Michigan State University Department of History

Looking for an exciting summer class? In History 202: American History to 1876, we’ll be using lectures, readings, songs, podcasts, poetry, works of art, and other sources to explore American history during a period of almost unimaginable change. We’ll move together from early contacts between native North Americans and Europeans in the late 1400s up to 1876, the year that Reconstruction – the astonishing and controversial period after the Civil War – ended. The people who lived through these 400 years witnessed staggering changes in politics, technology, the economy, the environment, and religion, as well as in understandings of sex, gender, race, age, morality, and a variety of other things that we’ll explore together in depth.

Looking for a great summer course? Professor Charles Keith is teaching HST 150: World History Since 1500. World history explores the idea that it’s impossible to really understand any part of the world without understanding its interactions with other parts of the world. HST 150 avoids a traditional focus on a single nation or region for an approach to history that is comparative and connective. We will consider common patters of historical change across world regions as well as the networks, processes and events that link different world regions to one another. The course’s main focus is empire: the various forms that world empires have taken across time and space, transitions from older to more modern imperial forms, the effects of imperial rule on ordinary people, and the role of empires in global exchange and conflict. Some of the principal topics we will cover include early modern exploration and trade, early modern scientific and intellectual innovation, transatlantic revolutions, industrialization, colonialism, the World Wars, the Cold War, decolonization, and the relationship between history and the 21st century world. #MSUHistory #MSUSocialScience

Congrats to our History faculty Dr. Achebe! #MSUHistory #MSUSocialScience

Join us on Monday, March 24th in Room 255 Old Hort as we welcome Peter Zinoman to campus for his talk on: The Politics of Historical Writing on the Vietnam War since the Fall of Saigon. #MSUHIstory #MSUSocialScience

We are lighting an Access Torch for Michigan State University Department of History PhD student Gloria Ashaolu. Her work focuses on the anti-racist pedagogy of Black teachers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The full story: https://spr.ly/604501OPb #MSUSocialScience #MSUHistory

We are proud to welcome Professor Johann Neem to campus for his lecture on The Daily Life of Democracy on Thursday, March 20th at 4pm in Room 255 Old Hort. Hope to see you there! #MSUHistory #MSUSocialScience

ICYMI: Register today, hope to see you there on Monday! #MSUHistory

The History Department is proud to sponsor the Mary Louise Hooper and the International Movement to End Apartheid Workshop. The workshop is free and open to the public will examine the life and legacy of Mary Louise Hooper, who was an anti-apartheid activist and close friend to the exiled African National Congress of South Africa. The conference begins at 8am on Saturday, March 15th. You can register now to join the event via Zoom at: https://spr.ly/6049LAgat #MSUHistory

"America in the Kitchen" is a new research grant funded by the National Endowment of Humanities that will work to digitize 200 of the most important American cookbooks from the 18th century through 1960. The MSU team behind the grant includes our historians Helen Veit and Dean Rehberger, former MSU Libraries Head of Special Collections and Librarian Emeritus?Peter Berg and MSU Libraries Head of Special Collections Leslie McRoberts. The full story: https://spr.ly/6040LF4v8 #MSUHistory #MSUSocialScience College of Social Science at Michigan State University

New episode of Africa Past and Present Available! Our MSU historian Peter Alegi talks to Dr. Benjamin Talton (Director, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University) on his eclectic intellectual journey as a historian of Africa and the Diaspora. The interview begins with a discussion of his early work on ethnicity and politics in northern Ghana and then turns to his award-winning book, In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics. In the final portion of the interview, Dr. Talton discusses his forthcoming book on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s engagement with African liberation politics. To listen and download, go to https://spr.ly/6049LUzRl. #MSUHistory #MSUSocialScience