Curriculum Model

An outgrowth of my research interests and advanced training in history, sociology, and theology, this curriculum model establishes a robust pathway in American cultural history and heritage, grounded in the methods of history. Students progress from lower-division to advanced undergraduate and graduate coursework, with many undergraduate offerings designed to be scalable for different institutional contexts. Lower-division courses provide a foundation for advanced offerings that bridge into graduate study. Together, these courses prepare students for professional careers in history, media, public political and social life, and cultural and heritage fields and develop transferable critical research, public engagement, and digital literacy skills valued across all disciplines and sectors.

Introductory & Lower Division

Lower-division courses ground students in the language, questions, and core skills needed to engage cultural history and heritage.

Introduction to American Cultural History & Heritage 1

This course introduces students to key definitions and themes in American cultural history and heritage studies, focusing on the period from the pre‑colonial era to 1865. It examines how communities remember, narrate, contest, and preserve the past through cultural artifacts in archives, museums, public spaces, and popular media. Ideal for students new to historical and cultural analysis

Black Cultural History & Heritage 1

This course introduces students to key definitions and themes in Black cultural history and heritage studies from the pre‑colonial era to 1865. It centers Black communities’ efforts to create, contest, and preserve cultural life through spiritual practices, print culture, performance, and everyday rituals, as well as in archives, museums, and public spaces. Ideal for students new to Black historical and cultural analysis.

Church History (Scalable)

This course surveys key moments in the history of the Christian church, asking how churches have functioned as community builders, safety nets, liberating institutions, and sites of creative theological interpretation. Students engage figures from the early Church Fathers, such as Origen, Tertullian, and the female martyr Perpetua, through Augustine and Martin Luther to Martin Luther King Jr., with attention to diverse Christian traditions, including ancient African, Eastern Orthodox, and Coptic churches, and work with church cultural artifacts—such as confessions, sermons, and institutional documents—to explore how Christian communities remember, debate, and preserve their past.

Introduction to American Cultural History & Heritage 2

This course deepens students’ engagement with American cultural history and heritage. They practice close reading of texts and heritage sites, interpret cultural artifacts, and begin to connect heritage work to contemporary public debates.

Black Cultural History & Heritage 2

This course follows Black cultural history and heritage into the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We examine questions of power, representation, and belonging through Black archives, museums, memorials, and popular culture, with attention to both local and global contexts.

Introduction to Historical Critical Method (Scalable)

This course introduces students to historical approaches to studying the Bible. Students learn how questions of authorship, audience, genre, and historical context shape interpretation, and practice reading biblical texts alongside ancient and modern sources. Ideal for students interested in how scholars study sacred texts in historical perspective.

The History and Heritage of Black Churches in America (Scalable)

This course examines the history and heritage of Black churches in the United States from slavery to the present. Students explore the conversion of enslaved Africans, the role of Black churches during Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement as an outgrowth of Black religious life. Using historical methods and sociological theory, the course defines the Black church as a religious institution—shaped by a Black sacred cosmos, community values, and a dialectical relationship with American society—and works with cultural artifacts such as sermons, church records, photographs, and oral histories, using collections at the AUC Woodruff Library, the Auburn Avenue Research Library, and the Atlanta History Center as primary sites of investigation to interpret and trace its impact on the spiritual, social, economic, educational, and political life of Black communities.

Upper Division & Advanced Undergraduate

Upper-division courses transition students into specialized investigations of cultural history & heritage. These advanced offerings bridge the gap between foundational study and graduate-level research through the analysis of primary artifacts and complex historiographies. By engaging with scalable seminars designed for rigorous academic depth, students cultivate high-level research and public engagement skills essential for professional careers in history, heritage, media, social advocacy, and public life.

Consuming History: Industry, Identity, and the Heritage Marketplace (Scalable for Graduate)

This course examines the workings of the past in our everyday lives by exploring the interfaces of academic history and its consumption by the public—analyzing the rapid broadcasting and commodification of history.Moving beyond traditional paper archives, our class enters the modern marketplace to examine digital landscapes, media, performance, and the heritage industry. Together, we will grapple with how contemporary popular culture shapes our deeply held ideas about history, identity and heritage.

Black popular Culture & Heritage: a history (Scalable for Graduate)

In this course, we dive into phonograph race records and modern digital media to explore how Black culture and heritage is created and consumed. Students investigate essential questions of cultural ownership, authenticity and identity and representation from the Industrial Revolution through today’s digital age. Join us to analyze how community history is preserved and resisted within the global culture industry.

Coming to Spelman College History Department soon.

Therapy Culture: A History (Scalable for Graduate

In this course, we will unpack the ways psychology and the wellness industry have fundamentally reshaped major social institutions, including politics and the Black Church. Students critically analyze the rise of the 'therapeutic gospel' and the commercialization of emotional survival in popular culture, examining the shifting boundaries of authority between clinical expertise and faith-based leadership. By investigating these intersections, we reveal how the pursuit of secular optimization confronts traditional religious institutions in the modern age

Historical Sociology (Scalable for Graduate)

This course brings history and sociology into conversation to examine how social systems work, change, and endure over time. Students explore topics such as the development of capitalism and the nation-state, religion, collective behavior, and social movements, while learning to situate these phenomena in their historical contexts. Drawing on the sociology of culture, the course also considers how cultural objects and practices express, contest, and reshape the meanings that organize social life. Ideal for students interested in how historical methods and sociological theory together illuminate the structures that shape social life.

Historical Theology

This course introduces students to the history of Christian thought, tracing how key doctrines and debates have developed over time. You will explore major theologians, councils, and controversies, and examine how changing historical contexts shaped Christian beliefs and practices. Ideal for students interested in how theology emerges from, and responds to, the social and cultural worlds in which Christians live.

History of Christian Ethical Movements (Scalable for Graduate)

A comprehensive exploration of how Christian communities have historically conceptualized collective movements around morality, justice, and human action within their broader cultural and social contexts. The course tracks how ethical frameworks shifted in response to major structural disruptions, examining how cultural narratives, media, and theological doctrines intersected to shape social justice movements, labor, and state power.Graduate Seminar Scaling: Expands at the graduate level into an intensive seminar focusing on primary ethical treatises, comparative moral frameworks, and the critical historical-sociological and cultural critique of religious institutions. Advanced historiographical debates are anchored in foundational introductory texts alongside specialized companion sourcebooks.

Graduate and Professional Seminars

These graduate and professional seminars represent the peak of academic inquiry, centering on intensive historiographical analysis and advanced debates. Designed for scholars and heritage professionals, these offerings bridge deep theoretical critique with the practical complexities of public political and social life. Students refine high-level research methodologies and public engagement skills through rigorous investigations of cultural history, preparing for leadership in specialized research and the broader cultural sector.

Cultural History: Theory & Practice

This seminar investigates core historiographical debates and methodologies within American cultural history, with selective engagement with European cultural history where it has shaped the field. We trace developments from the nineteenth century to the present, interrogating the “cultural turn,” social history, and the emergence of cultural studies. Students analyze pivotal texts that redefined the field’s boundaries around human subjectivity, holistic views of social life, and interpretation, while examining festivals, rituals, religion, and popular culture as key sites of cultural meaning. Central to the course is a critical examination of public memory and cultural production, asking how historical narratives are constructed, circulated, and contested in the public sphere.

The Philosophy of History

This seminar examines major debates in the philosophy of history, asking what it means to know and write about the past. We explore how concepts of time, causation, narrative, and human agency shape historical explanation, including debates over what drives historical change, from material determinism to dialectical materialism. Students consider the problem of historical knowledge, the formation of historical consciousness, and the role of the historical imagination in turning lived experience into narrative. Together we ask how different philosophies of history inform questions of power, silence, and public memory.

Dr. Morris