070255 LK Lektürekurs - Globalgeschichte (2016W)

This course will confront students with original texts and other source materials such as maps and convey skills and certain approaches necessary to dealing with such in the discipline of global history. A focus thereby is put on creating awareness for different kinds of cultural traditions and how to approach materials hailing from a different background than the own. Students will learn to handle the materials accordingly. The South China Sea region provides a practical case study and framework for the course.

A number of selected texts and original documents will be read and discussed in the course. All of these are of relevance within the South China Sea case. A good mixture between texts from different cultural traditions, European and Asian maps as well as international legal documents will serve as basis for discussion and elaboration on working skills and possible pitfalls in dealing with such materials.
Texts will be provided online (Moodle) and be made available step by step. The texts presented will be following the timeline starting from the early 15th century up to this day.
Reading and working with the materials is the major focus of this course. Thereby the students will be made aware of intrinsic differences between source materials hailing from different cultural regions (say Europe and Eastern Asia) and how they tackle concepts such as sovereignty. Moreover it will be discussed how also these regional approaches are differentiated within themselves. (e.g. different territorial claims by China and Vietnam).
Length of the texts will vary according to difficulty level and type of the respective materials.