Focus: This week examines how geography and climate shaped early Asian settlement patterns, agriculture, political organization, and social hierarchies. Students compare land-based and maritime connectivity, including steppe mobility, exchange networks, monsoon-driven trade, and the movement of ideas and beliefs. The week also emphasizes how state-building and philosophical or religious traditions supported governance while recognizing the limits of environmental explanations for historical change.

Required Reading:

1. World History, Volume 1, Chapter 5: Asia in Ancient Times (Chapter 5 introduction; sections 5.1 through 5.4)
2. Chapter 5 embedded primary sources (Analects selections; comparison excerpts from the Bhagavad Gita and Basic Teachings of the Buddha)
3. Chapter 5 visuals used as evidence (timeline, locator maps, and figure sets tied to oracle bones, Mandate of Heaven, Qin projects, steppe mobility, early Korea, early Japan, and Ashoka)

Focus: This week examines how environments shaped settlement and subsistence, how farming and ironworking supported population growth and the emergence of new political forms, and how long-distance exchange and belief systems connected regions and strengthened states.

Required Reading:

1. World History, Volume 1, Chapter 15: States and Societies in Sub-Saharan Africa (sections 15.1, 15.2, and 15.3)

Focus: This week links Greek political and intellectual developments to Renaissance humanism and cultural transformation, then complicates a West-only narrative by examining Constantinople’s fall and the Ottoman world within a connected Mediterranean context. Students focus on argument-driven writing supported by citations.

Required Reading:

1. World History, Volume 1, Chapter 6, Section 6.2: Ancient Greece
2. World History, Volume 1, Chapter 17: The Renaissance section
3. World History, Volume 1, Chapter 17, Section 17.1: The Ottomans and the Mongols

Focus: This week emphasizes how historians build knowledge using primary sources, causation, and interpretation, and how bias and lenses shape historical claims. Students practice distinguishing evidence from interpretation and explaining why historical thinking matters beyond the classroom.

Required Reading:

1. World History, Volume 1, Chapter 1, sections 1.1 through 1.3