Checking date: 25/04/2024


Course: 2024/2025

Political and social history
(16632)
Dual Bachelor in International Studies and Law (Plan: 507 - Estudio: 321)


Coordinating teacher: ARTOLA BLANCO, MIGUEL

Department assigned to the subject: Social Sciences Department

Type: Basic Core
ECTS Credits: 6.0 ECTS

Course:
Semester:

Branch of knowledge: Social Sciences and Law



Objectives
LEARNING RESULTS · Applied knowledge to understand the transformation of society and long-term rules of social convention and cohabitation. Understand how sovereignty, rights and freedoms, ideologies, and beliefs change over time, and understand the role of large social movements.
Skills and learning outcomes
Description of contents: programme
1. The origins of the modern state and the formation of the system of States in the Modern Age. 2. Formation of Nation-States, nationalisms and first empiralisms. 3. Revolutions, new elites and social change in the 19th century: The French Revolution, American Independence, the new social and political regime and the rise of the Bourgeoisie. 4. Urbanization, industrialization, capitalism, worker movements and the extension of suffrage. 5. The Modern State, secularization and the modern world. 6. Professionalization of bureaucracy, transnational movements, progressive ideology, and political and military rivalry. 7. Wars and the weakness of the international political system during the interwar period. 8. The Russian Revolution, the crisis of capitalism during the Great Depression and the rise of fascism. 9. New world order, cold war, and the strengthening of the Welfare State. 10. Decolonization. 11. Structural and social change. 12. The world after the fall of the socialist block: political challenges of globalization. 13. Global society and the clash of civilizations.
Learning activities and methodology
Students will acquire the knowledge and skills through lectures, the handing of the work assigned by the teachers and its discussion in class. Skills and attitudes will be enhanced by the individual and teamwork performed by the students and their discussion in class. The course is designed in two tiers: one will provide the basic understanding of the main historical events that have shaped the modern world and the second will analyse specific topics. The first part will be based on lectures which summarize and extend basic readings. In the second tier, students shall present briefings and discuss on specific historical problems based on in-depth readings. Students will form groups of three to work during these weekly seminars. Before each session, each group will read and discuss jointly the readings. After, they shall answer the questions and, at least in one occasion, prepare an oral presentation of 20 minutes. Furthermore, in the midterm, students will individually write a 2,000-word essay on a controversial historical topic. A solid command of written and oral English is essential. The ability to read and process up to sixty pages of academic literature per week is taken for granted. In the last week, there will be at least one tutorial of the course in which the student will have the chance to clarify doubts about the main concepts and key historical events discussed in the lectures, as well as doubts about assessment and the schedule of the course.
Assessment System
  • % end-of-term-examination 30
  • % of continuous assessment (assigments, laboratory, practicals...) 70

Calendar of Continuous assessment


Extraordinary call: regulations
Basic Bibliography
  • Bayly, C.A.. The Birth of the Modern World. Blackwell. 2004
  • Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848. Vintage Books. 1996
  • Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Empire, 1875-1914. Vintage Books. 1989
  • Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Capital, 1848-1875. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. 1975
  • Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914¿1991. Vintage Books. 1994
  • Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Penguin Books. 2006
  • Mazower, Mark. Dark Continent: Europe's 20th Century. Knopf. 1998
  • Osterhammel, Jürgen / Pettersson, Niels P.. Globalization: A Short History. Princeton University Press. 2009
  • Peter Stearns. World History in Documents: A Comparative Reader. NYU Press. 2008
Additional Bibliography
  • Bartov, E. (ed.). The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath. Routledge. 2000
  • Beevor, A. The Second World War. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2012
  • Ferguson. The pity of war. Penguin. 1998
  • Ferguson, N.. Empire : How Britain made the modern world. Allen Lane. 2003
  • Fisk, R.. The great war for civilisation : the conquest of the Middle East. Vintage Books. 2007
  • Fitzpatrick, S. The Russian Revolution 1917-1932. Oxford University Press. 1984
  • Fulbrook, M.. Europe since 1945. Oxford University Press. 2001
  • Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War. Allen Lane. 2005
  • Grimal, H.. Decolonization: The British, French, Dutch, and Belgian Empires, 1919-1963. Westview Press. 1978
  • Halperín Donghi, Tulio. The Contemporary History of Latin America. Duke University Press. 1993
  • Hobsbawm, E.J.. Nations and nationalism since 1780: programme, myth, reality. Cambridge University Press. 1990
  • Kitchen, Martin. Europe between the wars. Pearson Longman. 2006
  • Kocka. J. Bourgeois society in nineteenth-century Europe. Berg. 1993
  • Lewin, M. The Soviet Century. Verso. 2005
  • McCauley, Martin. Origins of the Cold War 1941¿1949. Routledge. 2021
  • Overy, R. The interwar crisis 1919-1939. Longman. 2007
  • Pipes, R. The Russian Revolution. Knopf. 1990
  • Prashad. V. The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World. The New Press. 2008
  • Saunders, F.S.. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. The New Press. 2001
  • Thompson, E.P.. The making of the English working class.. Pantheon Books. 1964
  • Weber, E.. Peasants into Frenchmen : the modernization of rural France, 1870-1914 . Chatto & Windus. 1979
  • Zubok, V.M.. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. University of North Carolina Press. 2007

The course syllabus may change due academic events or other reasons.