Sample Course Descriptions

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WHO 1023 Modern World to 1815
In the four hundred years or so between the end of the Middle Ages and the advent of the contemporary era, the world developed the parameters of modernity with which we are now familiar. The ‘discovery’ by Europeans of continents beyond their own set the stage for centuries of contact and conflict as Asia, Africa, Australasia, and the Americas met and matched each other in realms reaching from economic, political, military and cultural. This course will explore that contact and conflict, focusing both on emerging moments of particular significance and on specific sites of change within cultures. Using London as a textbook for contact and conflict, allows students to visit such places as the Docklands and its museum to see artifacts of exploitation and trade, or to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see over 150,000 artifacts ranging from textiles, through ceramics, metalworks, furniture, and paintings, representing countries and culture from throughout the Far, Middle and Near East. Looking at change within cultures, students might visit the Science Museum to see Stephenson’s Rocket, the first steam locomotive, or to Paris to see Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles and to understand something of the enormity of the gap between haves and have-nots in France of the Ancien Regime. By the end of the course, students may hope to have reached an independent understanding of the forces and factors that helped shape the terrain of the modern world.

WHO 1030 Modern World Since 1815
Revolution! War! Conquest! Empire! Votes! Welcome to the Modern World Since 1815! The past two hundred and fifty years has seen a tremendous amount of change in the global landscape. In 1815, Europeans controlled much of the world’s landmass and would go on to control yet more. A hundred years later, many of those controlled by Europeans began to resent their bondage and began to fight for freedom – war and revolution combined to fight conquest and empire all over the question of votes! Even as it grappled with the development of what came to be known as the Third World, the larger world engaged in two wars against itself and witnessed death and destruction on scales previously unknown. And all the time, as Europe declined in power, so did the Americas and Asia begin to rise. In this course students will see the evidence of these transformations all around them – in the government buildings in London and Paris proclaiming the imperial mission, in the Americanization of European culture, and in the wealth and business of the City reflecting the power and influence of the Asian markets. So steeped is London in the history of the modern world since 1815 that taking the course here is akin to taking a walk through two hundred and fifty years of history.