070324 UE Working Skills in Global History (2022S)

This course offers an introduction to key approaches and debates in global history. With a focus on new geographies (beyond Eurocentrism), new scales of analysis (beyond the nation-state) and new actors (such as women’s and gender histories), the course will investigate the potentials of global history and ask which particular working skills are needed to achieve such a shift in perspective. Given that students come to this course from a variety of academic and personal backgrounds, the aim of the course is to establish a common ground for the study of global history.

More specifically, the course introduces students to a number of working skills, such as defining a research question, identifying relevant secondary literature, locating and using primary sources, developing an argument and presenting findings orally and in the form of a final paper. For this purpose, the course will study late colonial, socialist and postcolonial global orders, with an emphasis on debates around access and participation. This is based on a rich and exciting recent literature in global history, unearthing for instance histories of women’s internationalism, global peace movements, anticolonial and postcolonial activism.

After an introductory session at the beginning of the semester, this course will be taught in two block sessions in May. The first set of sessions (13-14 May) will be based on reading material available on moodle. It will introduce key debates and working skills in global history. The second set of sessions (20-21 May) will feature the research of students employing the working skills that are at the centre of this course. Based on questions provided in the first session and on individual/group research between March and May, this part will be organized as a student-led research workshop on the theme of ‘New Histories of Internationalism and Global Orders’.