Online Synchronous Tuesdays & Thursdays, 12:30 pm – 1:50 pm


Dr. Elizabeth Frierson


This class will focus on the history of World War I and the world, in particular, Europe and its colonial empires as well as the United States and those parts of Asia and the Near East that would be importantly affected by both the War and the settlements that followed in its wake. This history will include an analysis of the causes of the War as well as the ramifications and consequences of the Versailles Treaty.

Students will read a variety of important and revealing primary materials from government reports, diplomatic and military accounts, newspaper articles, propaganda, memoirs, poetry, and novels; several films will also be introduced.

We shall examine the war itself on both the western and eastern fronts, examine soldiers’ experiences and military strategies, nurses’ experiences as well as historiographical debates among scholars regarding the ways in which the War ushered in new interpretations and understandings of modernity.

In addition, we shall investigate the war’s relationship to the home front, the societal and cultural changes ushered in by the war, and the revolutions unleashed by this war in places as different as Ireland and the Russian empire.