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Course Syllabus

Postgraduate course 2023/2024

Seminar "Global History of Empires"

Type: Elective course
Area of studies: Postgraduate Studies
Delivered by: Department of History
When: 2 year, 1 semester
Mode of studies: offline
Open to: students of one campus
Instructors: Tatiana Y. Borisova
Language: English
ECTS credits: 2
Contact hours: 36

Course Syllabus

Full Syllabus

Abstract

The shift in historiography: from studies of nationalism and critical theories of nationalism to theorizing empires and historical studies of diversity; approaches to historic empires (empires as actors of the global order, continental and colonial empires, imperial sovereignty and politics; modernizing empires and imperial transformations); a dialogue between post-colonial studies and new imperial history; key questions of new imperial histories: imperial sovereignty and citizenship; social history and agency in the context of diversity; political imaginaries of imperial and post-imperial order; production of knowledge and difference in the imperial context; global and entangled histories of imperial formations.
Learning Objectives

Learning Objectives

  • The aim of this course is to familiarize with current historical writings and reflections on empire. The ultimate thrust of the discussion is to scrutinize the epistemic revolution whereby the narrative of modern history previously written through the prism of national history has been recast to accommodate the fact of persistence of “imperial formations,” both in the sphere of international and global politics and in the area of management of diversity. The scope of the course mainly lies in the Modern history period, the geographic coverage is not universal, the main idea is to look at methodological debates and approaches. Global history has recently been constituted as a distinctive field of its own. Yet, in its thrust of overcoming the limitations of national history canon the global history has many resemblances with the field of imperial history. After all, empires were historic regimes that fostered connections and transfers in their often violent histories. At the same time, empires were habitually thought of by historians as autarkic and self-sufficient phenomena that allowed little space for cross-influence and entanglement. Following the optics of global history this course will be an attempt to explore the historic differences, comparisons and entanglements of empires in modern history.
  • ability to apply new approaches that explore diversity and management of diversity in the imperial settings
  • ability to apply new approaches that explore diversity and management of diversity in the imperial settings
  • - ability to situate the historical experience of a given historical empire in the comparative and global context.
  • ability to situate the historical experience of a given historical empire in the comparative and global context.
Expected Learning Outcomes

Expected Learning Outcomes

  • - understanding the new analytical category of empire and how it is used to analyze historical experience of the 18-20 centuries; - ability to apply new approaches that explore diversity and management of diversity in the imperial settings; - ability to situate the historical experience of a given historical empire in the comparative and global context.
  • ability to apply new approaches that explore diversity and management of diversity in the imperial settings
  • ability to situate the historical experience of a given historical empire in the comparative and global context
  • understanding the new analytical category of empire and how it is used to analyze historical experience of the 18-20 centuries
Course Contents

Course Contents

  • Global history and positionality. The challenge of post-colonial perspective.
  • Introduction. Requirements and the structure of the course. The historiographic shift from history of nationalism and critical theories of nationalism to theorizing empires and historical studies of diversity
  • What is new imperial history?
  • The temporal and spatial framing in the new approaches to empire and imperial formations.
  • The problem of ideological justification of imperial rule and imperial universalism. Empire and modernity in languages of rationalization of the Russian Empire of the 19th century
  • Back to social history, forward to post-colonial analysis
  • Imperial subjecthood and citizenship
  • The great war and empire
  • Violence and genocide at the end of empire
  • Transformations of empires in the 20th century.
  • Concluding discussion. Multiple legacies of empire in the modern world.
Assessment Elements

Assessment Elements

  • non-blocking Exam: written assignment, review of literature and analysis of the debate
    Written assignment, review of literature and analysis of the debate on a given theme in studies of imperial historical experience. The review should include the analysis of the historiographic context, the historiographic tradition (for instance, intellectual history, social history, post-colonial studies) in which the texts is written, the main arguments and sources used in the research as well as a clear map of discussion and argued positions. The written assignment should be 15-20 pages long and will constitute 60% of the final grade. For every day the assignment is late one point is taken from the grade.
  • non-blocking In-class Participation
    Students are required to read the mandatory texts, formulate at least three questions to the text, prepare to answer the question of the thesis/argument of the author, the historiographic tradition within which the argument is made and treatment of sources that allows the author to put forth the argument.
Interim Assessment

Interim Assessment

  • 2023/2024 1st semester
    0.6 * Exam: written assignment, review of literature and analysis of the debate + 0.4 * In-class Participation
Bibliography

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

  • Benton, L. (2005). Benedikt Stuchtey and Eckhardt Fuchs, editors. Writing World History 1800-2000. (Studies in the German Historical Institute.) New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. Pp. viii, 367. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.4A99271D
  • Bonin Hubert. (2012). Howe Stephen (dir.), The New Imperial Histories Reader, collection «Routledge Readers in History », 2010. Outre-Mers, (374–375), 330. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsper&AN=edsper.outre.1631.0438.2012.num.99.374.4938.t15.0330.0000.2
  • Burbank, J. (2015). Eurasian Sovereignty: The Case of Kazan. Problems of Post-Communism, 62(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2015.1002326
  • 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
  • GERASIMOV, I. (2017). The Great Imperial Revolution. Ab Imperio, (2), 21–44. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2017.0029
  • Gerasimov, I. (2018). Plebeian Modernity : Social Practices, Illegality, and the Urban Poor in Russia, 1906-1916. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1635990
  • GERASIMOV, I., GLEBOV, S., & MOGILNER, M. (2013). The Postimperial Meets the Postcolonial: Russian Historical Experience and the Postcolonial Moment. Ab Imperio, (2), 97–135. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2013.0058
  • Gerasimov, I., Glebov, S., Kusber, J., Mogilner, M., & Semyonov, A. (2010). Novaia imperskaia istoriia i vyzovy imperii. Ab Imperio, (1), 19–52. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=30h&AN=52945212
  • Gerasimov, I., Kusber, J., & Semyonov, A. (2009). Empire Speaks Out : Languages of Rationalization and Self-description in the Russian Empire. Leiden: Brill. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=351006
  • GLEBOV, S. (2017). BETWEEN FOREIGNERS AND SUBJECTS: Imperial Subjecthood, Governance, and the Chinese in the Russian Far East, 1860s-880s. Ab Imperio, (1), 86–130. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2017.0005
  • Judson, P. M. (2017). “Where our commonality is necessary…”: Rethinking the End of the Habsburg Monarchy. Austrian History Yearbook, 48, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0067237816000527
  • KHOURY, D. R., & GLEBOV, S. (2017). Citizenship, Subjecthood, and Difference in the Late Ottoman and Russian Empires. Ab Imperio, (1), 45–58. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2017.0003
  • Kumar, K. (2017). Visions of Empire : How Five Imperial Regimes Shaped the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1431829
  • Mogilner, M. (2007). Russian Physical Anthropology in Search of “Imperial Race”: Liberalism and Modern Scientific Imagination in the Imperial Situation. Ab Imperio, (1), 191–223. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2007.0088
  • Pedersen, S. (2015). The Guardians : The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Vol. First edition). Oxford: OUP Oxford. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=986840
  • SEMYONOV, A. (2017). How Five Empires Shaped the World and How This Process Shaped Those Empires. Ab Imperio, 18(4), 27–51. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=30h&AN=128449757
  • Suny, R. G. (2015). ’They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else’ : A History of the Armenian Genocide. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=944463
  • Weitz, E. D., & Bartov, O. (2013). Shatterzone of Empires : Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=523411
  • Williams, P., & Chrisman, L. (2013). Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory : A Reader. London: Routledge. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1052363

Recommended Additional Bibliography

  • Semyonov, A., & Judson, P. (2019). Finding Empire behind Multinationality in the Habsburg Case: Interview with Pieter Judson. Ab Imperio, (1), 25–43. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2019.0000

Authors

  • SEMENOV ALEKSANDR MIKHAYLOVICH
  • BORISOVA Tatiana Iurevna
  • LYUBAVINA SVETLANA VYACHESLAVOVNA