World History since 1500

How did we end up here? How did the world come to look as it does now? In 2015, we face multiple global crises: socioeconomic inequality, religious extremism, and climate change, to name just a few. But we can also see new possibilities for positive change, through new global social movements and transformative technologies. This course examines the roots of both the challenges and opportunities of the present through a survey of our past. We focus on the making of a modern world that is both unprecedentedly connected and deeply divided, through a survey of global events from the turn of the 16th century (circa 1500) through the present.