| Year Level: 2 | ||
| Equivalent GE Area(s) in 2011/2012 Model: |
Area 8 – World Histories and Cultures | |
This course examines the evolution of western civilization from antiquity to the eighteenth century. Over the course of the semester, students will develop an understanding of how the concept of ‘western civilization’ – that is taken to mean, the social and cultural norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs and political systems of ‘the west’ – were based historically on a series of cultural borrowings – artistic, literary, intellectual and political – between rivalling states and empires based mainly in Europe. With the rise of Christianity in the Late Roman Empire, students will examine how peoples in Europe gradually became aware of themselves and the lands they inhabited as being ‘western’, and of being part of a ‘western civilization’. Defining themselves first against other powerful civilizations, most notably Islamic civilizations in ‘the East’, this process quickly gathered speed in the sixteenth century as Europeans gradually moved to other parts of the world and began encountering other ‘non-western’ peoples from Asia, Africa and the Americas.