Western Civilization Since 1500 follows the political, religious, intellectual, economic, and cultural transformations that reshaped Europe and its global relationships. Beginning with Renaissance society, humanism, the Reformations, and overseas expansion, the course examines the emergence of absolutist and constitutional states, the Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment thought, and eighteenth-century society. It then connects the French and Napoleonic upheavals to industrialization, liberalism, socialism, nationalism, and the revolutions and state-building of the nineteenth century. Later lessons compare modernist ideas, imperial expansion, technological change, and the domestic politics of Europe’s great powers before tracing the causes, conduct, and settlements of both world wars. The course concludes by analyzing fascism, communism, Europe’s Cold War division, the Soviet collapse, and the growth of global and European institutions, while considering the cultural, economic, religious, and demographic questions facing the modern West.