The Making of the Modern World

Catalog description

The modern world is often seen as a triumph of liberal enlightenment thought, scientific discovery, and economic progress. But it is also a product of settler colonialism, imperial expansion, and massive waves of population displacement that reorganized human societies along racialized and capitalist modes of inclusion and exclusion. This course seeks to understand the making of our current world from the conquest of the “Americas" and the slave trade to industrialization and climate change. It also considers lessons from the struggles by native, enslaved, colonized, and displaced populations for a more just, peaceful, and greener future.