Catalog - Course Descriptions

What characteristics define a civilization? Pre-modern societies in the Ancient Near East first began exhibiting the hallmarks identified with "civilization" around 1500 years before the birth of Christ. These hallmarks include written languages, urban centers, monumental art and architecture, diversified labor forces with social stratification, and bureaucracies. Throughout this course, you will investigate major civilizations beginning with the ancient Sumerians and continue through the era of European exploration. You will learn about the past through the study of economic and cultural developments, empire-building endeavors, and major world religions.

The demonization of outgroups is a common feature in many societies; at times, this comes with disastrous results. HI175 surveys one egregious example--the Holocaust. Beginning with a survey of European Jewry and the origins of European antisemitism, the course then moves to examine the conditions that contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism which are key to understanding this event. In this course, you will also investigate the ways survivors, historians, filmmakers, and governments have memorialized this event in their attempts to ensure such genocides never happen again.

The United States is...? The United States is...? The history of the United States to the Civil War involves the transformation of one of the world's oldest nation-states from a confederation of thirteen largely independent states into a modern industrial power. You will learn about pre-Columbian native societies, European exploration, and the development of thirteen very different colonies. The origins of American independence and constitutionalism have long-standing British antecedents, and you will investigate relevant primary sources that justified American views of government and society. These ideas originated in England, yet they also led to a break with the mother country. The course will also provide you with an overview of political, economic, and cultural developments in the antebellum United States that eventually led to the American Civil War and the end of slavery.

How should we reunite the country after four years of increasingly bloody warfare? That was the question that dominated the political landscape in the years following the Civil War. In the intervening years, the United States became a global industrial power. You will investigate the rise of industrialism in the Gilded Age and the Populist and Progressive reactions to new relations between labor and capital. The United States emerged on the world stage in the twentieth century and became a leader in the drive for increased democracy in nations around the globe during the world wars. However, you will also investigate how strained race relations diverged from this American ideal.

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Whig historians frequently viewed the arc of history as one of continuous progress. Onward and upward was a common refrain. In this course, you will learn about the rise of new scientific and political theories that coincided with the end of absolute monarchies and the rise of more democratic forms of Protestantism. These developments contributed to the Western belief in unlimited human progress and its impact on the rest of the world. However, global war and the rise of totalitarian states and anti-imperialist movements in the twentieth century forced scholars to question the reality and desirability of universal progress. You will conduct an investigation into the impact of the Cold War and the increased globalization that accompanied its end.