ABOVE CLASS OPEN TO UNDERGRADUATES ONLY

Before Columbus there were two worlds – two hemispheres – completely
ignorant of each other’s existence. European voyages established one
world. When the three islands of Krakatoa disappeared from the face
of the planet in 1883, anyone on earth with the right instruments
and or access to information from those instruments could have heard
or heard about the explosion. Both knowledge and consciousness of
global human interconnections and interdependencies is thus the
larger topic of this lecture and discussion course. We will do a
survey of world history form the 1400s to the 1880s, focusing on
concrete topics such as navigation, mapping, technologies, foods,
consequences to flora and fauna, and disease experience. But we will
also discuss and study some of the larger context of ideas, patterns
and environmental shaping change over time. This course has no
prerequisites, but you should be prepared to do upper-level reading
and study, which means filling in gaps in your knowledge as we go
along. The WorldWideWeb was made for you! The fun stuff here is that
we discuss the origins of technologies and habits of mind and daily
life that underlie our actions today – printing, drugs and spices,
weapons, clocks, engines, disease experience, foods, and the
surviving natural world.