The Western Experience -- The Social Sciences

     This course will set out to familiarize you with the major trends in the development of the West from the end of the Reformation to the present. It will also stress skills necessary for the study of history--how to read primary documents, how to construct and support an historical argument, how to "deconstruct" the historical arguments of others, how to identify thesis, argument, evidence, theory, and methodology.      We will address the theme of utopias and dystopias throughout the course. What have people in the West viewed as "the perfect world" in the past? What did they view as the "worst of all possible worlds"? How and why did views of utopias and dystopias in the West change over time? How did utopian and dystopian visions of particular moments reflect the broader historical meaning of their own era?

Course Requirements:

     All students are required to attend class meetings and take part in discussions. Written work will require students to synthesize lecture materials as well as readings. Students must also read and assimilate required readings, and be prepared to discuss readings on the schedule given below. Students will submit all assignments on time; late papers will not be accepted without prior arrangement with the professor. Further, no student with more than three unexcused absences will receive a passing grade for the course.
     Your grade for this course will be based on your performance on two midterms, a cumulative final, an 8-10 page essay, and your participation in class, as explained below:

     Two midterms (worth 30% each, or 60% total) – Monday March 19 and Monday May 21      Cumulative final (10%) – Monday, May 21 (Please don't let the word cumulative frighten you)      6-8 page essay on one of the readings (20%) – Due Monday April 30

     (half of this grade will be for a proposal and outline and the paper will not count at all unless you submit this, due Wednesday April 4)

     Participation in class discussions (10%)

We will discuss each of these requirements in detail in class, and if you have any questions, please see me.

A Note About Academic Integrity: Integrity is fundamental to the academic enterprise. It is violated by acts such as borrowing or purchasing term papers, essays, reports, and other written assignments; using concealed notes or crib sheets during examinations; copying others' work and submitting it as one's own; and misappropriating the knowledge of others. The sources from which one derives one's ideas, statements, terms, and data must be fully and specifically acknowledged in the appropriate form; failure to do so, intentionally or unintentionally, constitutes plagiarism. Violations of academic integrity may result in failure in the course and in disciplinary actions with penalties such as suspension or dismissal from the College.

Contacting the Professor:

     My office is in 2N 203, and my office phone is 718-982-2869; I have office hours Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 2:30 to 4:30, and by appointment. You may also reach me via email at lavender@postbox.csi.cuny.edu.

Required Texts:

          Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (HarperCollins, 2000)
    François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Candide (Dover Thrift Editions, 1991)
    Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein (Bantam Classics, 1984)
    Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Signet Classic, 1998)
    Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1936) (Harperperennial Classics, 1998)
    Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (Collier Books, 1995)
    George Orwell, 1984 (New American Library Classics, 1990)
    Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal (film)
    Terry Gilliam, Twelve Monkeys (film)

Packet of Essays:

          Robert Darnton, "Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose," from The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episode in French Cultural History (New York: Vintage Press, 1984).
    Grimm's Fairy Tales: "Hansel and Gretel," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Rumpelstiltskin."
    Chronology of Voltaire's life.
    Kate Ferguson Ellis, "Introduction," and "Mary Shelley's Embattled Garden," from The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989).
    Selections from Rius, Marx for Beginners (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976).
    "Introduction," and one narrative from Barbara Engel and Clifford Rosenthal, eds., Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar (New York: Schocken Books, 1975).
    T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, from Collected Poems, 1909-1935 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1930).
    Poems of the Great War: Robert Graves, Dead Cow Farm (1916), from Poems About War (London: Cassell Publishers, Ltd., 1988); etc.
    Two Dada poems (1927), by Kurt Schwitters and Tristan Tzara.
    Edvard Munch, The Scream (1895).
    Primo Levi, "Preface," and "Conclusion," from The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Vintage Books, 1986).
    Paul Fussell, "Thank God For the Atom Bomb," "An Exchange of Views," and "Postscript (1987) on Japanese Skulls," from Thank God For the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (New York: Summit Books, 1988).

Course Schedule:

Week One: Introduction
	Wednesday January 31	What Is History? What is the West? What are utopias and dystopias?

Week Two: After Feudalism
	Monday February 5	From Feudalism to Market Economies: Economics, Demographics, and the Family
	Wednesday February 7	Politics After Feudalism; discussion of Darnton, "Peasants Tell Tales," and Grimm's Fairy Tales
	Readings: Darnton, "Peasants Tell Tales," and "Grimm's Fairy Tales"; Barzun, “Prologue.”

Week Three: A New World
	Monday February 12	College Closed; No Class Meeting
	Tuesday February 13	Monday Schedule; The Revolutions: Science, Agriculture, and Industry
	Wednesday February 14	The Enlightenment: Secularism, Humanism, and Freedom
	Readings: Voltaire, Candide; Barzun, ch. 1.

Week Four: The Enlightenment
	Monday February 19	College Closed
	Wednesday, February 21	The Enlightenment and Absolute Monarchies
	Readings: Barzun, ch. 2.

Week Five: Rebellion and Revolution
	Monday, February 26	Discussion of Candide; France on the Eve of Revolution
	Wednesday, February 28	Empire and Colonial Rebellion
	Readings: Barzun, ch. 2.

Week Six: The Romantic Era
	Monday March 5	The French Revolution
	Wednesday, March 8	Napoleon and the Napoleonic Empire
	Readings: Barzun, ch. 2; Kate Ferguson Ellis, "Introduction," and "Mary Shelley's Embattled Garden" (xerox); Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Week Seven: Reaction
	Monday March 12	Romanticism, Nationalism, and Home-Fires; Discussion of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
	Wednesday March 14	Discussion of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein continues; Restoration, Revolution, and Reform (and review for first midterm)
	Readings: Barzun, ch. 3.

Week Eight: The Second Industrial Revolution
	Monday March 19	FIRST MIDTERM
	Wednesday, March 21	The Economic Transformation of Europe
	Readings: Barzun, ch. 3; Rius, selections from Marx for Beginners (xerox); Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Week Nine: Rise of the Nation-States
	Monday March 26	Discussion of The Communist Manifesto; and The Revolutions of 1848
	Wednesday March 28	German and Italian Unification
	Readings: Barzun, ch. 3; Engel and Rosenthal, "Introduction," and selections from Five Sisters (xerox)

Week Ten: Nineteenth-Century Reform
	Monday April 2	"Victorian" Sensibilities in a Populist Age
	Wednesday April 4	PROPOSAL AND OUTLINE OF PAPER DUE; Discussion of Engel, Five Sisters
	Readings: Barzun, ch. 3

April 7-15--Spring Break, CSI Closed

Week Eleven: Science, Race, Gender, and Ethnicity
	Monday April 16	The Nineteenth-Century Scientific Revolution
	Wednesday April 18	Empires and Nation-States
	Readings: Barzun, ch. 4; Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Week Twelve: The Great War
	Monday April 23	Empires and the Origins of World War I
	Wednesday April 25	The Men Who Marched Away (Happy ANZAC Day)
	Readings: Barzun, ch. 4; Eliot, The Waste Land (xerox); Robert Graves, Dead Cow Farm and other poems (xerox); two Dada poems, by Kurt Schwitters and Tristan Tzara (xerox).

Week Thirteen: Modernism
	Monday April 30	FINAL DRAFT OF PAPER DUE; The Russian Revolution and the Irish Easter Rebellion
	Wednesday May 2	Weimar, the Great Depression, and Modernism; Discussion of Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
	Readings: Barzun, ch. 4; Levi, Survival in Auschwitz; Levi, "Preface," and "Conclusion," The Drowned and the Saved (xerox); and Fussell, "Thank God For the Atom Bomb," "An Exchange of Views," and "Postscript on Japanese Skulls" (xerox).

Week Fourteen: Fatal "Isms"
	Monday May 7	Fascism and Communism
	Wednesday May 9	The Final Solution; Discussion of Survival in Auschwitz and Fussell essays
	Readings: Barzun, ch. 4; Orwell, 1984.

Week Fifteen: Th-Th-Th-Th-That's All, Folks
	Monday May 14	The Cold War and The Modern Conscience; Discussion of 1984
	Readings: Barzun, ch. 4; Bergman, The Seventh Seal; Gilliam, Twelve Monkeys