HU Credits: 4

Degree/Cycle: 1st degree (Bachelor)

Responsible Department: Political Science

Semester: 1st Semester

Teaching Languages: Hebrew

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Dr. Efraim Podoksik

Coordinator Email: podoksik@mail.huji.ac.il

Coordinator Office Hours: Monday, 17:30 - 18:30

Teaching Staff:
Prof Efraim Podoksik

Course/Module description:
This is a survey course that will outline the social and political developments in the world from the early 20th century up to now.

Course/Module aims:
The main goal of the course is to provide a broad historical background regarding the political developments in various regions of the world and their significance for the today's politics

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
1. To gain knowledge on political events and phenomena.
2. To analyze historical political processes and development.
3. To compare political phenomena across time and space.
4. To apply the understanding of historical developments on current events.

Attendance requirements(%):
100%

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: This year the course will be based mainly on recorded lectures with the addition of zoom meetings.

The students will be required to listen to the lectures at home at any time convenient to them. During the semester a few live meetings via zoom will be arranged which will consist of group tutorials with the TAs and general discussion with the lecturer. These meetings will take place during the course time slots.

The total time of recorded lectures and zoom meetings will not exceed the total class time allocated to the course.

During the course the students will write a short essay. In the end there will be an exam focusing on the knowledge of the obligatory material.

Course/Module Content:
1. The Origins of the Contemporary Political World
2. The World Between the Two World Wars
3. World War Two
4. The Post-War World
5. The World after the Fall of Communism

Required Reading:
1. Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), ch. 3, pp. 121-167.

2. Matthew Stibbe, ‘The War from Above: Aims, Strategy, and Diplomacy’, in Gordon Martel (ed.), A Companion to Europe 1900-1945 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006) pp. 228-242.

3. Sean McMeekin, The Russian Revolution: A New History (London: Profile Books, 2017), chs. 11-13.

4. Alexander de Grand, Italian Fascism: Its Origins & Development (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), pp. 22-37, 58-77.

5. Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004), pp 266-309.

6. James Patterson, America in the Twentieth Century: A History (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1994), pp. 211-247.

7. Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 61-114.

8. Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 239-293.

9. John Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 279-330.

10. Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010), pp. 59-118.

11. Michael Jabara Carley, ‘Grand Strategy and Summit Diplomacy’, in Gordon Martel (ed.), A Companion to Europe 1900-1945 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 425-440.

12. Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 (New York: Doubleday, 2012), pp. 192-222.

13. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2005), pp. 241-277.

14. Thomas C. Reeves, Twentieth-Century America: A Brief History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 155-197.

15. David Holloway, ‘Nuclear Weapons and the Escalation of the Cold War, 1945–1962’, in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 1: Origins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 376-397.

16. John Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 345-405.

17. Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), ch. 8, pp. 231-264.

18. Donald L. Gordon, ‘African Politics’, in April A. Gordon and Donald L. Gordon (eds.), Understanding Contemporary Africa (London: Lynne Rienner, 2013), pp. 61-113.

19. M.E. Yapp, The Near East since the First World War: A History to 1995 (Essex: Pearson Education, 1996), pp. 167-187, 330-353.

20. Douglas Little, ‘The Cold War in the Middle East: Suez Crisis to Camp David Accords’, in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 2: Crises and Détente (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 305-326.

21. Harry E. Vanden and Gary Prevost, Politics of Latin America: Power Game, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 42-78.

22. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), pp. 109-163.

Additional Reading Material:
1. Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War (New York: Vintage Books, 2013), pp. 41-102.

2. Jeremy Black, The Great War and the Making of the Modern World (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 266-277.

3. Sean McMeekin, The Russian Revolution: A New History (London: Profile Books, 2017), chs. 18-20.

4. Renzo de Felice, Interpretations of Fascism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 174-192.

5. Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 3-51.

6. Thomas C. Reeves, Twentieth-Century America: A Brief History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 81-99.

7. Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 495-536.

8. Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 323-361.

9. Frank Dikötter, The Age of Openness: China Before Mao (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), pp. 7-30.

10. Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), pp. 147-207

11. Richard Overy, Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004), ch. 12.

12. Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 (New York: Doubleday, 2012), pp. 275-299.

13. Konrad H. Jarausch, A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 399-425.

14. James Patterson, America in the Twentieth Century: A History (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1994), pp.457-501.

15. J.M. Roberts and Odd Arne Westad, The History of the World, 6th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 1090-1123.

16. Jean-Louis Margolin, ‘Vietnam and Laos: The Impasse of War Communism’, in Stéphane Courtois et al. (eds.), The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 565-576.

17. Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), ch. 7, pp. 203-230.

18. Crawford Young, The Postcolonial State in Africa: Fifty Years of Independence, 1960-2010 (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), pp. 122-157.

19. Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 155-195.

20. M.E. Yapp, The Near East since the First World War: A History to 1995 (Essex: Pearson Education, 1996), p. 211-250.

21. Joel Horowitz, ‘Populism and Its Legacies in Argentina’, in Michael L. Conniff, Populism in Latin America (Tuscalosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1999), pp. 22-42.

22. Javier Tusell, Spain: From Dictatorship to Democracy, 1939 to the Present (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), pp 270-326.

Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 70 %
Presentation 0 %
Participation in Tutorials 0 %
Project work 30 %
Assignments 0 %
Reports 0 %
Research project 0 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 0 %

Additional information:
The course lecturer has the right to make changes to the course reading materials and other elements based on substantive as well as technical considerations.