Berkeley Historian Thomas W. Laqueur: European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present

Thomas W. Laqueur, winner of the Mellon Foundation’s 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award, is the Helen Fawcett Professor of History at U.C. Berkeley. Professor Laqueur earned his Ph.D. in 1973 from Princeton University. His first book, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, advanced the two-sex model in sexual history. His most recent book is Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation. The latter evaluates eighteenth-century attitudes toward sexuality through the print culture of enlightenment philosophy.

Thomas W. Laqueur has generously provided his enormously popular European History course for world wide history lovers online. The course is known for Laqueur’s unique integration of music, visual arts, and poetry into lectures, which increases its appeal to students of diverse interests. Understanding the global historical context of major events such as the witch hunts, triangular trade, or the World Wars can greatly enhance your understanding of United States history.

Lecture 1: An Introduction to European History

Lecture 2: The “Renaissance” in the Western and World History

Lecture 3: The State as a Work of Art

Lecture 4: New Worlds, New Peoples, New Goods

Lecture 5: Martin Luther: ‘A Mighty Fortress is Our God’

Lecture 6: Cultural Diversity in Early Modern Europe

Lecture 7: Witchcraft and Religious War

Lecture 8: English Revolutions, Dutch Revolutions, and European Constitutionalism

Lecture 9: French and Other Absolutionisms

Lecture 10: Currently unavailable

Lecture 11: The Scientific Revolution in Europe

Lecture 12: The Englightenment: Daring to Know and its Difficulties

Lecture 13: The French Revolution

Lecture 14: Currently unavailable

Lecture 15: Currently unavailable

Lecture 16: The Industrial Revolution

Lecture 17: Ideologies of Class and Gender

Lecture 18: Revolution and Reform, 1815-1851

Lecture 19: Science, Medicine, and Religion

Lecture 20: Making and Reforming Nation-States

Lecture 21: Politics, Culture, and Society at the Turn of the Century

Lecture 22: European Imperialism at its Zenith

Lecture 23: The Great War: It’s Causes and Course

Lecture 24: The Russian Revolution

Lecture 25: The Failure of Politics

Lecture 26: World War II: Holocaust and Rebuilding

Lecture 27: Remaking Europe East and West

Lecture 28: The Past in the Present