HIST543 - 18th and 19th Century Europe

Course Details

Course Code: HIST543 Course ID: 3077 Credit Hours: 3 Level: Graduate

This course investigates the intellectual, social, and economic history of Europe from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the onset of the Great War in 1914. The major focus is on the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Age of Ideologies, and the new imperialism prior to the World War I. While emphasizing the intellectual history of Europe, the course also investigates the social and economic structure of 18th and 19th century Europe.

Course Schedule

Registration Dates Course Dates Start Month Session Weeks
05/29/2023 - 11/03/2023 11/06/2023 - 12/31/2023 November Fall 2023 Session I 8 Week session
08/28/2023 - 02/02/2024 02/05/2024 - 03/31/2024 February Winter 2024 Session I 8 Week session

Current Syllabi

Course Objectives

APUS policy requires that undergraduate courses provide a transition from the basic, recall of facts and information (“knowledge” and “comprehension” categories from Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, by Bloom) to the higher orders of cognitive performance.

The policy also infers that graduate courses stress development of the student's ability to research, reason and write in a scholarly way, aiming at the higher order cognitive skills of “analysis,” “synthesis,” “evaluation,” and defense of logic and conclusions. Course learning objectives should be established accordingly, and instructional techniques should be used to achieve them.

For additional background, go to: University Learning Outcomes Assessment

The objectives of this course are specified as follows:

CO-1: Interpret the aims and aspirations of the philosophes from both a European and trans-Atlantic perspective;

CO-2: Evaluate the transformation of European culture and society from the early modern to the modern period;

CO-3: Analyze the chronology and narrative of the French Revolution in order to recognize the movement of revolutions in general ;

CO-4: Appraise the role of Napoleon as a man who both preserved and perverted the aims of the French Revolution;

CO-5: Assess the effect of the Industrial Revolution on the development of the middle and working classes;

CO-6: Analyze the reasons why 19th century Europe can also be characterized as an Age of Ideologies; and

CO-7: Describe the ways in which the idea of Nietzsche and Freud transformed the European mind on the eve of the Great War

This course requires a time management plan and the self-discipline to follow it. You are responsible for managing your time, completing assignments on time, completing the readings, and making inquiries as needed to complete the course effectively. This is an 8-week course, which means the material must be learned in a short period of time. This requires dedication and diligence on the part of each student.

You are required to complete EIGHT (8) Discussions and THREE (3) writing assignments.

Assigned Reading & Resources
Each week in addition to the Required Reading, additional resources may be provided to offer ideas to address in the Discussions or for further exploration. background information or further understanding the terminology as well as the material for the week. Each week you will be expected to read the Required Reading and review the additional resources.

  • Websites: Feel free to explore other websites that may be helpful to getting your point across in the Discussions. However, please keep in mind that at the graduate level, it is required that you use scholarly and academic sources rather than general all-purpose websites. Wikipedia is one of the more well-known websites and while it is perfectly acceptable to use Wikipedia to "look stuff up," Wikipedia is not to be cited in any graduate level essay.
  • Documents/Files: Word documents and .pdf files are hyperlinked in weekly lessons as well as the Discussions.
  • Resources: Additional resources may be explored by students at any time. If you think some of these resources have some bearing on our discussions, please let your instructor know before you pass on the resource to the rest of the class.

Discussions
Please join the Discussions each week. Each Discussion requires a minimum of ONE post and THREE replies. All Discussions require that your post be made by Friday by 11:55PM ET. All replies are due Sunday by 11:55PM ET. The due dates for posts and replies are clearly marked in the Discussions. A perfect post/reply must contain a balance of fact as well as your interpretation. Rehashing a question will not suffice. As graduate students you must learn the tools of critical analysis and be prepared to submit posts that contain depth of understanding as well as the willingness to make connections, judgments and interpretations Students should demonstrate their own knowledge in the Discussions and avoid copying and pasting from websites.

Discussion Guidelines:

  • Each Discussion requires a minimum of ONE (1) post and THREE (3) replies. Post the initial response to each Discussion by Friday by 11:55PM, ET - the due date is specified in each Discussion.
  • Posts are to be original in content and demonstrate a thorough analysis of the topic.
  • Reply to at least 3 of your classmates in each Discussion by 11:55PM ET, on the final day the Discussion is open.
  • Responses to classmates are significant to advance the discussion.
  • Students who wait until the very last moment to post/reply will have missed the essential feature of discussion, and this quite simply, discussion and interaction. Waiting until the last minute will mean one thing, you will be speaking to an empty room, no matter what you have written.

HIST543 requires the completion of three essays – you can read descriptions of the essays in the Lessons, the Assignment page and also in the Announcements.

Citation and Reference Style
HIST543 requires the use of Turabian's A Manual for Writers (2018) for all footnotes and bibliographies.

NameGrade %
Discussions 45.00%
Week 1: Virtual Introduction 5.63%
Week 2: The Moral Economy of the English Crowd 5.63%
Week 3: Low Literature in an Age of Enlightenment 5.63%
Week 4: Symbolism and the French Revolution 5.63%
Week 5: The Age of Ideologies 5.63%
Week 6: The New Imperialism - Hobson and Lenin 5.63%
Week 7: Nietzsche and Modernity 5.63%
Week 8: Europe and the Idea of Progress 5.63%
Short Essays 30.00%
(SE1) Short Essay 1 15.00%
(SE2) Short Essay 2 15.00%
Analysis Essay 25.00%
(AE) Analysis Essay 25.00%

Previous Syllabi

Not current for future courses.