Global History: The World Since c. 1500

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

We'll try to see the world whole - looking at genuinely global historical experiences of the last five hundred years. Our aim will be to take the broadest and most comprehensive perspective we can imagine; we'll look not only at every kind of human culture in every part of the planet, but also, for the sake of comparison, at the start and end of the course, at the societies of other, non-human cultural creatures. We'll focus on two stories: first, the mutual impact of human beings and the rest of nature; and, second, the effects human societies have had on each other in an era of accelerating world-wide contacts between cultures. The purpose of the course will be to identify and probe the main themes of the history of the world in the last half-millennium, equip students with a historically informed awareness of global connexions and inter-actions in a globalizing world, and to ask whether (and, if so, how) global history relates to current problems in social policy, international relations, and ethical debate.