World II

0-3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

World II considers human history since about 1500 AD, focusing on the dynamics of global interaction. The class seeks to familiarize students with, and help them contextualize, historical processes and phenomena such as colonialism and imperialism, industrialization, modern population growth, nationalism and the rise of the nation-state, great power politics, and the emergence of modern science. Its goal is to explain how the world got to be the way it is, with a particular focus on how social and ethno-cultural identities have been shaped--and have in turn shaped--political, economic, and physical environments. (This course fulfills the College's Core Survey Requirement for History)