Available to: grade 10 students
Note: The Modern World Honors course embarks on a study of world history from 1500 to the present, while The Modern World course centers on the last four centuries. The modern world has been defined by massive transformation––social and political upheaval and revolution, industrialization, urbanization, global exchange and conflict, migration, and imperialism and colonization. This course combines a chronological and thematic approach to explore the historical roots of modernity. What does it mean to be modern? In endeavoring to consider the dynamic changes that modernity brings, students critically examine diverse perspectives––including people of color, young people, and women––as well as multiple points of view––oppression as well as resistance, emigration as well as immigration, the enslaved as well as the enslavers. This course challenges students to think historically, objectively, and globally, to evaluate historical sources, and to grapple with a variety of complex textual, visual, and physical materials to explore the modernization of the world and its role in shaping our contemporary world. Students who place into The Modern World Honors can expect more rigor in historical analysis and writing assignments, culminating in a self-guided research project on a topic of the student’s choice in the spring.
