History 247 - Mountains and Modernity

From the Himalayas in South Asia to Mexico's Chiapas and from North Carolina's Grandfather Mountain to the Uluru in Australia's Northern Territory, mountains represent more than just a geographical feature. They have been long viewed as transcendental spaces, served as a canvas for epic struggles between humans and nature, shaped cultural attitudes and been at the heart of political struggles. This course traces the history of various political and cultural meanings attached to mountains. Using examples from around the globe, it seeks to argue that rather than a metaphor for remoteness and primitivism, mountains are constitutive to our understanding of modernity.