Understanding European Union

History 102H

Course description:
Our generation stands at a unique moment in history, European Union.  As one of humankind’s worst cases of internal division, hostility, and hatred to the point of genocidal extermination, European Union is almost oxymoronic.  Only within living memory has Europe seen essential similarity alongside diversity and a common civilization shared among relative equals instead of one entity dominating the others.  How did this come to be?  How has Europe constructed an understanding of the past that emphasizes the shared heritage of the entire civilization?  With our perspective firmly grounded in the twenty-first century, we will take a critical look at the stories the present tells about the past and what aspects of its identity modern Europe takes from Greco-Roman antiquity, the middle ages, Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment.

Books

1. Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto (1848)
2. Aeschylus, Oresteia [458 B.C.] (Penguin, 1984)
3. Christa Wolf, Cassandra, trans. J. van Heurck (FS&G, 1988 [originally German, A.D. 1984])
4. Eric H. Cline and Glynnis Fawkes, 1177 B.C.: A Graphic History of the Year Civilization Collapsed (Princeton University Press, 2024)  isbn 9780691213026

Grades
subject to minor adjustment

• Historical identification terms      25%
• Midterm                                    20%
• Final exam                                20%
• Aeschulus                                 15%
• C. Wolf, Cassandra                     15%
• Maps                                          5%