|
|
DESCRIPTION & RATIONALE
Our
students live in a nation shaped by the traditions of Western
civilization, and in a global world greatly influenced by Western values.
We seek to explore the development of the Western experience in
recent centuries, and understand how its expansion – political,
economic, cultural – has affected, and been affected by, other world
cultures.
This course opens with an overview of the world on the eve of the
French and industrial revolutions, and closes with a reflection on the
long half-century since World War II.
It encompasses the histories of Europe, the United States, and
other world regions; it traces economic, political, social, and cultural
developments; it explores the lives of men and women, of rich and poor, of
peoples of European and non-European descent; and it studies the many
paths that historians take (above all, the critical analysis of sources)
in their pursuit of an understanding of a living past.
|
 | strengthen historical and cultural literacy by acquainting students
with major issues, movements, events, and people in the history of the
past three to four hundred years |
| demonstrate the importance of historical perspective
by developing skills of chronology and context |
| teach the critical use of primary and secondary
sources |
| improve skills of organization and communication of
historical knowledge |
|
|
The
pre-modern world
|
Population trends: famine, plague, illegitimacy
|
|
European expansion: conquest, encounter,
colonialism
|
|
Science and Enlightenment
|
|
Nation states and absolute monarchy
|
|
Slaves, serfs, servants
|
|
Women’s roles and early feminism
|
|
Cities, industry, and trade
|
|
Revolutions: France and the Americas
|
|
Political ideas: “constitution,” “rights,”
“liberty”
|
|
Readings
from Locke, Rousseau, Paine, Burke, the U.S. Constitution, etc.
|
Industrial
economy and society
|
Local, regional and world trade systems
|
|
Industrialization of Britain
|
|
Industrialization of continental Europe, the U.S.,
and Japan
|
|
Urbanization
|
|
Workers’ combinations, trade unions, strikes,
collective bargaining
|
|
Life in industrial society
|
|
Readings
from Adam Smith, Marx and Engels, Pope Leo XIII, etc.
|
National
consolidation and imperialism
|
The Napoleonic era and reaction
|
|
Unification of Germany and Italy
|
|
Secession, Civil War and reunification in the U.S.
|
|
The modern “state,” mass society, and
individual rights
|
|
Imperialism in Asia, the Middle East and Africa
|
|
Readings
from Mazzini, Lincoln, Mill, Ferry, Al-Afghani, Lenin, etc.
|
Ideas
and ideologies
|
Liberalism, conservatism, nationalism
|
|
Socialism, communism, feminism
|
|
Arts and literature: Romanticism, realism,
naturalism, impressionism
|
|
Darwinism, science and racial theories
|
|
Medicine, physics, and psychoanalysis
|
|
Readings
from the Seneca Falls Declaration, Darwin, Freud, etc.
|
The
era of global warfare
|
World War I
|
|
The Great Depression
|
|
Communism: from revolution to dictatorship
|
|
Fascism: Italy, Germany, and elsewhere
|
|
Colonial resistance and de-colonization
|
|
Japanese imperialism and Chinese revolution
|
|
Arts: abstract art, cubism, expressionism,
surrealism
|
|
Film, jazz, modern dance
|
|
Women’s suffrage and the new woman
|
|
World War II
|
|
The Holocaust
|
|
The atomic bomb
|
|
Readings
from Lenin, Hitler, F.D. Roosevelt, etc.
|
Recent
times
|
The Cold War and the Third World
|
|
The Sixties and Vietnam
|
|
Popular culture and sexual revolution
|
|
Second-wave feminism
|
|
The U.S. Civil Rights movement
|
|
State building in Africa and Asia
|
|
The collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union
|
|
Environmentalism and Green parties
|
|
Arms control
|
|
Technology: space, cybernetics, communications
|
|
Economic globalization
|
|
Readings:
from Brown v. Board of Education, Khrushchev, Fanon, Mandela, etc.
|
|
|
