Essential Question
What made the world both dazzling and dangerous on the eve of the World Wars?
This week the student stands at the threshold of the 20th century, a world dazzling with new wealth, science, and art, yet quietly arming itself for catastrophe. We trace the height of European empires and the alliance system, the Gilded Age and the great wave of immigration that reshaped America, Theodore Roosevelt's energetic presidency, the birth of modern art in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and the welcoming heart of Mother Cabrini. The virtue of solidarity ties it together: how do we welcome the stranger?
Liturgical note: Ordinary Time (May), the month of Mary. A season to ask Our Lady's care for the immigrant, the newcomer, and the stranger, as the Holy Family themselves were once refugees in Egypt.
Threads at a Glance
Empires at their height, the European alliance system, accelerating science and technology, and the world on the eve of catastrophe.
Boom & Bust: The Twenties and the Great Depression
Theodore Roosevelt.
The world's empires (~1914): draw the colonial world map and the great immigration flows to America.
Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: Monet and Degas, then Van Gogh and Cezanne; the road to modern art.
Late Romantic and early modern: Tchaikovsky, Dvorak's 'New World' Symphony, and the dawn of American jazz.
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (Mother Cabrini), patroness of immigrants.
Solidarity: welcoming the stranger.
YOUCAT on the universal call to holiness and the Beatitudes (Q282-Q285).
Formal vs. informal register; writing for a specific audience.
Reflective narrative: an immigrant's story (research and narrative blend).
Weekly Writing Assignment
Research the real experience of one group of immigrants who came to America around 1880-1920 (for example, Italians, Irish, Poles, or Eastern European Jews). Then write a first-person narrative from the point of view of a fictional but historically accurate young immigrant, telling the story of leaving home, the ocean voyage, arriving at Ellis Island, and the first days in America. Ground every scene in real, researched detail.
The Week
Close the Week
Add each date to your running timeline notebook — one color for World History, another for US History.
Unit Reading · Revolutions & the Modern Age
by Baroness Orczy
A masked Englishman risks everything to rescue innocent aristocrats from the guillotine while playing the fool in society. The original 'secret identity' adventure, set in the Terror of revolutionary France.
by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Ingalls family loads the wagon and heads west to build a new home on the open prairie. A beloved classic of homesteading, family, and the hard, hopeful work of the American frontier.
by Willa Cather
Two French missionary priests build the Church across the vast deserts of the American Southwest, among Native and Hispanic peoples. A luminous Catholic classic about faith, friendship, and a lifetime of quiet service.
by Charles Dickens
Dickens's masterpiece of the Revolution, moving from the Reign of Terror to one of the greatest acts of self-sacrifice in all of literature. A natural companion to The Scarlet Pimpernel and a standard high-school classic on the Cardinal Newman Society list.
by Stephen Crane
A young Union soldier marches off dreaming of glory, then flees in terror from his first battle — and must wrestle with shame, fear, and what courage really means. A short, vivid American classic on the Cardinal Newman Society reading list.
by Jane Austen
Sharp, funny, and wise, Austen's beloved novel follows quick-witted Elizabeth Bennet and the proud Mr. Darcy as they misjudge each other and slowly learn better. A perennial high-school classic on the Cardinal Newman Society list.