The West and the World: Modern: HIST: 1403:0AAA
Schedule of Lectures and Deadlines. Fall 2018
The Lecture Hall
Please be on time, turn off your cell phone, and shut down your laptop browsers. Do not text, tweet, read email, or look at Facebook during the lecture. I recommend a pen or pencil and paper for lecture notes (you can print out an outline in advance from the course website). Do not leave before the end of lecture except in an emergency. As a courtesy to other students, please avoid shutting books or notes before the end of the lecture, which will always end promptly at 1:20.
Note: the two exams will only cover topics that are presented in the lectures. To do well on the mid-term and final, you should attend lecture, take notes with a pen or pencil, and use those notes along with the posted lecture outlines to review for the exam. You should read the textbook, but you will not be asked on the exams about topics presented in the textbook but not covered in the lecture. The textbook is encyclopedic, and should be used as a supplement to help you understand the lectures. Use it to look things up. It is more reliable than Wikipedia
Week 1: Read Hunt, Chapters 16 and 17
08/21 How to Study History: The Old Regime.
08/23 European Servitude and African Slavery
In-Class Writing Assignment Questions
What were the most important characteristics of “The Old Regime” in Europe before 1789?
Why was the royal palace at Versailles important?
How did human beings become a commodity in the international trading empires of Europe?
What were the major arguments used to justify the enslavement of human beings as property?
Week 2: Read Hunt, 18. Begin Reading The History of Mary Prince. Focus on the text rather than the introduction.
08/28 The Enlightenment, the Revival of Protestantism, and Abolitionism
08/30 Population Growth and the Industrial Revolution
In-Class Writing Assignment Questions
What were three fundamental characteristics of “Enlightenment” thought?
Why did “Enlightenment” thinkers regard the established churches as their adversaries?
What were the most important reasons for changes in the birth rate, and/or the death rate, in the eighteenth century?
What were the most important changes in technology and work that led to the increase in output in the textile industry?
Week 3: Read Hunt, 19 and 20
09/04 The Democratic Revolutions in America and France
09/06 Napoleon's Empire and the Congress of Vienna
In-class Writing Assignment Questions
Was Robespierre's reputation as an evil tyrant justified? Why or why not?
Why were so many French men and women willing to die to defend the Republic in the 1790s?
Why was Napoleon loved and admired by so many men and women in France?
Why was Napoleon prepared to use such overwhelming and brutal military force in an attempt to restore slavery in Haiti?
Week 4 Read Hunt, Chapter 21.
Prompt for the Paper on Mary Prince , due Week 6
09/11 Liberalism and the Fall of the Slave Empires.
09/13 Romanticism.
In-class Writing Assignment Questions
Why did the representatives of the great powers assembled at the Congress of Vienna regard the restoration of a "balance of power" as one of their central goals?
Why was the definition of "separate spheres" for men in women so important in the early and mid- nineteenth century?
How would one recognize a romantic painting in contrast to a classical painting?
How did the definition of an artist change in the Romantic period?
Week 5. Read Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
09/18 Great Britain: Workshop of the World
09/20 Karl Marx and Marxism
In-class Writing Assignment Questions
What is a Kondratieff Wave, and why is it important?
How did The Classsical Economists make the case for capitalism?
What did Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels mean when they referred to the American Revolution, the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1830, the urban revolutions of 1848 in Europe, and the American Civil War as “bourgeois revolutions”?
What were the stages of history according to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels?
Week 6 Read Hunt, 22. Paper due this week (to your TA) on The History of Mary Prince
09/25 Charles Darwin and Natural Selection
09/27 Science, Religion, and the Bible in the Nineteenth Century.
In-class Writing Assignment Questions
Why was the development of the Periodic Table of the elements important in the history of science?
Why was the theory of “natural selection” persuasive to so many people?
Why did so many people find their local parish church a useful institution?
Why did many clergy and ministers of the Christian churches believe they were “under attack” in the nineteenth century?
Week 7 Read Hunt 23, 24
10/02 State-building and Democracy
10/04 Democratic Socialism and Votes for Women
Week 8
10/09 The Second Industrial Revolution
10/11 Mid-Term Exam C20 PC. The exam will not be given early for any reason.
Week 9 Read Hunt Chapter 25. Begin reading Achebe, Things Fall Apart
10/16 Imperialism and Resistance
10/18 World War I
In-Class Writing Assignment Terms
You will be asked to identify and explain the significance of four of the following:
Indian National Congress
Sun Yat-sen
The Suez Canal
Orientalism
Franz Ferdinand
Schlieffen Plan
Rupert Brooke
"War to End All Wars"
Question for Paper 2: Using Things Fall Apart as evidence, identify the different ways in which African people responded to the presence of missionaries. In Achebe's view, which of these responses proved to be the most disruptive?
Week 11
10/23 The Versailles Treaty and the Soviet Revolution in Russian
10/25 The 1920s and the Rise of Fascism.
In-Class Writing Assignment Terms
You will be asked to identify and explain the significance of four of the following:
Bolsheviks
“What is to be done?”
Trotsky
Red Army
Treaty of Versailles
League of Nations
Mussolini
Reparations
Week 12. Paper on Achebe, Things Fall Apart, due (to your TA)
10/30 Modern Science: Einstein and Freud
11/01 Modern Art
In-Class Writing Assignment Terms
You will be asked to identify and explain the significance of four of the following:
Marie Curie
Uncertainty Theorem
Oedipus Complex
Psychoanalysis
Claude Monet
Cubism
Jackson Pollock
The Bauhaus
Week 13 Read Hunt, Chapter 26. Begin Reading Orwell, 1984
11/06 The Great Depression and the Rise of Hitler
11/08 The Soviet Union and Stalin
You will be asked to identify and explain the significance of four of the following:
Demand Management
Mein Kampf
Reichstag Fire
Appeasement
New Economic Policy
Gulags
Five Year Plan
Kulaks
Question for paper 3: Written in the late 1940s, the novel 1984 was a warning to western audiences. What was one of Orwell's major warnings to his readers, and how was it based on the historical developments and geopolitical conditions of the age in which he wrote? Remember that the point of the paper is to make an argument of your own rather than repeating the author’s argument.
Week 14 Read Hunt, Chapter 27
11/13 World War II
11/15 America and World Communism.
In-class writing assignment terms
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
Dresden
Blitzkrieg
Stalingrad
Yalta
Containment
Central Intelligence Agency
Balfour Declaration
Week 15.
Thanksgiving Holiday
Week 16. Paper on Orwell, 1984, due (to your TA), and paper portfolio
11/27 The Cold War and Western Prosperity
11/29 The End of the European Empires?
Week 17 Read Hunt Chapters 28, 29
12/04 The Fall of Communism
12/06 Globalization and America's Drive for World Supremacy
Exam Week. December 10-14
Final Exam. Wednesday Dec. 12, 8-10 PM, C20 PC
Please note that the exam will not be given early for any reason. A make-up for those with excused absences will be scheduled on Friday evening, 5:30-7:30