History of the 21st Century

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

It has been a pretty rough ride so far in the twenty-first century. What may have started with grand hopes for a glorious future as the world celebrated the advent of a new millennium on New Year’s Eve 1999 has so far, at least according to a widespread perception among people in the “West,” unfolded as a series of crises: 9/11 and the global “war on terror”; the devastating financial crisis of 2007-8; Brexit, the rise of rightwing “populism,” and the crisis of liberal democracy; the Covid-19 pandemic... Have we entered The Age of Crisis? In this course, we will explore the history of what is not history yet. We will investigate the very recent past and the ways contemporaries on either side of the Atlantic have tried to make sense of the first decades of the twenty-first century from a historical perspective. The goal is to situate the most recent developments in society, politics, and culture in a longer-term historical context and examine the central ideas and forces that shape the present – such as neoliberalism, globalization, ethno-nationalism, populism, polarization, the “culture wars” – from a historicizing perspective. More generally, we also want to reflect on the question of how the historical approach can contribute to a better understanding of the present: How does history relate to the present? How does the study of history influence our understanding of our current moment? And what, if anything, can we “learn” from history as we are navigating the crises and challenges of the twenty-first century?