070261 KU Practice of Scientific Communication (2017S)

Praxis der wissenschaftlichen Kommuninkation (MA Globalgeschichte) – 20th century Revolutions in global perspective

The general topic for this course about ‘Praxis der wiss. Komunikation’ in Global History will be revolutions in the 20th century. Taking the 100th anniversary of 1917 as a starting point, this class will familiarize students with the debates about and different historiographical approaches to revolutions. Special emphasis will be placed on more recent interpretations which analyse revolutions less as ‘national’ events and more in terms of their global embeddedness, the circulation of ideas, persons, commodities, practices, etc., as well as in view of the connection between locations. The course will cover the grand revolutions of the 20th Century, such as the October Revolution, but also less known transformation projects in the periphery. The individual revolutions will be contextualised through broader transnational ‘cycles of revolution’, meaning interconnected clusters of revolutions taking place at different world regions at the same time (1917, 1945, 1968, 1979, 1989, etc.).

The idea of the course is to provide students with basic working skills needed for the research of a historical topic in a global framework. To this end, the course syllabus will offer participants the introduction into basic working skills and concrete research steps in global approach to historical topics, such as: search and critical assessment of secondary sources, ability to draft an abstract and bibliography for a research paper, understanding conference calls, wording of a conference paper proposal and an academic short CV, strategies and techniques for the writing process, feedback and editing of texts, presenting in a conference setting, etc. This class will pay special attention to understanding one of the major media of scientific communication: conferences. The numerous conferences announced for this year about revolutions will be analysed: their commonalities and differences will be highlighted as well as the dynamics of conferences analysed.