My Modern European History course spans the centuries from the Renaissance to the present, roughly aligning with the A.P. European history curriculum.  Two mini-units frame the course: one on national identities, in which we read Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography (2007) in conjunction with some theoretical material (Benedict Anderson, Hugh Trevor-Roper), news articles, and primary sources; and one that offers a quick overview of medieval Europe and the features the defined it.  After that, we proceed at a pace of roughly one century per month until, in the spring, we slow down to explore the twentieth century, first by reading and discussing Orlando Figes’ Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History (2014) and Peter Hayes’ Why? Explaining the Holocaust (2018) and then by participating in lessons on aspects of post-1945 Europe that are planned and led by individual students.

The first semester of the course is gently shaped by the theme of identity.  How did Europe come to be a coherent cultural region, defined by its internal trade networks and by the institutions of monarchy and the Catholic Church?  (This is one reason why I include a mini-unit on the Middle Ages.)  How did Europeans in various times and places conceive of their own identities?  The spread of Christianity, the Protestant Reformation, and the lives of Jews and Muslims in pre-modern Europe all fit under this rubric; so too do concepts of rank and, later, social class; so do linguistic and national identities.  We discuss how the recasting of European thought in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment also recast literate Europeans’ understanding of themselves.  Students wrestle energetically with the chapters on the problematization of torture and the rise of novel reading in Lynn Hunt’s Inventing Human Rights: A History (2007).

When we get to the seventeenth century, I introduce a second theme: democracy.  As I explain to students, I mean this in the broadest possible sense: not just elected government, but the whole vision of government in which human beings and human consent matters.  We begin, naturally, with Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, contrasting their views with Robert Filmer’s patriarchal conservatism.  We examine changing conceptions of the individual and the emergence of civil rights through Lynn Hunt’s book as well as assorted primary sources, and consider some of the half-measures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century: How much did enlightened absolutism offer the people living under its yoke?  What about the Napoleonic Code?  Moving into the later nineteenth century, we investigate the social measures of Bismarck’s “practical Christianity” and consider the trade-offs between a smoothly functioning state with limited suffrage and an authoritarian or chaotic state with universal male suffrage.  I often stage a debate over whether Britain, France, or Germany was the most democratic European country c. 1900.  Rarely does the whole class agree.  In the spring, this lens of “What constitutes democracy?” can be a useful lens to apply to fascist states such as Nazi Germany and to the Stalinist Soviet Union.

“Modern European History” is a course title that I inherited, and my version of the course is not as emphatically modern as previous iterations have been.  This is in part a personal preference—I am an early modernist at heart, with a lively interest in medieval topics as well.  But it’s also because I feel a responsibility to question how Europe, as we know it, came to be, and particularly how the regions that were not part of the classical Mediterranean world came to seem so solidly, characteristically European over time.  Aside from a few essential topics, such as new monarchy and voyages of exploration in Spain, the Italian Renaissance, and the nineteenth-century unification of Italy, I don’t spend a lot of time on southern Europe.  (Iberia gets more coverage in my Atlantic World course, where it seems a more natural fit.). On the other hand, I place more emphasis on Eastern Europe and Nordic Europe than any European history course I took in my own studies ever did.  Both regions are full of interesting stories, from the Vikings to communism, and Eastern Europe is ideal for highlighting the very long-standing presence of Jews and Muslims in Europe.  It’s also worth remembering that about 40% of Europeans live in Eastern or Northern Europe; it makes no sense to leave these regions out of the story.

Modern European History is generally an easy sell to students.  As a former student once explained, amid a controversy over how frequently MEH would be offered as departmental priorities changed, “We like Europe.”  That said, I have found that there is some work to do to make the course feel relevant to young people in the twenty-first century.  I designed my syllabus in 2016, as the migrant crisis was unfolding; it felt important to address the politics of immigration head-on and to note Black, Asian, Muslim, and Jewish communities within Europe, past and present.  I have also tried to get away from the “Western Civ” model of pedagogy and instead envision my course as a regional survey, a counterpart to colleagues’ offerings on Africa and East Asia.  This approach has spurred some fruitful questioning for me: it was this that led to me to focus on the incorporation of northern and eastern lands into a European cultural realm and to consider all the different things that Europeans, in various times and places over the last few centuries, have meant when they imagined government by or for the people.

Some additional thoughts on teaching Modern European History:

“European History beyond the Great Powers,” a detailed exploration of how to incorporate regional diversity into a European history survey course

“Six Things We Should Talk about More When We Teach European History“