Listed below are the primary documents that are required reading for this course.
Where applicable, I have indicated what portions of the documents you should read. These links should all work with Internet Explorer; if you use another browser, most should work but a few may not. If you find that one or more of these links are not working properly, let me know ASAP.
Notes on using these readings:
*As a condition of being a student at USA, it is assumed that you have access to a computer and can work online. If you have difficulties with computer access, contact me immediately so that we can make other arrangements. You are responsible for these readings regardless of your computer situation.
*We may find it necessary to add or remove a reading or two over the course of the semester. You will be responsible for keeping up with any changes in the reading assignments, and so periodically check back to this page.
*For the most part, these are primary documents: they will not always be easy to read or to understand. Please feel free to discuss these readings with me outside of class if you want/need another perspective. Using the readings, your textbook, and lectures, be able to identify these works (who, what, when, where) and to understand their historical context and significance.
*As you read these documents, try to identify the author's main argument and consider what he or she wants us to know about his or her time. Then, "read between the lines" - what does the author's thesis tell us about the social, cultural, and political environment in which he or she is working.
Week 1 Roots of Modernity: the State Supreme
James I, True Law of Free Monarchies, 1598
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651 CE (Chap. XIII)
Catherine the Great of Russia, an "Enlightened Despot", 1729-1796
Feudal Poland Falls to Modern States
Scene from Amadeus, "Escape from the Seraglio", 1984
Week 2 Science and the Death of Nature
Nicolas Copernicus from The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies, 1543 CE
Francis Bacon from First Book of Aphorisms, ca. 1597
Galileo challenges Biblical authority, 1651 (excerpts)
Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica, 1687
Benjamin Franklin, Experiments with Balloons, 1783 CE
Weeks 3 Foundations of the Liberal Tradition
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689 (Chapter II, secs. 1-5)
The English Bill of Rights (excerpts), 1689
Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762 (Chaps. i, iii, vi)
Voltaire, A Treatise on Toleration, 1763
Immanuel Kant, What Is Enlightenment?, 1784
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, 1776
Week 4 The Age of Reason
Exam 1 - includes all readings from Weeks 1-3
Week 5 Revolution in France and Beyond
Arthur Young, Travels in France, 1792
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789
La Marseillaise (with translation), revolutionary hymn and French National Anthem
Abolition of Feudalism in France, 1789
Olympe de Gouge, Declaration of the Rights of Women, 1791
Maximilien Robespierre, "Justification of the Use of Terror", 1794
Robespierre, "Cult of the Supreme Being"
Napoleon - Summit Of Greatness, Battle of Austerlitz (1805)
Week 6 Rise of the Machines and the Modes of (re)Production
The "Potato Revolution", 1695-1845
Women Miners in the English Coal Pits
Thomas Carlyle, Signs of the Times: The "Mechanical" Age, 1829
The Sadler Commission Hearings, 1832
Sara Stickney Ellis, "The Cult of Domesticity", 1838
Week 7 Ideologies and the Perils of Democratization
Johann Gottfried von Herder on "Romantic Nationalism", 1784
Ernst Moritz Arndt, "The German Fatherland"
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1791
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major, "Eroica"
Mary Shelley, The Last Man, 1822
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1831 (Book 1, Chap. 13)
The People's Petition [Chartism], 1838
Declaration of Sentiments, 1848
Alexander Petofi, The National Song of Hungary, 1848
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859
Week 8 The Forgotten Revolutions
Review primary readings Weeks 5-7 in preparation for Exam II
Week 9 Survival of the Fittest: Man, Nature and the State
Documents on German Unification, 1848-1871
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
Herbert Spencer on "Social Darwinism", 1857
Giuseppe Garibaldi, "Report on the Conquest of Naples", 1860
Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, 1863
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871
Week 10 Spring Break!
Week 11 Imperialism and the New Consciousness
Friedrich Nietzsche, "Parable of the Madman", 1882
Sigmund Freud, "Psychoanalysis" and Interpreting Dreams, 1900
Emmeline Pankhurst, Militant Suffragist, 1913
Kaiser Wilhelm II, "A Place in the Sun", 1901
Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness, 1902
Mohandas K. Gandhi on Indian Independence, 1909
Week 12 The Great War and the Decline of the West
Donald Fraser, My Daily Journal, 1915-1916
Trench Warfare: Scene from Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory
Baron Manfred F. von Richthofen, "The Red Baron", on air warfare, 1915
The Espionage Act (U.S.), 1918
The Treaty of Versailles, 1919
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, 1922
Vladimir Lenin, "What Is to Be Done?", 1902
Soviet Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Peoples, 1917
Vladimir Lenin, The April Theses, 1917
Josef Stalin on the (1st) "5-Year Plan", 1928
Totalitarianism, or the Cult of Personality: "A Hymn to Stalin"
Week 13 Totalitarianism and the Experimental Society
Review primary readings Weeks 9-12 in preparation for Exam III.
Week 14 Fascism and the Politics of the Irrational
Benito Mussolini, What Is Fascism?, 1932
The Nuremberg Laws #3: "German Blood and Honor," 1935
Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Appeasement, 1938
W. H. Auden, "The Unknown Citizen," 1939
Heinrich Himmler, "Speech to the SS", 1943
Pierre Seel, "The Death of His Lover"
Elie Wiesel, "The Perils of Indifference", 1999
Week 15 Paranoia, Prophets and Politics in the Atomic Age
Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, 1945
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948
Nikita Kruschev, the "Secret Speech", 1956
United Nations Proclaims "Earth Day", 1971
Youth Culture and Rebellion: Protest Songs
Ronald Reagan, the "Evil Empire Speech", 1982
Weeks 16 The "End of History"? The Search for Postmodern Order
Simone de Beauvoir, Existential Feminism, 1949
Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", 1963
Ayatollah Khomeini on the Islamic Revolution in Iran, 1979
Joint Statement (U.S. and Russia) on Terrorism, 2001
Charles S. Maier, "An American Empire?", 2002