The modern era is generally seen as the period from either the Enlightenment of the mid-eighteenth century or from the revolutions beginning in 1776 to either the end of World War II or the fall of the Soviet Union. No matter which dates we choose, the modern era began with incredible optimism as supporters claimed that poverty, inequality, disease and war would be eliminated and a golden era of human achievement and progress would begin. As early as the turn of the twentieth century, however, even supporters of modernity were claiming that the era was empty and meaningless -- that progress was a great weight rather than a sign of a better future. The two World Wars from 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 followed by the Cold War left many critics claiming that modernity was a failure and that advanced societies had brought technological advancement and violence but no real progress.

Our class was assigned to use class sources and a class project to examine the question of modernity -- what it means, if the goals have been achieved and what the critics have said. We were assigned to do much outside research and design an interactive web site were we will integrate existing on line sources, new sources, our research and essays to form a comprehensive look at modernity from the Enlightenment to the present.  Our History 198 class spent the semester analyzing three major questions.  These questions are: What does it mean to be modern? How has "modernization" taken place and to what extent does it reflect the goals of Enlightenment optimists?  Are we "postmodern?" 

The main goals of the project were to: locate and utilize primary documents, both documents on the web and those unavailable on the web, and determine to what extent, if at all the goals of modernity were met.  The culmination of our semester long project took the form of an open forum. 

We divided into six groups to examine different aspects of the Enlightenment thinkers goals:  Progress, Identity, Liberation, Secularization, Rationalization, and The State.  Each group gave a ten minute opening statement, and a shorter closing statement.  The bulk of the forum was taken up with open discussion.  There are links to the forum as well as our sources at the left.  Included in the sources are primary sources never before seen on the web.  We apologize for the terseness of the last hour of open discussion - our video camera didn't work, so we're going from memory and quickly-taken notes.  Thank you for taking the time to learn about modernity and what we think it means, how it has happened, and where it might be headed.