This course will introduce students to key works and approaches to the study of empire and 'race' in Canadian history. We will discuss the history of migration, the meaning of empire in everyday life, Canada's relations with the global south, and Indigenous politics. Throughout, we will debate the merits of the 'transnational' turn in Canadian history.

This intensive joint graduate/undergraduate research seminar provides opportunity for detailed study of the treaty processes between Indigenous peoples and newcomers in Canadian history, examining the shift from alliance treaties to land surrender agreements during the colonial period through to the signing of recent treaties including the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement and the Nisga'a Final Agreement. We will consider the history of Canada as a negotiated place, mapping the changing contexts of these agreements over more than four centuries through readings and seminar discussions. The first six weeks will be devoted to an intensive study of more than four centuries of negotiated agreements between Indigenous peoples and newcomers to the lands that would become the Dominion of Canada. There will be a day-long field trip to the Woodland Cultural Centre and the Mohawk Institute Residential school and a class trip to the Royal Ontario Museum. For the major assignment, students will select a treaty of personal relevance to them and conduct detailed research (guided by the professor), contributing their findings to a web resource on Canada's treaties. Students in this year's Canada By Treaty will have the opportunity to learn about digital curation and website design. Primary source analysis, seminar participation, digital content, research essay.

This course explores how the "transnational turn" has influenced the writing of Canadian history over the past two decades. Students will be introduced to the major debates in the international literature, as well as a range of works in Canadian history that adopt a transnational approach. In weekly readings, seminar discussions, and in the preparation of a major historiographical paper on a topic of their choosing, students will reflect on the challenges and merits of interpreting, researching, and writing Canada's history through a transnational lens.

The course this year will concentrate on the period since 1980-2000. The course will centre around the Mulroney government's foreign relations, including acid rain negotiations, the free trade agreement of 1988, peacekeeping, the South African question, Canada's defence policy, and the end of the Cold War. On some topics primary research materials can be made available.

This course explores the historiographies and historical populations surrounding "the world’s oldest profession" in Canadian and comparative global contexts, from the 17th century onwards. Using a range of texts, students explore both the lived experiences and representations of those involved in this controversial economy, including madams, clients, police, and queer and trans communities. Throughout the course students will examine a range of sex work archives and primary sources, including memoirs, photographs, and film, to develop an original research project on a topic related to the course theme.

This course explores the enduring power and changing forms of "race" in Canada and in the United States from historical and theoretical perspectives. We will examine how "race" has affected society and inequalities within both nations. We will also see how "race" has impacted both nations' engagements with the world. To make our comparison concrete, we will consider connections as well as divergences. To that end, our examination of "race" will focus on tracing interactions among law, society, and policy from the late 19th century to the early 21st century. We will examine these interactions as they affected white, black, indigenous, Asian, Latino, Muslim, and mixed race residents. We also will probe related impacts on transnational and international relations. This is both a reading and research course.

The course will introduce students to the methods and practices of intellectual history with a focus on the development of ideas in Europe from the Enlightenment to the present day. The books assigned in the course will be a combination of classic and exemplary works in the field, theoretical texts in related fields, and some of the best and most representative works recently published in the field. The aim is to give students a solid foundation in the methods and practices of intellectual history, an exposure to a breadth of approaches within the field and a sense of the trends in recent scholarship while also enabling them to engage with challenging theoretical works that will allow them to create their own unique approaches to intellectual history.

Jus commune: the rise and development of learned jurisprudence in the High Middle Ages. Jurisprudence is one of the foundational disciplines in the rise of the Universities and the one in which the newly defined figure of the academic most directly became engaged in the rule and development all sorts of high medieval institutions and practices. This course will examine the texts and practices relate to medieval jurisprudence.

Our medieval history students and those in the Centre, whatever their topics of interest, can all profit from some familiarity with the history of ecclesiastical institutions in the high Middle Ages (papacy, episcopate, parish structures, clerical education etc.). The proposed course would provide the opportunity to acquire such familiarity while varying the topics covered in accordance with the research interests of the students.

This course introduces students to the theory and practice of 20th century east European Communism. A little over three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the east European communist regimes, scholars across the disciplines continue interpreting communism’s multifaceted legacy. Consensus on what exactly constituted state socialism and how to remember it, however, is difficult to achieve. With emphasis on recent historiography, this course highlights the complexities of the communist past. Focusing on a range of issues — such as nostalgia, consumer culture, sexuality, gender, nationalism, dissidence, political violence, and attempts at transitional justice — this course will reveal that, when considered as a lived-experience, it is impossible to represent socialism in a straightforward and unambiguous narrative. Instead, we will explore the various, sometimes conflicting, ways in which people lived in and through the communist regimes and the ways in which they have come to interpret their legacy. This course will combine discussion of scholarly studies with screenings of documentary and fiction films. For their writing assignments students will produce a historiographical survey, a comparative essay on visual and written sources, and a research paper based on both secondary and relevant primary sources. Students will also deliver an in-class presentation and lead discussion.

Up until the twelfth century, a significant proportion of Western medieval sources originated from monasteries. At the same time, many considered monastic life to be the most perfect form of existence. During this seminar, we will try to understand why such was the case, as well as how the monastic ideal evolved from its origin to the twelfth century. We will explore with a critical eye some of the most important monastic primary sources, especially the intriguing hagiographic sources (Lives of saints) and the so-called "normative" sources (rules and customaries). These sources will be read in English translations but students who can read Latin will be encouraged to access the original texts. Thanks to these sources, we will discuss the daily life, internal structures, and interactions with the lay world of the most significant monastic communities of the Middle Ages. This is an introductory course for graduate students desirous to acquire sound bases in the history of medieval monasticism.

A research seminar devoted to the study of social and economic change from the accession of Henry II to the passage of the Statute of Mortmain under Edward I. Subjects of inquiry will depend upon the interests of the class, which among other things may include: 1) social status and responsibility; 2) the means available to obtain, hold and transfer land; 3) the distribution of wealth and the value of property; 4) trade, industry and markets in town and country; 5) the feudal and manorial "familia;" 6) employment opportunities; 7) food production and transportation; 8) record keeping and literacy; 9) technology; 10) family ties; 11) crime and justice. Knowledge of Latin and modern European languages is highly desirable.

Social historians of the past decades have explored new ways of understanding human experience, publishing fascinating new work on sensory history, spatial history, material history, and history of the emotions. They have worked with some earlier social historical methods, like quantification, they have incorporated foundational concerns about class and economics, and they've integrated areas of inquiry that took off in the second half of the 20th century, like the histories of gender, of children and youth, and of race. Early modern historiography has been transformed by the intersections of these approaches, and in this seminar we’ll consider how the new work on sense, space, materials, and emotions may change our approach to the early modern world. We will look at some theoretical or survey works, read some monographs together in depth, and sound out the scope of possibilities through a few essay collections. When we look at different sides of human experience, do we see and interpret the early modern period differently?

This seminar will investigate the central place of humanism in the development of the European Renaissance. Beginning with the emergence of humanism in fourteenth century Italy, the class will investigate the influence of humanist ideas on various aspects of the political, social, and cultural worlds of Renaissance Europe, north and south of the Alps.

This course is a readings seminar designed to introduce students to the work of the loose association of 20th-century French historians known as the Annales school, which came to have far-reaching influence on the writing of history around the world. More broadly, this course proposes to explore how an understanding of both historical context and the social trajectories of individual historians can shed light on historical scholarship itself.

Modern European powers tend to inscribe their power onto the urban fabric of its colonies and protectorates. In the process, colonial cities often became 'laboratories of modernity.' This course analyzes how — from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 to decolonization in the 1950s — colonial urbanism affected the modern Mediterranean world. It does so by focussing on French, British, and Italian urban designs and politics in cities of the Levant and North Africa. We will pursue comparatively the cultural and material, economic and architectural policies of three major European imperial powers and contrast them to late Ottoman urban culture.

This course is designed to introduce students to fundamental questions in the history of early modern France, as well as help prepare students for examination fields in early modern European history. Students will examine a series of key themes and important primary and secondary texts as an avenue into critical reflection on the political, religious, and social history of France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Of particular interest will be the institutions of the Renaissance monarchy, the causes and consequences of the Wars of Religion, historiographical debates surrounding the development of the absolutist state, the social history of war, and the intersection of social change, political history, and religious life. All assigned course reading will be in English. Students will write one short book review and a longer essay analyzing a substantial primary text (or series of documents).

This seminar addresses the emergence and recent transformation of the early modern Mediterranean as an historical object. It will offer an overview of the historiography of the early modern Mediterranean from Braudel to his most recent critics, and situate this historiography within the broader field of contemporary scholarship and politics. In particular, it will explore the methodological and epistemological implications of post-colonial critiques of Orientalism and Occidentalism on the one hand and of the ongoing conversations between historians and anthropologists of the Mediterranean on the other. Among topics covered will be the emergence of Europe, borderlands and frontiers, varieties of colonial and territorial states, early modern ethnography and travel writing, kinship, merchant "nations" and diasporas, and cultural interaction between the Ottoman Empire and its neighbours. Students will be expected to write weekly response papers, a book review, an annotated bibliography, and a final paper.

This seminar will examine recent trends in French colonial history, covering the period from the conquest of Algeria (1830) to the wars of decolonization. Readings will span a wide geographical range, encompassing French colonies in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, and ending chronologically with postcolonial legacies and the question of Francafrique.

This graduate course explores themes and episodes in French history since the Paris Commune. Students will be introduced to the historiography of the Commune, the Dreyfus Affair, French colonialism, immigration, the two world wars, the Vichy regime, decolonization, and May 1968. Memory, identity, citizenship, immigration and empire are some of the recurring themes in this course. Readings will include a range of cultural, political, gender, and social approaches. In some cases we will read classics, and in others we will consider very recent studies.

This course explores theories and histories of gender with particular attention to Europe over four-and-a-half centuries. We will consider gender and sexuality as connected and entangled with religion, violence, the state, and everyday life. The chronological and geographic boundaries of the course are porous, and we will be especially attentive to linkages between Europe and Africa, Asia, and the Americas and the ways gender shaped those interactions and intersections and how people experienced them. Assigned readings will pair older scholarship with new work to reveal continuities and changes in the discipline. Students will explore an area of particular interest in a historiographic analysis and participate in peer-review workshops.

This course will examine how Europeans and North Americans confront the memory of both Nazi mass murder and the Allied bombing of Germany through the law, literature, left wing agitation, film, memorials and museums, and political debates. How do postwar representations of German atrocities and the Allied liberation of Europe, or conversely, German suffering and Allied war crimes shift throughout the postwar period, and what do these representations mean for "overcoming the past?" We will juxtapose generational responses, national reactions (including Germany, Poland, Israel, and the U.S. and Canada), and official vs. unofficial representations of the atrocities of the Second World War. Among the focal points: the Nuremberg and postwar West German trials of Nazis, the fascination with Anne Frank, anti-fascist terror in 1970s Germany, The Berlin Memorial, and the U.S. Holocaust Museum, and films such as Shoah and Schindler's List, and the explosion of debate on the bombing of Germany between 1943-45.

This seminar explores the history and especially the historiography of the Holocaust. Among the themes we will consider are the roles of religion in the Holocaust, colonial contexts, gender and sexuality, and cultures of memorialization. How has scholarship on these and other matters changed over the course of 80 years? Readings include works written during and close to the events and recent contributions to the field. Combinations and juxtapositions of works are intended to highlight innovations and persistent questions and help you revisit familiar material in new ways. We will read primary sources and secondary literature related to the Holocaust as well as consider how similar issues play out in other cases of genocide and mass atrocity and the scholarship about them. Oral presentations and the long paper (an historiographical analysis, although in consultation with the professor, students may write a paper based on original research) will give students an opportunity to explore areas of particular interest to them.

This seminar introduces students to some major developments and current issues in the modern history of medicine and healthcare. Using a combination lecture/group discussion format, the class covers such topics as the doctor-patient relationship, the impact of medical care upon health, the evolution of such medical specialties as internal medicine, neurology, and psychiatry, the relationship between culture and the presentation of illness, and the history of medical therapeutics.

Developments in medicine (not necessarily "progress") can be seen as a balance between important individuals and significant events. Students will prepare a major research assignment (8 to 12 pages) assessing an individual or event of their choice, using secondary sources.

What is globalization? What is empire? How can we think of the relationship between them? Globalization is one of the most widely used concepts today. As a concept, it means many different things. We will investigate its range of meanings, analyzing in particular its connections with different imperial projects and the types of connections (economic, political, cultural) that they fostered. The goal is to seek to understand the types of globalization active in our world today. In other words, through a historical analysis of globalization and empire we will explore the various processes of economic and political transformation that created our modern present.

This seminar immerses students into the rich world of mineral water cures. It explores the relationship between the medical sciences and society, and the connections between prescriptive and normalizing medical rituals and sites of pilgrimage, capitalism, and sociability. The seminar will also focus on shifting medical meanings, on gender dynamics at these sites, and on uses and practices surrounding hot water springs, as well as varied experiences of spa towns as sites of leisure and tourism. The course is transnational and features case studies in Mexico, Madagascar, Britain, Germany, Tunisia, Japan, France, Austria, Hungary, Greece, and Canada.

This research seminar will focus on recent controversies concerning social, cultural, and political change in the time of Bismarck and Wilhelm II. Among the topics to be considered are state- and nation-building after 1866, regional identities, gender and sexuality, religion, culture, antisemitism and murder in a small town, and British diplomatic reports on the rise and repression of the German labour movement. A combination of secondary literature and primary documents (all in translation and many online) will be discussed each week, beginning with a short student presentation. Among the required texts are James Retallack (ed.), Imperial Germany 1871-1918. The Short Oxford History of Germany (2008) and Helmut Walser Smith, The Butcher's Tale. The course will conclude with a discussion of the East German film adapted from Heinrich Mann's biting satire, The Loyal Subject (1918).

This course is designed to further the preparation of students for examination fields in twentieth-century German and European history. We will read major (new) works on the century's central period and events — the two world wars, the Holocaust, the rise of fascism, the Cold War and the reconstruction of Europe, colonialism and decolonisation — as well as exploring the larger processes of transformation that span the century as a whole. These include the development of the modern social welfare state and the growth of a mass consumer society, the legacies of war and violence, ethnic nationalism and its discontents, and the strength and weaknesses of democratic political culture (with an emphasis on histories of gender and sexuality). Particular attention will be paid to Germany within Europe. We will also examine works which attempt to connect the two halves of the century – the histories of war and violence with those emphasizing democracy and reconstruction. These works seek to establish an overarching paradigm for the twentieth century, whether it be territoriality and the rise and fall of the nation state or the creation and destruction of political community.

World War II was much more destructive and traumatic in East Central Europe than in Western Europe. The difference was caused by many reasons, among which the Nazi and Soviet plans and policies were the most important. Yet, there were also numerous East Central European phenomena that contributed to the cruelty of World War II in the East. This seminar will explore the external and internal factors that defined the war in the discussed region. Students will analyze the military, political, economic, and cultural activities of Germany, the Soviet Union, and their allies and enemies. Following sessions will concentrate on the fall of the Versailles systems, diplomatic and military activities throughout the war, on occupational policies of the invaders, economic exploration of the invaded, on collaboration, accommodation, resistance, genocide, the "liberation" and sovietization of East Central Europe after 1944. All the secondary and primary sources used in class are English.

This research seminar will examine a number of texts and films produced during and after the socialist era. Writings from the former period include memoirs, diaries, fiction, and film produced during the 1960s and 1970s in the Soviet Union and other countries of the "socialist camp," including Yuri Trifonov's novel, House on the Embankment (1976); Natalya Baranskaya's novella A Week Like Any Other (1979) and the films The Joke, by Jaromil Jires (1969) and Man of Marble by Andrzej Wajda (1976). Works produced after 1991 include Andrzej Stasiuk's novel On the Road to Babadag (2004), and the films Goodbye Lenin! by Wolfgang Becker (2003) and 24 City by Jia Zhangke (2008). Additional readings are critical works dealing with the concept of "real (existing) socialism," its legacy, and issues of nostalgia.