The past is present
In 2023, UF president Dr. Ben Sasse called for "less indoctrination" of students by their professors. This course explores the historical debates over indoctrination to understand how such undue influences may have threatened or seemed to threaten freedom of thought, personal autonomy, and self-determination—the touchstones of liberal democracy.
"A Global History of Lies" starts in the present. We consider how a confluence of technological, economic, political and social forces has reshaped the contours and possibilities of misinformation and disinformation and their role in the development of rumors, conspiracy theories, and hoaxes. We then trace the arc of conspiratorial thinking and rumors from the sixteenth century through the era of Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro, Orban, and Erdogan.
This course surveys the history of illness and medicine in the US with a focus on viral pandemics, the developments of treatments and prevention, and the experiences of patients, families, medical professionals, researchers, activists, and politicians.
This course traces hip hop culture's emergence and development in the United States and globally from the 1970s to the present. With a strong emphasis on rap music, the course investigates the culture's intersections with local, urban, and regional histories, as well as technology, politics, capitalism, race, gender, sexuality, and class.
The Business of History syllabus challenges students to merge the often creative, open-ended nature of academic inquiry with the outcomes-oriented and deadline-driven world of business.
This course explores historical "happenings" and their interpretations after 1945 with a heightened focus on if/how the United States has maintained, strengthened, and perpetuated its image of global excellence.
This course traces the history of the United States during the 1990s. It pays particular attention to the politics of the era, as well as the cultural texts (songs, films, and other phenomena) that both reflected and shaped the period.
This course introduces students to the history of emotions and senses. Students explore theories and methods for studying emotions in history, as well as scholarship on emotions or senses in specific historical contexts.
This course uses graphic novels to think about the past and considers how the visual medium can reveal new understandings of familiar historical events. Students examine graphic novels alongside archival materials to analyze and interpret complex and difficult stories of war, trauma, slavery, social protest, sexuality, citizenship, and civil rights.
This course provides a historical overview of extremism in the United States from Reconstruction through the present. Students will explore primary sources ranging from political pamphlets to diaries, religious tracts, government records, and films, alongside scholarly literature, to equip them with a foundational knowledge of the history of extremism in the US during the long twentieth century.
Clio and the Contemporary 