Fall 2025

HST 4979 / Senior Seminar – The Progressive Era

Rod Clare

This class is an exploration of the major figures, events, and concepts that guided the United States during the Progressive Era, roughly 1890-1920. The United States began expanding geographically, economically and population-wise from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the end of the 19th century. However, this attendant growth brought about many new and unforeseen problems to the country. The Progressive Era then became a somewhat successful attempt, brought about by many wildly varying persons, groups and ideologies, to regulate, ameliorate and control this new “Colossus” of American evolution.

The Progressive Era (Progressive movement) (article) | Khan Academy

Spring 2026

HST 4976 / Senior Seminar – Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century

Michael Matthews

This seminar will introduce students to the main problems, issues, trends, etc. that historically shaped nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperialism as well as engage the major debates on the topic that have developed among scholars from different academic fields. This course examines the changing interconnection between imperialism, industrialization, and capitalism from the eighteenth- to the twenty-first century. The course stresses how imperialism began a process of rapidly changing social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental structures over time – not only in the colonial world but in the nations of the colonizers as well. In this regard, the course asks students to think about the diverse ways that colonized peoples and the colonizers influenced and shaped one another’s worlds, both in the past and today. By emphasizing how imperialism spurred a series of global processes that shape and continue to shape the world today, the course encourages students to analyze their own lives as the product of ongoing and dynamic processes of social, cultural, political, and economic change.