Students will receive an introduction to the course aims, structure and methods of evaluation. History as an academic discipline will be discussed. Instructor will divide the class into groups for the Group Presentations.

Seminar Session: The Renaissance is explored based on our study of the assigned podcast. We look at the wider European world, particularly the development of overseas Empire and the rise of the Ottoman presence in the East.

Seminar Session: Using the assigned podcast as a starting point, we explore why Europe became split into Catholic and Protestant blocs. We will also look at society, in particular the phenomenon of peasant uprisings.

Seminar Session: This session is devoted to discussing the era of religious wars which rocked Europe from the later sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries. We will try to imagine what it was like to ‘choose’ between rival confessions in the Reformation era.

Lecture Session: The unit looks at the rise of the absolutist state in much of Europe including Russia, contrasting this form of polity with the liberal constitutions of Poland-Lithuania, the Dutch Republic and Britain. The intellectual revolution known as the Enlightenment is introduced.

Seminar Session: This module looks at how a political reform movement in France turned that country into creative, idealistic and bloody turmoil, and before long influenced the rest of continent with passionate ideas of liberalism, nationalism, socialism and conservatism.

Group A on Hernan Cortés / Group B on witch persecution / Group C on the French Revolution.

Lecture Session: We explore the second great revolutionary process in modern European history, with a particular emphasis on the political and social impacts – most importantly the advent of class politics. We will circle back to the French Revolution and briefly consider the legacy of Napoleon.

Lecture Session: The unit examines the 19th century in the context of the struggle between progressive/revolutionary and conservative/reactionary forces and social groups. The central, dramatic focus of attention is the 1848 ‘spring of nations’. We will also consider the strange hybrid of authoritarianism (including so-called patriarchy) and liberalism that characterized European states in the second half of the 19th century.

Seminar Session: We will chart the descent of Europe into total war, and consider why the First World War took the catastrophic course it did.

Seminar Session: This discussion looks at the causes, course and consequences of the most devastating conflict in human history, including a consideration of the Holocaust and the morality of Allied victory.

Lecture Session: The Cold War was the single greatest fact of life in Europe after World War II. This session looks at the establishment of Communist regimes and on contrasting conditions between East and West Europe. Yet we should not be blind to some commonalities between both sides of the Iron Curtain, such as youth movements and a culture of protest and dissent. Eventually, dissent helped to bring down Communist rule in the East. We will view and discuss a documentary on the experience of Communism in Czechoslovakia.

Group D on the Industrial Revolution / Group E on Germany after World War I / Group F on the character of the Soviet Union.

A final session will explore the major themes addressed in the course, and suggest ways of approaching contemporary European history.