Week 1 (Jan 13) Class 1: Why This Course? And: Ancient Greece

Week 2 (Jan 20) Class 2: Ancient Rome

Livy and Polybius on the Battle of Cannae

Plutarch, Life of Caesar,  31-34

Week 3 (Jan 27) NO SCHOOL

Week 4 (Feb 3) Class 3: Medieval Europe I

Albert of Aix and Ekkehard of Aura: Emico and the Slaughter of the Rhineland Jews

Truce of God – Bishopric of Terouanne, 1063

Agreement between Count William V of Aquitaine and Hugh IV of Lusignan

Week 5 (Feb 10) Class 4: Medieval Europe II

Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (selection).

Anonimalle Chronicle, “English Peasants’ Revolt 1381”.

Joan of Arc, “Letter to the King of England”(1429)

Week 6 (Feb 17) Class 5: What was the Reformation?

There will be a short test at the start of class. The test includes the materials of weeks 1-4, focusing on the primary source readings, and the lectures.

Martin Luther, The 95 Theses.

Michael Gaismair’s Territorial Constitution for the Tirol (1526)

St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre(24 Aug 1572) eyewitness descriptions.

Week 7 (Feb 24) Class 6: The Military Revolution and the Age of Exploration

A Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

Week 8 (March 3) Class 7: The Atlantic Revolutions

English Bill of Rights 1689 

Virginia Declaration of Rights 

The Declaration of the Rights of man

The United States Bill Of Rights: First 10 Amendments to the Constitution

Week 9 (March 10) NO SCHOOL

Week 10 (March 17) Class 8: Total War and Industrialization

Friederich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 (selection).

Week 11 (March 24) Class 9: Colonization

There will be a short test at the start of class. The test includes the material of weeks 1-8, focusing on the primary source readings, and the lectures.

Shooting An Elephant

The White Man’s Burden

Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

Week 12 (March 31) Class 10: World War I

Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est”

John Mccrae, “In Flanders Fields”

V. I. Lenin, “Economics And Politics In The Era Of The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat”

Week 13 (Apr 7) NO CLASS

Week 14 (Apr 14) Class 11: WWII

Hermann Friedrich Graebe, Account of Holocaust Mass Shooting (1942)

Elie Wiesel, Except From Night

Week 15 (Apr 21) Class 12: Cold War and Decolonization

There will be a short test at the start of class. The test includes the material of weeks 9-12, focusing on the primary source readings, and the lectures.

Winston S. Churchill: “Iron Curtain Speech”, March 5, 1946

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

The Problem of Cuba and its Revolutionary Policy

“Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]”

Tutorial: 25%

Tests: 55%

• Class 5    10% 
• Class 9    30% 
• Class 12   15% 

Take-home exam: 20%

Students have to sign up for one group and attend ALL tutorials classes as it accounts for 25% of the final grade. 

Change of groups is not accepted after enrollment. 

More details will be announced. 

Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy and regulations. Details may be found at here.

With each assignment, students will be required to submit a signed declaration that they are aware of these policies, regulations, guidelines and procedures.

• In the case of group projects, all members of the group should be asked to sign the declaration, each of whom is responsible and liable to disciplinary actions, irrespective of whether he/she has signed the declaration and whether he/she has contributed, directly or indirectly, to the problematic
• For assignments in the form of a computer-generated document that is principally text-based and submitted via VeriGuide, the statement, in the form of a receipt, will be issued by the system upon students’ uploading of the soft copy of the assignment. 
• Students are fully aware that their work may be investigated by AI content detection software to determine originality.
• Students are fully aware of the AI approach(es) adopted in the course. In the case where some AI tools are allowed, students have made proper acknowledgment and citations as instructed by the course teacher.

Assignments without the properly signed declaration will not be graded by teachers.

Only the final version of the assignment should be submitted via VeriGuide.

The submission of a piece of work, or a part of a piece of work, for more than one purpose (e.g. to satisfy the requirements in two different courses) without declaration to this effect shall be regarded as having committed undeclared multiple submissions. It is common and acceptable to reuse a turn of phrase or a sentence or two from one’s own work; but wholesale reuse is problematic. In any case, agreement from the course teacher(s) concerned should be obtained prior to the submission of the piece of work.

The copyright of the teaching materials, including lecture notes, assignments and examination questions etc., produced by staff members/ teachers of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) belongs to CUHK. Students may download the teaching materials produced by the staff members/ teachers from the Learning Management Systems, e.g. Blackboard adopted by CUHK for their own educational use, but shall not distribute/ share/ copy the materials to a third-party without seeking prior permission from the staff members/ teachers concerned.