Master
2022/2023
Global History: Introduction
Category 'Best Course for Career Development'
Category 'Best Course for Broadening Horizons and Diversity of Knowledge and Skills'
Category 'Best Course for New Knowledge and Skills'
Type:
Elective course (Global and Regional History)
Area of studies:
History
Delivered by:
Department of History
When:
1 year, 1 module
Mode of studies:
offline
Open to:
students of one campus
Master’s programme:
Global and Regional History
Language:
English
ECTS credits:
3
Contact hours:
40
Course Syllabus
Abstract
The course ‘Global History’ aims to introduce students to the complex dynamics of core transnational processes from the early 19th century to World War II. The discipline is devoted to a critical rethinking of modern history as a teleological journey from empires to nation-states whose pasts are confined to clearly delineated boundaries. The course focuses on the history of the interconnections and intertwining of various social, political, and cultural processes on a global scale, with particular emphasis on the diversity of regimes of imperial transformations, (de)colonizations, and postcolonial situations and contexts. Our goal is a critical examination of theories and approaches toward the analysis of transnational developments in the epoch. Looking beyond empires and nation-states, the course also seeks to shed light on alternative agencies of transformation, including global networks, organizations, and exchanges
Learning Objectives
- This course aims at familiarising the students with the main events of global history of the modern period (long nineteenth century). The course also aims at getting students acquainted with methodology of global and comparative history, its advantages, drawbacks, and perspectives.
Expected Learning Outcomes
- By the end of the course students will learn to solve problems in professional activity on the basis of analysis and synthesis, assess the need for resources and plan their use while solving problems in professional activity, find, evaluate and use information from various sources, which is necessary to solve scientific and professional problems.
- Students will also learn to critically evaluate and rethink the accumulated experience (one’s own and that of colleagues).
- Students will be able to reflect upon professional and social activities in the international environment, written and oral communication in a foreign language, master special literature in a foreign language, determine the novelty and relevance of professional tasks on the basis of the modern condition of historical science, formulate and solve professional problems using interdisciplinary approaches.
- Students analyze the premises of the crisis of the old regime, the consequences of the change, and the potential of the 'old' polities to adapt and change, facing the challenges of the global revolution
- Students recognize the change in the perception of time in the 19th century, as well as ambiguities and inconsistencies of this process
- Students determine the complexity of the nature of power, its capacity to 'produce' as well as to 'destroy', its different vectors and mediums
- Students examine the capacities of the 19th century political imagination and its limits. They analyze the avenues of the geographical visions nurtured in the imperial institutions and concieved by nationalist agents.
- Students formulate the main tendencies of globalization prompted by the technological advancements.
- Students compare the prospects of mobility and immobility in different regions, contexts, and political frameworks.
Course Contents
- What is global history?
- OLD REGIME AND ITS DEMISE
- TIME, SPEED, RHYTHM
- HEGEMONY, POWER, RULE
- TERRITORIALITY, IMPERIALISM, NATIONALISM
- TECHNOLOGY, GLOBALIZATION, GLOCALIZATION
- MOBILITY AND IMMOBILITY
Assessment Elements
- Presentation and questionsStudents’ in-class presentations should be based on one of the books/ articles from the syllabus. Presentation itself should be consice and its contents devoted to the author’s biography, career highlights, and her/his standing in the field. Main part of the presentations consists of 4-5 questions that student have prepared for the general discussion with the group that relate to the main arguments of the book/article. Student have to mediate the discussion. Power Point or .pdf presentations are recommended to be used to make it easier for the audience to stay engaged and involved during the talk. Time limit for the presentation and discussion is 30-40 minutes.
- Seminar discussionsSeminars are planned as weekly online discussions of assigned readings, which will complement the lectures and explore a given topic in in a more comprehensive way. The discussions will be based around the focus questions, provided to students to reflect upon in advance.
- EssayThe final assignment is a historiographical analytical essay. It is expected that in the essay the student will EITHER articulate how his or her own research may (or may not) be historiographically, methodologically, or intellectually situated within the context of global history, OR provide a discussion of one of the exam questions. A minimum of three works from the seminar additional reading list, and an unlimited amount of other literature relevant to the exposition of the student's argument, must be analyzed in the essay. The written assignment should be 15-20 pages long (line spacing -2, margins - 1 inch). Reference format is APA. For every day the assignment is late one point is taken from the grade.
Interim Assessment
- 2022/2023 1st module0.1 * Presentation and questions + 0.6 * Essay + 0.3 * Seminar discussions
Bibliography
Recommended Core Bibliography
- Burbank, J. (DE-588)141712732, (DE-576)164382186. (2010). Empires in world history : power and the politics of difference / Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper. Princeton, NJ [u.a.]: Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edswao&AN=edswao.321297032
- Conrad, S. (2016). What Is Global History? Princeton: Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1090930
- Foucault, M., Burchell, G., Senellart, M., Ewald, F., & Fontana, A. (2009). Security, Territory, Population : Lectures at the College De France, 1977 - 78. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=379853
- Hall, C., & Rose, S. O. (2006). At Home with the Empire : Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World. Cambridge University Press.
- Nelson, W. M., Hunt, L., & Desan, S. (2013). The French Revolution in Global Perspective. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=671401
- Sidney W. Mintz. (1986). Sweetness and Power : The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books.
- van Ittersum, M., & Jacobs, J. (2012). Are We All Global Historians Now? An Interview with David Armitage. Itinerario, 36(2), 7–28. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0165115312000551
- Weber, A., & Gommans, J. (2011). “You turn a page and then there is suddenly something on a turtle”. An Interview with Jürgen Osterhammel. Itinerario, 35(3), 7–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0165115312000034
- What is global history?, Conrad, S., 2016
- Zahra, T. (2014). Travel Agents on Trial: Policing Mobility in East Central Europe, 1889–1989*. Past & Present, 223(1), 161–193. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu002
Recommended Additional Bibliography
- Beckert, S., & Sachsenmaier, D. (2018). Global History, Globally : Research and Practice Around the World. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1710833
- Cañizares-Esguerra, J., & Seeman, E. R. (2018). The Atlantic in Global History : 1500-2000 (Vol. Second edition). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1588656
- Globalgeschichte: Eine Einführung, Conrad, S., 2013
- Jackson, M. (2018). A Global History of Medicine. Oxford, United Kingdom: OUP Oxford. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1668836
- Middell, M. (2019). The Practice of Global History : European Perspectives. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=2179170
- SEMYONOV, A. (2017). “Global History Is More Than the History of Globalization”: Interview with Sebastian Conrad. Ab Imperio, 1, 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2017.0002
- Writing history in the global era, Hunt, L., 2014