The Modern West
Matthew N. Vosmeier
Winter 2013
866-7211 vosmeier@hanover.edu
Quick Links
The Modern West
Matthew N. Vosmeier
Winter 2013
866-7211 vosmeier@hanover.edu
Quick Links
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Course description and required texts:
This LADR course is a survey of the broad themes that characterized the history of the West, emphasizing the time since the Renaissance. Students will analyze primary sources, consider the importance of historical context and perspective,
discuss their ideas with colleagues, and interpret the sources in light of broader themes of modern European and American history.
LADR Objectives:
1. By exploring the ideas, themes, events, and personalities that have shaped the history of the West, students
will be able to describe important characteristics of modern society.
2. Reading and analyzing background texts and primary sources as historians do helps students to
understand one of the "key ways of knowing and of evaluating evidence in the social sciences."
3. By considering change over time, and similarities and differences between past and present, students
will place modern society in its historical context.
4. History concerns the analysis and interpretation of social, cultural, religious, and political evidence of the past. Through
consideration of that evidence, students will be able to "expand their abilities to view things from alternative perspectives" and
to "explain causes for human behavior in ways that account for the complexity of social forces and of human motivation."
5. Students will hone their ability to "reflect systematically and meaningfully on ethical dilemmas and issues that face
citizens in modern society" by thinking about the problems, debates, and conflicts people have faced in the course of the history of Western
society
6. Through class discussion and through course exams and papers, students construct interpretations of evidence and support them with
effective speaking and writing.
Required Texts:
1. Thomas H. Greer and Gavin Lewis, A Brief History of the Western World.
2. Online Materials accessed through this web page
3. Materials on reserve at Duggan Library
There is an online Study Guide for Primary
Sources to print out.
The final course grade will be calculated from the following:
1. Two exams: A midterm (25%) and a final exam (25%). The exams will consist of identification terms and essays. Students are expected to take the exams on the days scheduled. In cases of necessity, requests for make-ups should be made before the day of the exam.
2. Two papers (each 20%). These papers will involve an analysis of primary sources. Late papers will be assessed a penalty.
3. Class participation (10%). Class participation includes collegial involvement in class discussions and completion of brief assignments. Cell phone use is prohibited as it distracts from discussion.
Jan. 7: Introduction to the Course
Renaissance and Reformation
Jan. 9: Transformation of Europe; Renaissance Humanism. Greer & Lewis, 299-307, 335-342,344-356
Petrus Paulus
Vergerius, "De Ingenuis Moribus" (ca. 1404),
Christine de Pisan, Book of the City of Ladies (1405)
Jan. 11: E. D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy, xiii-32, on reserve.
Jan. 14: Renaissance Humanism
Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola, from Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486).
Jan. 16: Renaissance Politics. Greer & Lewis, 307-313
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1513).
Jan. 18: The Reformation. Greer & Lewis, 364-380, 384-387
John Calvin,
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1545).
Jan. 21: The English Reformation and English Puritanism. Greer & Lewis, 380-384.
John Winthrop, "A
Modell of Christian Charity" (1630).
Jan. 23: Individualism and Community in Early Modern Society.
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Absolutism and Enlightenment
Jan. 25: Absolutism. Greer & Lewis,408-411, 416-418.
Jacques Bossuet, On
the Nature and Properties of Royal Authority (1678).
Thomas
Hobbes, Leviathan (1651).
Jan. 28: The Scientific Revolution. Greer & Lewis, 418-431.
Isaac Newton, Principia (1687).
John
Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690).
Jan. 30: The English Revolution, Greer & Lewis, 446-451.
John Locke,
Second Treatise on Government (1690).
Feb. 1: Augustan England, Classical Republicanism, and the Whig Opposition.
John Trenchard,
Cato's Letters, No. 18
Thomas Gordon,
Cato's Letters, No. 33
John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon,
Cato's Letters, No. 94
Feb. 4: Writing Workshop.
Bring Complete Paper Drafts to class.
Feb. 6: The Enlightenment.
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, The Social Contract, (1763).
Voltaire, The
Philosophical Dictionary (1764).
Feb. 8: The Enlightenment.
First Paper due
The American and French Revolutions.
Feb. 11: The American Revolution and the Early Republic. Greer & Lewis, 451-456
Thomas
Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence (1776).
Abigail Adams,
"Remember the Ladies" Letter (1776).
James Madison,
Federalist #10 (1787).
Feb. 13: The French Revolution and Empire. Greer & Lewis, 445-446, 456-471.
Declaration of the Rights of
Man and Citizen (1789).
Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights
of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791)
Maximilien de
Robespierre, Speech of February 5, 1794 (1794).
Feb. 15: Midterm Review
Feb. 18: Midterm Exam
Feb. 20: Conservative Reaction. Greer & Lewis, 473-478.
Edmund Burke,
Reflections on the French Revolution (1790).
Feb. 22: Romanticism; 480-490
Madame de Staël, On Germany (1810).
(Winter Break begins at the close of class day, Friday, Feb. 22. Class resumes Monday, Mar. 4)
Mar. 4: Music of the Western World. Greer & Lewis, 439-442, 490-491, 672-673.
The Nineteenth Century
Mar. 6: Liberalism. Greer & Lewis, 491-497.
John Stuart Mill,
On Liberty (1859) and
John Stuart Mill, "Utilitarianism" (1861).
Mar. 8: Nationalism. Greer & Lewis, 497-501.
Joseph
Mazzini,An Essay On the Duties of Man (1844-1858).
Mar. 11: American Individualism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
"The American Scholar" (1837)
Seneca Falls Convention,
Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
Mar. 13: American Slavery, Sectionalism, and Civil War
Frederick Douglass, "The Meaning of
the Fourth of July for the Negro" (1852)
Abraham
Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address (1863)
Mar. 15: Socialism. Greer & Lewis, 517-523.
Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848).
Mar. 18: Late Nineteenth-Century Social Thought. Greer & Lewis, 528-530.
Andrew
Carnegie, "The Gospel of Wealth" (1889).
Thomas Huxley, Evolution
and Ethics (1894).
Imperialism, Racism, Statism
Mar. 12: Race and Racism in the Progressive Era.
Booker T.
Washington, "The Atlanta Exposition Address" (1895).
W. E. B. DuBois,
The Souls of Black Folk (1903).
Mar. 22: Writing Workshop.
Bring Complete Paper Drafts to class.
Mar. 25: The New Imperialism and World War I. Greer & Lewis, 548-567.
World War I Poetry
Mar. 27: The Interwar Years. Greer & Lewis, 568-582, 648-652.
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
Benito Mussolini,
"The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism" (1932)
Mar. 29: World War II. Greer & Lewis, 585-591
Second Paper Due
American Society and the World since 1945
Apr. 1: The Cold War; Decolonization. Greer & Lewis, 595-612, 614-624
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (1952)
Apr. 3: The Cold War. Greer & Lewis, 624-637.
The Cold War in Film.
Apr. 5: Late Twentieth-Century American Society. Greer & Lewis, 612-614, 655-661.
The Port Huron
Statement (1962).
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
"Letter from the Birmingham Jail" (1963)
Apr. 8: Contemporary Society
David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise (2000), chapter 2, on reserve
Apr. 10: Global Society and Conflict. Greer & Lewis, 720-730.
Reading TBA
Apr. 12: Conclusion and Review
Apr. 15-19 Final Exam Week