Western Civilization II: 1650 to the Present

3 units

This course examines social, cultural, economic, and political developments in European society from the seventeenth century to the present. Students will explore roughly three-and-a-half centuries of European history, investigating, among other topics, the Scientific Revolution; the European Enlightenments; the era of the French Revolution and Napoleon's empire; the Industrial Revolution; the two world wars and the Holocaust; the Cold War; and decolonization. The course will interrogate Western notions of progress and pay significant attention to the ways in which ideology, religion, and nationalism appreciably shaped the lives of people living in Europe in the early modern and modern eras.