Descriptions Archive - Page 2 of 5 - Department of History

Playing History

HIST 3908B: Playing History

Fall 2026

Professor Pamela J. Walker

In this course, we will study history by playing games.

For many decades, university professors, politicians and parents have lamented that university students seem more interested in having fun than studying. In 1913, a Harvard professor lamented that his students “could not be much stimulated by any inducements a teacher could suggest.” Reacting to the Past (RTTP) takes a different approach to university studies and makes subversive play integral to a historical study. It makes studying history fun, serious fun. Students who enjoy theatre, debating, public speaking, role playing games, board games, sports, and problem solving will have opportunity to use those talents in this course.

RTTP draws students into the past, promotes engagement with big ideas, and develops intellectual and academic skills. Reacting roles, unlike those in a play, do not have a fixed script or outcome. Students will be obliged to adhere to the philosophical and intellectual beliefs of the historical figures they have been assigned to play and they must devise their own means of expressing those ideas persuasively, in papers, speeches, or other public presentations. Students must also pursue a course of action they think will help them win the game. Students will collaborate and compete with others. They will work to understand historical documents and to develop their response to the central problems of the game. Together they may develop ideas for debates, engage in skullduggery, or plot to sabotage their opponents. After the game, the professor will organize a debrief session to consider what students learned and how the historical events differed from the way the game unfolded.

We will play two games and students will play historical roles in both games that will involve research, writing, giving speeches, and debating. You will have some choice of role you will play and different roles allow for different ways to participate in the game. You will have to purchase a game book for each game and other course materials will be posted on Brightspace. The games both ask questions about Christianity, religious change, and the relationship between religion and politics in modern European history.

We will play:
Ending the Troubles: Religion, Nationalism, and the Search for Peace and Democracy in Northern Ireland 1997-98
https://reactingconsortium.org/games/troubles1997

Henry VIII and the Reformation Parliament
https://reactingconsortium.org/games/henryviii

Students will be required to purchase paper copies of the game book.

Students will be graded on their engagement with class discussions of the assigned reading, participation in the game which includes speaking, writing, research, collaboration, and planning, and on the quality and depth of their written work. There are no exams in this course.

Historical Representation

Public History From Memory to Museums

Fall 2026

HIST 2811

Professor John C. Walsh

Introduction: Public history is one of the most rapidly growing fields of historical research and professional practice. Public history deals with the ways in which history is created and presented in the public arena. This includes sites like museums, monuments, exhibitions, historic sites, and archives, but also forms such as graphic novels, video games, live performances, and a smorgasbord of digital histories. The ubiquity of public history in our culture also means public history work and careers are being established in a wide range of places, in both the public and private sectors. Indeed, this is why in the last few years Carleton has added an undergraduate public history concentration to allow students to add some value to their degrees whether History Majors or Minors.

Class Format: Most weeks will be done in-person once / week in a three-hour block. (Some class time will be devoted to asynchronous site visits to avoid any conflicts with classes right before or after ours.) In-class time will involve a range of activities: lectures, discussion, screenings, public history experiments, and visits from public historians to talk about their professional careers and pathways.

Aims and Goals: There are two fundamental goals for this course. First, it seeks to introduce students to public history as both a practice and a career. Second, it will immerse students in doing public history by pursuing a “public history of place” project from the first weeks of the course until the end.

Assessment (tentative):

Attendance: 10%

Online, Asynchronous Quizzes: 40%

Public History of Place Project: 50% (this is broken down into components over the term)

Text: The core text will be Thomas Cauvin, Public History: A Textbook of Practice 2nd Edition (Routledge, 2022) – please note that you will need the 2^nd edition and copies of this will be ordered through the university bookstore, but students can find the book in a wide range of retailers. A copy of the textbook will also be placed on reserve at the library. All other required readings, screenings, or listenings will be made available electronically through the course website.

Questions? Please email me at: john.walsh@carleton.ca

Indigenous Peoples and Canada

History 3510A

Indigenous Peoples and Canada

Fall 2026

Instructor: Professor Michel Hogue

Description: This course examines the historical experiences of Indigenous peoples and their encounters with colonialism. It examines key sites of interactions between Indigenous peoples—First Nations, Metis, and Inuit—and their would-be colonizers in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Canada. While we survey the contours of Indigenous lives and histories during this time period and the complex histories that entangled Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, we will pause to consider the utility of colonialism as an analytical framework for understanding these interactions. What do we mean when we talk about “colonialism”? What different forms has it taken? How have Indigenous peoples shaped, accommodated, or resisted such measures? How have the processes of colonization affected both colonizer and colonized? What are the legacies of these colonial interactions? What might de-colonization look like?

Our investigations will focus in large part on the primary sources that provide glimpses into aspects of this colonial past and its legacies. While historians typically identify such primary sources as the “building blocks” of historical interpretations, many of the sources that have been used to write the histories of Indigenous peoples were themselves the product of colonial needs to survey and control Indigenous peoples. While such collections necessarily privilege the perspectives and desires of colonizers and the very conditions of colonization, such records have also proven vital to Indigenous efforts to seek legal redress before courts and other tribunals, as well as to the efforts to revitalize cultural practices in the present. Grappling with the double-edged nature of historical sources about Indigenous peoples will necessarily mean casting a critical eye on the practice of history and its implication in the colonial pasts that historians have sought to document.

Format: This course will be delivered in a blended format. The three course hours per week will include an asynchronous, online course module (1 hour/week) and in-person discussions and hands-on activities (2 hours/week).

Evaluation: The course activities will include:

weekly quizzes based on the required readings and course activities
short writing assignments

If you have any questions please contact me at michel.hogue@carleton.ca

Seminar in British History: Histories of Shopping

HIST 4500A:
Seminar in British History: Histories of Shopping
Fall 2026 / Winter 2027

The above image is from the Empire Marketing Board campaign in the 1930s.
Instructor: Danielle Kinsey
Course Description: While this is a seminar about modern British history (ie/ from about 1750 to the present), the theme for the course is “Histories of Shopping.”
Long has it been assumed that industrialization was the backbone of British development and that histories of production drove imperialism, militarization, and the rise of parliamentary governance in Great Britain. This course will take a step back from that assumption and investigate how consumption, distribution, marketing, and consumerism were just as much a part of the story as production. Napoleon famously characterized England as a nation of shopkeepers; this course will explore how “shopping,” or the practice of buying goods from shops, became a constitutive element of modern life and driver of economic, political, social, and cultural change in Britain and its empire.
In the Fall semester, we will read and discuss scholarship about consumerism and shopping in modern Britain. Readings will likely be about: the cotton trade, racial capitalism, museums and exhibitions, glass shopwindows, department stores, worker cooperatives, consumer boycotts, kleptomania, fashion, the advertising industry, sensationalism, shopping districts, rationing, mass culture, Cold War culture, and the neoliberal citizen-consumer. Students will be asked to think historiographically about how and why scholars made their arguments about the past in addition to learning basic narratives of what happened in the past. The Fall semester will be evaluated on discussion participation, reading responses, a historiographical analysis of a particular topic of each student’s choosing, and a midterm on the readings in that semester.
In the Winter semester, as a class we will choose a specific area or theme to focus on and students will develop an original research topic of their own. We will discuss how to: generate topics and research plans, write a proposal, find and analyze primary sources, find and analyze secondary sources, write in drafts, and craft arguments and argumentation. We will also engage in peer review and students will be asked to make an oral presentation on their research findings. The output format for the research project will probably be a formal written essay but I am open to other modes of presentation.
Class Format: This is a 1.0 credit seminar that will meet in-person once per week for three hours. All students are expected to attend every class.
Evaluation: Attendance and participation will be graded in both semesters and is mandatory. There will also be reflective assignments in both semesters in addition to the assignments already discussed in the course description. The summative paper for the Fall semester will be a historiographical essay. The Winter semester will revolve around students producing aspects of their research project in a timely manner and engaging in constructive feedback with their peers.
Prerequisites: Students should complete either HIST 3810 or 3820 before taking this class so that they have been introduced to the concepts and content of historical theory and historiographical analysis.
Required readings: Readings for this course have not yet been set. Having said that, students should be prepared to read and discuss about 120 pages of academic writing per week. This reading load will come in the form of academic journal articles, monograph chapters, and theoretical texts, some of which will be challenging.
Email the instructor if you have any questions or concerns.

Britain & Empire, 1914-present

HIST 2512A:
Britain & Empire, 1914-present
Winter 2027
Instructor: Danielle Kinsey

This image is taken from the Empire Marketing Board campaign to promote British consumption of products from the empire during the 1930s.

Description: This lecture-and-discussion course surveys the history of the United Kingdom and its empire after 1914. Material in the course will be organized chronologically (ie/ we’ll start just before the First World War and slowly make our way to the present), discussing key political, social, cultural, military, and economic transformations that occurred along the way. We’ll examine all things “modern Britain”: what, when, where, and why was it, who was thought to be included and excluded from British national belonging, and how imperial and colonial development was mutually constitutive with British “domestic” development. Themes in the course will be: the rise of modern consumerism; the centrality of empire and colonialism to Britain in the twentieth century; experiences and transformations in the two World Wars; economic depression and deindustrialization; social justice movements; decolonization; tensions between England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales; British party politics; neo-liberalism and fascism; the “special relationship” with the United States; the Commonwealth; and the European Union and Brexit. The course will foreground cultural and identarian issues and as such we’ll often discuss the histories of class, race, gender, sexuality, ethnic, and religious difference. While this course is meant to continue from where HIST 2502 (Britain & Empire in the 19^th Century) leaves off, you do not need to have completed HIST 2502 to take this course.

Format: This is a 0.5 credit course that will meet twice weekly for face-to-face lectures and large group discussion.

Evaluation: Each lecture will contain keywords that students should take notes on. At times the instructor will use lecture time for large group discussions. Exams will be based on information from these lecture sessions. Weekly discussion sections will be used to discuss assignments, weekly readings, and/or short and feature length films. Discussions sections will be evaluated on attendance and participation, short worksheet assignments, and one summative written assignment that will be no more than 10 pages (double-spaced) of writing.

The weekly reading load in the course will not exceed 30 pages. Readings and other primary sources for the course will be made available online; if a textbook is required, it will be no more than $50.

Playing History

Professor Pamela J. Walker

FYSM 1405A: Playing History
Fall 2026-Winter 2027

Playing History

Do you like board games, theatre, video games, improv, historical fiction, costumes, and having fun? Are you tired of sitting quietly while a teacher talks?

Do you want to play historical games, meet other students, ask big historical questions, and figure out university life?

This course uses Reacting to the Past (RTTP) games to draw students into the past. Students will take on historical roles like a journalist, the King of France or a peasant protesting unjust laws. Games are set in times of historical change and upheaval like the French Revolution or the beginning of World War One. There is no fixed script or outcome. You will be obliged to adhere to the philosophical and intellectual beliefs of the historical figures you play and you must devise your own means of expressing those ideas persuasively, in papers, speeches, or other public presentations.

Everyone must figure out how to win the game. That might mean overthrowing the King and establishing a republic or making the King’s hold on power even more secure. Players will collaborate and compete with others. Your character might get killed in the game and you will reenter the game in a new role. You will work to understand historical documents and to develop your ,,response to the central problems of the game. You will debate, deceive your enemies, engage in skullduggery, or plot to sabotage your opponents. After the game, we will look at how the historical events differed from the way the game unfolded and reflect on the big historical questions we asked.

As one student said, “Because of Reacting, I don’t just know the facts, I know the history. And that’s pretty epic.”

This seminar will introduce you to historical thinking and help you to develop skills in persuasive speech, research, critical analytical thought and academic writing. These key skills are not only fundamental to success in university but are also essential to a successful professional career.

Class Format: This seminar will be taught in person with a maximum of thirty students.

Textbook: J. Popiel and M. Carnes, Rousseau, Burke, and the Revolution in France, 1791 2^nd. Edition, (University of North Carolina Press)

Assessment: Students will be graded on their participation in the historical games and class discussions. They will submit frequent short essays that will examine key historical questions. The papers will require independent research using techniques that will be taught in class. Students will also write longer essays on topics of their choice. There is no examination in this course.

Read about game-based history classes:
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/role-playing-games-are-breathing-new-life-into-the-history-classroom/

Conflict or Change in Early Canadian History

HIST 1301
Conflict or Change in Early Canadian History
Fall 2026

Source: Page of manuscript census of Canada West 1842, (can be enlarged and read in its entirety) Library and Archives Canada, https://data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca/1842/uc/jpg/004569584_00268.jpg
Caption: To know more about all censuses, how they were collected, how to make sense of the data, and to see the aggregated results, see the guides and introductions on the website of Library and Archives Canada, https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/1851/Pages/about-census.aspx.

Instructor: Professor Dominique Marshall

Introduction: An exploration of the various peoples and groups who have inhabited the Canadian territory from its earliest times to the 1860s. A chronological survey, with special attention to major transformations in imperial relations, the environment, the population, public life, social relations, and culture. An introduction to the many, and changing, ways used by historians to discover and explain this past. A discussion of conflicting understandings, received ideas, prejudices, assumptions and misconceptions. An opportunity to engage personally with written, visual and oral documents, as well as objects. A chance to participate in hands on virtual and collaborative laboratories to make and exhibit elements of the history of Canada.

Class Format: No participation in real time required. Within each week, there will be three hours of engagement with the class (watching, exchanging with the whole class, or one small discussion group, or the instructor, or the Teaching Assistant, as well as posting materials in common exhibits) with a flexible schedule. Besides, the course will require a weekly investment of an average of 4 hours of individual work, half of them to read the textbook & watch related materials, half of them to prepare an individual project on a topic of your choosing, following well defined steps. Each week, you will learn by simultaneously reading, explaining, writing, researching, making, revising, and reflecting.

Aims and Goals: To be familiar with the basic and recent knowledge and methods in the early history of Canada. To be prepared to perform confidently, and at short notice, basic investigations in the early history Canada. To be able to present the results of this research effectively, by using the basic tools of oral, written, and digital communication in history. To be able to understand and navigate of the basic ethical dimensions of historical research.

Assessment: Students will work on a series of projects: one individual term project divided in a series of steps, several group, and class-wide activities (collaborative research around regions; virtual and asynchronous group discussions; small class virtual exhibits, etc). Approximately 35% of the final mark will be for the various steps of the individual project assignments; 40% for engagement activities; 5% for individual tutorials with the teaching team; 20 % for a final take home examination and reflection.

Free Textbooks:
Belshaw, John Douglas. Canadian History: Pre-Confederation – 2nd Edition. Victoria, BC: BCcampus, 2020. https://opentextbc.ca/preconfederation2e/
Kheraj, Sean and Thomas Peace. Open History Seminar: Canadian History. Toronto: eCampusOntario, 2018. https://openhistoryseminar.com/canadianhistory
Occasionally, other readings will be available through the library course reserve system.

Questions? Please email me at: Dominique_marshall@carleton.ca

Rethinking Modern Canadian History

Early Modern Europe 1350–1650

Introduction to Women’s and Gender History

HIST 2506:

Introduction to Women’s and Gender History

Winter 2027

This course asks how did women make history and how does history make gender?

We will revisit major historical events including the transatlantic slave trade, the French Revolution, the Industrial revolution and the Reformation. What did women do, how did women’s lives change, and how did ideas about gender change in the course of that history? We will look at enslaved women who toiled and created cultures of resistance. We will look at the women who enslaved other women. How does understanding the profound differences among those women reshape our understanding of history? And what of the women who broke social conventions — the women who loved and had sex with women, the women who took to the streets to demand the vote, who escaped slavery, who resisted the Shoah, and who participated in riots and revolutions? How can we understand the past by closely attending to their actions and their words?

This course will offer a broad perspective on how people have negotiated their gendered subjectivity from the early modern period to the twentieth century. We will consider how gender has been constructed and deployed in relation to other categories including class, race, and sexuality. The course will primarily focus on Europe and North America with attention to a wider, transnational perspective. Themes will include women’s work; transatlantic slavery; women and religious change; the struggle for political representation in transnational contexts; the role of women in war; and feminist organizing in comparative perspective.

Class will meet twice weekly for one and a half hours and include lectures, discussions and in class writing. Students are expected to read an assigned article before class, to attend the lecture, participate in class discussions, submit short writing assignments in class, and complete a research essay. Readings will include scholarly articles, book chapters, and primary sources. There are no course materials for purchase. All required readings are on Brightspace.

Graded work includes a short answer submitted at the end of every class to an assigned question, an essay due during the semester, a presentation on a topic of choice and a final assessment that examines the course reading and lectures.

Questions: email pamela.walker@carleton.ca

Introduction to the History of the Civilization of Japan 日本文明史入門

HIST 2806A

Introduction to the History of the Civilization of Japan

日本文明史入門

[Nihon Bunmeishi Nyūmon]

Fall 2026 / Winter 2027

Instructor: Prof. Jacob Kovalio

Dear Students,

ELEVEN fundamental elements inform Japan’s historical evolution: location in the northwestern corner of the Ring of Fire; intense tectonic/volcanic environment; dearth of natural resources; being an island-nation; a complex written language; non-monotheistic religious duality of Shintō & Buddhism; subservience of religion to political leadership; bureaucratic domination of state and society; existence of one – the world’s oldest- imperial dynasty; readiness to adopt and adapt foreign (Chinese, then Western) institutions/traditions ; relative racial homogeneity. This fascinating, full-year lecture course – taught in two weekly classes – blends comprehensive factual information with topical analysis of the political, social, cultural (religion, mythology and art) and economic components of Japan’s history between the 6^th century and 1941.

Participants are strongly urged to attend classes regularly. Questions and debates are STRONGLY ENCOURAGED. However, Social Networking and Eating are allowed ONLY during breaks,which usually include a musical interlude.

GRADING has three components: I – One in-class FALL-Term (late November) identification and definition exam, worth 25% of the final grade. – II– One in-class WINTER-Term (late March) identification and definition exam (covering only materials taught in that term) and worth 25% of the final grade. III- One typewritten research essay due at the end of the year, worth 50% of the final grade and following this format: 1 – A cover page. 2 – A brief opening summary. 3 – Footnotes as citation style. 4 – Up to ten sources. There is NO mandatory length and NO email submission. AI may be used only as a research and preparatory tool. DEADLINES WILL BE STRICTLY OBSERVED. STUDENTS MUST COMPLETE ALL ASSIGNMENTS to be in GOOD STANDING. Professor Kovalio’s HIST 2806A Learning Handbook – avaluable study tool- will be in our bookstore by August 2026.The traditional textbook for the course is the classic J.W. Hall, Japan: from Prehistory to Modern Times. University of Michigan Press,1991 is available in the bookstore and online.

PA 411

jacobkovalio@cunet.carleton.ca