Final Exam, Spring 2020

World History / Andrews

Spring 2020

Final Exam

This final exam can be completed any time during the week of April 27 - May 1. Responses are due at 11:00 pm on Friday, May 1.

Please respond to five questions in short-answer format, writing approximately 100-200  words per response. When done, email your paper to me at pandrews@ndnu.edu as either a Word doc, a PDF file, or by copy/pasting your responses into the body of your email. Please do not send me links to files stored in a Google drive, Dropbox or other file sharing service.

You may use your books and notes when writing your responses, and you may reference your own blog posts or the blog posts of other students. Standard academic requirements apply to all quoted, paraphrased or otherwise referenced material... if you use any references while writing your responses you MUST cite your sources using in-text citations, such as (Strayer 98), and include a Work Cited list at the end of your exam answers.

I'm sorry I won't get to see you all in person to wish you well as you move forward in life. We are living at a crazy time that requires adjustments but also, for some, might create opportunities. Try to see the opportunities. Send me an update if you'd like to - I will be teaching a summer version of the world history class, so I know that my ndnu email will be active at least throughout the summer. Best of luck to you all.

Patricia Andrews

1) What and when was the Industrial Revolution? How did it impact the economies, work relationships, social classes, and politics of European nations?

2) What have been the long-term impacts of the Industrial Revolution on earth’s environment? Describe the early responses of environmentalists to bring attention and solutions to the problems it created.

3) What was the Scramble for Africa? What were the impacts of this phase of colonial rule?

4) How has the Enlightenment value of “equality” influenced global history during the Modern era?

5) How might we use our historical knowledge of early Western influence in the Ottoman Empire to better understand the tensions between Muslims and Christians today? 

6) Describe the concept of the Anthropocene described by Strayer. Reflecting on where humankind is in its evolution today, in April 2020, do we seem to be moving into a fundamentally different era as implied by the concept of Anthropocene? 

7) In what ways does contemporary humanity demonstrate continuity, and in what ways does it demonstrate change as compared to the human past as described in our textbook over the course of this semester?

8) Choose one chapter from our textbook that you feel our political leaders need to understand in order to effectively lead the United States into the kind of future you want for yourself and your loved ones. Write a letter to the two men who will be running for president this year, President Trump and Joe Biden, telling them why they should read this chapter and what you feel they should know about this topic. You do not need to send the letter (but you can if you want to).

Module 9

Module 9. Also due April 23

Prep & preview of final exam. Review your class notes, your blog entries, other students’ blog entries, and all assignments (in-class group assignments & homework) from the semester. Then read through the study guide for the final exam. The study guide will be posted on or just before April 23. 

Module 8

Module 8. Due April 23

Please read chapter 23, titled “Capitalism and Culture.”

Similar to the previous chapters, respond to 3 of the sidebar or big picture questions, or to questions about the images or documents in this chapter. Each response should be approximately 200 words and must show evidence of having personally read the chapter. Post your 3 responses to your blog.

After the due date, go back and make thoughtful comments on at least 2 other students’ blog posts.

For your convenience, the sidebar and big picture questions from this chapter are copied below. Remember, you only have to respond to three of them!

1) To what extent has globalization fostered converging values and common interests among the world’s peoples? In what ways has it generated new conflicts among them?

2) What factors contributed to economic globalization in the second half of the twentieth century?

3) In what ways has economic globalization more closely linked the world’s peoples?

4) Study the image titled “Globalization in Action: Foreign Direct Investment in the Late Twentieth Century” on page 1027. Reflect on ways in which the information conveyed by this image could have both stabilizing and a destabilizing effect on world peace and cooperation.

5) What new or sharper divisions has economic globalization generated?

6) Study the Snapshot titled “Global Development and Inequality, 2011” on page 1031. What trends stand out to you? If you were having a small group discussion in a classroom setting, what would your contributions to the conversation be?

7) What is the role of the United States of America on the global stage of the 21^stcentury? Is the America you live in today consistent with the America Strayer describes in this chapter?

8) What distinguished feminism in the industrialized countries from that in the Global South?

9) In what respect did the various religious fundamentalisms of the twentieth century express hostility to global modernity?

10) From what sources did Islamic renewal movements derive?

11) In what ways did Islamic renewal express itself?

12) What can Barbie, Sara and Fulla (or Dara, depending on your version of the textbook) tell us about the globalized world of the twenty first century? What different values and sensibilities do they convey?

13) How might you compare feminism and fundamentalism as global movements? In what ways did they challenge earlier values and expectations? To what extent were they in conflict with one another?

14) how can we explain the dramatic increase in the human impact on the environment in the twentieth century?

15) What differences emerged between environmentalism in the Global North and that in the Global South?

16) Watch, summarize and reflect on the video linked below, putting it in its historical context.

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p080h12j/what-happened-after-this-iconic-river-gained-legal-rights-

17) Read the Zooming In segment titled “Rachel Carson, Pioneer of Environmentalism” on page 1058. In what larger contexts might we understand Rachel Carson and the book that gained her such attention? If you have read Silent Spring, bring your insights from that reading into your response.

18) In what ways did the Global North/South divide find expression in the past century?

19) What have been the benefits and drawbacks of globalization since 1945?

20) Do the years since 1914 confirm or undermine Enlightenment predictions about the future of humankind?

21) “The most recent century marks the end of the era of Western dominance in world history.” What evidence might support this statement? What evidence might contradict it?

22) To what extent did the various liberation movements of the past century – communism, nationalism, democracy, feminism, internationalism – achieve their goals?

23) To what extent did the processes discussed in this chapter (globalization, feminism, fundamentalism, environmentalism) have roots in the more distant past? In what respects did they represent something new in the past century?

Extra Credit Module

Extra Credit Module. Due April 23

With everyone working at home and with varying access to internet and resources, I realize that making research presentations online may be difficult for some of you. Therefore, the traditional end-of-semester research presentation will be optional this semester. If you do one, it will be worth extra credit. If you don’t do one, your grade will not suffer. 

Formats can include video, “talking powerpoint,” or another format you determine will work for you given the resources and connectivity you do or don’t have to work with. Here is a link to another student’s online presentation from last year so you have an example of how you might do this – thank you Frances for letting me share your video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALGODlwlqWc&feature=youtu.be

Module 7

Module 7. Due April 16

Write a short (3-page) essay that puts the current coronavirus pandemic into historical context. Use the information you learned in Module 5 to get you started. You do not need to do additional research unless you decide it is necessary. However, you do need to cite all sources of information you end up using in your essay. Include both in-text citations such as (Strayer 91) and a Work Cited section at the end. Your essay should be 3 pages and include the following elements / address the following questions:

* What is a pandemic?

* Does a disease need to impact the entire globe to be considered a pandemic or can it be regional (e.g. small pox killing native Americans after European contact) and still be considered a pandemic?

* What are some global or regional pandemics from the human past? How did they start?

* A reflection on your own experience as a human being living through the pandemic of 2020… i.e. put your 2020 experience into historical context.

Module 6

Module 6. Due April 14

Please read chapter 22, titled “The End of Empire.”

Similar to the previous chapters, respond to 3 of the sidebar or big picture questions, or to questions about the images or documents in this chapter. Each response should be approximately 200 words and must show evidence of having personally read the chapter. Post your 3 responses to your blog.

After the due date, go back and make thoughtful comments on at least 2 other students’ blog posts.

For your convenience, the sidebar and big picture questions from this chapter are copied below. Remember, you only have to respond to three of them!

1) In what ways did the experience of the “Global South” during the past century register on the larger stage of world history?

2) What was distinctive about the end of Europe’s African and Asian empires compared to other cases of imperial disintegration?

3) What international circumstances and social changes contributed to the end of colonial empires?

4) What obstacles confronted the leaders of movements for independence?

5) How did India’s nationalist movement change over time?

6) What was the role of Gandhi in India’s struggle for independence?

7) What conflicts and differences divided India’s nationalist movement?

8) Why was African rule in South Africa delayed until 1994, when it had occurred decades earlier elsewhere in the colonial world?

9) Why do you think Abdul Khan is generally unknown? Where does he fit in the larger history of the twentieth century?

10) How did South Africa’s struggle against white domination change over time?

11) How and why did the anticolonial struggles in India and South Africa differ?

12) What conclusions can you draw from the Snapshot graph titled “World Population Growth, 1950-2011” on page 994?

13) What led to the erosion of democracy and the establishment of military government in much of Africa and Latin America?

14) What common features do the reconciliation efforts described in the Zooming In segment titled “Mozambique: Civil War and Reconciliation,” on page 998, share? How do they differ? What possible responses to them can you imagine?

15) What obstacles impeded the economic development of third-world countries?

16) How and why did thinking about strategies for economic development change over time?

17) In what ways did cultural revolutions in Turkey and Iran reflect different understandings of the role of Islam in modern societies?

18) In what ways did the colonial experience and the struggle for independence shape the agenda of developing countries in the second half of the twentieth century?

19) How would you compare the historical experiences of India and China in the twentieth century?

20) From the viewpoint of the early twenty-first century (2000-2015), to what extent had the goals of nationalist or independence movements been achieved?

21) To what extent did the struggle for independence and the postcolonial experience of African and Asian peoples in the twentieth century parallel or diverge from that of the earlier “new nations” in the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

22) If your version of our textbook includes the “Working with Evidence” section, you may also write your answers to any of the study questions included in the Evidence entries for this chapter.

Module 5. Due: April 9

Module 5. Due: April 9

The coronavirus pandemic is not the only one humanity has suffered. Spend some time for this class session learning about any other historical pandemic by doing self-guided research. What other pandemic can you find that has plagued humanity? Where did it strike? Why were people vulnerable to it? How long did it last? Did the people who experienced it learn anything from the experience / do anything differently afterwards? What were the long-term effects of it on human populations or on the planet? These questions are just to get you started. You do not need to answer them all, (but you can if that is helpful). Summarize what you learn in your blog post for April 9.