The slums of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, home to 1.4 million, are one of the world's most dangerous places. From 2007 to 2013, 33,000 people were murdered and 5,412 killed in encounters with police.

Global Challenges, ​c. 1900-Today

World Wars

Topics:

• The Mexican Revolution
• ​​The Great War
• ​Imperial Collapse​
• Soviet Modernization
• The Great Depression
  
• Fascism
  
• The Second World War
• Total War and Genocide

Goals:

• ​​Explain internal and external factors to change.
• ​​​Explain the causes and consequences of World War I.
• ​​​​​​Explain how governments conducted World War I.
• ​​​​​Explain how governments responded to economic crisis.
• Explain territorial changes.
• ​​​​Explain the causes and consequences of World War II. 
• ​​​Explain how governments conducted World War II.
• ​​​Explain the causes and consequences of mass atrocities.

The Postwar World

Topics:

• The Iron Curtain
• Communist China
• Proxy Wars and the Third World
  
• Decolonization
• New States
• Fall of Communism
  
• The European Union and Russia
  
• War on Terror​

Goals:

• Explain the causes and effects of the Cold War.
• ​​​Compare how the United States and the Soviet Union sought global influence.
• ​​Explain China’s adoption of communism.
• ​Explain movements to redistribute economic resources.
• ​​​Explain the end of the Cold War.​
• ​​Compare how various peoples pursued independence.
• ​​​Explain territorial, demographic, and nationalist developments.
• ​Explain economic changes and continuities resulting from decolonization.
• ​​Explain reactions to power structures.

Globalization

Topics:

• Global Networks
• Energy 
• Reproduction
• The Green Revolution 
• Modern Medicine
• Climate Change
• ​Free Markets
• Information
• ​Inequality
• Global Culture
• International Cooperation

Goals:

• ​​​​​​Explain how environmental factors affected human populations.
• ​​​Explain environmental changes.
• ​​Explain how new technologies changed the world.
• Explain how social categories, roles, and practices have been maintained and challenged.
• ​​​Explain how and why globalization changed culture.
• ​​​Explain various responses to globalization.
• ​​​Explain how globalization affected international interactions.
• ​​Explain continuities and changes in the global economy.

Links

• The Atlantic - Hong Kong’s Protests Have Cemented Its Identity
• Vintage Everyday - Postal Operation During World War I – 19 Rare Lantern Slides Show the Postmen from 1914-18
• The Guardian - Beyond Uncle Sam: the US poster art inspired by the first world war
• So Today I Learned that France built a Replica of Paris in WWI
• BBC News - Why was the Zimmermann Telegram so important?
• BBC News - Six unexpected WW1 battlegrounds
• Al Jazeera - The need for a museum on British colonisation of India
• Washington Post - ‘African Kaiser’: A sweeping military history that reads like a novel
• The News Lens - Airbrushing Taiwan’s History: Can Japanese Colonialism Ever Be Justified?
• ​The Telegraph - World War One in colour: Graphic artist Frédéric Duriez gives us a new look at the conflict
• NPR - From Wristwatches To Radio, How World War I Ushered In The Modern World
• BBC News - Why has Germany taken so long to pay off its WWI debt?
• BBC News - 1989 - Europe's Revolution
• Watch Mojo - Biography of Mussolini
• NPR - Fake It 'Til You Make It: What Came Before Photoshop
• i09 - These photographs capture the terror, joy and weirdness of the USSR's final days
• ​Watch Mojo - The Rise of Hitler
• Vox - 42 Maps That Explain World War II
• BBC - When Russian Artists Dreamed of a Utopian Future
• Salon - Trump and Mussolini: The same, only different? Eleven key lessons from historical fascism
• The Guardian - Death of truth: when propaganda and 'alternative facts' first gripped the world
• Public Radio International - In communist Poland, the punk thing to do was to sing in English
• Russia Beyond the Headlines - Putting history to rest: Will Lenin soon be buried?
• ​BBC News - Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Communist China
• Newsweek - WORST LEADERS IN HISTORY? WINSTON CHURCHILL AS ‘EVIL’ AS HITLER, MAO AND STALIN, INDIAN LAWMAKER SAYS
• New York Times - How Moscow Lost Its Luster as the School of Revolution
• Mother Jones - 5 Terrifying Nuke Videos That Were Kept Secret for Decades—With Good Reason
• Washington Post - Science in the service of the Soviet regime
• Timeline - This Russian photo magazine published groundbreaking art under 70 years of Soviet rule
• Huffington Post - A New Dark Age?
• Global Issues - Many Conflicts Throughout Africa
• Public Radio International - It's Time to Stop Blaming the Maps
• New York Times - Analyzing Maps to Better Understand Global Current Events and History
• NPR - Romeo Dallaire, Meeting the 'Devil' in Rwanda
• Huffington Post - Romeo Dallaire: Senator Slams 'Hotel Rwanda' Film As Revisionist 'Junk'
• Huffington Post - The Geopolitics of American Global Decline
• Slate - People Don’t Hate Millennials.  They hate 21st-century technology.
• Reuters - China says 'no such thing' as man-made islands in South China Sea