Courses

Online Courses

The History Department of Michigan State University is offering online courses in two summer sessions. You can take 100, 200, 300, and 400 level courses online from anywhere in the world and make progress on your degree. All you need is a sustainable, broadband connection to the internet. You can finish a 100 or 200 level prerequisite over the summer and then take more advanced courses during the fall and spring terms. You can also take one of our 300 or 400 level specialty courses on a range of topics from the History of the State of Michigan to the History of Medicine.

If you are interested in our online courses, please visit our registration information page. You do not have to be an MSU student to take our courses.  Students at other universities can take them and may qualify for low in-state rates.  Further, most of our courses count for credit toward degrees elsewhere.  For transfer-credit information, see http://www.michigantransfernetwork.org/

If you have questions, please contact us at history.courses@matrix.msu.edu.

Summer Courses:

History 140 World History to 1500
Taught by: Dr. Alan Fisher History 140 is the first semester of a year-long course on World History. Here, we include the period primarily before 1400 CE – a hundred years or so before the first European circumnavigation of the globe. We have picked this approximate date intentionally – so that we can examine...
History 150 World History since 1500
Taught by: Dr. Alan Fisher History 150 is the second semester of a year-long course on World History. In HST 150. We include the period primarily after 1500 C.E. Those of you who have studied World History before 1500, say our own HST 140, know that Europe was not the most advanced region of the...
History 202History 202 U.S. History to 1876
Taught by: Dr. Christine Daniels Between the mid 1400s and 1865, people from three areas of the globe (the Americas, Britain and Europe, and West Africa) encountered each other in the Americas. Some were native peoples; others migrated (more or less willingly); still others were enslaved. During the 400 years this course covers, they created many...
History 203 U.S. History since 1876
Taught by: Dr. Michael Stamm This course surveys United States history from the end of the Civil War to the present.  Our focus will be economic and social development, political conflict, and the cultural responses of Americans to the enormous changes over the past 145 years.  You will be presented with a variety of different sources and mediums....
History 208 Introduction to African History, Culture, and Society
Taught by: Dr. Nwando Achebe Introduction to African History, Culture, and Society is a general survey of the history, culture, and society of Africa. Since it is impossible to provide in-depth coverage of so vast and diverse a continent, during each lecture session, I will draw on case studies from West, East, Central,...
History 210 Modern East Asia
Taught by: Dr. Ethan Segal Learn about the amazing transformations that the peoples of East Asia have experienced over the last three hundred years.  Today, China, Japan, and the two Koreas are extremely important in political, economic, and military terms, yet many Americans know little about their history.  HST 210 explores the challenges and opportunities that East...
History 250History 250 History of the Digital Age
Taught by: Alex Galarza Computers are ubiquitous.  Whether we are in our cars, our planes, our houses, our hospitals, or our classrooms, computers are now part of the infrastructure of everyday life.  How and why did this come about?  In order to explore this question, the course will be broken into three separate, though integrated themes. ...
History 304 The American Civil War
Taught by: Dr. Peter Knupfer The course provides an intensive study of the causes, conduct, and consequences of the American Civil War. Students will examine the underlying sectional conflict over slavery, freedom, and nationality, the military and political conduct of the ensuing war, the social and economic transformation of an agrarian republic into a nation-state, and...
History 320 History of Michigan
Taught by: Dr. Roger Rosentreter Few states can boast a past as rich as Michigan’s. In the early 17th century, French explorers, fur traders and missionaries arrived in the Great Lakes. For the next 150 years, the French established Michigan’s earliest settlements while interacting with the Indians who had called Michigan home for several thousand years....
hst321History 321 History of the American West
Taught by: Dr. David Bailey This class examines the migration of people and settlers in the western hemisphere, beginning with the First Societies and ending with the myths and realities of the Old West. ...
History 324 History of Sport in America
Taught by: Dr. David Bailey This course takes a fresh and innovative look at the history of American sport. Created by an award-winning faculty member, the class places the voices of athletes at the center of the story of how American culture developed its special and intense relationship with sports. Starting with the nineteenth century development...
History 327 Mexican Struggles in the United States, 1897-1980
Taught by: Nora Salas This course analyzes the history of people of Mexican descent in relationship to the development of the United States from 1897 to 1980. People of Mexican descent in the United States have been known by many names during the 20th century including Mexican Americans, Chicanos, Hispanics, Latinos and more. The...
History 328 Modern U.S. Military History
Taught by: Dr. Roger Rosentreter The 20th Century is filled with struggles for freedom. Beginning with the Philippine Insurrection of 1899-1902, this course traces the 20th century experiences of the U.S. Armed Forces. Stops along the way include Belleau-Woods and the Meuse-Argonne Forest (World War I), Omaha Beach and Okinawa (World War II), the 38th Parallel...
280x_1-4-AF-49-sportsHistory-a0a0s7-a_13864History 329 College Sports History in the United States
Taught by: Dr. Juan Javier Pescador This class will introduce students to the major historical transformations in intercollegiate athletic competitions from their origins in the U.S. nineteenth century to present times. The course will analyze the evolution of College sports as physical competitions, leisure activities, youth rituals, gender & race differentiators,...
History 390 – History of International Relations
Taught by : Malcolm Magee This course examines the evolution of the nation state system from the Congress of Vienna to the post Cold War period. We will document patterns in international history and the consequences of national foreign policy decisions on the rest of the world. While the course will examine this from the...
History 394 History of the Space Age
Taught by: David Bailey Travel back to the future, when the idea of going to the moon was a glint in the nation’s eye!  What was the back-story of the Sputnik crisis? How did scientists make space flight feasible?  Learn the history surrounding space travel: dogs, monkeys, humans and more. ...
History 395: A Social History of War
Taught by Dr. Ben Smith Over the last hundred years, between 150 and 200 million people have lost their lives during armed conflicts.  According to the most recent statistics, around 33 million have been military casualties, and around 170 million civilians. The technology employed during these wars was something entirely new. Arm chair...
History 425 American & European Health Care since 1800
Taught by: Dr. John Waller This course traces the changes in medical theory and practice that have transformed health care over the past four centuries. It charts the decline in magical beliefs, the growth in scientific rationalism, the emergence of hospital medicine, the advent of the germ theory of disease, the rise of laboratory diagnostics and...
History 454 – American Cinema and the American Century
Instructor: Juan Javier Pescador This interdisciplinary class introduces students to the history, evolution and transformation of the film industry in the United States in the extended 20th century. From its humble origins in the penny arcades and nickelodeons in the 1900s to its ultimate consolidation as a leading sector in the global entertainment industry, American cinema...
History 455 – Global Soccer
Taught by: Peter Alegi No history of the modern world is complete without a history of soccer (association football). This course explores how and why global soccer influenced, and was influenced by cultural values, economic interests, and power relationships.  Case studies drawn from a wide range of texts and audio-visual sources about the game complement...
ISS 330c – The Drug Trade in the Americas
Taught by: Dr. Ben Smith After communism, the most important source of tension in US-Latin American relations over the last century has been drugs. As successive Latin American countries have moved from the production and transportation of marijuana and heroin in the early twentieth century to cocaine in the last three decades, the US has primarily...