Dr. Eicher Holding 'Entertaining and Unexpected' Lecture Series on Modern Western Civilization

Dr. John Eicher, associate professor of history at Penn State Altoona and current US National Endowment for Humanities Fellow, will present an eight-part lecture series titled "Modern Western Civilization (1500-present) From Dawn to Decadence to Disillusionment" beginning Sept. 13 at the Hollidaysburg Public Library.

This is a lecture series that covers all of what historians refer to as the Modern Era - the Reformation and the Renaissance in the 1500s up until the present. The series is meant for a general audience hitting the major important aspects of different sections of this era: the enlightenment, industrialization, imperialism and the World Wars. Each lecture will be an hour.

There is a coherent plot over the past 500 years and often times the story of Western Civilization is usually taught as a story of progression.

The purpose of the lecture series is to provide an entertaining and unexpected perspective on the last 500 years that doesn't support any particular political outlook.

"It's my feeling - and I think a general feeling in society - that we might have lost our way on that project," Eicher said.

According to Eicher, we have reached an era where we look back and we think it seems like we were promised a different or better world than we got.

The goal of the lecture series is not so much as to support some old story or try to advance a political take on it but to really look at the deep structures that we often don't pay attention to. They have made the world we live in.

"I present the series as politics being important but not the biggest story," Eicher said. "The big story is the way we have rearranged our society with bureaucracies as the backbone."

"Bureaucracies in politics, bureaucracies in the military, bureaucracies in business - it sounds kind of dry," Eicher said. "But it can be very exciting, because you realize just how many areas of life these bureaucracies have control over.

"It is a hard sell, I know because bureaucracy is we think boring but when you start thinking about it, pretty much every aspect of your life is managed in some way by bureaucracy."

According to Eicher, when you start to notice all of the little strings that tie you to some office, either government or business, you start to really see this is really a big part of our lives. It controls a huge part of our life and we often don't notice it.

"I think that the essential takeaway point that I want to make is that the reality of our society is shaped less by politics and more by a more unpolitical bureaucratic system that we see in government as well as in business," Eicher said.

He continued saying that it is important because it is a different story than what we hear normally.

"It is important because I think as a society we feel like we want to change something or everything but we really don't know how to do it or what questions to ask or where to go and our political leaders seem to have let us down and they don't seem to have any new good ideas," Eicher said. "You would think you would have constant new breakthrough things and the world would just keep getting better. We just seem to be recycling everything from politics to pop culture. I don't think the solution to getting out of this is going to be provided by our politicians. It is going to come from us. It is going to come from the people that I think that we have to have new ways of thinking about the world."

Eicher said that the audience for this is anyone who has completed high school. All that is needed is a high school level of understanding about history in the world and also there will be wars.

"I will tell stories and give examples that will make you excited and wonder how amazing and weird history is," Eicher said.