Courses

HIST B101 The Historical Imagination

Not offered 2026-27

Explores some of the ways people have thought about, represented, and used the past across time and space. Introduces students to modern historical practices and debates through examination and discussion of texts and archives that range from scholarly monographs and documents to monuments, oral traditions, and other media.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: International Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B102 Introduction to African Civilizations

Fall 2026

The course is designed to introduce students to the history of African and African Diaspora societies, cultures, and political economies. We will discuss the origins, state formation, external contacts, and the structural transformations and continuities of African societies and cultures in the context of the slave trade, colonial rule, capitalist exploitation, urbanization, and westernization, as well as contemporary struggles over authority, autonomy, identity and access to resources. Case studies will be drawn from across the continent.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B200 The Atlantic World 1492-1800

Fall 2026

The aim of this course is to provide an understanding of the way in which peoples, goods, and ideas from Africa, Europe. and the Americas came together to form an interconnected Atlantic World system. The course is designed to chart the manner in which an integrated system was created in the Americas in the early modern period, rather than to treat the history of the Atlantic World as nothing more than an expanded version of North American, Caribbean, or Latin American history.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Anthropology; International Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Peace Justice and Human Rights.

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HIST B219 LGBTQ+ History in the United States

Not offered 2026-27

This course traces the history of LGBTQ+ identities, relationships, and politics in the United States from the late 18th century to the present. We will consider, in particular, the shifting meanings of sexual and gender variance and LGBTQ+ identities; changing forms of romantic and sexual relationships; the emergence and policing of LGBTQ+ communities, as shaped by class and race; the history of LGBTQ+ activism and its intersections with broader movements for social and economic justice; and the relationship between LGBTQ+ people and the state. Students will learn to read and analyze a range of historical scholarship, as well as primary texts in the history of gender and sexuality including memoirs and letters, periodicals, photographs, and political manifestos.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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HIST B226 Topics in 20th Century European History

Section 001 (Fall 2025): Revolution in European History
Section 001 (Spring 2026): History of Fascism: Then & Now

Not offered 2026-27

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B235 Africa to 1800

Not offered 2026-27

The course explores the formation and development of African societies, with a special focus on the key processes of hominisation, agricultural revolution, metalworking, the formation of states, the connection of West Africa to the world economy.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies.

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HIST B237 Themes in Modern African History

Section 001 (Spring 2026): Public History in Africa
Section 001 (Fall 2026): Public History in Africa

Fall 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; International Studies; International Studies; Museum Studies.

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HIST B242 American Politics and Society: 1945 to the Present

Fall 2026

This course examines transformations in American culture, politics, and society from World War II to the present, focusing on flashpoints of government policy, popular culture, and social activism. We will trace this history with a focus on four central themes: (1) U.S. domestic and foreign policy and the fear of annihilation, from the Cold War, the specter of nuclear warfare, and the War in Vietnam to the War on Terror and climate change; (2) the growth and convergence of movements for social justice, including African American, Latinx, Asian American, indigenous, feminist, and LGBTQ+ rights and liberation; (3) the rise of the New Right, neoliberalism, the reshaping of party politics, and their impact on social welfare, healthcare, and the environment; and (4) the politics of popular culture, especially television, music, and digital media. Across these themes, we will consider where government leaders and popular culture have worked to reinforce social norms and sharpen political divides and how social movements have reshaped American politics and society.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B243 Topics: Atlantic Cultures

Section 001 (Spring 2026): Maroon Communities - New World

Not offered 2026-27

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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HIST B257 British Empire I: Capitalism and Slavery

Not offered 2026-27

Focusing on the Atlantic slave trade and the slave plantation mode of production, this course explores English colonization, and the emergence and the decline of British Empire in the Americas and Caribbean from the 17th through the late 20th centuries. It tracks some of the intersecting and overlapping routes-and roots-connecting histories and politics within and between these "new" world locations. It also tracks the further and proliferating links between developments in these regions and the histories and politics of regions in the "old" world, from the north Atlantic to the South China sea.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Growth and Structure of Cities; International Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B258 British Empire: Imagining Indias

Fall 2026

This course considers ideas about and experiences of "modern" India, i.e., India during the colonial and post-Independence periods (roughly 1757-present). While "India" and "Indian history" along with "British empire" and "British history" will be the ostensible objects of our consideration and discussions, the course proposes that their imagination and meanings are continually mediated by a wide variety of institutions, agents, and analytical categories (nation, religion, class, race, gender, to name a few examples). The course uses primary sources, scholarly analyses, and cultural productions to explore the political economies of knowledge, representation, and power in the production of modernity.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: International Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B264 Passages from India: 1800-Present

Not offered 2026-27

This course explores the histories and effects of migration from the Indian subcontinent to far-flung destinations across the globe. It starts with the circular migrations of traders, merchants, and pilgrims in the medieval period from the Indian subcontinent to points east (in southeast Asia) and west (eastern Africa). However, the focus of the course is on modern migrations from the subcontinent, from the indentured labor migrations of the British colonial period (to Africa, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific) to the post-Independence emigrations from the new nations of the subcontinent to Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: International Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B292 Women in Britain since 1750

Fall 2026

Focusing on contemporary and historical narratives, this course explores the ongoing production, circulation and refraction of discourses on gender and nation as well as race, empire and modernity since the mid-18th century. Texts will incorporate visual material as well as literary evidence and culture and consider the crystallization of the discipline of history itself.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B294 Making Modern America Between the Wars

Not offered 2026-27

The decades between World War I and World War II were a tumultuous and uncertain period for the U.S., and a critical moment in the emergence of modern American culture and politics, with important connections and parallels to the present. The years from 1918 to 1941 encompassed a major epidemic on the scale of COVID-19, the winning of women's suffrage, a rise of policing with Prohibition, the spread of anti-black violence and segregation, early African American civil rights activism, the growth of black communities and culture in Northern cities, rising nativism and Eugenics, shifts in gender and sexual norms, the Great Depression, labor activism and Communist witch-hunts, and a major expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the federal government with the New Deal. Rather than simply track major events, we'll study American society and politics in this period by foregrounding the lives of everyday people through close analysis of their material and cultural worlds, including personal and domestic artifacts such as letters, photographs, and food, as well as new technologies and creative works such as radio shows, films, novels, plays, and music. We'll work with archival and art collections at Bryn Mawr and Haverford. We'll also consider how historians frame these objects through different thematic lenses to imagine and interpret the past. The class is especially geared to first years and sophomores considering a major in history.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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HIST B299 Exploring History

Not offered 2026-27

This course is designed to introduce history majors to the debates governing the production of historical knowledge which dominate the discipline. Although undergraduates often read history monographs as finished and "complete" projects, in fact each of these works is always deeply contested - both in terms of method and product. The goal of this course is to not only reinforce habits of critical textual reading but to provide students the tools to critically "read" the entire project of writing history. Required for History Majors.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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HIST B303 Topics in American History

Section 001 (Fall 2025): Histories of Homelessness

Not offered 2026-27

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Recent topics have included medicine, advertising, and history of sexuality. Course may be repeated for credit.

Counts Toward: Gender & Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Health Studies.

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HIST B319 Topics in Modern European History

Section 001 (Spring 2026): Growing Up in Communism

Not offered 2026-27

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Counts Toward: Growth and Structure of Cities; International Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B327 Topics in Early American History

Section 001 (Spring 2026): Indigenous Peoples

Not offered 2026-27

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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HIST B337 Topics in African History

Section 001 (Spring 2026): Cities, Epidemics, Pandemics

Not offered 2026-27

This is a topics course. Topics vary.

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Health Studies; Health Studies; International Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B371 Topics in Atlantic History: The Early Modern Pirate in Fact and Fiction

Not offered 2026-27

This course will explore piracy in the Americas in the period 1550-1750. We will investigate the historical reality of pirates and what they did, and the manner in which pirates have entered the popular imagination through fiction and films. Pirates have been depicted as lovable rogues, anti-establishment rebels, and enlightened multiculturalists who were skilled in dealing with the indigenous and African peoples of the Americas. The course will examine the facts and the fictions surrounding these important historical actors.

Writing Intensive

Counts Toward: International Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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HIST B398 Approaches to Historical Praxis

This course is designed to provide students the opportunity to consider different ways of "doing history." In conversation with the professor and using the resources of the College (archivists, librarians, digital specialists, Praxis Program) students will articulate a historical question, research it, and produce a final project. This project may be a final research paper, but might also take the more public form of a digital project, an exhibit, a short film, or an internship in a local museum, oral history center, or archive.

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HIST B403 Supervised Work

Optional independent study, which requires permission of the instructor and the major adviser.

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HIST B425 Praxis III: Independent Study

Praxis III courses are Independent Study courses and are developed by individual students, in collaboration with faculty and field supervisors. A Praxis courses is distinguished by genuine collaboration with fieldsite organizations and by a dynamic process of reflection that incorporates lessons learned in the field into the classroom setting and applies theoretical understanding gained through classroom study to work done in the broader community. Note: Students are eligible to take up to two Praxis Fieldwork Seminars or Praxis Independent Studies during their time at Bryn Mawr.

Counts Toward: Praxis Program.

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EALC B131 Chinese Civilization

Not offered 2026-27

A broad chronological survey of Chinese culture and society from the Bronze Age to the 1800s, with special reference to such topics as belief, family, language, the arts and sociopolitical organization. Readings include primary sources in English translation and secondary studies.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: East Asian Languages & Culture; East Asian Languages Cultures; History.

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EALC B200 Major Seminar: Methods and Approaches

Not offered 2026-27

This course is a writing intensive course for EALC majors and minors to introduce some foundational ideas and concepts in the study of East Asia. Beginning with close readings of primary source texts, students are introduced to the philosophy and culture of China, and its subsequent transmission and adaptation across the vast geographical area that is commonly referred to as "East Asia." Students will gain familiarity with methods in this interdisciplinary field and develop skills in the practice of close critical analysis, bibliography, and the formulation of a research topic. Required of EALC majors and minors. Majors should take this course before the senior year.

Writing Intensive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; East Asian Languages & Culture; History.

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EALC B263 The Chinese Revolution

Fall 2026

Places the causes and consequences of the 20th century revolutions in historical perspective, by examining its late-imperial antecedents and tracing how the revolution has (and has not) transformed China, including the lives of such key revolutionary supporters as the peasantry, women, and intellectuals.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: East Asian Languages & Culture; History.

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EALC B264 Human Rights in China

Not offered 2026-27

This course will examine China's human rights issues from a historical perspective. The topics include diverse perspectives on human rights, historical background, civil rights, religious practice, justice system, education, as well as the problems concerning some social groups such as migrant laborers, women, ethnic minorities and peasants.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: East Asian Languages & Culture; Gender Sexuality Studies; History; International Studies; International Studies.

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EALC B325 Topics in Chinese History and Culture

Section 001 (Fall 2025): Law and Society/Imperial China
Section 001 (Spring 2026): Chinese Environmental Culture

Fall 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Counts Toward: East Asian Languages & Culture; History; International Studies; International Studies.

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GERM B223 Topics in German Cultural Studies

Fall 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Taught in English.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; History; History of Art.

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HART B310 Topics in Medieval Art

Section 001 (Fall 2025): Kings, Caliphs, and Emperors: Images of Authority
Section 001 (Fall 2026): Surveying Byzantium

Fall 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art.

Current topic description: This course casts a critical eye on the question of how Byzantine art and architecture have been represented in surveys of art history, medieval art, and Byzantine art. In addition to reading survey texts themselves, students will consider scholarship that analyzes and critiques the representation of Byzantine art in these books and in the fields of art history and archaeology more broadly. The course provides a historiographic overview of Byzantine art history and addresses questions of canon formation, the relationship of textbooks to current scholarship, and the role of museums and exhibitions in the interpretation and public presentation of Byzantine art.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Growth and Structure of Cities; History.

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HEBR B271 Topics in Judaic Studies: Histories of Jewish Identity

Not offered 2026-27

What makes one Jewish? Is it a matter of religion, ethnicity, race, nationality, culture, or kinship? Or, conversely, is being Jewish a symbolic, universal identity, associated with any person or collective that encounters persecution and dispossession? Must a Jew be religious? Must a Jew be a Zionist? Can a Jewish person be antisemitic? Can one choose to be Jewish, or not? In the modern world, with the emergence of both secularization and religious fundamentalism, internationalism and nation-states, capitalism and communism, the primary marker of Jew or Jewish as a member of a stateless, marginalized minority has undergone a fundamental revision. This course brings together historical and literary narratives that strive to answer these and related questions. We will engage myriad voices, Jewish and non-Jewish-including your own. Traversing three hundred years of Jewish history, we will encounter communities, individuals, and collectives across Europe, North America, the Middle East, North Africa, and Israel/Palestine. We aim to recognize not only the multiplicity of Jewish identities, but how such identities can be amalgamated, negotiated and reformed in different historical and cultural contexts.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: History.

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ITAL B240 Philadelphia the Global City: The Italian Legacy across Time

Not offered 2026-27

This course investigates the history and evolution of Philadelphia as a globalized and multi-ethnic city, using as a case study for this analysis the impact and legacy of transnational Italian culture across the centuries. By adopting a cross-cultural, trans-historical, and interdisciplinary approach, the course explores the influence that - along with and in intersection with many other cultural inputs - also Italian arts and cultures have exerted on the city, making it become the cosmopolitan and transnational urban environment that it is today. Throughout the centuries and way before Italy even started existing as a state, Philadelphians traveled to the peninsula and brought back objects to display in emerging cultural institutions or studied the country's art and architecture styles to shape the evolving aspect of the city. Simultaneously, incoming immigration formed new neighborhoods - such as South Philly, home to the Italian Market - and Italian figures came to prominence and became part of the social fabric of the city. Nowadays, many non-profit organizations work to preserve the traces that Italian migrants left within Philadelphia's multi-ethnic urban environment as well as to extend the city's global profile and celebrate its heritage and diversity. Through specific field trips, on-site experiential activities, and forms of civic engagement this course highlights both the enduring fascination of Philadelphians with Italy (or with the idea thereof) across the centuries and the role that the Italian Diaspora played in the development of the city. The course ultimately challenges geographical, chronological, and cultural boundaries by showing how places, arts, identities that today are perceived as 'American' have in most cases an intersectional, multi-ethnic, and cross-cultural history to tell. This course will be taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program. All readings and class discussion will be in English, and no knowledge of Italian is required. Students seeking Italian credits will complete their assignments in the target language.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Growth and Structure of Cities; History; History of Art; Museum Studies; Praxis Program.

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MEST B100 Introduction to Middle Eastern, Central Asian and North African Studies

Fall 2026

This course introduces the interdisciplinary field of Middle Eastern Studies with a focus on analytical approaches, methods, and tools. Students consider the dynamics of the region in the premodern and modern periods and become familiar with the major issues and debates that dominate various disciplinary approaches to the Middle East. Readings include both important canonical and alternative scholarship in order to examine the limits and possibilities of the field.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: History; International Studies.

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MEST B202 The Legacy of Genghis Khan: The Mongols and Their Successors

Not offered 2026-27

This course examines the political, intellectual, and social history of Genghis Khan, the Ilkhanid Mongols, and their successors in the Middle East and Central Asia from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth century CE. We will consider the formation of new political norms, changing trends in trade, and an increasingly hybrid cultural and artistic production that characterize this period.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: East Asian Languages Cultures; History.

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MEST B210 The Art and Architecture of Islamic Spirituality

Not offered 2026-27

This course examines how Muslim societies across time and space have used art and architecture in different ways to express and understand inner dimensions of spirituality and mysticism. Topics to be studied include: the calligraphical remnants of the early Islamic period; inscriptions found on buildings and gravestones; the majestic architecture of mosques, shrines, seminaries, and Sufi lodges; the brilliant arts of the book; the commemorative iconography and passion plays of Ashura devotion; the souvenir culture of modern shrine visitation; and the modern art of twenty-first century Sufism. Readings include works from history, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, and the history of art and architecture.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Growth and Structure of Cities; History; History of Art; International Studies; Visual Studies.

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MEST B305 Merchants, Pilgrims & Rogues: Travels through the Mid East

Not offered 2026-27

This course will critically approach the various ways that people have traveled to and within the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa in the medieval and modern periods. It will explore the many reasons that induced people to travel by looking at travelogues produced by these various travelers, the material culture of travel (e.g. pilgrimage scrolls, architecture and infrastructure that facilitated travel and lodging, movement of commodities, postcards, etc.), and scholarly work on travel, tourism, and migration more broadly. This course will include travels by merchants, pilgrims, adventurers, scholars, conquering armies, imperial powers, oil tycoons, and refugees.

Writing Attentive

Counts Toward: History; International Studies.

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POLS B378 Origins of American Constitutionalism

Not offered 2026-27

This course will explore some aspects of early American constitutional thought, particularly in the periods immediately preceding and following the American Revolution. The premise of the course is that many of the questions that arose during that period-concerning, for example, the nature of law, the idea of sovereignty, and the character of legitimate political authority-remain important questions for political, legal, and constitutional thought today, and that studying the debates of the revolutionary period can help sharpen our understanding of these issues. Prerequisites: sophomore standing and previous course work in American history, American government, political theory, or legal studies.

Counts Toward: History.

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