Europe in the Modern World (201-2-20)
Topic
Modern European History
Instructors
Deborah Anne Cohen
847/491-4963
Harris Hall Room 238
Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Deborah Cohen is the Richard W. Leopold Professor of History at Northwestern. A specialist in modern European history, she's written books on World War I, on British consumerism, and on family secrets. Her most recent book is Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War. She writes regularly for the Atlantic on subjects ranging from punk rock to Winston Churchill's bad debts. As her family can attest, she spends way too much time at flea markets.
Meeting Info
Tech Institute Lecture Room 4: Mon, Wed, Fri 11:00AM - 11:50AM
Overview of class
This course sets out to answer two big questions: What can history tell us about the making of successful entrepreneurs? How has entrepreneurship shaped the modern world? We will consider how the quest for new products and new markets helped to transform societies, economies and environments from the 1780s through the 1950s. We will ask why and how entrepreneurs as various as Josiah Wedgwood, Madame C.J. Walker, Jamsetji Tata, and Aristotle Onassis exploited opportunities that other people either failed to see or failed to act on. Among the subjects we'll discuss are the strengths and weaknesses of family firms, the search for capital, resource extraction and depletion, and the dynamics of globalization and deglobalization.
Learning Objectives
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline Students will:
• Assess competing explanations of historical transformations of economies and societies, showing an awareness of how claims are supported by evidence and how arguments are structured by analytic categories;
• Interpret different sorts of primary texts, including historical datasets, visual sources, in their appropriate historical context;
• Analyze methods of historical argumentation through the assessment of debates in the secondary literature about the significance of entrepreneurship;
• Formulate original arguments based on independent interpretation of both primary and secondary sources.
Evaluation Method
Mid-term exam: 15%
4 "explain" papers (1 p.) and 3 "hunt" exercises: 25%
Strategy paper (due 17 Nov., inc. presentation) 20%
Final exam: 20%
Participation (including occasional reading quizzes): 20%
Class Attributes
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area
Global Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity
Associated Classes
DIS - Harris Hall L05: Fri 1:00PM - 1:50PM
DIS - University Library 3370: Fri 2:00PM - 2:50PM
DIS - Harris Hall L04: Fri 4:00PM - 4:50PM
DIS - Harris Hall L04: Fri 5:00PM - 5:50PM
DIS - NO DATA: NO DATA