History of Cultural Contact

Cultures do not develop in a vacuum. World History is punctuated with moments of great demographic or cultural movement, episodes when societies change rapidly as a result of the influx of new ideas, products, and peoples. Such new influences may change economies, affect agriculture and dietary customs, overturn dominant worldviews, incite revolutions, introduce new pathogens, challenge dominant models of morality, alter ideals of beauty and fashion, or lead to violent military conflict. For a given people or culture, the results of these events may range from the beneficial to the disastrous. This course will examine a series of such cultural contacts, and explore the complex consequences that transformed the lives of people and nations.