Course Description

Course Description

This course is an introduction to the history of the world from 1945-2001, framed by the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on one end, and on the other by the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. You will acquire a basic knowledge of major historical events in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and the Middle East in this period. You will also learn through lecture and discussion how to think about change over time in diverse societies as interconnected with and framed by underlying regional and
global trends, in which national boundaries may be increasingly irrelevant in some ways while becoming even more meaningful in others. Reading, discussing, and writing about selected primary sources will push you to analyze the connections between transnational processes and the experience of human life in the second half of the 20th century.