This lecture course is constructed around the notion that much of modern intellectual history has involved a continuing dialogue with the Enlightenment of the 18th Century and with what it means to be "enlightened" and "modern."

To that end, the course begins by examining characteristics of "modernity" as it arose out of the 17th Century. It then provides an overview of Enlightenment thought and explores themes in 19th Century European intellectual history. Topics considered in Fall Term include industrialism and romanticism; 19th Century ideologies; the Darwinian Revolution and the Victorian crisis of faith; changing varieties of literary, artistic and musical expression; feminist thought; and the growing sense of intellectual unrest during the Belle Époque near century’s end.

Among subjects examined in Winter Term are European and American social thought and theory; new and revolutionary developments in art and music; the impact of the Great War; the Russian Revolution, Leninism, Fascism, and Stalinism; elite and mass culture; shifting literary tastes and concerns; the orientation of American social science; Hitler and the Holocaust; American pragmatism and European existentialism; citizenship, entertainment, and popular culture; changing conceptions of time and history; ideological assumption during the Cold War; shifting forms of social identity in a "post-industrial society"; cultures of consumption and globalization; modernity and post-modernity.

All lectures are fully illustrated, often involving sound recordings.