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Welcome to Spring Semester 2013
Doctor of Philosophy in English
A History of the World since 1300
Jeremy Adelman
This course will examine the ways in
which the world has grown more integrated yet more divided over the past 700
years.
Dear FIX,
A few days ago, I returned from an intense, week-long trip to South America to encounter a region recovering from a terrible storm. Thank you to those who had to adjust schedules for their assignment submissions. One of the threads on the forums even picked up the story of the trip from the press! Small world we live in.
During the trip, I took my colleague and Princeton President, Shirley Tilghman, to visit the site of torture chambers created during the Argentine dictatorship from 1976-1983. Aside from offering a view into the ways in which Argentines are grappling with a horrible chapter in their history, the Naval School reminded me of themes we will now explore in this course. As we pivot from the nineteenth-century into the twentieth, the challenges of global integration, the rise of mass societies, the spread of new ideologies, and the effects of technological shifts on daily lives around the globe appeared to make time accelerate. Indeed, some ways, time did speed up.
For that reason, the course slows down in pace to take apart the complex processes that lead to our more proximate past.
Many of the concepts planted over the course of the previous weeks, starting with a definition of wealth, the notion of a social division of labour, total war, the urge to classify people and species -- among others -- are now going to be raveled together. For those who have joined the course late (there are now over 86,000 students enrolled), it is not necessary to review prior lectures to understand what we mean by these concepts. But know that we have been discussing the historical development of many of these concepts or processes dating back to 1300. If you need a quick summary, see the threads in the online forum sections where Melissa Teixeira and I discuss issues raised in each lecture.
https://class.coursera.org/wh1300-2012-001/forum/list?forum_id=25
What is important to know is that many of the issues discussed since the days of Genghis Khan (conquest, population movement, imperial expansion and changing attitudes to land) are going to provoke both creativity and carnage on a hitherto unimaginable scale. We will return also to the regions where the course began, Central Asia.
One theme that the online forums have been tossing around is nationalism. In a way, this is paradoxical. World history was in part invented to overcome old-fashioned national history. But one thing we have learned: the nation was also a political concept that went global, with profound consequences. As a result, this was a theme I spent a lot of time discussing with Professor Linda Colley and Princeton students in the Fourth Global Dialogue. I had originally planned to talk more about empire, specifically the British empire, but was intrigued by your responses to earlier lectures. That Dialogue is now posted and I hope you will find it relevant to what's to come.
https://class.coursera.org/wh1300-2012-001/lecture/index
Next week, the Dialogue will feature two younger Russian historians, Ekaterina Pravilova (a colleague of mine here at Princeton) and Igor Fedyukin from Moscow. We will discuss Russia and the world. In due course, we will post a thread inviting questions. Please remember that Russia has a history before 1917 (sometimes I worry that especially North Americans do not realize that Russia has been a world player for centuries), so post questions about what is known as the "Imperial" period as well.
With best wishes,
Jeremy Adelman & A History of the World since 1300 Course Staff
A few days ago, I returned from an intense, week-long trip to South America to encounter a region recovering from a terrible storm. Thank you to those who had to adjust schedules for their assignment submissions. One of the threads on the forums even picked up the story of the trip from the press! Small world we live in.
During the trip, I took my colleague and Princeton President, Shirley Tilghman, to visit the site of torture chambers created during the Argentine dictatorship from 1976-1983. Aside from offering a view into the ways in which Argentines are grappling with a horrible chapter in their history, the Naval School reminded me of themes we will now explore in this course. As we pivot from the nineteenth-century into the twentieth, the challenges of global integration, the rise of mass societies, the spread of new ideologies, and the effects of technological shifts on daily lives around the globe appeared to make time accelerate. Indeed, some ways, time did speed up.
For that reason, the course slows down in pace to take apart the complex processes that lead to our more proximate past.
Many of the concepts planted over the course of the previous weeks, starting with a definition of wealth, the notion of a social division of labour, total war, the urge to classify people and species -- among others -- are now going to be raveled together. For those who have joined the course late (there are now over 86,000 students enrolled), it is not necessary to review prior lectures to understand what we mean by these concepts. But know that we have been discussing the historical development of many of these concepts or processes dating back to 1300. If you need a quick summary, see the threads in the online forum sections where Melissa Teixeira and I discuss issues raised in each lecture.
https://class.coursera.org/wh1300-2012-001/forum/list?forum_id=25
What is important to know is that many of the issues discussed since the days of Genghis Khan (conquest, population movement, imperial expansion and changing attitudes to land) are going to provoke both creativity and carnage on a hitherto unimaginable scale. We will return also to the regions where the course began, Central Asia.
One theme that the online forums have been tossing around is nationalism. In a way, this is paradoxical. World history was in part invented to overcome old-fashioned national history. But one thing we have learned: the nation was also a political concept that went global, with profound consequences. As a result, this was a theme I spent a lot of time discussing with Professor Linda Colley and Princeton students in the Fourth Global Dialogue. I had originally planned to talk more about empire, specifically the British empire, but was intrigued by your responses to earlier lectures. That Dialogue is now posted and I hope you will find it relevant to what's to come.
https://class.coursera.org/wh1300-2012-001/lecture/index
Next week, the Dialogue will feature two younger Russian historians, Ekaterina Pravilova (a colleague of mine here at Princeton) and Igor Fedyukin from Moscow. We will discuss Russia and the world. In due course, we will post a thread inviting questions. Please remember that Russia has a history before 1917 (sometimes I worry that especially North Americans do not realize that Russia has been a world player for centuries), so post questions about what is known as the "Imperial" period as well.
With best wishes,
Jeremy Adelman & A History of the World since 1300 Course Staff
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