CourseConnect

This course surveys the political, social, economic, and cultural developments that have shaped American history since the Civil War. The search by Americans for what George Washington called an "ordered liberty"--a balance between liberty and order best suited to allow for the individual "pursuit of happiness" while being mindful of the common good--and the growth in size and power of the U.S. government, are this class’s unifying themes.

This course surveys world history from 1500, a period marked by intellectual renewal, religious conflict, and colonization, to the Arab Spring.  Watching the news today we hear frequent references to “globalization” and a “clash of civilizations” between the “West and the rest.”  Following the advent of the global “War on Terror,” and the collapse of pre-9/11 political certainties, many Americans wonder how to make sense of the world again.  How did we arrive as this moment in history?  This course will chart the growth of what is today called globalization, the emergence of modernity, and the recent development of late modernity or post-modernity.  We will also explore how peoples at different points in time responded to a constantly changing and uncertain world, especially following the French and Industrial Revolutions of the nineteenth century and the advent of global total warfare in the twentieth century.