070224 VO Theories and Methods of Global History (2021W)

The course explores different theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the Cold War period fruitful for the field of global history. With a focus on Eastern Europe and particularly socialist Yugoslavia, the course will involve wider implications relevant for global history. Taking the dynamic period of the Cold War as a case study, students will actively engage with the question of scale in history: across national and regional levels, to international, transnational, transregional, and global histories. The class dynamics will be based on the combination of theoretical and conceptual contributions with concrete case studies that illustrate them. The course draws on contributions from political, economic, social and cultural history.
Students will be familiarized with the Cold War history beyond the binary narrative of superpower rivalry by exploring the histories of socialist globalization, international networks and alliances, contact zones, and cultural transfers and entanglements. To foster understanding of the complex theoretical content, socialist Yugoslavia is taken as the main case study that will be placed in these various contexts and approached from the perspective of different scales.