The Age of Atlantic Revolutions

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Our world today traces its origins back to the radical cultural, political, and economic upheaval of the imperial crises and revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Representative democracy, political rights, the nation-state, feminism, egalitarianism, and antislavery emerged from this era. This course explores the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, considering their origins in the English Civil Wars of the 1640s, through to the eruption of the revolutionary movement that swept the Atlantic World from 1776 in North America on to France and Haiti, up to the fracturing of Latin America in the 1820s. Working with the latest scholarship and an array of primary sources, this course will explore these revolutions in their Atlantic and global contexts, emphasizing their interconnectivity. Students will come to understand these movements from diverse perspectives and their significant distinctions and overlaps while working throughout the semester to complete an original research project. The course will challenge students to engage with the commemoration and memory of these Revolutions and grapple with the Age's contested significance and legacies. Through engagement with public art and museums students will reflect on the nature of memorialization, memory, history, and the role of power in establishing historical narratives.