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Ludwig Meidner, The Burning City, 1913
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Welcome!
Michael L. HughesDepartment of HistoryWake Forest University |
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SITE MAP Links to History Sites
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My areas of specialization are 20th-century German History, Late Modern European History, and European Social and Economic History. |
Willi Brandt In Warsaw, 1972 |
COURSES
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American Historical Association Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies United States Holocaust Memorial Museum History of Germany: Primary Documents
Below are several links to sites about HTML and web site creation:
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HST 101 WESTERN CIVILIZATION TO 1700 (in a Mediterranean context): This
course will introduce you to the perennial problems of human existence
in complex societies by focusing on a historically important but diverse
area of the world, the Mediterranean basin and its outliers, over an extended
period of time. Some of the problems that will concern us are: the nature
of divinity and people's relationship to the divine; the nature of evil;
the nature and sources of human knowledge; forms of social intercourse;
the organization and legitimation of political power. Two particular emphases
will be environmental history (why did the Mediterranean remain a center of world power for 4500 years-and then become a backwater?) and cultural
interaction (why and how did human groups develop different cultures within
similar, neighboring environments and how did their interaction with one
another affect their development?). Americans are, perforce, cultural
heirs to this part of the world, and a study of its development should
give you some understanding of how the culture you live in-and some of
your own modes of thought-came to be.
HST 102. Europe and the World in the Modern Era. Europe was backward and
poor, compared to China, India, and the Middle East, as late as the 16th
century. Yet it dominated the world in the late 19th century. Brutal wars,
1914-1918 and 1939-1945, dramatically eroded its influence, as did economic
development elsewhere in the world. Yet it still remains rich and powerful.
Moreover, the Untied States derived its major institutions and values
from its European origins. This course will examine the ways in which
Europe developed and exported, and other parts of the world adopted and
adapted, the key ideologies and institutions that characterize the world
in which we live. We will talk about intellectual movements, economic
development and competition, and political institutions and cultures;
about bureaucracies, markets, corporations, trade unions, political parties,
and social movements. We'll start in the 17th century and end with the
collapse of communism and beginnings of a post-Cold War world.
HST 318 Weimar Germany. This course is an exploration of the arts in Central
Europe, 1905-1933, in historical context. We will read novels, stories,
and poems; view some of the best of the early films; listen to challenging
and stimulating music; and look at vibrant and provocative paintings,
etchings, woodprints, and sculptures. All along we will be seeking to
understand how these works of art, which speak to us still, are nonetheless
rooted in a particular time and place, in the economic, social, and political
institutions and developments of their day. The course is team taught
with Prof. Rebecca Thomas of the German Dept.
HST 320 GERMANY, UNIFICATION TO UNIFICATION: For much of the 20th century,
Germany was at the center of world history. At first, it was a great power
seeking to dominate Europe (ca. 1890 to 1945); then it became the center
of the conflict between the United States and its liberal democratic allies
on the one hand and the Soviet Union and its communist satellites on the
other (1945 to 1990). Since 1990 it has been at the center of European
efforts to define an identity that would allow Europe to reassert an autonomous
and powerful position in the world. This course will examine the complex,
fraught, and all-too-often horribly fascinating history of Germany, as
it came together into a unified nation, set out to seize hegemony in Europe,
collapsed in catastrophic defeat and division, and eventually managed
to unify once again under very new conditions in 1990. We will also be
looking at how another industrial and post-industrial society grappled
with the economic, political, and social problems that have challenged
the nations of the world over the last 150 years.
HST 369. Modern Military History. After the Vietnam War, where the US
won all the battles and lost the war, the Department of Defense and others
began asking how that could happen. This course is designed to help Americans
put military experience in a broader political, economic, cultural, and
social context. We will talk about military technology, tactics, and strategy
and about battles and wars, but we will always seek to situate them within
the larger historical context. We can't understand how the narrowly military
elements developed and how and why they were successfully-or unsuccessfully-deployed
unless we recognize the complex range of factors that influence both military
choices and ultimate outcomes.