Category: History Courses

This list provides a selection of the History courses I’ve taken during my time at Agnes Scott, including writing samples, research papers, and course overviews.

HIS-323: US Conservatism: From Teddy Roosevelt to the Tea Party

Course Description:

A study of the conservative movement in the United States from 1900 through the present, examining historical context as well as change over time in what is considered “conservative.” The course will consider intellectual, economic, social, religious, cultural, and political conservative movements. (Cross-listed with POL-323.)

Major Takeaways:

This course helped me to consider political movements as subjects of history; political ideologies do not merely adapt to changing contexts, but rather they inform them. Understanding the foundations of the modern American Right has given me valuable insight into current political debates and policy decisions that I hope to utilize in my career.

Read:

Minorities and Conservatism: Applying Essentialism to Political Identities

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HIS/ESS/AS-215: African Environmental History

Course Description:

This course will survey the evolution of African environmental and ecological systems over the past 200 years. Subjects will include aspects of the physical environment visible through changes in climate and hydrology, as well as key issues of human/environmental interaction, such as agriculture, deforestation, conservation, famine, malaria, and the role of colonialism and economic development in environmental change. The course will also examine the ways in which outsiders have created myths about the African environment and how Africans have managed their natural resources over time. The course will examine the causes and social effects of famine, vector-borne disease and the impact of political ecology of globalization on African environmental management. Course assignments will cover most geographical regions of Africa, but with special attention to East Africa.

Major Takeaways:

African Environmental History combined elements of Africana Studies, Environmental Studies, and History to achieve a powerful interdisciplinary objective; understanding “Africa” as a complex and nuanced product of African agency against colonial implications and lasting, dangerous misconceptions of the continent as a whole. This course remains one of my favorite classes at Agnes Scott.

Read:

Imagining African Environments: Zoos, Circuses, Menageries, and the Colonial Impulse

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HIS-325: The American Revolution: Causes and Consequences

Course Description:

The political, social, economic and ideological roots of the American Revolution; the Constitution and early government; the creation of an American national culture; and the contested meanings of freedom in the early republic.

Major Takeaways:

I took this class half-expecting it to be a rehashing of the standard American public school curriculum, but my expectations not have been farther from reality. This course helped me to completely reimagine the intentions of the Founding Fathers and understand the way that our ever-evolving national identity was created long before the republic was created in law. It challenged myths and assumptions about the institution of slavery and introduced me to the reality of a multi-racial, multi-faith abolitionist movement at the end of the 18th century.

Read:

The Violent Expansionism of the American Revolution: Indigenous Responses to the “Contest for Indian Land”

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