Honors World History

Honors students are expected to complete additional assignments throughout the course that build on the content provided. These assignments, like reading and evaluating eyewitness accounts of historical events, makes these students go above and beyond the curriculum content in creativity and application.

Semester A

World History begins with a focus on the skills needed to read, understand, and analyze history, also demonstrating how historians and social scientists arrive at their conclusions about human history. Semester A covers the history of civilization from hunter-gatherer societies through the characteristics of the earliest civilizations to the Enlightenment period in Western Europe. The second half of Semester A explores early intellectual, spiritual, and political movements and their impact on interactions among world cultures.

Semester B

Semester B applies the reading and analytical strategies introduced in Semester A to the events and movements that created the modern world. In the second semester, World History emphasizes the effects of the Industrial Revolution and changing attitudes about science and religion as well as the impact of European colonization. Students are encouraged to make connections between World War I and II and events related to the Cold War and between 19th-century imperialism and modern independence movements.

Semester A

How Historians Understand the Past
The Rise of Nations
Europe Divided
Empires in the East
An Age of Discovery
Struggle for Independence
Semester Exam Review

Semester A Syllabus

Semester B

Production, Power, and Progress
Colonization and Empire
Global Conflict
Total War
The World Today
Semester Exam Review

Semester B Syllabus