Graduate Level Courses

This is the second required course in for the MA in Global, International, and Comparative History and is open only to students enrolled in this program. This is a methods and research seminar for first-year MA students. Students will explore how historians frame their research questions, analyze primary sources, and place their work into conversation with other historians. Over the course of the semester, students will identify a research project that will form the basis of their capstone paper in their second year. Course assignments include weekly reflection papers and a final prospectus. For the first five weeks, students will read and discuss common texts. The remainder of the semester will be devoted to identifying and exploring relevant primary sources, analyzing a body of historiography around those sources, and reading and critiquing each other’s emerging work.

Why are we currently witnessing such intense political conflicts over history, over who gets to tell the national story and what that story should be? The specific topics may vary, depending on national contexts: In the U.S., these “history wars” have come in the form of escalating fights over the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” Confederate symbols and monuments, and racism as a topic in high school curricula. In the UK, Belgium, and other parts of Western Europe, the conflict has focused on the legacies of the colonial past and the present-day responsibilities of the former colonizers. Meanwhile, in Germany – and just when the German attempts to grapple with the Nazi crimes and integrate them in the nation’s collective imaginary are being lauded as a role model in the U.S. – a new fight over Holocaust history and memorialization has broken out, perhaps questioning the idea that there is something to be learned from the Germans. Everywhere, the legacies of racism, slavery, colonialism, and imperialism are being hotly contested. In this seminar, we examine the current politics of history: These conflicts over the past, over the stories we tell about it and the way we teach it, that have been catapulted to the top of the political agenda. We compare them to previous “history wars” in past decades and ask why they are escalating right at this moment; we explore their transnational character; and we will reflect on what the stakes are in these fights, why they matter, how they are part of a much larger struggle over who gets to define national identity and the way that either stabilizes or questions the status quo and the existing political, social, and cultural order across the “West.”

The idea that liberal democracy is experiencing a severe crisis currently dominates much of the political, academic, and broader media discourses. Brexit in Great Britain, the election of Donald Trump in the United States, the success of the AfD in Germany and similar far-right parties all over Western Europe, and the rise of “populists” in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and elsewhere – they all seem to indicate strong authoritarian leanings amongst the broader electorate in the “West” and a dangerous amount of skepticism towards the foundations of liberal democracy. What does the historical perspective contribute to a better understanding of our current predicament? We start by analyzing the diagnoses presented by politicians and journalists, political scientists as well as social and political psychologists and examine how they have interpreted the “crisis.” Next, we look at previous moments in recent history when democracy seemed, or was perceived to be, in trouble – in the period between the World Wars, for instance, and in particular after the Global Depression; or in the 1970s, when a series of economic “shocks” and powerful protest movements seemed to conspire to make democracies “ungovernable” – and reflect on the lessons that can (or should not) be drawn from this history. Finally, we explore the origins of the current “crisis,” focusing on possible longer- and medium-term causes such as the global financial / economic crisis of 2008/9, the dramatic demographic and cultural changes that most of the affected societies are undergoing, or the role of globalization.

This course will introduce students to landmark works of theoretical and historiographical import conceived in and written from the “Global South”- areas of the world colonized by Europe, whose postcolonial histories continue to bear the imprint of colonial marginalization and exploitation. We will read in a contrapuntal way, juxtaposing works from different areas and even eras, in order to better understand both theoretical production from (post)colonial spaces and to examine whether the term “Global South” has analytical meaning and may be defined coherently. Readings will be organized along the following topics: plantations and cities in the new world; the structure of colonial power; violence and rebellion; (post)colonial culture; the nation after colonialism; identity, alterity and subalternity; other feminisms. Although readings are not yet finalized, theorists we will read may include: B.R. Ambedkar, Shahid Amin, Kwame Appiah, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Bama, Homi Bhabha, Gautam Bhadra, Euclides da Cunha, Ochy Curiel, Ganesh Devy, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Frantz Fanon, Florestan Fernandes, Angela Figuereido, Gilberto Freyre, Luis González y González, Gopal Guru, Ranajit Guha, K Lalitha, Maria Lugones, Albert Memmi, Rigoberta Menchú, Fernando Ortiz, Urmila Pawar, Aníbal Quijano, Angel Rama, Sharmila Rege, Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Rani Sivasankara Sarma, Edward Said, Lamin Sanneh, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Susie Tharu, among others. Readings will be provided in translation. However, readers who have access to the texts in the original language are strongly encouraged to read them in the original. MA students should check with the professor to make sure the course fits their needs.

The specter of World War II continues to haunt Asia and influence national identities and diplomatic relations to this day. In this course, we will start with the historical context of World War II in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, and Russia’s Far East. Then, we will study how the war has been subsequently depicted and how its historiography has developed in relation to sociopolitical vicissitudes from the Cold War to present.

The total military and moral defeat of Hitler’s Empire in 1945 left Germany militarily and morally defeated. The two German states that were founded in 1949 – the capitalist liberal-democratic Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the Socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) – were built on the ruins of a genocidal dictatorship. This graduate seminar will examine how the two states negotiated their common past and constructed competing political and social orders in an era of Cold War bipolarity. After surveying the general trajectories of both states from the late 1940s until the 1980s, we will examine German-German history thematically to tease out comparisons and contrasts between both societies. The themes covered include, but are not limited to, experiences with Soviet and U.S. occupation; political leadership in East and West; competing memories of war and the founding myths of anti-fascism and anti-communism; the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall; negotiating diversity and difference in the wake of genocide; popular culture and consumption; gender and sexuality; the environmental history of both German states; surveillance regimes in East and West; protest movements and political opposition; and overcoming the ‘wall in the heads’ after unification. Students will gain a thorough understanding of West German history beyond the redemptive tale of a smooth transition to liberal-democracy after ‘zero hour’ and insights into how to evaluate the ‘second German dictatorship’. Throughout the semester we will pay special attention to the manifold and resilient entanglements between both states across the Cold War divide. While providing an in-depth look at a key chapter in German history, divided Germany will thus also serve as a case study for thinking about comparisons, transfers, and linkages ‘across the blocs’ more generally. Course Goals As a graduate seminar, the class aims to combine empirical reconstructions about a wide range of topics with methodological and conceptual discussions that should benefit you in your future study and research. As part of our weekly seminar we will discuss and practice how to evaluate and contextualize a broad range of primary sources. In addition, we will explore themes such as transnational – or rather trans-bloc – and comparative history writing, and probe the usefulness of categories such as gender, memory, generation, class, and ethnicity as tools with which to interpret the histories of both German states after 1945. While the course is focused on the two Germanies, approaching the subject from different historiographical perspectives will enable you to engage critically with some of the broader concepts used to study postwar Europe as a whole. You will be expected to present your arguments clearly in class presentations and in written form and to carry out and present original research. This will help you to develop your analytical abilities, your writing skills and your research and presentation skills. By the end of the semester you should be able to interpret and analyze German division through different conceptual lenses and to speak and write confidently about the comparisons, contrasts, and entanglements between the FRG and GDR.

The British Empire was famously described by contemporaries as ‘the empire on which the sun never sets’. At its height, in the early twentieth century, Great Britain’s global imperial project had established its hegemony over 25% of the world’s landmass and 20% of the world’s population. By the end of the Second World War Britain had lost its global superpower status. This course charts the rise and fall of the British Empire, from the ‘Scramble for Africa’ over the ‘long’ nineteenth century to the loss of India (the ‘Jewel in the Crown’) in the post-war era of decolonization. Exploring themes such as civilisation, culture, power, race, resistance, and violence, the course will interrogate the inequalities of British imperial experience, from the white dominions of Australia, Canada, and Ireland to the settler colonies of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Engaging with a wide-range of historiographical debates – from official ‘British World’ histories to the postcolonial approaches of the ‘new imperial’ history – students will evaluate the historical, cultural, and societal legacies of the Empire in post-Brexit Britain.

This seminar explores the Cuban war for independence of 1895-98, the Mexican revolution of 1910, El Salvador’s risings of 1932, Guatemala in the 1950s, Cuba in 1959, Central America in the 1980s, and Chiapas in 1994–all seen in the context of U.S. power. The goal is to understand the roots, gains, and limits of revolutionary risings, the responses and consequences for established powers, local and global, and the relevance of past conflicts to migrations challenges, historical and contemporary. Students will write four independent analytical essays based on our shared work and discussions.

This seminar explores the changes in the Ottoman economy from the early nineteenth century to the era of the First World War. It examines developments in agriculture and industry, the Ottoman economy’s links to global capitalism, and the transformation of work and workers’ life.

This course examines recent scholarship in Russian history grounded in close analysis of images and visual texts, such as religious icons, maps, paintings, folk art, advertising, photography, film, architecture, and public spectacle. Specifically, it investigates the role of visual experience and seeing in relation to imperial Russian and Soviet state power, and in shaping modern understandings of self. The course also explores various approaches to studying ‘the visual’ pioneered by anthropologists, sociologists, art historians, and media theorists. This will help our seminar to develop a set of conceptual tools for analyzing images during the semester, while considering the status of different types of visual sources for historical research. Although focused on twentieth-century image-making, the course also touches on Russia’s medieval and early modern histories. Its methodological remit is global in scope.

This course will trace the history of the United States from the tumultuous 1960s to the present. It will deal with a wide range of topics including the decline of the liberal/New Deal order, the growth, expansion, and crisis of neo-liberalism, emerging “culture wars,” struggles for racial and gender justice, worker rights, inequality, and deepening political division/polarization.

Today the study of Civil War and abolition in the U.S. is a transnational field populated by a diverse array of scholars who have enlivened the field by asking new questions, examining new sources, and above all, by insisting that the study of the war cannot be separated from studies of state-making, state-breaking, and abolition, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. In this graduate reading seminar, we will take the pulse of this busy, comparative, transnational field.

The seminar will introduce central concepts and frameworks in historiographies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and explore developing trends in historical studies of the region. Assigned primary and secondary readings will highlight the historian’s handling of methodological tools, documentary sources, units of analysis, and narrative structures.

HIST 5001 – History Core Colloquium – Katherine Benton-Cohen
HIST 5004 – MAGIC Core Colloq – Ananya Chakravarti
HIST 5501 – LA Origins & Transformations – John Tutino
HIST 5501 – LA Origins & Transformations – Erick Langer
HIST 6128 – The 90s: Birth of the Present – Thomas Zimmer
HIST 6129 – Env Hist: Climate & Conflict – John McNeill
HIST 6310 – Topics in Modern Korean Hist – Christine J Kim
HIST 6315 – ChineseHistory:ChinesePolitics – Denise Ho
HIST 6400 – Monarchy & Modernity – James Shedel
HIST 6403 – Magic: A Historian’s Problem – David Collins
HIST 6509 – Latinx Social Movements – Mireya Loza
HIST 6602 – Social Cultrl Hist ME & N Afr – Osama Abi-Mershed
HIST 6611 – Feminist Theory and Methods – Nefertiti Takla
HIST 6706 – Fascism, Communism, and War – Michael David-Fox
HIST 6709 – Russia as an Empire 1550-1950 – Gregory Afinogenov
HIST 6804 – Readings in African-Amer Hist – Maurice Jackson
HIST 6814 – Workers & American Capitalism – Leon Fink
HIST 6815 – Conservatism and the Far Right – Thomas Zimmer

HIST 5005 – Global & International History – Alison Games
HIST 6117 – Nationalism – Aviel Roshwald
HIST 6124 – Ways of Knowing – Gregory Afinogenov
HIST 6125 – Emotions/Hist in the Age of AI – Ananya Chakravarti
HIST 6126 – Liberal Democracy in Crisis – Thomas Zimmer
HIST 6127 – History of the 21st Century – Thomas Zimmer
HIST 6308 – China: Empire, Nation, Ethnicity – James Millward
HIST 6314 – Manchuria and Modern East Asia – Emily Matson
HIST 6409 – Empires at War 1911–1923 – James Shedel
HIST 6506 – Ecology/Power/Culture/Mexico – John Tutino
HIST 6608 – Approaching Ottoman History – Gabor Agoston
HIST 6710 – Varieties of Dissent in Eastern Europe – Christopher Stolarski
HIST 6800 – US as World Power – Toshihiro Higuchi
HIST 6812 – Great Books in US History? – Michael Kazin
HIST 6813 – Race & Inequality Modern America – Mike Amezcua

HIST 5001 – History Core Colloquium – Katherine Benton-Cohen
HIST 5004 – MAGIC Core Colloquium – James Millward
HIST 5501 – LA Origins & Transformations – John Tutino
HIST 5501 – LA Origins & Transformations – Erick Langer
HIST 6002 – Thinking About Archives – Adam Rothman
HIST 6104 – Pacific Empires – Toshihiro Higuchi
HIST 6105 – Environmental History – Timothy Newfield & Dagomar Degroot
HIST 6120 – State, Society and Self – Ananya Chakravarti
HIST 6121 – Why We Fight Over the Past – Thomas Zimmer
HIST 6123 – Asia in DC – Christine J Kim
HIST 6313 – Life and Legacy of Mao Zedong – Emily Matson
HIST 6400 – Monarchy & Modernity – James Shedel
HIST 6404 – Material Culture – Susan Pinkard
HIST 6601 – Ottoman 1st WW and Aftermath – Mustafa Aksakal
HIST 6602 – Social Cultrl Hist ME & N Afr – Osama Abi-Mershed
HIST 6704 – Approaches to Rus/Soviet Hist – Michael David-Fox
HIST 6805 – Slavery Civil War Emancipation – Chandra Manning