Module 1: What is World History?
- Central Question:
- Key Topics
- World History as a Discipline
- Historical Thinking Skills
- Historiography
Module 2: Pre-History, History, and Ways of Knowing
- Central Question: How did humans progress from scattered hunter-gatherers to the first organized civilizations?
- Key Topics
- Pre-History & Geologic Time
- Paleolithic Era
- Neolithic Revolution
Module 3: The Human Web Widens
- Central Question: What key innovations allowed early civilizations to emerge and interact with each other, creating an interconnected human web?
- Key Topics:
- The Origins of Civilization
- Earliest Civilizations (West Asia & the Levant, North Africa, India, and China)
- Key Developments in World History & Diffusion of ideas
Module 4: The Classical World System
- Central Question: How did classical civilizations across Eurasia and the Mediterranean interconnect to form an ancient world system?
- Key Topics:
- Classical West
- Hellenic Greece
- Achaemenid Persia
- Hellenistic Empire)
- Classical Rome
- Classical East
- Silk Road
Module 5: Retraction & Expansion in the Post-Classical World
- Central Question: How did the decline of classical empires lead to decentralization, the diffusion of culture and religion, and the development of new regional powers?
- Key Topics
- Islam & the Islamic World
- Byzantine Empire & Orthodox Christianity
- Medieval Europe
- Crusades
Module 6: Trade & the Old World System
- Central Question: How did the expansion of trade networks during the 13th and 14th centuries foster greater interconnection in the Old World System, even amidst economic, social, and political turmoil?
- Key Topics
- Mongols
- Sea Road, Sand Road, Silk Road
- Pre-Modern World Systems (Janet Abu-Lughod)
Module 7: Colliding Worlds
- Central Question: How did trade networks stimulate cross-cultural exchange and begin linking the Eastern and Western hemispheres?
- Key Topics:
- Mesoamerica
- Changing Role of Africa
- European Expansion
- The Columbian Exchange
