History 21C: World History: 1870 to the present

Sandra Zito, Ph.D.

szito@uci.edu

Office Hours:

Course Description: This course is the third part of a three quarter world history survey designed to give undergraduates a purview of some of the major world historical events and processes that have shaped the modern world from 1870 to the present. As a survey course, the aim of this class is to give students an introductory knowledge of key events and processes, such as, imperialism, nationalism, migration, diasporas, revolution, racism, fascism, genocide, decolonization, consumerism, human rights, and globalization, in terms that they may understand how past historical conditions relate to present-day political, economic, social, and cultural concerns. To that end, this course will be framed around two pertinent ethical questions of particular resonance for an understanding of world history today: 1) What is our ethical responsibility towards each other inside colonial and/or national borders?; 2) What is our ethical responsibility towards others outside of colonial and/or national borders? The course will not give a comprehensive account of all world events during this time period, but rather, aims to introduce some of the more salient historical processes, keywords, and concepts that connect and differentiate various regions of the world. The content of this class will aid students in making sense of contemporary political issues that affect their lives today and enable students to better frame their own ethical obligations and engagements with others in the world today.

Course Materials:

Robert Tignor, et. al., Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (hereafter WTWA)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (Touchstone, 1996).

Other readings will be available on the course website and/or e-reserve.

Course Expectations and Requirements: This class will be a combination of lectures, readings, group work, exams, and weekly papers. Each class will consist of 50 minutes of lecture and 50 minutes of group discussion. You are expected to come to class having read the assigned readings for the week and to be prepared to engage the material as part of group discussion. Group discussion questions will mainly revolve around the primary source readings for the week. The mid-term and final exam will draw from readings and lectures, so if you attend class, do the readings, and participate in the group work, you will be sufficiently prepared for the exams (which will be composed of short answer keywords, map identifications, and longer essay questions).

Please be courteous to everyone in the classroom, arrive on time, and resist the urge to transcend temporal and spatial boundaries through your media devices, i.e. no phone or web chatting, facebooking, googling, emailing, youtubing, etc. As a major theme of this class is the consideration of one’s ethical obligations towards others inside and outside colonial-national borders, please think about how your conduct inside the classroom affects your teacher and your classmates.

Weekly Papers: You are required to write a 2-3 page paper on the primary source readings for the week that will be due every Friday at the end of class. Please keep in mind these two questions as you do the weekly readings and writings: 1) What is the ethical responsibility expressed towards those inside colonial and/or national borders?; 2) What is the ethical responsibility expressed towards those outside of colonial and/or national borders? Concentrate your paper around the primary source readings for the week, but utilize the textbook to help you understand the historical context of the production of the primary source, i.e. why the document was written during the time period it was written, who its intended audience was, how it defines keywords and concepts (such as empire, race, nation, gender relations, capitalism, etc.) and whether those meanings have changed or continue to persist in the present historical moment.

Grade Determination:

Mid-Term Exam 25%

Final Exam 35%

Weekly Papers 20%

Group Work/

Class Participation 20%

Plagiarism: There will be a zero tolerance for academic dishonesty. Students who plagiarize will be penalized to the fullest extent allowed by University regulations. Please read the university policy on plagiarism printed in the course schedule booklet. Submitting a paper that includes text and research data that is not cited is grounds for failure in the course. All information borrowed from print sources or the internet must be identified. Failure to do so is theft. Plagiarists fail the course and have their offense recorded in their School and in the School of Humanities. Violations of academic honesty can affect a student's graduation, financial aid, and eligibility for honors. (Text from the syllabus of Writing 39 C/Mitchell 21C, 2005).

For citation assistance, refer to Kate L. Turabian, A Guide for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations. Sixth Edition. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996.
(Or on-line Turabain info at http://www.bridgew.edu/Library/turabian.cfm)

Accommodations: Students who need specific accommodations to get the most out of this course are encouraged to contact the UCI Disability Services Center at 949-824-7494 as soon as possible to secure assistance. Students who must miss class due to religious observation or family or medical emergencies should contact the instructor as soon as possible.

Lectures and Weekly Reading Assignments:

Week One: Nations and Empires: Hoarding and Hatred

Introduction: World History and Ethical Duties Towards “Ourselves” and “Others”

Nations, Empires, Monopoly Capitalism and The World Division of Labor

Scientific Racism, Manliness, and the Cult of Domesticity

Readings:

WTWA, Chapter 8

Renan, “What is a Nation?” (1882) http://www.nationalismproject.org/what/renan.htm

Cecil Rhodes, “Confessions of Faith” (1877) http://www.uoregon.edu/~kimball/Rhodes-Confession.htm

Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (1889) http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/kipling.html

Teddy Roosevelt, “The Strenuous Life” (1899) http://www.historytools.org/sources/strenuous-abridged.html
D.F. Sarmiento, “Physical Aspects of the Argentine Republic,” from Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism (1845)  

Week Two: Discontent Abroad, Discontent at Home: Local Autonomy and Equality

Resistance to Empire: A Slow Burning Fuse

Resistance to Capital, Patriarchy, Racism: Exclusions within the Nation-State

Desiring A Nation of One’s Own: Nationalisms Ambiguous Relation to Empire

WTWA, Chapter 9

Statement of Hendrik Witbooi (Nama chief) on the German administration (1904) and Letter written by Samuel Mahahero (1904) http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/reference/ob22.html

The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, “Two Proclamations of the Boxer Rebellion (1898)
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)

Ida B. Wells, “Southern Horrors” and “The Red Record,” excerpts. (1892-1894)
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.”(1903)
Qiu Jin, “An Address to Two Hundred Million Fellow Country-Women” (1906)

José Rizal, Noli Me Tangere (1887), excerpt.
José Martí, “Our America.” (1891)
Liang Qichao (Ch=i-ch=ao), excerpts from A People Made New (1902-1905)

Excerpt from  Surendrenath Banerjea, A Nation in the Making (2 pages)

Week Three: Modern Warfare and A New World Order: Solidifying Nation-States Around Racial and Ethnic Majorities and Minorities

Militarism and Nationalism, the Slow Burning Fuse Explodes, Russian Revolution, New World Order

National/Ethnic Minorities and Majorities, Refugees, Stateless Subjects

Mid-term

WTWA, Chapter 1

Wilson’s Fourteen Points (1918) http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/reference/ob34.html

Little Treaty of Versailles, or Polish Minority Treaty (1919) http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/eehistory/H200Readings/Topic5-R1.html

Start Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

Week Four: Consequences of Enlightened Modernity: States of Emergency, Camps, and Ethnic Cleansing

Mass Production, High and Low Art, Economic Booms and Busts

Fascisms, Spectacle, and Purifying the Nation

War in the East, Proportionality, and Who Is the War Criminal?

Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

Nazi Decrees of 1933 and Enabling Act (1933) http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/reference/ob60.html

Nuremberg Laws (1935) http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/reference/ob14.html

Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore Cook, Japan At War: An Oral History,
excerpts: pp. 40-46; 105-113; 181-184; 382-387, 447-453.

Week Five: Decolonization and Reterritorialization: Cold War Camps, Hot Wars, Human Rights Discourse

Decolonization and Post-war Partitions

U.S. Informal Empire, World Bank, IMF, and Development Discourse

1968: Global Responses to Post-War National Societies: Exclusions Continue

WTWA, Chapter 11

United Declaration of Human Rights (1948) http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952), selection and “Colonial Wars and Mental Disorders”

Ishtiaq Ahmed, “Forced Migration and Ethnic Cleansing in Lahore in 1947: Some first person accounts” in Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya, eds., Partition and Post-Colonial South Asia, vol. 1: selections (e-reserve)

Goldman & Turki: Zionist & Palestinian perspectives (e-reserve)

Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence,” April 4, 1967
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html
Three Student Pamphlets from the University of Paris (1968)

Week Six: Post-colonial Diasporas and Globalization: New Imperialism without a State or Nation, or A New World Division of Labor?

Globalization, or Neoliberal Capitalism, and Its Discontents; Film: Life and Debt

Final Exam

WTWA, Chapter 12

Stefano Boeri, Border Syndrome: Notes on Research Program (2003)

Eyal Weizman, “Military Operations as Urban Planning,” in Weizman and Segal, eds. A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture

Estudio Teddy Cruz, “Cross Border Suburbias,” in Blauvelt, Andrew, ed., Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes