Common Topics

Common history text used in all three courses:

Hunt, Lynn. et al., The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures. 3rd ed. Boston and New York: Bedford Saint Martins, 2009.  And companion source books.  ISBN: 13:978-0-312-45294-0.  Cloth Text, 1184 pages.

Western Culture 101: Beginning to 900 C. E.

1. Civilization in the fertile crescent
2. Rise of Athens and democracy
3. Roman Empire and its aftermath
4. Hebrew culture
5. Rise of Christianity

1. Homer, Iliad, selections
2. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
3. Plato, Apology
4. Genesis, selections, and one gospel, selections
5. Augustine, Confessions, selections

Western Culture 102: 900-1800 C.E.

1. Middle Ages
2. Rise of the nation-state
3. Florence and the renaissance
4. Protestant reformation
5. Scientific revolution
6. Enlightenment and the French Revolution

1. Dante, Inferno, excerpts
2. Machiavelli, The Prince, excerpts
3. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
4. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, excerpts
5. Madison, Federalist 10, and the Declaration of Independence

Western Culture 103: 1800-Present C. E.

1. Romanticism
2. Industrial revolution
3. Democratization of the world
4. Science and technology
5. The world wars
6. The modern world

1. Darwin, The Origin of Species, excerpts, or a modern account of evolution
2. Marx, The Communist Manifesto
3. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, excerpts
4. Chinua Achebe,  Things Fall Apart
5. Martin Luther King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail
6. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, excerpts