World History (Honors Major)

In this four-week seminar, trace the interconnected stories that shaped civilizations and continue to define our modern world while thinking forward to the future. Woven through a global survey that includes voices beyond Europe and pivotal turning points such as the Renaissance, Enlightenment, industrialization, and decolonization, this course examines five key themes crucial to imagining the future: liberty from the Magna Carta to the Berlin Wall; the liberal arts and sciences from the ancient Greeks to the research university; law and how laws have shaped and continue to shape the societies around them; the essentials of economics and markets; and conflicts from wars to revolutions and rebellions. This course involves the use of primary sources, accessible scholarship, lively debate, and field visits to Oxford sites, archives, and museums to ask how history is written, whose perspectives are amplified or overlooked, and how past choices shape present institutions and future cultural and political possibilities. By the end of the seminar, students will leave with both a deeper grasp of the global story and a practical toolkit for questioning, connecting, and interpreting the forces that will shape the world to come—a skillset especially suitable for pursuing government, politics, history, or pre-law at the college level.