HS 111 World Civilization to 1650
Textbook Information Methodology and Assignments Links for Global History APUS login
This course is a survey of the history of the human community from the dawn of civilization to around 1650. I teach the 8 week version of the course. Starting in December of 2007, it has been significantly re-designed.
I am currently working on ideas to improve the design of the course to have more emphasis on "global history" as opposed to "world histories" and other ideas.
Textbooks
Duiker, William J.; Spielvogel, Jackson J.: World History. 4th Edition, 2003.
Methodology and Assignments
I have recently re-designed this course to involve less rote memorization and more discussion. The amount of writing has remained about the same, but with fewer total assignments.
The major assignments are
- a short term paper on a subject of the student's choice. The topic will be centered on some historical person, event or development outside the western (Mediterranean and European) tradition. As in all my classes, there is a special discussion forum in the online classroom for helping students get through this assignment. See also my policies and advice on writing and research.
- a short paper. The form this takes varies from term to term. It might require the discussion and analysis of a primary source from history, the comparison of two scholarly articles on the same theme, or the critical discussion of an online history webpage.
- weekly discussions of primary sources from the textbook. The textbook is full of short excerpts from interesting and colorful primary sources. Every week we discuss several of them in the online classroom. The students and I discuss these sources against the broader background of the textbook chapters on the major world civilizations.
- a final exam. The exam is no longer proctored! This is a take-home, open book, essay exam. The questions are broad and require the students to mine the textbook and other sources for evidence and ideas.
Global History Links
Primary Sources
- The Global History Sourcebook by Paul Falsall at Fordham University is a great resource for primary documents from the histories of all the worlds regions and civilizations. There, you will find links to collections on African, Indian, East Asian, Islamic and other histories.
- World Civilizations Student Resource Center at Houghton Mifflon http://college.hmco.com/history/world/resources/students/primary/index.html
- World Civilization Anthology of Readings at Washington State University http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/WORLD.HTM
- The World Civilization Virtual Library by Dr. Vess http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~dvess/hist110.htm
- Links from Reading About the World by Paul Brians http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/contents_vol_1.html
Miscellaneous
- The World History Connected webpage has articles on teaching and studying global history. The November 2004 issue has some interesting articles on integrating Africa, which is often neglected, into global history.
- Read Samual P. Huntington's famous essay on the Clash of Civilizations.
- Wang Hui: Reclaiming Asia from the West: Rethinking Global History http://japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=226
