10:30 AM to 11:45 AM W
Nguyen Engineering Building 1101
Section Information for Spring 2017
In this course, we will explore the sweeping historical changes that created today’s world, ending with the current but fairly recent ascent of “the West.” We will survey major features of the principal civilizations of the world and the major types of global contacts, as they were originally formed and as they have been more recently altered during the past three centuries by the “forces of modernity.” We will try to define what the major traditional features of each civilization were, and how those cultures persisted and changed as the “modern world” evolved. This course will specifically trace key processes shaping and reshaping the politics, cultures, and economies of various societies throughout the world. The chief goals of this course involve the following: the ability to assess change over time on a global level; the capacity to compare different societies; and the understanding of the emergence and impact of global processes throughout the past three-quarters of a millennium.
While Europe and the United States will be part of our focus, we will also consider Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East to a significant degree. Each of these geographic regions became enmeshed in a global system affected by far-reaching religious transformations, mercantile activity, industrial growth and imperialism/colonialism. Finally, we will study the influences of modern nationalism, Cold War dynamics, and anti-colonial movements in the twentieth century. By the end of the semester, students should have a grasp of the major trends underlying the most recent millennium of world history – ALL of world history. To accomplish all of this, we will explore primary documents from some often "unheard" voices like women, non-whites and non-Westerners (although we won’t completely forget about the so-called “Great White Men” either), secondary source scholarship in the form of your textbook and scholarly articles, plus artistic devices such as images, music and film. This class will be organized as BOTH lecture classes and interactive activities such as group work and discussion.
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Credits: 3
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