Summer Course: Inventing the World: Exploration, Empires, and Encounters (1400-1800)
Stanford, USA
Summer Course
DURATION
8 weeks
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
EARLIEST START DATE
TUITION FEES
USD 4,515
STUDY FORMAT
* undergraduate and graduate students | international students needing an I-20 sponsored by Stanford is April 27, 2026 | HS students is March 9, 2026
Key Summary
About: This Summer Session course at Stanford University examines global encounters 1400–1800, studying exploration, empires, trade, migration, cartography, travel narratives, cosmologies, art, and literature. You'll compare Ottoman, Mughal, Iberian, African, Chinese, and Japanese perspectives on mapping and the planet; study how contact drove colonization, displacement, disease, environmental change, adaptation, and resistance. Course offers campus events, workshops, Stanford Spaces tours, and Stanford Voices. It awards college credit within a Summer Session framework and connects you with an international community.
Career Outcomes: Students can pursue roles in museum curation, archives, heritage management, public history, education, cultural policy, research, journalism, and international NGOs.
What did the "world" mean before the modern age, and who got to imagine it? This course explores how people across empires - from the Ottoman and Mughal courts to Iberian colonies, African kingdoms, and Chinese and Japanese polities - envisioned and represented the globe between 1400 and 1800.
We will examine how exploration, conquest, trade, and migration connected distant societies and how those encounters inspired new ways of seeing and mapping the world. Rather than treating globalization as a modern or Western invention, we will trace its deeper roots in the early modern era, a time when goods, ideas, and beliefs moved faster and farther than ever before. Through travel accounts, maps, cosmologies, artworks, and literary texts, we will compare how different cultures understood the planet and their place within it.
Along the way, we will also explore how these connections brought about colonization, displacement, disease, and environmental change, as well as creativity, adaptation, and resistance.
Details:
- Time: No Days No Times - No Times
- Units: 3
- Class Number: 11477
- Interest Area: Social Sciences and Humanities
- Population: High School, Undergraduate, Graduate
- Interest Area: Social Sciences and Humanities
- Course Format & Length: In Person, 8 Weeks
- Grading Basis: Letter or Credit/No Credit
Events and Engagement
Workshops
Hosted through the Summer Academic Resource Center (SARC), we offer a variety of educational workshops to complement your academic pursuits. Presenters varying from Stanford affiliates, community partners, and graduate tutors will cover a wide range of topics from academic skills to career exploration. Past workshops included college preparedness, software exploration, and building your professional network.
Stanford Spaces
Explore the intellectual ecosystem of the Stanford campus. Tour museums like the Cantor Arts Center, visit unique campus spaces like the d.school, Frost Amphitheater, and O’Donohue Family Farm, and get to know the unique community of companies and innovators that gather at Stanford Research Park.
Stanford Voices
These small gatherings give you an opportunity to connect with Stanford faculty, fellows, and alumni to hear about their work or research, as well as the road that brought them there. Ask questions and continue your intellectual exploration—whether you're taking a course on the topic this summer or just curious.