What is modernity? And when is modernity, that is-- when did it take place? What is modern life? Who were (and are) modern men and women? These are major questions that have preoccupied thinkers, authors, artists and numerous historians, social scientists and students of culture. This course, which may serve as an introduction to the history of the 19th-21th centuries, surveys processes of modernization in Western Europe and North America. We shall examine how these processes were experienced by men and women in their everyday life and at times of upheaval. We shall consider the rise of a new kind of state and new forms of citizenship; the modern revolutions of ideas and thought from the Enlightenment to socialism and Marxism; the rise of political modernity; industrialization and new forms of work, new “modern” finance; revolutions in literature and the arts—from Romanticism (early 19th century) to modernism, life in the modern city, family life and sexuality, the surge of nationalism, the “new imperialism” and globalization, and total war and destruction in the 20th century.