070132 KU Globalgeschichtliche Theorien, Quellen und Methoden (2013S)

I. Description
II. Program and Required Reading

I.Description

Writing global history has been based on as many concepts, frameworks, interests, and perspectives, on as many types of sources, and as many methods as other branches of historical writing such as - for instance - national political history, cultural history, or local history. Some major concerns, however, have been different in conceptualizing and writing global history. There are a number of more or less distinct "schools" of global history, built on competing concepts and practices of how to do global historical writing, and defined by their implicit or explicit relations with other branches and concepts of writing history. Different global historians have drawn on different methods, materials, and writing strategies as they created their histories.

This course is aimed at supporting students to become practicing global historians themselves. It aims to make them conversant with the above issues and debates, help them develop and make explicit their self-positioning in the field, and, above all, help them translate their principal interests into practical research and writing strategies.

II. Program and Required Reading:

8 March
Introduction, program planning

15 March
"My global history": students' statements, instructor's statement, discussion
Discussion of:
Jerry H. Bentley, Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century Scholarship, American Historical Association, 2003.

22 March
Discussion of:
Fernando Coronil, Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories. In: Cultural Anthropology 11 (1996), 51-87.

12 April
"Doing global history": students' statements, instructor's statement, discussion
Discussion of:
Madeleine Herren, Martin Rüsch, Christiane Sibille, Transcultural History, Theories, Methods, Sources, Springer 2012, 44-84, 97-112.

19 April
Draft paper proposals due! (e-copy sent to all participants + paper copy handed in in class)
Discussion of:
Steven Feierman, African Histories and the Dissolution of World Histories. In: Robert H. Bates, V.Y. Mudimbe, Jean O’Barr (eds), Africa and the Disciplines: The Contributions of Research in Africa to the Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Chicago Press 1993, 167-212.

26 April
Group discussion of draft paper proposals

3 May
No class!

10 May
Alessandro Stanziani, Serfs, Slaves, or Wage Earners? The Legal Status of Labour in Russia from a Comparative Perspective, from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century. In: Journal of Global History 3 (2008) 2, 183 – 202.

17 May
Final paper propsals due! (e- and paper copy)
Discussion of:
Claire Midgley, Anti-slavery and the Roots of 'Imperial Feminism'. In: Claire Midgley (ed.), Gender and Imperialism, Manchester University Press, 161-179.

24 May
Discussion of work in progress
Discussion of:
Frederick Cooper, Decolonialization and African Society. The Labor Question in French and British Africa, Cambridge University Press, 361-386, 432-472.

31 May
Susan Zimmermann, The Long-term Trajectory of Antislavery in International Politics. From the expansion of the European international system to unequal international development, in: Marcel van der Linden (ed.), Humanitarian Intervention and Changing Labour Relations. The Long-term Consequences of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (= Studies in Global Social History, vol. 7) Leiden, Brill, 2011, 431-496.

7 June
Presentations and discussion

14 June
Presentations and discussion

21 June
Presentations and discussion

28 June
Presentations and discussion
Closing discussion