HIST 333 Contemporary Europe

Overview of Course

This course examines the political, social, cultural, and global history of Europe from the end of World War II to the present. Students study reconstruction, Cold War division, decolonization, postwar migration, European integration, the collapse of communism, neoliberal restructuring, populism, Brexit, and contemporary debates over democracy, borders, and belonging. At the same time, the course asks how “Europe” has been imagined, defended, marketed, mourned, and contested through culture: film, literature, music, architecture, museums, monuments, tourism, and public memory.
Taught on Semester at Sea, the course is organized around a comparative and reciprocal framework: Europe in the World and the World in Europe. In ports outside Europe, students identify and analyze examples of Europe’s presence in the world through institutions, architecture, law, religion, education, cultural prestige, museums, and imperial or post-imperial inheritances. In European settings, students identify and analyze examples of “the world” in Europe through migration, diaspora, religion, foodways, art, public memory, and postcolonial and global exchange.
Through historical scholarship, primary sources, arts-based materials, discussion, field observation and regular class engagement using historical thinking skills students investigate how contemporary history reflects and shapes tensions around European identity, heritage, global influence, and global dependence. The course is designed for Semester at Sea’s comparative, multi-country educational model and for a Spring 2027 voyage across Asia, Africa, and Europe.