This class delves into a different kind of war—not one of guns and bombs but a centuries-old battle over what history should be taught and commemorated. While I’ve always been passionate about studying history, it wasn’t until my years teaching high school history in Southeast Dallas that I began questioning the content mandated for our students. Why, for instance, did my students need to know about WWI Medal of Honor recipient Alvin York but not about Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street”?

Throughout United States history, disasters have redefined the American physical and political landscape. The History of American Disasters is a first-year seminar focused on how disasters affect people’s lives and communities. There are two sections of this seminar: one focusing on natural disasters and one focusing on building fires.

In this class, we will examine political polarization in the United States from both an institutional and behavioral perspective. Quotes like the one above suggest that Americans are hopelessly polarized, pushed by our partisan predispositions to vote for or against a candidate regardless of whether we like that candidate’s issue positions or personal characteristics.

Throughout modern history, individuals have taken extraordinary pleasure in sharing the music that they love with others. Why we like the music that we do and why we feel the need to share it with others can tell us a lot about who we are as individuals.

Fairy tales are a literary genre that encompasses the world. While often considered to be part of children’s literature, fairy tales reflect the culture of the region they originate from. On the other hand, as Vladimir Propp shows, fairy tales share common structures that transcend national and cultural boundaries. This course has a closer look at the structure, meaning, and function of international fairy tales and their enduring influence on popular culture.

Unlike post-Nazi Germany, post-dictatorial Spain has never been officially compelled to confront the violence, repression, and human rights abuses of its twentieth-century past. As a result, the victims of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the Fran …

The tech industry promises to improve our everyday lives by making things faster, easier, and better. Whatever you need, there’s an app for that. But does the tech industry really deliver on its promise to make lives better? In our daily interactions w …

The amusement park is a timeless symbol of leisure, thrill, fantasy, and entertainment and it is a pastime enjoyed by generations of guests the world over.  Today, it is a perfect mix between a time-honored pastime that spans the generations and a mode …

History is the study of what happened—the paths, both chosen and unchosen, taken by people in the past.  But what about what didn’t happen—the paths not taken, the choices not made, the outcomes that never came to be?  Historians refer to this topic of debate as alternate history or counterfactual history.

It’s been estimated that college graduates have 80,000 working hours in their career. So, as a future college graduate, if you desire to build a better world for yourself and future generations, then your choice of career is one of their best opportuni …