This class explores the history of modern architecture and urbanism from the late nineteenth century to the present. The course critically interrogates the idea of "modernity" as applied in a wide range of global contexts, from north to south and east to west. We will treat modernity as something that is contested, uncertain, and uneven, rather than as a triumphal evolution as it is sometimes depicted. Special attention will be paid to the relation of aesthetic and formal developments to historical forces such as capitalism, imperialism, industrialization, and globalization. The impact of modernity on practices and ideas of gender, domesticity, and the delineation of private and public spaces, will also be discussed.