SCHEDULE NUMBER: 17405

Required Texts: (Please note – all texts will be available at Little Professor Book Store in Placentia).

Recommended Readings:

1. Philip D. Curtin, Cross-cultural Trade in World History, (Cambridge UP, 1984) ISBN:0-521-26931-8

2. __________. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex, (Cambridge UP, 1990)

3. Eric R. Wolf. Europe and the People Without History, (U. of California, 1982) ISBN:0-520-04898-9

4. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, (Cambridge UP, 1986)

5. Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, (U. of California, 1998)

6. Clive Gamble, Timewalkers: The Prehistory of Global Colonization, (Harvard UP, 1993)

7. Bruce Mazlish, and Ralph Buultjens, eds, Conceptualizing Global History, (Westview Press, 1993)

8. Stuart B. Schwartz, Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, (Cambridge UP, 1994)

9. K. N. Chaudhuri, Asia Before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750, (Cambridge UP, 1990)

10. Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century, (London, 1986)

11. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229-1492, (London, 1987)

12. L. N. Gumilev, Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom: The Legend of the Kingdom of Prester John, (Cambridge, 1987)

13. Archibald R. Lewis, Nomads and Crusaders, A. D. 1000-1368, (Bloomington, 1988)

14. Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, (London, 1984)

15. William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, (Garden City, 1976)

16. Basil Davidson, The Lost Cities of Africa, Rev. ed., (Boston, 1987)

17. Geoffrey Blainey, Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Aboriginal Australia, (Melbourne, 1975)

18. Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation, (Cambridge UP, 1991)

19. Ben Finney, Voyage of Rediscovery: A Cultural Odyssey through Polynesia, (U. of California, 1994)

20. Michael Pearson, Port Cities and Intruders, (Oxford UP, 1994)

This course is designed primarily, but not exclusively, for teachers, and students intending to teach world history. The goal of the course is to examine ways in which world history can be conceptualized. This semester we will focus on the first half of world history (ancient to 1600). Because of the vast, potentially overwhelming size of the subject, students and teachers of world history need to be familiar with the ways in which scholars have been conceptualizing world history, both at the level of scholarly monographs and at the level of texts and supporting materials aimed at the classroom. In this class students will read significant monographs and articles representing the direction of world history scholarship over the past fifteen years. They will explore themes such as nomadism, syncretism, cross-cultural trade, world-bridging mediators and European diffusionism, through which world historians are debating, and fashioning the ways in which world history is understood and taught. During the course of the semester they will also learn how different conceptualizations of world history manifest themselves in the teaching materials designed particularly for college level world history courses.

1. Examine and evaluate the main theoretical approaches to world history.

2. Comprehend how world history theory translates into content and periodization of world history textbooks.

3. Skills improvement: textual comprehension, oral and written communication.

1. Two in-class exams, each worth 25 percent of the final grade, designed to assess students= comprehension of the assigned readings, and ability to analyze critically those readings.

2. A paper and presentation, each worth 25 percent of the final grade. Students will be broken up into groups of about five individuals. They will simulate the activities of a faculty textbook selection committee by examining chapters from five different world civilization textbooks as well as supporting materials on reserve in the library. They will select one text to "adopt" for their own use, and toward the end of the semester they will make a group presentation to the class. In their presentations each "committee" will explain to the class why they chose a particular textbook, how the authors of the text conceptualize world history, and why they found that particular approach superior in the chapters they examined. There is no "right" answer to the project; students must be able to justify their choices in light of what they have learned throughout the semester about conceptualizing world history. Each group member will also be expected to turn in an individual paper (ten pages minimum, fifteen maximum) discussing the chapters they read. Students must hand in a draft of this paper for me to read and edit no later than week 13. This draft, with my comments, must be appended to the final draft handed in week 15 for students to receive full credit for their papers. Plan Ahead!!!

The group presentation will be worth 25%, and the paper will be worth 25% of the final grade.