(300-level, Selected Topics)
This course introduces students to the study
of the “new world history,” a history not of nations or civilizations or even
“areas” of the world (as in what was once known as an “areas studies approach”)
but of the global interactions stemming from the economic, environmental,
cultural and political exchanges between social systems that have characterized
and created the “modern world” as we know it. While globalization
and modernity are relatively new terms coined to signify the recent
acceleration and global scale of such interactions and the identities and
consciousness that has developed alongside them, the modern “world system” can
be traced back several hundred years. This course begins by challenging
the idea that the modern world originated with the “rise of the West” and ends
with an examination of the political implications of a globalized
economy and culture-industry. Topics examined in this course
include: trade and empire in the “age of discovery,” the Columbian
exchange, the rise of scientific authority, travel writing, industrial
capitalism, cultural imperialism, and the role of global media in the 21st
century.