Whether you are planning a future in education, law, museum curation, business, healthcare, publishing, or politics, we have the program and tools to help you get where you want to go. Along the way, you will discover what our students tell us time and again: history is fun. The history major offers an endless array of fascinating topics—and dynamic classroom teaching—that will bring the past to life.
We invite you to learn about the many offerings for History majors. For example, we give you the opportunity to work closely with faculty in small classes, publish your work in a journal, join the History honors society, and get course credit for an internship at many excellent sites around Birmingham.
What Can You Do with a History Degree?
History teaches the research, writing, and persuasive arguing skills that are so essential to every professional field. Some of our former students are curators of historical sites, such as Sloss Furnaces or Rickwood Field (the oldest baseball park in the country). Others are archivists, IT experts, military officers, directors of schools and banks around the world, and non-profit professionals.
We're Here for You
We are a hands-on department, made up of professors and instructors who are committed to teaching in many different styles—from lectures, to small discussion groups, to historical reenactments. At UAB, our goal is to make sure you have access to academic and student experiences that will launch you toward a lifelong love of history and into a rewarding career.
Spring 2025 Special Topics Courses
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HY 201-1C: History & Culture of Gaming
Instructor: Dr. Tola Rodrick
Games are more than just fun - they're windows into the past. This course takes you on a tour of games across history, from ancient Egypt and Rome to medieval China and Mesoamerica, all the way to Dungeons & Dragons and contemporary video games like Minecraft and Assassin's Creed.
We'll explore how games shaped-and were shaped by-culture, politics, religion, and identity. Along the way, we'll tackle big questions: What do games reveal about gender, race, and power? Why are gods and monsters so common in play? How do games shape the way we think about history?
If you're ready to see games as cultural artifacts, challenge your critical thinking skills and rethink what play really means, this course is for you.
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HY 393 & 459-2E: Spain & The Spanish Inquisition
Instructor: Dr. Andrew Keitt
This course explores Spain's fraught history with the Other, both within and without. Spain’s rise as a confessional state on the Iberian Peninsula and as a global empire in the New World resulted in unquestionable suffering for the exiled and the conquered, but it also generated an unprecedented body of legal theorizing by theologians like Francisco de Vitoria, who questioned the legitimacy of the Spanish conquest. Unlike previous (and many subsequent) imperial propagandists and apologists, these Spanish scholars subjected their own society to a clear-eyed, critical analysis and in so doing laid the groundwork for modern international law.
During the first half of the semester, we will be exploring these contrasts between philosophical speculation and the brutal realities of colonization by playing a Reacting to the Past game. Reacting to the Past consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. In RTTP, teams pursue a series of "victory objectives" which are attained by persuading fellow students via written work and oral presentations. This game pits defenders of the indigenous peoples of the New World against conquistadors eager to secure their territorial claims and crown officials and churchmen struggling to administer a far-flung empire.
During the second half of the semester, we will play a Reacting game dealing with a starkly contrasting episode in the history of Spain: the collapse of the Second Republic which set the stage for the rise of the Franco dictatorship. In this episode, far from being a global empire, Spain was an impoverished state collapsing in on itself. In May 1931, King Alfonso XIII fled Spain, and the Second Spanish Republic was declared. The game begins when the temporary Constituent Cortes meets to write a new, republican constitution. The game models the deliberations of the Spanish legislature as elected officials representing parties from across the political spectrum debate the direction of the new Spanish government. Topics include the role of the Catholic Church in society, national minorities, land reform, and the permissibility of political violence. Players will explore the ideologies and tactics of the several factions in the Republic including Socialists, Catholics, Liberals, Communists, and Fascists.
