Current Courses
Plan your spring 2027 semester
Explore the past from different places, periods, and perspectives. Skidmore College history courses invite you to ask questions, examine evidence, and consider how people and events have shaped the world we live in. Explore this semester’s courses and find what you want to investigate next.HI 144P 001 East Asian Civilization: Traditions and Transformations
Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:10-12:30 pm
Instructor: J. Day
An introductory survey of East Asia (China, Japan, Korea) from its earliest history
to the end of the Mongol empire in the 1300s. Students will explore the formation
of Confucianism as an ideology, the changes in social and political institutions across
East Asia, ideas and practices concerning gender and the family, religion and beliefs
of elites and ordinary people, and intercultural exchanges and conflicts within East
Asia.
Note(s): (Designated a non-Western culture course; fulfills social sciences requirement;
fulfills humanistic inquiry and global cultural perspective.)
4 credits
HI 151P 001 Cold War
Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:40-11:00 am
Instructor M. Hockenos
This course examines the U.S.-Soviet rivalry after 1945—known as the Cold War—from
a European and global perspective. In addition to addressing the nuclear arms race
and the ideological struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States, attention
will be given to how the Cold War ignited deadly conflicts in Africa, Asia, the Middle
East, and Latin America. Our starting point will be the division of Europe at the
end of the Second World War and the formation of Eastern and Western Blocs under Soviet
and American hegemony. In the European context we exam the occupation and division
of Germany; the Marshall Plan; everyday life behind the Iron Curtain; the Prague Spring;
and the revolutions across Eastern Europe that brought down the communist regimes.
In the global context we exam the Korean War; the Cuban Missile crisis; the Vietnam
War, and the emergence of China as a superpower. We end the course by examining the
explosion of nationalism in the Yugoslav states after the fall of communism and the
ethnic cleansing and genocide that takes place there.
4 credits
HI 204 001 Athens, Alexander the Great, and Cleopatra
Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:40 -5:00 pm
Instructor B. Abbott
A study of Greece from the Peloponnesian War to the end of Greek independence. Students
examine the war between Athens and Sparta and its aftermath, the struggle for preeminence
among Greek city-states, the rise of Macedonia, the monarchies of Philip and his son
Alexander the Great, the Hellenistic kingdoms, the development of scientific thought,
and the last “Greek” monarch, Cleopatra of Egypt. Special emphasis is given to the
study of the ancient sources: literary, historiographic, archaeological, and numismatic.
Note(s): (Fulfills social sciences requirement.)
3 credits
HI 211P Deconstructing Britain
Wedensdays and Fridays 8:40 – 10:00 am
Instructor T. Nechtman
Explores the history of Britain from the 16th century to the present, exploring new ways of approaching the historical narrative of the British nation. Beginning with early English engagements with the wider world and tracing the rise of Britain as one of the world’s foremost imperial powers in the 18th and 19th century, students will examine Britain’s self-assured sense of global power through many different sets of eyes, thus investigating how Britain looked to those who lived under its shadow—including Indian travelers, African sailors, and Native American traders. Readings will explore the ways in which the British nation, and indeed British history, have been driven by British imperialism around the globe. Ends by asking questions about the post-imperial history for citizens of a nation that was once predicated on its imperial identity. (Fulfills Cultural Diversity requirement; fulfills social sciences requirement.)
4 credits
HI 242P 001 China in War and Revolution
Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:40 -11:00 am
Instructor J. Day
The emergence of modern China-its turbulent and violent transition from an imperial
dynasty to a Communist nation-state. Students will study how internal and external
crises precipitated reforms and revolutions, how people shed their old identities
and took on new ones, how political leaders engineered campaigns and movements-often
with disastrous effects-and how this history has been remembered, reflected upon,
and remolded by the Chinese themselves.
Note(s): (Fulfills Non-Western Culture requirement, fulfills global humanities requirement.)
4 credits
HI 251 001 Everyday Africa
Mondays and Wednesdays 4:00-5:20 pm
Instructor Lacy Feigh
An exploration into the cultural history of Africa through everyday sources. What can food tell us about national identity? Comedy as a revolutionary practice? Or television’s relationship to gender roles? From globally renowned writers and singers to local artisans and artists, cultural history provides a lens through which to view complex formation of societies, ideas, and identities beyond the political elite. Drawing upon a vast array of sources—including fashion, food, film, music, television, comedy, art, and literature—students will analyze how cultural production and consumption shape understandings of the African past. Students will delve into Skidmore’s Africa collections at the Tang for a creative project throughout the semester.
3 credits
HI 259P 001 Communism and Anticommunism
Mondays and Wednesdays 2:30-3:50 pm
Instructor J. Delton
Perhaps the only American political party devoted to the destruction of capitalism, the Communist Party USA provides a unique opportunity to investigate the possibilities and limits of political radicalism in the twentieth century.
Students will learn about the history of the Communist Party in America (CPUSA): its connections to Moscow, its contributions to racial and economic progress, its appeal to intellectuals, and its effects on the American left in the 1920s-60s. The course also examines the history of anticommunism during the same period, including European critiques of Communism, liberal anticommunism, and McCarthyism.
The fourth credit hour will consist of a film series about the Communist Party and McCarthyism.
3 credits
HI 280 Science and Nature in the Renaissance
Wednesdays and Fridays 10:10-11:30 am
Instructor E. Bastress-Dukehart
A study of the culture of Renaissance ideas as they pertained to
the natural world. Building on historian Brian Ogilvie’s argument that natural history
was invented in the Renaissance, this course looks at the Renaissance perceptions
of the natural world from three perspectives: (1) how scientists and philosophers
thought about astronomy, astrology, and humans’ relationships with the universe; (2)
how explorers, natural philosophers, and theorists cataloged and categorized their
wonderous discoveries; (3) how Renaissance notions of the cosmos transformed perceptions
scientists, artists and doctors had about the human body. Note(s): (Fulfills humanities
requirement.)
3 credits
HI 325R 001 Public History
Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:40-5:00 pm
Instructor J. Dym
Most people encounter and enjoy connecting with the past every day, often through the work of public historians, who research, write and present with a general audience in mind. Introduction to Public History considers the distinctive practices of public history from local to national and international contexts. We read studies of the field and discuss how public historians craft different versions of the past; ask how governments and institutions construct and disseminate historic narratives; think about history storytelling in popular culture, such as in newspapers, film, and reenactments. We also think about how private groups, including families and museums, preserve individual and collective heritage and memory. In and around Saratoga Springs, students will evaluate museum exhibits, historic sites and markers, events, and archives.
This course counts towards the History Department's Research requirement.
4 credits
HI 351P 001 The Quest
Wednesdays and Fridays 12:20-1:40 pm
Instructor E. Bastress-Dukehart
Honor, Courage, Humility, Community
Your first Step: Quo Vadis?
So violent and motley was life, that it bore the mixed smell of blood and roses
--Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages
Mysteries, Intrigues, Honor, Alliances, Chivalry, Coded Messages, Miracles, Dragons, and, of course, The Quest for the Holy Grail.
4 credits
HI 351R 001 Cold War Berlin
Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:40-2:00 pm
Instructor M. Hockenos
This course examines the history of divided Berlin during the Cold War. Topics include: the brutal Soviet invasion of Berlin; the emergence of the Cold War and the division of the city; the 1948 Soviet blockade of West Berlin and the American and British airlift of food and fuel to West Berliners; the quashing of the 1953 workers’ uprising in East Berlin by Soviet tanks; the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961; attempts (often fatal) to subvert the wall; the women’s movement on both sides of the wall; dissent and resistance in East and West Berlin; sex and sexuality in the socialist state; Stasi surveillance of East Berliners; and finally, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Berlin and the rest of Germany in 1990. Special attention will be given to the emergence of two distinct cultures in East and West Berlin, including eating habits; sex life; gender relations; youth movements; religious life; film, music, theatre, and literature; and attitudes toward the Nazi past and the Holocaust.
4 credits
HI 376 001 How Do You Know That? Coda in History
Wednesdays and Fridays 10:10-11:30 am
Instructor T. Nechtman
A library can be filled with shelf after shelf of books all themselves filled with history and with knowledge.
But, have you ever asked yourself: does the library itself have a history? Do the shelves have a history? Does the book have a history?
How is it that we have come to organize and store knowledge as we do? What is the history of western ways of knowing?
This course will explore the history of knowledge. From organizational structures
like the dictionary to the encyclopedia, from the library to the periodic table of
the elements. We will study the history of these structures and explore the implications
they have had on our ways of both understanding and knowing the world.
Students in this class will ask the profound question: how do I really know the things
I know?
1 credit