Resources for Current Students

For course times, instructors, room number and official course descriptions, check the Schedule of Classes for Spring 2025.

Spring 2025 Undergraduate Course Offerings 

The following course descriptions are presented as a guide for students and academic advisors. Although major alterations are unlikely, instructors reserve the right to make changes in content and requirements. 

For a list of Undergraduate courses and official course descriptions, see the Undergraduate Bulletin.
 

Foundation Courses in U.S. History

• HIS 100 - American Political & Social History I
• HIS 101 - American Political & Social History II
• HIS 220 - Public Policy in Modern America
• HIS 227 - Civil Rights: A Documentary Approach
• HIS 251 - Introduction to Documentary Studies
• HIS 292 - Trials in United States History
  
   

Foundation Courses in European History 

• HIS 130 - History of European Civilization I 
• HIS 235 - Early & Medieval Christianity
• HST 252 - Jews, Hellenism and Early Christianity
• HIS 254 - The Jews in the Modern World
• HIS 288 - Drifting Away: The Political, Social and Cultural Consequences of the Cold War on Eastern European Countries, 1945-1989
       This course analyzes the dramatic consequences of the Cold War on the Eastern European countries. Students will    see how the Iron Curtain created Eastern Europe as a separate world, isolated and hermetic, marked by a rigid       political life, censorship and surveillance, a lack of democracy and insane policies, stagnating and unsuccessful economies, and a culture plagued by propaganda. Students will be able to reconstruct how complicated and challenging everyday life for people living in communism was, and see which were their ways of coping and opposing this cruel political system. Last but not least, the course will analyze the major crisis of the system, its ultimate demise, and the aftermath of the disappearance (or not?) of communism in Europe. 

Foundation Courses in World History

• HIS 158 - The Past as Present: The World since 1900 
• HIS 177 - East Asia: Its Culture & History
• HIS 268 - Introduction to Southeast Asia
• HIS 275 - Antisemitism: Historical Exploration & Contemporary Challenges
• HIS 286 - African Civilizations
• HIS 287 - Africa in the Modern World
   

History Methods Course 

• HIS 395 - The Historian’s Craft
   

Advanced Courses in U.S. History

• HIS 300 - The History of the American Indians and the United States
• HIS 311 - History of American Foreign Policy I
• HIS 315 - Roosevelt to Reagan 1933-1988
• HIS 325 - The Quest for Equality in United States History
• HIS 356 - The World at War 1939-1945
• HIS 406 - Practicum in Historical Documentary Filmmaking
• HIS 407 - Readings and Practicum in Digital History and Hypermedia
   

Advanced Courses in European History

• HST 341 - Art and Globalization in 18th Century Europe
• HIS 344 - Europe 1914-1945
• HIS 346 - History of England I
• HIS 349 - History of France Since 1815
• HIS 352 - History of Eastern Europe
• HIS 355 - History of Russia
• HIS 356 - The World at War, 1939–1945
• HIS 358 - Issues in Hellenistic-Rabbinic Judaism
• HST 363 - The Roman Republic: 751-31 B.C. 
   

Advanced Courses in World History 

• HST 304 - Epidemics, Pandemics and History
• HST 356 - The World at War, 1939-1945
• HST 374 - Crime and Punishment in Traditional China
• HIS 377 - History of Modern Korea
• HIS 380 - History of Modern China
• HIS 381 - History of the Middle East
• HIS 385 - History of Modern Japan
   

Senior Research Seminar 

• HIS 489Z - Senior Research Seminar
  
  

Senior Honors Course 

• HIS 495Z - Senior Honors Thesis
   

Independent Study and Projects in History 

• HIS 497 - Independent Study in History 
• HIS 499 - Special Projects in History
  
  

Judaic Studies Program 

• JST 252 - Jews, Hellenism, and Early Christianity
• JST 254 - The Jews of the Modern World
• JST 375 - Antisemitism: Historical Exploration & Contemporary Challenges
• JST 342 - Issues in Hellenistic-Rabbinic Judaism
• JST 344 - Issues in Modern Jewish History
• JST 450 - Judaic Studies Practicum 
• JST 497 - Independent Study in Judaic Studies
   

Documentary Studies Program 

• DOC 225 - Media Law & Ethics 
• DOC 227 - Civil Rights: A Documentary Approach
• DOC 251 - Introduction to Documentary Studies
• DOC 308Z - Narrative Journalism
• DOC 324 - Introduction to Documentary Photography
• DOC 363 - Visual Culture
• DOC 406 - Practicum in Historical Documentary Filmmaking
• DOC 407 - Readings and Practicum in Digital History and Hypermedia 
• DOC 450 - Documentary Studies Seminar and Fieldwork Practicum
  
  

Religious Studies Program 

• REL 100 - Introduction to the Study of Religion 
• REL 175 - Anthropology and Folklore
• REL 235 - Early & Medieval Christianity
• REL 252 - Jews, Hellenism and Early Christianity
• REL 254 - The Jews in the Modern World
• REL 265 - Intro to Buddhism
• REL 322 - Philosophy of Religion
• REL 397 - Independent Study of Religious Studies
• REL 450 - Readings in Buddhist Texts
• REL 499 - Senior Seminar in Religious Studies
  
  

Hebrew Studies Program

• HEB 102 - Elementary Hebrew II
• HEB 497 - Independent Study in Hebrew

Spring 2025 Graduate Course Offerings: 

For a complete list of Graduate courses and official course descriptions, see the Graduate Bulletin.

• HIS 500 - Practicum in College Teaching
• HIS 502 - Research Prospectus-MA Students
• HIS 508 - Material Culture
• HIS 530 - Social Responsibilities and Museums
  What is the purpose of a museum, whose stories and artifacts does it hold, and who decides? In the 21^st century, museum professionals been called upon to reject old-fashioned practices that reinforced colonial power dynamics through choices made in the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of material culture. This course looks at the theories and practice behind modern museum work, exploring the diverse ways in which museums confront and address issues of representation, voice, community, and social justice. Instructor Aaron Noble is a senior historian and curator at the New York State Museum.
  
• HIS 596 - Practicum in Digital History and Hypermedia
• HIS 599 - Special Projects in History
• HIS 603 - "Short and Long Term Disaster"
  Individuals and nations often mark histories by focusing on key breaking points: wars, epidemics, floods, tragedies personal and political. Such sudden transformations punctuate individuals’ lives and those of communities and nations. As historians, they provide key touchstones, hefty caches of documents, and and narrative momentum to drive our histories. But what if such an approach distorts the most important forces driving human history – things like climate change, mass extinctions, or economic and social structures that keep people poor? Inspired by works like Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor and the field of critical disaster studies, this graduate reading seminar will examine histories of disasters told with distinctive and varied temporal and narrative frames. Some will tightly focus on a single event  – a fire, flood, or local manifestation of violence. Others emphasize the long duree, and a global scale. By pivoting and exploring these works, we’ll consider the merits, methodologies, and implications of how historians revisit tragic times. Works will include environmental, labor, and social histories of the United States and of the world. Students should be prepared to read more than a dozen books over the course of the semester, and to practice strategies for understanding and explaining how a work of history within the broader literature of its field.
  
• HIS 607 - Seminar and Practicum in History and Media
• HIS 633 - "Big History"
  This course will engage with the genre of "Big History" a project that attempts to tell the story of the human past across vast timescales, generally a chronological span from the Neolithic era (the development of agriculture) to modernity. The extended timescale allows us to grapple with grand questions:  the roots of inequality, the origins of the state, the pace of technological innovation and the contingent ascendancy of Europe.  We will interrogate the tensions between historical specialization and the broad chronological scales under consideration, and the possibilities and pitfalls of moving well beyond the narrow, archival based research that is the hallmark of academic History. Notably many of the practitioners of Big History, starting with evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond, the author of what is arguably the genre's ur-text, Guns Germs and Steel, are not trained historians. 
  
• HIS 697 - Independent Study in History 
• HIS 698 - History and Media Masters Project
• HIS 699 - Master’s Thesis in History 
• HIS 797 - Directed Reading in Public History 
• HIS 798 - Internship in Public History 
• HIS 799 - Public History Project Thesis 
• HIS 897 - Directed Reading in History 
• HIS 898 - Dissertation Prospectus Workshop-PhD Students
• HIS 899 - Doctoral Dissertation
  

For course times, instructors, room number and official course descriptions, check the Schedule of Classes for Winter 2025.

Winter 2025 Undergraduate Course Offerings

The following course descriptions are presented as a guide for students and academic advisors. Although major alterations are unlikely, instructors reserve the right to make changes in content and requirements. 

For a list of Undergraduate courses and official course descriptions, see the Undergraduate Bulletin.

• HIS 100 American Political & Social History I
• HIS 101 American Political & Social History II
• HIS 130 History of European Civilization I
• HIS 158 The Past as Present: The World since 1900
• HST 201 History of Marriage and Family in the US
• HIS 250 The Holocaust and Genocide in the Modern World
• HIS 263 Art, Music, and History: A Multimedia Approach I
• HIS 300 The History of American Indians and the United States
• HST 302 America in the Age of Sail
• HIS 346 History of England I
• JST 250 The Holocaust and Genocide in the Modern World

All of our Teaching Assistants are located in SS 60W.

The combined BA/MA program in History provides an opportunity for students of recognized academic ability and educational maturity to fulfill integrated requirements of undergraduate and master’s degree programs from the beginning of their junior year.

The combined program requires a minimum of 138 credits, of which at least 30 must be graduate credits. In qualifying for the BA, students must meet all University and college requirements, including the requirements of the major program in history described above, the minor, the minimum 90-credit liberal arts and sciences, General Education, and residency requirements. In qualifying for the MA, students must meet all University and college requirements as outlined in the Graduate Bulletin, including completion of a minimum of 30 graduate credits and any other conditions, such as a research seminar, thesis, comprehensive examination, other professional experience, and residency requirements. Up to 12 graduate credits may be applied simultaneously to both the BA and MA programs.

A cumulative grade point average of 3.20 or higher and three supportive letters of recommendation from faculty, one of whom must be from the Department of History, are required for consideration. Students are admitted to the combined program upon the recommendation of the department’s Graduate Committee.

Contact Prof. Maeve Kane at [email protected] for more information about admittance to the program.

Each semester, prior to the preregistration period (October during Fall semester, and March during Spring), students should contact their advisor to find out about scheduling an advising appointment. You should then consult History course descriptions available online on the department’s webpage, and arrive at your preregistration advising appointment with a copy of your degree audit, an understanding of the graduation requirements you have yet to fulfill, and a list of potential classes for the following semester. Advisors will review this information with you, then provide you with an AVN to allow you to sign up for classes once registration has begun. Please note: you cannot receive your AVN without attending one of these advisement meetings.

Students may see their advisor at other times during the semester to discuss academic matters. Members of the undergraduate committee, who help oversee the department’s undergraduate program, are also available in this capacity. They can help with matters ranging from problems with your audit, to questions about the major, study abroad credit approvals, transfer credit (Transfer Credit Permission form), the honors program, and much more.

Step #1: Check out the department's website and find an internship. Reach out to the place you’re interested in and ask them if they have any internships available. If so, you’ll need to decide roughly how many hours you want to spend on your internship—45 hours = 1 academic credit of HIS 499; 135 hours = 3 academic credits of HIS 499. You can always go over that number and might be paid for the difference. You can also sign up for the University's applied learning course, UNI 288/289.

Step #2: Then find a faculty mentor. In the history department, internships are decentralized, so just about any faculty member can help you. You might ask your advisor or a professor you really like or a professor who writes about the history of New York. You can also ask the History Undergraduate Director to sign off on your internship. (Thinking ahead, an internship is a really smart way to get a letter of recommendation from someone—so be strategic.) If the faculty member you approach is wavering, just remind him or her that all you need is a permission number, a brief meeting, and a pass/fail at the end of the semester. For faculty, it's an easy gig.

Step #3: Download the department's internship contract, which is posted to the internship page on the History Department website. The first page is pretty straightforward—just basic information about who you are and where you're working. The second page is for you and your faculty mentor. If you're going to get academic credit, you have to learn something, right? Well, the coolest thing about an internship is that you get to decide what you will learn (in consultation with your wise faculty mentor, of course). Once you've finished pages 1 and 2, share your objectives with your new boss at the internship site and then get her or his signature. Then scan and e-mail the completed contract to your faculty mentor.

Step #4: Do the internship! When the internship is complete, have your internship boss send your faculty mentor an e-mail certifying that you completed the contract. You should also debrief with your mentor, so you can regale her or him with stories of your internship life. That way your mentor will hook you up with a really good recommendation when you need it.
 

Undergraduate Internship Form

This list of just some of the places where UAlbany history majors have interned in the past, but if you find an internship that you would like pursue that is not on this list, let us know and we will do our best to help you make it happen.

Libraries, Museums, and Historic Sites:

Key Contact Person: Prof. Pastore

• USS Slater
• United States Capitol Historical Society (through UAlbany Semester in Washington)
• Olana State Historic Site
• Peebles Island State Park
• Albany County Hall of Records
• Shaker Heritage Society
• Preservation League of NY State
• Historic Cherry Hill
• Historic Albany Foundation
• Albany Institute of History and Art
• Hanford Mills Museum
• Irish American Heritage Museum
• Crailo State Historic Site
• New York State Museum
• Saratoga National Battlefield
• Saratoga National Historic Park
• Schuyler Mansion Historic Site
• Ten Broeck Mansion Historic Site
• Martin Van Buren National Historic Site
• New York State Military Museum
• New York State Historic Preservation Office
• Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives
• Seward House Museum – Auburn, NY
• FASNY Museum of Firefighting, Hudson, NY
• Waterford Museum
• Smithsonian
• For national historic sites beyond NY, or the immediate region: Check thesca.org

Writing, Communications, Documentary Production

Key Contact Person: Prof. Bernard

• SUNY Press
• Mt. Ida Press
• Albany Times Union
• Amsterdam News
• WMHT
• WAMC
• WGBH Boston
• WNET NY
• A&E Networks (includes History channel)

Education

There are a host of opportunities in this field, and the office of Community Engagement might be the best place to start. Here are some that might not be on their list.

• State Department of Education
• Liberty Partnerships Program
• Capital Roots: (Formerly Capital District Community Gardens)
• Healthcorps

Law and Policy

Key Contact Person: Prof. Hamm

• Center for American Progress (placed through UAlbany Washington Semester)
• New York State Assembly
• New York State Senate
• New York State Attorney General’s Office Internship
• Empire Center for New York State Policy
• NY State Division of Human Rights
• Congressman Paul Tonko’s District Office

Environment

Key contact person: Prof. Smith-Howard

• Great starting point: Student Conservation Association (thesca.org)
• Environmental Advocates of New York
• Parks and Trails New York

Business/Management

Key contact person: Prof. Smith-Howard

• Reichert Advertising
• Times Union Center
• Capital Roots (many of the internships here include market analysis, marketing, close work with small business owners)
• JP Morgan Chase
• Disney

Arts and Non-Profits

Key contact person: Prof. Smith-Howard

• Albany Institute of History and Arts
• Arts Center of the Capital Region 
• Foundation of New York State Nurses
• Saratoga Performing Arts Center

World Affairs and International Internships

Interested in a community service or public service internship, but need cash? Here are some internship support programs, nationally competitive, that might provide you with funding.

• JW Saxe Fund: Prizes up to $2000 to college and university students involved in public service.
• Federal and Public Service Internships for undergraduate and graduate students interested in and committed to Asian Pacific American issues, through the Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership.

The Patricia Stocking Brown Fund for Feminist Social Justice Research in University Libraries Award
Cash awards to one undergraduate student and one graduate student who submit an application describing a research project/class paper related to feminist social justice using materials in The University at Albany Libraries’ M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives. The awards are $100 for undergraduate and $500 for graduate students. 

Initiatives for Women (IFW)
Initiatives for Women (IFW) awards, generally between $500 and $1500, are designed to enhance educational and career opportunities for women students, staff, and faculty. Applications are generally due in March. 

Department of History Paper Prize Competitions - The deadline is March 15th
An opportunity to have your research recognized by the Department. Each prize comes with a small cash award. Submissions from all history graduate students are encouraged. To apply for one of the prizes below, please submit as one file:

• A cover sheet with your name, email address, the date, the paper title, and information about the course for which the paper was written.
• A copy of the research paper, being sure that your last name and a page number are on every page. The paper must have been written between January and January of the previous year.
• Please name the file as follows: LastName_PaperPrize_20XX.docx (or .pdf)

Email the file directly to the History Graduate Director or [email protected]. The department awards the following:

• ARTHUR A. EKIRCH, JR. PRIZE IN AMERICAN HISTORY
  The Arthur A. Ekirch Prize in American History is awarded to the graduate student who submits the most outstanding research paper in American History.
• ARTHUR A. EKIRCH, JR. PRIZE IN HISTORY
  The Arthur A. Ekirch Prize in History is awarded to the graduate student who submits the most outstanding research paper in any geographic area other than American History.
• PHI ALPHA THETA PAPER PRIZE
  The Phi Alpha Theta Award is given to a Master’s student for an outstanding paper in history written within the last calendar year. Winner will be recognized at the Phi Alpha Theta reception.

Established by Dr. Sherry Penney, a distinguished History Department alumna, the Sherry Penney Award is given to the most outstanding woman graduate student in History who is planning to pursue a career in history.  To submit:

• A statement summarizing progress toward your degree and professional career plans. Please name the file as follows: LastName_PenneyAward_20XX.docx (or .pdf)
• Two (2) letters of recommendation from faculty to support your application, to be sent directly by the faculty member to [email protected] and the Graduate Director. One of the recommendations must be from History faculty at the University at Albany.

A fellowship established in honor of distinguished alumnus Joseph E. Persico '52, these funds may be used for any expenses related directly to research, including travel to archival collections and other research sites, photocopying, etc. Students may apply for fellowships ranging from $200 to $4,000. Priority will be given to those who have not received support through these programs previously, though all applications will be fully considered. Applications may receive partial funding at the discretion of the awards committee. If you received one of these awards in previous years, you must submit your one-page research report detailing your use of those funds before you will be considered for this round. Send your report to [email protected] and the Graduate Director.
 

Eligibility
All graduate students in good standing, who are conducting research on some aspect of U.S. history (including those doing comparative and international projects), are eligible to apply for the Persico Fellowship Fund. However, priority will be given to doctoral students engaged in dissertation research. The Doctoral Research Award is open only to doctoral students. Students seeking consideration for both should submit a single application; the committee will consider it for the award for which it is eligible.
 

Application

• The application should submit the following to [email protected] and the Graduate Director, via email, by the deadline: March 15th.
• A brief, one paragraph statement (50 word) summarizing the request, including how much support you are seeking and for what purpose.
• A description (500 word maximum) of the project and explanation of how the proposed activity advances your project goals.
• An itemized budget indicating how the funding will be used (including total cost for the proposed activity and information about how additional expenses might be covered). NOTE: It is critical that your budget accurately and clearly reflect your projected expenses. The committee recommends that all applicants consult with their advisors or Prof. Dawson about how to prepare a budget.
• A timeline for completing the activities for which support is being requested, and for the project overall (for those at the early stages of doctoral research, this latter part can be very general). The activity period for the award is June 1 of the award year to May 31 of the following year.
• A letter from the faculty member directing the research about the importance of the project and the applicant’s progress or anticipated progress in completing it, send directly to [email protected] and the Graduate Director by the deadline.