Core 2.2: Shaping of the Modern World

Fall 2009 -- Tuesday 3:40-6:10 PM - Room 519

Professor M. L. King - king@brooklyn.cuny.edu

SCHEDULE

Description * Requirements * Contact me  * MLKHome

 

Session

Date

Topic

Readings: available online in Blackboard Course Documents

1.1

9/1

Introduction

 

   1.2

9/1

Atlantic encounters

 
  1. Columbus, Letter to the King and Queen (1492)
  2. Aztec account of the Conquest of Mexico (1519)
  3. De las Casas, Devastation of the Indies (1542)
  4. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries (1609-1617) [pdf]
  5. Montaigne, Cannibals  (1580)

2.1

9/8

Old World Ventures

 
  1. Da Gama, Round Africa to India (1497-1498)
  2. Camões, Lusiads (c. 1554)

  3. Xavier, Letter from Japan (1552)

  4. Matteo Ricci, excerpts from his Journals (c. 1601)

  5. Mary Wortley Montagu, Smallpox Vaccination in Turkey (c. 1717)

2.2

 9/8

The Renaissance

 
  1. Pico, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1487)
  2. Vasari, Life of Giotto (1550)

  3. Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)

  4. Castiglione, The Courtier (1528) [pdf]

3.1

 9/15

 

Protestant and Catholic Reformations

In class writing sample
  1. Erasmus, Shipwreck (1518)
  2. Luther, 95 Theses (1517)

  3. Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day (1572)

  4. Loyola, Spiritual Exercises (1522-1524)

  5. Decrees of the Council of Trent (1545/1563)

3.2

 9/15

Early modern monarchies

 

 

  1. Domat, On Absolute Monarchy (1697)

  2. Dutch Declaration of Independence (1581)

  3. The English Bill of Rights (1689)

  4. Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

  5. Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government (1690)

4.1

 9/22

Scientific Revolution

 

  1. Copernicus, Preface, excerpt On the Revolutions (1543)

  2. Galileo, Letter to Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany (1615) 

  3. Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637)

  4. Bacon, Novum Organum (1620)

  5. Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood (1628)

4.2

 9/22

Town, court, and country

  1. Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, 3: The Squire (1554)

  2. Young, Travels in France (1792)

  3. Franklin, How he became a printer, from Autobiography  (1771-88)

  4. Olaudah Equiano, Life of Gustavus Vassa (1789)

5.1

 10/6

 

Enlightenment

Quiz 1  

  1. Voltaire, Treatise on Toleration (1763)

  2. Swift, Modest Proposal (1729)

  3. Rousseau, On Social Inequality (1755)

  4. Condorcet, Future Progress of the Human Mind (1794)

  5. Gournay, Equality of Men and Women (1622) [pdf]

5.2

 10/6 

Colonial North America and American Revolution

 

  1. Flushing Remonstrance (1657)

  2. Crèvecoeur, What is an American (1782)

  3. Paine, Common Sense (1776)

  4. Declaration of Independence (1776)

  5. Constitution of the United States (1787)

6.1

 10/13

French Revolution: the liberal phase

 

 

  1. Cahiers of Carcassonne (1789)

  2. Sieyès, What is the Third Estate? (1789)

  3. Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789)

  4. De Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791)

6.2

 10/13 French Revolution: radical phase, reaction, and Napoleon

 

  1. Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution (1791)

  2. Levée en Masse  (1793)

  3. Robespierre, Justification for the Use of Terror (1794)

  4. Code Napoléon (1804)

7.1

 10/20

The coming of the Industrial Revolution

Essay

  1. Radcliffe, On Power Looms (1828)

  2. Machines: the steam loom; protesting the machines [pdf]

  3. Leeds Woollen Workers' Petition (1786)

  4. Factory rules (1844) [pdf]

  5. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)

7.2

 10/20 Industrial Revolution: Europe and Beyond

  1. Parliamentary investigation, Women miners in the coal pits (1842)

  2. Charles Dickens, "Coketown," from Hard Times (1854)

  3. Chadwick, Report on Sanitary Conditions (1842)

  4. Engels, Manchester (1844)

  5. Zola, Strike! (1885) [pdf]

8.1

 10/27 Life in the industrial city

  

 

  1. Booth, Darkest England (1890) 

  2. Tristan, London Laboring Classes (1840) [pdf]

  3. Riis, The Other Half , chapters 15-17 (1900)

  4. Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth (1889)

  5. Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (1891) [pdf]

8.2

 10/27 The Western imperium

  1. Qian Long, Letter to George III (1793)

  2. Lin Zixu, Letter to Queen Victoria (1839)

  3. Macaulay, On Education and Empire in India (1833, 1835)

  4. Al-Afghani, On the Importance of Science (1882) [text file]

  5. Chief Moshweshewe, Letter to Sir George Grey (1858)

  6. Chief Black Hawk, A Native American Life (1833)

9.1

 11/3

Dominon within: the psychology of imperialism

Quiz 2

  1. Illustrated London News: famine in Ireland (1847); evictions (1848); depopulation (1851)

  2. Korolenko, Pogrom at Kishinev (1903)

  3. Kipling, The White Man's Burden (1899)

  4. Hobson, Imperialism (1902)

  5. American Anti-Imperialist League Platform (1899)

9.2

 11/3 Nationalism, mass politics, and the triumph of the state
  1. Mazzini, Duties Towards Your Country (1844)
  2. Fichte, To the German Nation (1806)

  3. Lincoln, Second Inaugural (1865)

  4. Herzl, The Jewish State, Introduction (1896)

  5. Constitution of the Empire of Japan(1889)

10.1

 11/10 Ideas and ideologies

 

  1. Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848), Intro, Parts I, II, IV

  2. Tocqueville, June Days (1848)

  3. Mill, On Liberty (1859)

10.2

 11/10

Advent of the modern

  1. Darwin, from Descent of Man (1871)

  2. Freud, from Civilization and its Discontents (1930) 

  3. Nietzsche, God is Dead (1882)

  4. Seneca Falls Conference, Declaration of Sentiments (1848)

11.1

 11/17

 

 World War I: opening battles

 
  1. Owen, Dulce et decorum est (1918)
  2. Sassoon, Counter-Attack (1918)

  3. Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth (1933)

  4. Private Fraser, Journal (1915-1916)
  5. Botchkareva, Woman Soldier (1918) [pdf]

11.2

 11/17 World War I: culmination and Russian Revolution
  1. Lenin, Call to Power (10/24/1917)
  2. Wilson, Fourteen Points (1918)
  3. Treaty of Versailles (1919)
  4. Keynes, Consequences of the Peace (1920)

12.1

 11/24 Between the wars: the reign of uncertainty

Quiz 3  

  1. T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men (1925)

  2. Auden, The Unknown Citizen (1940)

  3. Kollontai, Communism and the Family (1921) [pdf]

  4. Kopelev, Terror in the Countryside (1932/33) [pdf]

  5. FD Roosevelt, First Inaugural (1933)

12.2

 11/24 Between the wars: crisis and totalitarianism

  1. Bukharin, Last Plea (1938)

  2. Mussolini, What is Fascism? (1932)

  3. Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938)

  4. Hitler, 1921 speech; excerpt from Mein Kampf (1926)

  5. New York Times, Nanjing massacre (1937)

13.1

 12/1 World War II

  1. Churchill, We Shall Fight on the Beaches (June 4, 1940)

  2. FD Roosevelt, Day of Infamy (1941)

  3. Hoess, Testimony at Nuremburg (1946)

  4. Ogura, Letters from Hiroshima (1945) [pdf]

13.2

 12/1 Imperialism undone

  1. Gandhi, Quit India speech (1942)

  2. Nehru, on Non-Alignment (1941, 1956)

  3. Mao Zedong, The People's Democratic Dictatorship (1949)

  4. Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (1961)

  5. Mandela, Speech on Release from Prison (1990)

14.1

 12/8 Bipolar world

Quiz 4  

  1. UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

  2. Churchill, Iron Curtain speech (1946)

  3. Truman Doctrine  (1947)

  4. Khrushchev, Address to the 20th Party Congress (1956)

  5. Remembering China's Cultural Revolution (1966) [pdf]
14.2 12/8 From the Sixties to the Millennium
  1. Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream speech (1963)
  2. NOW Statement of Purpose (1966)
  3. Kerry, Vietnam Veterans Against the War statement (1971)

  4. Honig & Both, Massacre at Srebrenica (1995) [pdf]

  5. Havel, New Year's Day Address (2000)

  6. Amartya Sen, Democracy as a Universal Value (1999)

Exam

  

FINAL EXAM