In today’s class, we highlighted some key authors from the past two weeks. Readings from Benedict Anderson and Dipesh Chakrabarty allowed us to engage at a higher level with their theories on modernity, whereas Robert Marks’ textbook introduction and conclusion later rounded out our understanding of the modern world.

Anderson challenges the contemporary notion of a nation by describing it as a construct. Removing the structure of a nation-state provides fluidity, increasing autonomy by withholding the bounds of a particular territory or language. Nations evolve with time as a product of culture; however, our understanding of this evolution as modernity has been held through a Eurocentric lens. As such, Chakrabarty urges us to consider multiple structures of modernity. In this way, there is the freedom to adapt or translate ideas across the world based on one’s own terms. Exploring history in this way allows us to deconstruct a Eurocentric worldview and understand how the hegemonic systems of today came about.