Module 1: What is World History?
- Central Question: Why should we study world history?
- Key Topics
- World History
- Historical Thinking
- Historiography
Module 2: Colliding Worlds
- Central Question: How did the collision of the Eastern and Western hemispheres in the late 15th century affect global interactions and transformations?
- Key Topics:
- Mesoamerica
- Changing Role of Africa
- European Expansion
- The Columbian Exchange
- European Empires in the New World
Module 3: Revolutions & their Consequences
- Central Question: How did political and economic revolutions fundamentally transform societies, cultures, politics, and economies across the Atlantic World? How did that contribute to what historians have called the Great Divergence?
- Key Topics
- Nationalism & the Long 19th Century
- Atlantic Revolutions
- Industrial Revolution
Module 4: Imperialism & Western Hegemony
- Central Question: What fueled the new wave of Western imperialism and colonialism in the late 19th century, and how did it impact colonized societies?
- Key Topics
- New Imperialism - How & Why?
- US Imperialism
- Scramble for Africa
- Imperialism in Asia
- The Great Divergence
Module 5: The Bloody 20th Century
- Central Question: How did World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II radically transform international relations and global power dynamics?
- Key Topics
- World War I
- A Punitive Peace
- Great Depression & Political Radicalism
- Failure of the League of Nations
- World War II
Module 6: A Bi-Polar World
- Central Question: How did the Cold War competition between the US and USSR shape geopolitics and decolonization in the postwar era?
- Key Topics
- The Cold War
- The Middle East since 1918
- Decolonization
- The End of the Cold War
Module 7: New Global Systems
- Central Question: How has economic and cultural globalization reshaped international systems and relationships in the late 20th and early 21st centuries?
- Key Topics
- New Technology & Increased Globalization
- A Multi-Polar World
- New Questions
