Course Guide
During the summer of 2025, the UMass History Department is offering 11 online classes. Each class fulfills one or more UMass general education requirements, including Historical Studies (HS), United States Diversity (DU), and Global Diversity (DG) requirements.
All classes are open to UMass students and the general public. The summer semesters run May 19-July 1 and July 7 - August 15, 2025. Join us!
For questions about course content, contact the faculty member teaching the course. For general questions about the UMass History Department's online classes, contact @email. For all other questions, including registration and records, contact U+.
Enrollment Begins March 17!
History 110: World to 1500
Anna Taylor, HS DG, 4 credits
This course explores some of the most ancient cultures of the world, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, and Meso-America, through ancient primary sources and artifacts.
History 121: Latin America, National Period
Maria Portilla Moya, HS DG, 4 credits
Explore the creation of modern Latin America, with a focus on the struggles over land and labor, the creation of nation-states, and the conflicts within those states over issues of citizenship and social justice. The course also addresses the contentious role the United States has played in the region.
History 170: Indigenous Peoples of North America
Alice Nash, HS DU, 4 credits
This course offers you a quick tour through 500+ years of history in a geographic region (North America) inhabited by Indigenous peoples so diverse that by some estimates there were over 500 different languages spoken here prior to 1492. With only six weeks to cover this material, the class emphasizes broad themes across time and space, using a few examples in-depth that illustrate continent-wide patterns and principles. The focus is on Indigenous peoples, their cultural paradigms, historical experiences and present-day situations.
History 283: American Gridiron Football
Joel Wolfe, HS, 4 credits
This class examines the history of American gridiron football from its earliest days as a game played primarily at elite colleges through its development into the most popular spectator sport in the United States. The class examines the complex and contentious history of race and ethnicity in football, and its place in American politics from Theodore Roosevelt’s intervention to keep the sport legal to present-day controversies over everything from race and sexuality to patriotism.
History 389: U.S. Women's History since 1890
Jennifer L. Nye, HS DU, 4 credits
This course explores the relationship of women and gender to the social, cultural, economic, legal and political developments shaping American society from 1890 to the present. It examines change over time in family life and intimate relationships, including marriage, divorce, sexuality and reproduction (sterilization, birth control, abortion, reproductive technologies, adoption); the civil and political participation of women, including voting, jury service, military service, and holding political office; and paid and unpaid labor, including employment discrimination and sexual harassment. The course will pay particular attention to gender and leadership in various social movements such as suffrage, civil rights and racial justice, welfare rights, reproductive rights and justice, and the anti-rape and battered women’s movements. We’ll consider the long arc of feminist activism, as well as conservative resistance and backlash. This course will specifically focus on how class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and immigration status have shaped women's historical experiences. Sophomore level and above.
History 111: World Since 1500
Richard Chu, HS DG, 4 credits
In this course, you will be invited to explore the continuities, connections, trends, and ruptures in world history from the late fifteenth century to the present. We will investigate the historical processes that formed the modern world, including cross-cultural interactions, capitalism, global migration, colonization and decolonization, nationalism and imperialism, trade networks, revolutions, and war. Topics include the foundation of European empires, the spread of Islamic world powers, the establishment of the African slave trade, the rise of MIng/Qing China and Tokugawa in Japan, the two world wars, the rise of globalization and climate change. The course emphasizes the multiple perspectives and experiences that shaped world history, including the determinant role played by non-European societies in making the modern world. Course readings include a textbook, some documentaries or movies, and a set of primary sources that provide a window into the diverse human experiences in history.
History 131: Middle East II
Mohammad Ataie, HS DG, 4 credits
This course will explore the political, social, and cultural history of the modern Middle East, with an emphasis on its interconnections with the rest of the world, most notably Europe and the US during the modern period. This course begins with the rise of the Safavid Empire in Iran and the Ottoman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia, then examines shifting power balances within these empires due to internal and external forces. Moving into the Modern Middle East, it explores European imperialism's impact and regional responses. Key events shaping the region include World War I, the colonization of Palestine, Nasserism, Pan-Arabism, the Lebanese civil war, the Iranian Revolution, and the rise of Political Islam. The course concludes with the Axis of Resistance against U.S. imperialism and Israel, reflecting on contemporary events.
History 155: Empires to Nations: The Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800
Timothy Hastings, HS DG, 4 credits
The transformation of the Atlantic World from a world of empires into one of nation-states through examining the interactions between Africans, American Natives, and Europeans from the fifteenth through the end of the eighteenth century. New England's place within this history will be highlighted.
History 264: History of Health Care and Medicine
Emily Hamilton, HS DU, 4 credits
This course investigates the social meaning of medicine, health care, and disease in the U.S. from 1600 to the present. Major topics will include: the evolution of beliefs about the body; medical and social responses to infectious and chronic disease; the rise of medical science and medical organizations; the development of medical technologies; the role of public and government institutions in promoting health practices and disease treatments; and a particular focus on the history of reproductive health and justice. To explore the human experience of medicine, readings will address the experience of being ill, the delivery of compassionate care, the nature of the relationship between practitioner and patient, and ethics. Throughout the semester, the class will link medicine to broad issues in American history by examining the effects of class, race, religion gender, age, sexual orientation, lifestyle, and geographic region on health and medical care, as well as exploring themes such as consumerism, social movements and activism, politics and health care, patient expectations, and medical ethics. Course materials will include recent scholarly literature in the history of medicine, writings by physicians and patients, historical documents, films, websites, audio interviews, and artifact studies.
History 265: U.S. LGBT and Queer History
Jennifer Nye, HS DU, 4 credits
This course explores how queer individuals and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities have influenced the social, cultural, economic, and political landscape in United States history. With a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the course covers topics such as the criminalization of same-sex acts, cross-dressing, industrialization and urbanization, feminism, the construction of the homo/heterosexual binary, transsexuality and the "lavender scare" during the Cold War, the homophile, gay liberation, and gay rights movements, HIV/AIDS, and (im)migration. We will often look to examples from the present to better explore change over time and the modes and influences that shape both current and past understandings of gender and sexual difference.
History 280: History of Baseball
Joel Wolfe, HS, 4 credits
This class examines the history of baseball from its earliest days as a game for young men in New York City in the mid-19th century to the present and its professional leagues in the United States and elsewhere in the world. The class studies the rise of sport as a leisure activity and then industry, the creation of the major leagues, the racial integration of baseball, the rise of free agency, the steroid era and beyond.