Department of History

HIST 1701 Empires, Revolutions, Wars Professor Laura L. Frader

Final Exam Paper

Directions: This paper replaces the 2-hour final exam originally scheduled for this course. It is worth 35 percent of your grade. The paper allows you to make use of your texts — the basic text (Hunt et. al.), the collection of documents (Lualdi) and the two novels assigned for the course. You are also free to consult other materials, although you are not required to do so. If you use direct quotations or paraphrase, be sure to use a brief in-text citation. Please take as long as you want to prepare your ideas, but try write for no more than two hours.

You may submit your paper at any time during exam week, but all papers MUST be submitted by 3 pm December 15 on Turnitin. No later papers will be accepted.

The Assignment: History provides important insights that enable us to understand contemporary events, challenges, and dilemmas. Indeed, one might argue that many contemporary dilemmas can be explained or more fully understood by reference to the effects of past historical developments. Choose two of the following issues and discuss how the historical developments you have studied in this course influence, explain, or help to better understand them. Feel free to suggest another issue (or issues) that is not on this list, but do not choose the problem of ethnic violence that erupted in the breakup of Yugoslavia, since you will have already discussed that in the debate! Be sure to support your claims with evidence!

· The Israeli-Palestinian conflict

· The persistence of gender and racial inequality (including sexual harassment and sexual violence) in the modern world

· Environmental degradation/climate change

· Poverty and underdevelopment in states that were former European colonial possessions in Africa

· The rise of nationalist and/or illiberal political parties and groups in contemporary Europe

· Terrorism