GEO 5934(3)/HIS 6934(5)

MODERNITY, TIME, AND SPACE

Tuesdays, 2:00-4:30
BEL 317
Dr. Barney Warf Dr. Nathan Stoltzfus
Office: BEL 323 Office: BEL 447
644-8371 644-9529
bwarf@coss.fsu.edu nstoltzf@mailer.fsu.edu





This course is designed as an experimental, interdisciplinary seminar concerned with
various dimensions of modernity. It seeks to explore what it means to be modern.
Modernity is simultaneously an economic, political, cultural, and spatial phenomenon that
marks a dramatic departure from older, premodern worlds, as important to human social
development as was the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. The central
issues, questions, and dilemmas we will confront include: What the origins of the modern
world and how did it evolve? How was modernity constituted in time and space? How
were peoples perceptions of themselves and society transformed? What transformations,
including mass movements (mass production and consumption, total war and social
revolution) and the production of the individual, accompanied modernity and modernization?


Jan. 13: Introduction

Jan. 20:
Taylor, Peter. 1999. Modernities: A Geohistorical Interpretation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Jan. 27:
Berman, M. 1982. All that is Solid Melts into Air. New York: Penguin Books.

Feb. 3, 10:
Bauman, Zygman. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Malden, MA: Blackwell

Feb. 17, 24:
Kern, Stephen. 1983. The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

March 2, 16:
Esksteins, Modris. 1989. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. New York: Houghton
Mifflin.

March 9: spring break no class


March 23, 30:
Bauman, Zygman. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust. New York: Polity Press.

April 6, 13:
Therborn, Goran. 1995. European Modernity and Beyond: The Trajectory of European Societies 1945-2000. London:
Sage.

April 20:
Friedland, Roger and Deirdre Boden, eds. 1994. NowHere: Space, Time and Modernity. Berkeley: University of
California Press. Chapters 1-5.



COURSE REQUIREMENTS and GRADE COMPOSITION:
30% Consistent, enthusiastic class participation
(poor participation is a sign you haven't done the readings)
Students will be asked to introduce a particular book or reading.

30% Eight 3-page summaries of each assigned reading, due at the beginning of the class when
the book is discussed.

40% One paper falling within the broad theme of modernity (12-15 pages), due by April 6.
HIS 6934 students will be asked to give a 10 minute presentation on their paper topic at the
beginning of class starting Feb. 10.

Note: taking notes in class and on the readings is not a bad idea; they may come in handy in the future.