This course intends that students acquire a basic knowledge about the ideas, processes and changes that go along with the concept of modernity. The subject deals with the main ideas which characterize the modern moment, the ways how the human beings have exploited natural resources and organised the different societies, the great ideologies and philosophies which have moved interests and passions in this time, social, scientific and technological advances and human tragedies, and the way how they have contemplated the individual’s existence, as well as the profound transformations in all these factors that have taken place in the last two centuries. All these are the principles of our changing Modern Age.



This subject is compulsory for all the degrees that the Faculty of Arts teaches as its goal is general and basic knowledge of the great historical processes of the modern world. This is to provide a historical basis and reflection on the immediate past and present to all students who take part in the different Humanities taught in our Faculty. In that sense, it is a matter of making a common narrative, not specialized disciplinarily, that serves as much for students of History as for students of Philology, Geography or other branch of the Humanities. It is an introduction that should serve to organise and give meaning to their future knowledge, always from a historical perspective. Students are also instructed in the use of precise concepts and denominations and are introduced to essential readings to understand the world they live in and to face in the future, as professionals and citizens, attitudes and responses to it, with a thorough and rigorous knowledge of the novelty and the change. The subject is thus inserted in the group of those that try to give an initial general vision of each of the great stages in which we organise the knowledge of the history of Humankind.

C1- To understand the past as a construction carried out by the human beings from their ways of thinking, seeing themselves as individuals and society, relating to nature and organising their community.



C2- To be aware of the past as a dynamic of continuity and change that responds to understandable and even measurable reasons, and whose tangible expressions or factual facts are related immediately in accordance with certain logics that arise from a variety of factors.



C3- To understand that modernity surpasses the phase of a single explanation and gives way to a new time where each fact or process can be interpreted (and, in fact, it is interpreted) according to different points of view. The students also get to know the existence of different schools of thought and interpretation of the historical processes. They are introduced into the complex question of historiography.



C4- To discover that the narrative of the past is an intellectual construction subject to a method and rules, and that our knowledge of the past does not come naturally from that time but from the preoccupations of the present.



C5- In the practical field, students must use the essential competences required for the treatment of a narrative: reading, understanding, contrasting, concluding their own ideas and expressing them verbally and in writing in a precise manner and using the concepts appropriately. A number of practical works will be proposed for this purpose.



Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:



RA1- Understand and explain modern historical processes as an interaction between the dominant ideas at the time, the action of individuals and groups, alternative proposals for social and political organization, and the socioeconomic conjuncture. For example, in a modern revolutionary process, one must understand and reasonably explain how the dominant ideology and other alternative proposals, the protagonist groups, the proposals for change, the general environment and the demands forced by the material reality play and interact.



RA2- Know how to explain diverse processes that have occurred in modern times based on historical starting points and the novelty of ideas, demands and economic possibilities, and social and political projects. Students will be able to explain how transformations have taken place –or what has prevented them– and how the previous and the altered have been combined since that moment. Thus, again in a revolutionary process, students will be able to point out the essence of the change, if it has taken place, and how it alters the reality it has come to replace.



RA3- Reason the plurality of visions, attitudes and interventions that characterize Modernity, as a time in which the unique paradigm has been replaced by this diversity. In relation to this, they should identify various historiographical schools that interpret the past also according to the plurality of views. In this way, they will be able to explain how different proposals for the organization of social, political, economic and cultural reality are formulated, operate and relate to each other.



RA4- Discover with concrete examples (from recommended readings) how history is an intellectual construction subject to method and rules, but interpreted from a personal perspective. Students will test this ability with coursework where they are invited to have an increasingly personal look at things.



RA5- Exercise and demonstrate their ability to read different primary source documents or texts with interpretation of various authors and compose from them a personal account on the subject of their choice, both orally and in writing, and always in a practical way.

0. Introduction. The Modern Age and the world before it.

1. Historical awareness and revolutionary change as novelties.

2. The exploitation of nature, the economy and its effects on societies.

3. A world in dispute. International relations and modern geopolitics.

4. State, politics and modern societies. Conflicts and ideologies.

5. Thought, culture and science.

6. Problems and crises of modernity. Challenges of today’s society.

To develop the contents of this subject, 60 hours of classroom and online teaching are available: 40 for the teacher to explain the fundamental processes, contents and concepts of the subject and 20 to carry out practices. These will include commentaries (of texts, documentaries, graphics and maps), historiographic analyses, oral presentations and debates. It is also highly recommended to attend the tutorials. The students will also need other 90 hours of activity to prepare both the practices and the work that they will have to do outside the classroom.



Activities planned to be carried out throughout the course:

. Presentation and explanation of the contents of the syllabus (M).

. Analysis and commentary of historical texts, documentaries, maps and graphics (GA).

. Reading, reflection and debate on texts and historiographical materials (GA).

. Visit to the archives and research centres.

. Organisation and coordination of bibliographic essays and monographic works.

• Continuous Assessment System
• Final Assessment System
• Tools and qualification percentages:
  • Written test to be taken (%): 60
  • Individual works (%): 20
  • PARTICIPATION IN CLASS AND ATTENDANCE AT TUTORIALS (%): 20

1) Continuous assessment: The grading system foreseen for the first call is the mixed one. The score will be distributed as follows:

* A maximum of 2 points may be obtained for individual or group work. The teacher will explain the possibilities and procedures offered to students to cover this section on the first day of class.

* Other two points will be obtained for participation in classes and tutorials under the terms established and made known by the teacher on the first day of class.

* The remaining six points will be obtained from the practices carried out throughout the course or from the completion of a final exam, as indicated by the teacher on the first day of class.

2) Final assessment (after giving up the continuous assessment or having not carried out the works that allow obtaining a score for it): Students who renounce continuous assessment will be assessed through an individual test that will account for 100% of the final grade.

Regarding the nature of the test, the teacher will set, for all the students who choose the final assessment, one of these two possible grading formulas:

A) A critical exercise, related to the course content, to be carried out during the course and delivered before or on the day of the exam.

B) An exercise or exam on the same day set for the assessment of the first call.

There is an official regulation on class attendance and certifiable exemptions provided. It is available on the Faculty website. Students officially exempt from attending class will follow the final grading system.

In the second call, assessment criteria analogous to those set out in the case of the final assessment and the first call will be applied.

In all cases, the grading system will be aimed at students demonstrating their degree of acquisition of competencies related to the course and marked in the Teaching Guide.

Selection of compulsory readings to be specified in the syllabus of the course.

Basic bibliography

Basic bibliography:



Handbooks:



BARRACLOUGH, Geoffrey: An Introduction to Contemporary History, Penguin Books, London, 1991.

MARKS, Robert B.: The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Environmental Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 2002.

OSBORNE, Roger: Civilization: A New History of the Western World, Pegasus Books, New York, 2006.



Specific bibliography:



BAILEY, Paul J.: China in the Twentieth Century, Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, 2001.

BAYLY, Christopher A.: The Birth of the Modern World: Global Connections and Comparisons (1780-1914), Blackwell, Oxford, 2004.

BLOM, Philipp: The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West (1900-1914), Basic Books, New York, 2008.

BOCK, Gisela: Women in European History, Blackwell, Oxford, 2002.

BURBANK, Jane and COOPER, Frederick: Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2010.

DIAMOND, Jared: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, University of California, Los Angeles, 1997.

DUBY, Georges and PERROT, Michelle: History of Women in the West, vols. 4 and 5, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1993-1994.

FOGEL, Robert William: The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death (1700–2100): Europe, America, and the Third World, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2004.

HOBSBAWM, Eric J.: The Age of Revolution. Europe (1789-1848), Abacus, Vintage, London, New York, 1962.

HOBSBAWM, Eric J.: The Age of Capital (1848-1875), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1975.

HOBSBAWM, Eric J.: The Age of the Empire (1875-1914), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1985.

HOBSBAWM, Eric J.: The Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century (1914-1991), Michael Joseph, Vintage, London, New York, 1994.

HOWARD, Michael and ROGER Louis, William (eds.): The Oxford History of the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998.

JUDT, Tony: Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century, Penguin Books, London, 2008.

JUDT, Tony: Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, Penguin Books, London, 2005.

JUDT, Tony (with Timothy Snyder): Thinking the Twentieth Century, Penguin Books, London, 2012.

LANDES, David S.: The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998.

MANN, Michael: The Sources of Social Power, vol. II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986.

MISHRA, Pankai: From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2012.

MORRIS, Ian: Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2010.

MOSSE, George L.: The Culture of Western Europe: the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. An Introduction, Rand McNally, Chicago, 1961.

OSTERHAMMEL, Jürgen: The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2014.

OVERY, Richard J. and WHEATCROFT, Andrew: The Road To War, Penguin Books, London, 1999.

SASSON, Donald: The Culture of the Europeans from 1800 to the Present, Harper, London, 2006.

STROMBERG, Roland N.: European Intellectual History since 1789, Prentice Hall, 1994.

TILLY, Charles: Social Movements (1768–2004), Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, 2004.

TODD, Allan: The Revolutions (1789-1917), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998.

WATSON, Peter: The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2000.

In-depth bibliography

Support materials:

KINDER, Hermann and HILGEMANN, Werner: The Penguin Atlas of World History: Volume 2: From the French Revolution to the Present, Penguin Books, London, 2004.
OVERY, Richard: The Times Atlas of the Twentieth Century, The Times, London, 1996.
PALMER, Alan W.: The Penguin Dictionary of Twentieth Century History, Penguin Books, London, 1999.
PALMOSWSKI, Jan: A Dictionary of Contemporary World History, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016.

Journals

Ayer (Asociación de Historia Contemporánea).
Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea (Universidad Complutense de Madrid).
Historia Contemporánea (UPV/ EHU).
Historia y Política (Universidad Complutense de Madrid).
Pasado y Memoria. Revista de Historia Contemporánea (Universidad de Alicante).
Revista de Historia Contemporánea (Universidad de Sevilla).
Studia Historica. Historia Contemporánea (Universidad de Salamanca).
Tiempo de Historia (Revista electrónica).

Web addresses

http://www.history-journals.de/hjg-search.htlm/
http://www2.yntech.edu/history/journals.html/
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
http://www.euratlas.com/
http://renovatiohistoria.blogspot.com.es/
http://www.biblioteka.ehu.es/p207-home/eu/