HIST 297H - Honors Topics in History

Fall of 2020: This Bascom Honors program seminar will explore some of the darkest and most difficult to understand topics in recent human history - the Holocaust and other genocide events of the twentieth century. Particular cases examined will vary from year to year, but will include, e.g., Armenia, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, and the Nazi genocide of the Jews, Sinti, and Roma. The main objective off the course is to explain the important political, intellectual, social, and cultural forces that have shaped the genocides of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”

Spring of 2021: Alexander Hamilton: Worlds At War . Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? This course explores the beginnings of American history through the life and times of Alexander Hamilton and the award-winning musical written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. We will watch and analyze the musical along with newspapers, journal entries, and Hamilton’s own letters from the period. Together we will explore issues like women’s lives in the early republic; the lives of enslaved peoples and the fight to end slavery; the spy networks of George Washington, and the ideological and cultural ramifications of the American Revolution.
General Education Area: Social Science
Prerequisite: Membership in Bascom Honors Program