070041 UE Working Skills in Global History - Connections between Eastern Europe and Africa after 1945 (2023W)

The course has a twofold goal. First, the course introduces students to working skills relevant to, but not limited to, global history. These working skills include defining a research question, identifying and citing relevant literature, identifying and developing an argument, and composing a title and abstract of a paper. Furthermore, the course will familiarize students with doing research on a historical topic, working with different kinds of text and presenting their findings orally and in a term paper as well as providing feedback to their peers.
The course’s second goal is to examine Eastern Europe and Africa and their interconnectedness in the global Cold War. The course will investigate different aspects of socialist internationalism and use this topic as a case study for working skills. During the first part of the semester, the course will discuss socialist internationalism between Eastern Europe and the postcolonial world based on the reading materials available on Moodle. The second part of the semester will focus on developing student-led projects. The course will offer a list of topics that students can choose and employ their working skills on. After the individual and group research period that will be class-free, there will be a mock conference where students will present their findings and provide feedback to others. The projects will form the basis for term papers to be submitted at the end of the semester.