This seminar aims to provide students with a critical understanding of revolutions and popular uprisings in modern world history in order to help them grasp their importance in the making of states, societies and political forms/norms. To this end, the seminar will firstly overview of some selected revolutions in world history from the 17th century to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 by focusing on their historically specific domestic as well as global reasons and implications. Later, the rise and development of popular upheavals in different parts of the globe since 1989 will be problematized in an attempt to question their importance in contemporary world history.