A History of the World 1850 to the Present - Einzelansicht

This course takes you on a voyage into the past: you will explore the history of the modern world. You will learn about the past, and you will also learn about how to think about the past – to consider models and concepts for explaining the cycles of integration and disintegration, like empire and free trade, religious conversion and global governance. The aim of this course is to understand the forces that pull the parts together as well as those that drive them apart.

Course themes include migration and statelessness, economic integration, warfare and conflict, the transformation of the ecological balance, and cultural responses and innovations. To grapple with these themes, we explore first-hand perspectives of historical actors through a collection of texts and images. And because learning global history is much more exciting in a global context, you will join teams from different universities all over the world, including from Princeton’s Global History Lab.

In this global history course, you will learn not just by reading excerpts from the textbook, watching lectures and engaging in class discussions. The core of this course is a series of weekly lab assignments in which you will work in teams to use historical knowledge from the course to solve problems and develop new connections and interpretations of primary sources. You will then discuss your results across teams and themes.

The class meets once a week. The first half of this course will involve watching online lectures and working in small groups to complete the weekly assignments,which you will then discuss in class.

The second half of the course, from January 2023, will consist of writing workshops to equip you with the fundamental tools of historical research and writing.

Worlds Together, Worlds Apart by Robert Tignor et al. Norton and Company, 2017.

This class consists of online lectures, group work to solve challenges and questions based on primary source problem sets, textbook reading, and class discussions. You should calculate time to watch the lectures (1-2 hrs) and prepare the textbook reading and primary source materials (ca. 2 hrs) in time for class discussion (1.5hrs). In addition, you will need to plan for a weekly team meeting to prepare the presentation of your case study (1.5hrs). 

Active participation in the class will give you 6 ECTS. In addition, you have the option to write a final paper (due date March 31st), for up to 10 ECTS.