Debates in American, European, and World History

Today, the political stakes of historical interpretation are front and center. How might we learn about history through passionate, reasoned, and constructive debate? By connecting the worldviews of people in the past to our present concerns without reducing one to the other? This course examines global history since the eighteenth century with particular attention to Europe and the United States by foregrounding foundational questions raised by primary sources and by historians who study them. Topics include the Enlightenment, revolution, democratic we-ness and exclusion, capitalism, communism, fascism, racism, imperialism, decolonization, nonviolence, progressivism and conservativism, and the recent past.