COMMON TEXTS
Units: The Protestant Reformation, The Scientific Revolution, The Age
of Reason and Revolution, Romanticism and Industrialism, The Global Village
Martin Luther, "Treatise on Christian Liberty"
Galileo, "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina"
Voltaire, Candide
Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Mary Wollstonecraft, ch. 9 of A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey"
Darwin, selected writings
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
One non-Western novel
**Faculty will supplement this list with texts of their own choosing.
Most commonly taught supplementary texts include:
Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills;
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl;
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness;
LeLy Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places;
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart.
Guernica
RELATED WEB SITES:
I. The Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation
Read the text of Martin
Luther's 95 Theses
For a background discussion of the causes of Luther's nailing of the 95 Theses to the Castle Church door at Wittenberg and the reactions to it, click here.
The Council of Trent: Read a summary of each of the 25 sessions from 1545 to 1563.
Six Epistles by Margaret Fell, published by the Association of Friends (Quakers) in 1859
II. The Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment Beginnings
A
brief biography of Galileo provides links to related scientific discussions
Visit the Galileo Project at Rice University
A brief biography of John Locke and the background of his famous Essay from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
III. The Age of Reason and Revolution
A brief biography of Thomas
Paine along with his complete works
Mary Wollstonecraft [no website yet]
Edmund Burke [no website yet]
IV. Romanticism and the Rise of Industrialism
Visit the Frankenstein
Exhibition at the National Library of Medicine.
Women's Rights and Women's Wrongs: Click here for background information and supporting documents related to the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.
The Marx & Engels Internet Archive houses many primary texts penned by Karl Marx and many other socialists including Mao Zedong, Gramsci, and many others.
Read complete texts by Charles
Darwin and view the collection
related to Darwin at the University of South Carolina. See further
sources on evolution.
Jason
Heaton, "How the Leopard Changed Its Spots".
Herbert Spencer's life and works related to his philosophy of Social Darwinism are available from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The website for Rebecca Harding Davis contains a brief biography by Samford professor Dr. Janice Milner Lasseter and has links to all of Davis's writings available online.
V. The Modern Age and the Global Village
Read the full text of the General
Act of February 26, 1885, at the Berlin Conference
Colonialism in Africa and Southeast Asia [no websites yet]
Read the full text of the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
The International Monetary Fund holds discussions related to poverty and inequality in emerging nations: Globalization: threat or opportunity?
A transcript of the PBS television series on Globalization and Human Rights includes footage and provocative interviews of human beings impacted by the growth of a multinational corporate culture.
VI. Middle East and Islam
For those interested in Islam generally and the Middle East specifically,
PBS has a useful interactive website.
Click here: Global Connections:
Putting World Events in Context
A fine database on Islam and the Middle East.