Course Description

Is “Europe” falling apart?!  This course will treat major themes in the history of 17^th- to 20^th-century Europe, including the rapid, frequent, and radical movement of people and boundaries; continuities and ruptures in political regimes and social mores; ideas of modernity, modernization, and modernism; state-building and citizenship; nationalism and sub- and transnational allegiances; the rise of bourgeois culture, mass culture, and mass politics; colonization and decolonization; war and peace; “universal rights”; and notions of "progress" and "backwardness."  It will also consider the meaning of Europe, and “the West,” and examine Europe’s changing place in the world and its relations with the rest of the world.  Readings are composed of a wide variety of primary sources, which we will work on learning to analyze for their historical significance.  Lectures will draw on historiographical trends, that is, how historians have conceptualized the processes and events we will discuss; we will compare these conceptualizations with our own assessments.