History and Social Studies

World History 9 asks students to consider what it means to be actively engaged in the world in a historically informed way. This course examines recent world history with the goal of helping students create a framework for situating and understanding current issues and events. The course features a series of research projects and activities that are used to help provide a firm foundation in the reading, writing, and critical thinking skills that are crucial to the study of history in the Upper School. A variety of classroom activities are used to help students engage meaningfully with big events, including class discussions and activities, primary document analysis, and research projects.

The 10th grade world history course provides an in-depth opportunity for students to engage in the work of the historian. Students are provided ample opportunities to develop their historical writing, close reading, discussion, and research skills. The course uses primary and secondary source analysis as a basis for the further development of analytical thinking and writing skills. Throughout the course, students examine the human experience with political, social, religious, and social organization. The 1st semester examines the Ancient World and the 2nd semester focuses on the Early Modern period. A variety of activities including class discussions, written essays, oral presentations, web-based research, and a formal research paper support the investigation of historical topics.

In U.S. History students survey the political, social, and cultural history of the United States between 1607 and contemporary times. Students use a textbook and accompanying primary documents to master content and sharpen their critical reading and analytical skills. Core topics include the American Revolution and development of the federal government, the Civil War and Reconstruction, 20th Century American foreign policy, the Great Depression and Second World War, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement. Emphasizing both change and continuity across historical eras, the course strives to enhance students' understanding of the diverse experiences and ideas that have shaped the United States. Tests and other assignments assess students' understanding of broad patterns and key details of the course content. Written work includes frequent in-class and take-home assignments, along with a formal research paper. With additional individual preparation, this course may be used as the basis for preparation for the Advanced Placement examination in U.S. History.

Advanced Historical Research (AHR) is a sophisticated history course that provides opportunities to grow and extend student understanding of archival research, historical writing, methodology, historiography, and historical analysis while introducing state of the field methods used to create original scholarship. The course is divided in two semesters.  Students may take the first semester without the expectation that they take the second semester, but the first semester is a prerequisite for the second semester of AHR. Students who wish to be considered will submit a history writing sample (10th or 11th-grade research paper) for review, they will have an interview with the AHR teachers, and they will be expected to complete a summer reading. Seniors and juniors who show consistent, robust interest in world and US history should apply. This course offers a year-long or semester-long elective, if students choose to stop halfway, under the umbrella of Advanced Historical Research. It investigates how historical scholarship is constructed and how historical texts converse over time. “How did we get to this point?” is a question that goes beyond mere curiosity and drives at the core of what our place in time is. Why is it important to understand why events happened as they did? What does it mean for our present and future? Students in the course will extend and apply ideas from their core history courses to discover the richness of deep historical study. Students will build upon ideas from their core history courses such as framing historical questions, critical reading, historical methods, and historical writing during the first quarter as they learn general approaches to historical students and the changing ways historians approach the same subject at different times and from various vantage points. Students then use the methods learned to construct a prospectus and bibliography for their continued research. During the second semester students would work to enact their prospectuses through independent research, writing, and revising their research papers, then preparing to present their work to the community toward the end of second semester.

The Advanced U.S. History seminar introduces seniors to historiography, the study of how historians constantly engage in a process of reinterpreting and rewriting history. Starting with the assumption that all history is “revisionist history,” the course highlights the dramatic changes that American history has undergone over the course of the past century. Students read a variety of scholarly accounts of selected eras and themes, including the Revolution and Constitution, the "Age of Jackson," slavery, the American West, and Reconstruction. For each topic, we examine the questions that guide historians’ inquiry, scrutinize their underlying assumptions, and think critically about whose perspectives are included and whose are absent. Students write analytical essays at the end of each unit and complete other short written assignments throughout the semester.

Texts: Davidson and Lytle, After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection; Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America; Degler, Out of Our Past; and a wide variety of scholarly readings.

Through selected readings (monograph, scholarly articles, excerpts, websites), students learn basic chronology and discuss the shifting understandings of the concept of “gender” in the geographic region of North and South America.  After an introduction to terminology and theory, students lead discussion on thematic and case-study units. Students will complete an individual project (website, book reviews, or short research paper) which allows for a fuller exploration of a specific topic, examples of which include suffrage movements in the U.S., anarchist women’s politics in the hemisphere, Cuban gay resistance movements, pre-contact sexuality, and female conquistadors among many others. Mohanty’s theory of “feminist solidarity” is studied and implemented in relation to a group service project.  A major emphasis is put on making connections between historical time periods and current events. 

Citizens should be familiar with the institutions and practices of participatory democracy in order to understand, effectively navigate and change our shared civic communities. This course will explore the underpinnings of government from the Constitution to the various branches and levels of the State that govern us. Citizenship and Democracy is a study and discussion of how public policy is formed rather than the merits of a particular policy; it will be an exploration of process, place and people rather than a debate on the substance of specific issues. The course will examine how citizens interact within their government, how government influences the citizenry and the role of civic engagement in society. Students will have opportunities to volunteer on campaigns, observe government in action and overall get a better sense for what government does and how it shapes citizens, and how citizens can shape it. There will also be a comparative component and project to the course, allowing students an opportunity to explore other forms of government around the world. 

According to the census, Minnesota has two percent of the U.S. population but thirteen percent of its refugees making it the state with the highest number of refugees per capita in the country. Since 1980, almost 100,000 refugees have settled in the Twin Cities. What does this mean for our community? What are the challenges and opportunities that this presents? In this course, we examine several specific communities starting with their lives before Minnesota, why they left their home countries, what led to their legal designation as ""refugees"", why they came here, how MN has changed them and how they have changed MN. After studying the Hmong, students will select three other immigrant groups or topic areas on which to focus. Possibilities include: Somali, Karen, Latinx, Liberian, Tibetan, health services, education and many more. Using a variety of secondary and primary sources along with guest speakers and tours of enclave neighborhoods in St. Paul and Minneapolis, students will learn more about where we live, the groups that make up our community, and the agencies and people who serve us all. Students explore the experiences of additional immigrant groups as part of independent research projects.

Texts: Hmong and American: From Refugees to Citizens edited by Vincent K. Her and Mary Louise Buley-Meissner; The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang

This course focuses on the great questions that have been discussed, debated and analyzed throughout world history. As an introduction to philosophy, the course is organized around how different philosophers in different times and places attempted to answer questions central to the human experience. Guiding questions are organized into three categories: The Self, The World and The Self in the World. Specifically, the topics of freedom, human nature, society, ethics and identity are studied by reading the great philosophers from the Classical Age to the present. History of Thought is taught in a student-centered seminar format where discussion skills are actively coached and assessed. Students prepare one research paper on an ethical dilemma, as well as numerous other shorter essays for this course.

Native American Studies is a place-based history elective that will explore the history of American Indigenous peoples, and specifically those who have called, and continue to call, Minnesota their home. Centering Dakota and Ojibwe voices, the course will explore topics of historical and contemporary interest. Topics explored will include creation stories, treaty rights and land use, language revitalization, foodways, and material culture. The course will feature archival research at the Minnesota Historical Society, feature weekly presentations on students' oral history projects, and will engage actively with the local indigenous community as we seek to understand Native American history and culture in Minnesota.

Advanced Historical Research (AHR) is a sophisticated history course that provides opportunities to grow and extend student understanding of archival research, historical writing, methodology, historiography, and historical analysis while introducing state of the field methods used to create original scholarship. The course is divided in two semesters.  Students may take the first semester without the expectation that they take the second semester, but the first semester is a prerequisite for the second semester of AHR. Seniors and juniors who show consistent, robust interest in world and US history should apply. This course offers a year-long or semester-long elective, if students choose to stop halfway, under the umbrella of Advanced Historical Research. It investigates how historical scholarship is constructed and how historical texts converse over time. “How did we get to this point?” is a question that goes beyond mere curiosity and drives at the core of what our place in time is. Why is it important to understand why events happened as they did? What does it mean for our present and future? Students in the course will extend and apply ideas from their core history courses to discover the richness of deep historical study. Students will build upon ideas from their core history courses such as framing historical questions, critical reading, historical methods, and historical writing during the first quarter as they learn general approaches to historical students and the changing ways historians approach the same subject at different times and from various vantage points. Students then use the methods learned to construct a prospectus and bibliography for their continued research. During the second semester students would work to enact their prospectuses through independent research, writing, and revising their research papers, then preparing to present their work to the community toward the end of second semester. 

This one-semester elective offers an introduction to fundamental economic principles and to real-world economic issues today. Students spend the first two months learning basic micro- and macroeconomic terminology, principles, and frameworks for analysis, presented in a case study/simulation format (with very limited graphing and mathematics). As a group, students choose and debate controversial questions affecting our economy today. Past debate topics have included globalization, tax reform, healthcare reform, stadium financing, organ donations, environmental policy / disasters, immigration, sin taxes, drug legalization/cartels, affirmative action, counterterrorist measures, the value of college, and others taken from student interest. Individually, students will choose topics for a substantial research project/presentation. Following those, students will balance the federal budget. Students also participate in a semester-long stock market game and make microfinance loans. (This course does not prepare students for the AP Micro- or Macro-economics exams.)

Text: Anderson, Economics by Example, and current events followed online.

This course invites students to explore the concepts of law and justice. Students survey a history of codified law, explore issues of justice, and relate the concept and practice of justice to contemporary legal systems. During their investigation of the history of codified law students examine the underlying philosophical strands that form the basis of contemporary laws. The course then shifts its focus to concepts of justice in the modern world. The U.S. legal system is examined and current issues in justice are studied, along with appropriate Supreme Court cases. Students also consider the issue of universal justice and international human rights. Finally, students explore issues in practical and "street" law. Issues examined may change from year to year depending upon student interest. Students engage in seminar discussions, research, and simulations to help understand the issues involved. Assessments include essays, analytical papers, and a research project.

Texts include the U.S. Constitution, The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, selections from Aristotle, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Plato; Supreme Court cases such as Korematsu v. U.S., Miller v. California, and New York Times v. Sullivan.

History of Medicine is a one-semester elective that offers a broad overview of how understandings of human health and disease have changed throughout history and across cultures. While human physiology has remained basically the same, conceptions of the human body are constantly changing. The course examines human health and medicine in their historical context, paying careful attention to the scientific, religious, or cultural understandings that shaped them. Our work throughout the semester is grounded in a common set of questions that we will apply to topics throughout the semester. Over the course of the semester students will have opportunities to select specific topics to investigate in greater depth, first with classmates and then individually. As with all history electives, students will polish their critical reading, historical analysis, research, discussion, and expository writing skills.

This course builds upon the junior year survey course and examines the role race has played in US history. To do this, the course will investigate the ways in which we think about race as historians and create an understanding of the motivations, choices, and resulting actions around racialization in distinct periods from U.S. history. Beyond the formation of race in the U.S., the course will seek understanding of the ways that people on the margins of political and economic power exercise their agency over their lives and find their voices in the American historical narrative. Using scholarly articles and primary sources, students will piece together the story of race in America. Assessments will take varied forms from class discussions to written pieces on the topics of each unit. Students will keep a journal to reflect on the ways their thinking evolves over the semester. After covering a variety of forms that racialization and agency take, students will conduct and craft an historical research paper to delve more deeply into their topic.

Texts might include, but are not limited to: Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in North America by John Wood Sweet, Who is Black? One Nation's Definition by f. Davis, and Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act by Andrew Gyory, and Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric; A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota edited by Sun Yung Shin

This course examines the unique immigrant experience of South Asians in the United States. The course considers the problems with a Pan-Asian immigrant identity, and seeks to undertand the South Asian Diaspora experience as it is relevant to historical narratives in the US and in the world. We will consider how the South Asian American experience would reflect their untold stories and how diasporic communities developed in the context of their immigration history since the 19th century through to contemporary times. The Course will involve web-based archival research and focus on writing and discussion skills.

This seminar invites students to deepen their understanding of United States foreign relations during the Cold War and post-Cold War era. The seminar explores the implications of foreign policy on domestic politics, and the influence that domestic politics exerts on foreign policy. Students will primarily examine the Cold War in Asia, Europe, and domestically through class discussions of printed and visual primary documents. Topics addressed include: origins of the Cold War, strategies of containment, conflicts in Korea and Viet Nam, Détente, the Age of Reagan, the end of the Cold War, the wars with Iraq, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and the War in Afghanistan. Students write periodic exams, while the course culminates with a capstone project.

Texts: LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2006; Hanhimaki and Westad, eds., The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts.

This senior seminar focuses on the history of the world's major religious communities. Students survey the histories and theologies of some of the major world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Daoism, and Zoroastrianism. The curriculum invites students to compare and contrast how each of the religious traditions fosters a sense of community and how each tradition has changed over time. World Religions is taught in a student-centered seminar format where discussion skills are actively coached and assessed. The class frequently hosts guest speakers. Students are required to observe worship, conduct interviews, and seek other experiences as part of their preparation for their class leadership. Students also design and complete individual research projects.

This region has been a consistent center of worldwide attention since the end of the 19th century, and conflict in the region continues to have a direct impact on global international relations. Students study the roots of the conflict from multiple sides, and explore both the internal struggles and the ways that conflict in the region of Israel and Palestine has impacted the rest of the Middle East and the outside world. Using primary source readings, research assignments, and documentaries, students delve deeply into Israeli and Palestinian perspectives and assumptions. Students express their understanding of the key issues through case studies, class discussion, written assessments, and a research project. The course traces the challenges and the prospects for peace up to the present day.

Throughout American history groups of citizens have challenged our nation to live up to the Declaration of Independence’s affirmation that “all men are created equal.” This seminar explores a variety of American social movements, all of which drew ordinary American citizens into grass-roots politics and activism. The course will focus on three eras: the mid-nineteenth century, the Progressive Era, and the late 20th century. During each of these periods, we will investigate movements that promoted racial justice, gender equality, and peace. How have social movements celebrated, challenged, and transformed foundational American ideals of democracy, equality, and opportunity? What long-lasting impact have these movements had on American politics and culture?

Texts: Zinn and Arnove, eds., Voices of a People's History of the United States, 10th anniv. edition (978-1609805920)
Kauffman, How to Read a Protest: The Art of Organizing and Resistance (978-0520301528)