European History
European History
01:510:321 The Age of Enlightenment (3)
- Course Code: 01:510:321
- Semester(s) Offered: Spring
- Academic Credits: 3
Syllabus: Spring 2022
Syllabus Disclaimer: The information on this syllabus is subject to change. For up-to-date course information, please refer to the syllabus on your course site (Sakai, Canvas, etc.) on the first day of class.
Course Description
What is Enlightenment? A question voiced most famously by Immanuel Kant in 1784 has intrigued historians ever since. Did the Enlightenment constitute a unified body of thought? What was the goal of the “Enlightenment project”? And how do we make sense of the origins, development, and enduring effects of this body of thought? Until the final third of the 20th century, intellectual historians dominated the study of the Enlightenment. Scholars such as Ernst Cassirer (1930s) and Peter Gay (1960s) studied the Enlightenment was by focusing on a small coterie of intellectuals, the books and treatises they published, and the canonical debates in which they engaged. The Enlightenment belonged squarely in the history of ideas.
This course organizes our study of the Enlightenment around a series of ongoing – and often contentious – debates. Men and women in the 18th century debated: How should “moderns” use and build upon the wisdom on the ancients? What is the boundary between religious faith and toleration? Are science and rationality antithetical to religious belief? Or, can one harmonize the insights of science and religious traditions? How should governments facilitate progress? What is the purpose of human social interactions (sociability)? What is the role of natural law? How can a society insure equality? And, how can individuals find happiness?
To understand these debates, we’ll roam throughout Europe – from London and Edinburgh to Milan and St. Petersburg -- with Paris as our home base. We’ll listen in on the conversations that animated the canonical writers of the Enlightenment – Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Hume, Smith, Gibbon, Mendelssohn, Beccaria, and Kant, to name just a few of the luminaries. But we’ll also explore how less well-known Europeans responded to the changing patterns of social, cultural, economic, and political life in eighteenth century. We’ll explore the new ways that men and women read books, attributed new meaning to art, listened to music, debated how best to raise their children, and explained racial categories. To underscore the role of conversation and debate in the Enlightenment, students will participate in a “pop up” salon in the second half of the semester. Students will study the position of a key philosopher of the Enlightenment and come to our in-class “salon” prepared to debate key topics with fellow philosophes and salon guests.
01:510:325 Nineteenth-Century Europe (3)
- Course Code: 01:510:325
- Academic Credits: 3
Examination of the formative period of modern Europe, including the industrial and democratic revolutions, nationalism, imperialism, and the crises culminating in World War I.
01:510:327 Twentieth-Century Europe
- Course Code: 01:510:327
- Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Summer
- SAS Core Certified: WCd
- Academic Credits: 3
- Mode of Instruction: Lecture
Syllabus: Fall 2023
Syllabus Disclaimer: The information on this syllabus is subject to change. For up-to-date course information, please refer to the syllabus on your course site (Sakai, Canvas, etc.) on the first day of class.
Course Description
Brexit--and Nexit? Russian war-mongering. The new challenge to imperialism, Fridays for Future--and the rise of the new right. What is going on with Europe, and how can we understand it? This course will treat major themes in the history of twentieth-century Europe, including the transforming stature of Europe and its meaning; rapid, frequent, and radical movement of peoples and boundaries; continuities and ruptures in political regimes and social mores; modernity and post-modernity; nationalism and sub- and transnational allegiances; "peculiarities" and commonalities; transformation of mass consumer culture and varieties of mass politics; history and memory; colonization and decolonization; war and genocide; protest and complacency; "second world" status; citizenship, rights, and obligations; environment, energy, and power; sources of present-day conflicts; and the future of Europe. We will also sharpen skills in reading primary sources (readings, visual images, etc.) critically and analytically, and compare examples of historical interpretation.
01:510:329 World War II in Europe (3)
- Course Code: 01:510:329
- Semester(s) Offered: Summer
- Academic Credits: 3
01:510:333 France, Old Regime, and Revolution (3)
- Course Code: 01:510:333
- Semester(s) Offered: Spring
- SAS Core Certified: WCd
- Academic Credits: 3
- Mode of Instruction: Lecture
Syllabus: Spring 2024
Syllabus Disclaimer: The information on this syllabus is subject to change. For up-to-date course information, please refer to the syllabus on your course site (Sakai, Canvas, etc.) on the first day of class.
Canvas Syllabus Page: https://rutgers.instructure.com/courses/161555/assignments/syllabus
Course Description
Few events in history have had such a profound impact on Western society and culture and have generated such intense debate among historians as the French Revolution. In this course we will consider the causes, meanings, and consequences of the French Revolution by examining French society and culture in the “long century” between the reign of King Louis XIV (1660) and the end of Napoleon Bonaparte’s empire (1815). Our sources will range from novels and memoirs to Enlightenment treatises to scandalous revolutionary pamphlets attacking Queen Marie-Antoinette. In addition to primary sources, we will encounter a range of conflicting historical interpretations of the Old Regime and Revolution as we try to make sense of a revolution that, in many historians’ eyes gave birth to the modern world. In addition, the course will introduce the culture of the rich and sparkling century that is fondly known as le siècle des lumières.