This course explores the history of universities, from their origins in medieval Europe, their reinvention as research institutions in nineteenth-century Germany, and their dissemination around the world in the context of European colonial empire and globalization. We will consider the history of higher education in broader social, cultural, intellectual, and political context. We will focus particular attention on the history of the University of Toronto as a vital, multidimensional historical experience that, in its status as one of the world’s leading universities, embodies many features of the broader history of universities. We will focus on a number of important features of U of T’s history, including: its origins in the longer history of European and North American universities; its relationship to settler colonialism in Canada; its changing function in society over time; its links to broader off-campus politics; pedagogies, student experience and social life; race, gender, class; the role of the research university in modern nation-states and capitalist economies; protest and contestation. Students will use the University as a site for historical investigation by completing individual research projects into U of T’s history; they will identify and analyze sources in U of T’s archives and experiment with different forms of historical production (scholarly writing, oral and visual presentation, public history, digital production, etc.).