Fall 2026

History 7A: Introduction to the History of the United States: The United States from Settlement to Civil War, David M Henkin
Tu, Th 03:30 pm – 04:59 pm
This course introduces the history of the lands that became the United States, from antiquity through the Civil War. We will focus on interactions among Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans on the North American continent; the social, political, and environmental changes wrought by those interactions; the establishment and development of colonial societies; the founding of the United States and the evolution of its political institutions; the spread of new ideas and cultural practices; and the clash of competing claims about power, rights, salvation, and the good life. Throughout, we will pay special attention to resonances, connections, and contrasts between the developments we are studying and the worlds we inhabit today. Requirements include in-class exams, short document analyses, and active participation in discussion sections.

History 103D 002: Voting Rights: Battles for Suffrage and Representation in the U.S., Jaime Sanchez
Th 02:00 pm – 03:59 pm
Voting is a core privilege and responsibility for all U.S. citizens, but the long history of suffrage in this country shows us that this was not always the case. This course explores the gradual and hard-fought battles by which the United States amended the category of eligible voters since the nation’s founding through the modern day. Social categories such as race, class, and gender were central to the process of strictly delimiting the electorate. Grassroots social movements opposed this exclusionary system and successfully pushed for legislation that won voting rights for women, African Americans, young people, and more. Despite this expansion, tactics such as gerrymandering, racial discrimination, and voter intimidation hindered the full implementation of voting rights—challenges that continue to shape American electoral politics today.

English 166AC: Race and Revision in Early America, Kathleen Donegan
In this course, we will read both historical and literary texts to explore how racial categories came into being in New World cultures and how these categories were tested, inhabited, and re-imagined by the human actors they sought to define. Our study will be organized around four early American sites: Landfall in the Atlantic, Pocahontas at Jamestown, Witchcraft at Salem, and Jefferson’s Virginia. In each of these places Native, European, and African ways of making meaning collided, and concepts of racial difference were formed. These sites will function as interpretive nodes. For each, we will read a selection of primary documents and then explore how racial constructions forged at each site have been re-imagined and revised throughout American cultural history.

AMERSTD 102: Examining U.S. Cultures in Place: American Monuments, Andy Shanken
Mo 02:00 pm – 04:59 pm
“There is nothing in the world as invisible as a monument,” writer Robert Musil once mused. Yet recent events have brought them into high relief, both as commemorative infrastructure and as sites of political struggle. This course will offer a primer on the history of monuments (and memorials) in the United States and engage with their recent history. The course will explore the formal strategies, habits of placement, commemorative value, and the social and political meaning of these often maligned, but also revered, interventions in the built environment. Students will explore issues of iconoclasm, appropriation, race, and gender; confront recent controversies; and work together to propose their own memorial or counter-memorial to an issue or event.