A&H 175 World History

Content

This course will be offered both in the Spring and Fall semesters.

The main purpose of this course is to present a general overview of the main forces that have shaped the world over the past ten centuries. Understanding world history entails, first of all, an interdisciplinary approach that combines knowledge of long-term environmental, socio-economic, political, and cultural developments. In the second place, it requires an comparative approach that decenters Europe. As the authors of Worlds Together, Worlds Apart write in their preface, “the history of the modern world has not simply been a history of increasing globalization, in which all societies eventually join a common path to the present. Rather, it has been a history of the ways in which, as people became linked, their experience of these global connections diverged.” When we study the structures and phenomena that facilitated global connectedness in this course, we also try to see how different regions developed their own particular ways of handling or resisting connections and change.

The point of this course, however, is not only that you learn of the persons, structures, changes, and interactions that shaped the world in the past ten centuries. This course also aims at fostering critical thinking skills, essential to all academics, while reading historical texts and images. Assignments to train these skills (e.g. making comparisons, or recognizing bias) will build your capacity to analyze, interpret, synthesize, and evaluate texts and images, primary and secondary sources. When they have become a habit of mind, these critical skills will help you in subsequent courses at Roosevelt Academy and throughout your life.

Instructor

Dr. Dorothee Sturkenboom

Track

History – Europe and the World

Period

Spring / 2009

Course Material

• Robert Tignor et al, Worlds Together, Worlds Apart. A History of the World from the Mongol Empire to the Present (2nd edition, New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company 2008) Vol. Two, Ch. 10-21 (from 1200), or the complete edition of Robert Tignor et al, Worlds Together, Worlds Apart. A History of the World from the Beginnings of Humankind  to the Present (2nd edition, New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company 2008)
• Kevin Reilly, Worlds of History. A Comparative Reader. Volume Two: Since 1400 (3rd edition, Boston and New York: Bedford/St.Martins 2007)

Additional Prerequisites

One cannot take this course if one has already taken A&H 176 Rise and Fall of Europe

Required for

This course is required in order to take the following course:

• A&H 287 History of Women and Gender