexual Pasts
• HIST 405 - Age of Fracture: The United States since 1973
• HIST 407 - Civil War Era
• HIST 412 - Lords, Peasants, and Pigs on Trial: popular and elite culture in early modern Europe
• HIST 416 - The World Upside Down: Abolitionism in America
• HIST 418 - Beyond Slavery and Freedom in the Atlantic World
• HIST 425 - History of Space, History of Time
• HIST 427 - Borderlands
• HIST 429 - Jazz of the Americas
• HIST 430 - Environmental History of the Middle East and North Africa
• HIST 433 - American Empire
• HIST 435 - Museums: A Social, Political, and Institutional History
• HIST 440 - Europe’s East: Orientalisms from Russia to the Balkans
• HIST 448 - Slavery, Law, and Warfare in North America