ITB 202E - World History

Course Objectives

Compare and contrast world civilizations, starting with the Neolithic Revolution and concluding with Post-Modernity.

Course Description

This course provides a survey of world history from the Neolithic revolution to the 21st century, focusing on the ways in which social, economic, political, cultural, artistic, and intellectual structures interacted especially in the Mediterranean basin. Charting both continuity and change, we study the emergence, rise, and demise of civilizations from a comparative and historical perspective. Extensive readings will be done in the primary sources. Attention will be devoted to readings of law-codes, hagiographies, encomia, historiography, biographies, letters, and poetry. Some themes to be considered are lawful monarchy, tyranny, constitutionalism, civic culture, identity, the concept of the “other”, Romanitas, Hellenism, Islamic Civilization, Orientalism, nomadism, world-trade system and capitalism, nationalism, the interaction between ideology and economy.