This course is designed to provide an overview of about 2000 years of world history, tracing the major forces and long-term transformations that have shaped human societies from antiquity to the present. Rather than trying to cover as many regions and periods as possible, it will adopt a broadly comparative approach and focus on seven core issues of political, social, cultural, economic, and environmental history as recurring patterns in the global past. Topics to be addressed include modes of subsistence, the organization of societies and the historical emergence of social inequality and gender inequality, different religions, colonialism and imperialism, as well as changing communication technologies, etc. Modernization and globalization, above all, will be critically addressed as two major trends in world history, with particular attention to their role in producing and contesting unequal and hierarchical orders. It is hoped that the comparative and global perspectives which this course employs will increase students' awareness of cultural diversity and help them understand how global historical developments inform contemporary struggles over justice, equality, and social change.