This course focuses on major events in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in Europe, the United States, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Taking a global perspective, the course argues that events in one part of the world cannot be understood in isolation—that events in Europe, for example, affected and were influenced by incidents in Asia, Africa, or the U.S. Topics include the two world wars, the fall of empires, the Cold War, the roles of important personalities, and recent events in China, central and southern Asia, and the Middle East. Open only to new first-year students.