070319 SE Seminar on History - Publics under Threat (2025S)

Publics and their boundaries play a central role in discussions surrounding digital communication, freedom of expression, and the future of democracy. In the context of the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of populism, publics have been thrust into the spotlight, particularly as they relate to fake news, filter bubbles, and manipulated flows of information.

However, even though the topic of the boundaries and limits of publics is increasingly relevant to power and geopolitics, the tension between the expansion and the fragmentation of publics is seldom explicitly examined from a global perspective, . In addition, there remain fundamental social questions as to who is part of publics. Who can participate? And who remains an outsider? Publics seem ever more accessible on the one hand, yet fragmented and exclusionary on the other. Beyond these global and social questions, in a moment when publics are under threat, it pays to throw a historical perspective on the matter: how have publics globalized in the past? And what were the limits and threats to the opening up of publics during the long twentieth century?

The seminar has three aims. Its first goal is to familiarize students with definitions and concepts of the public or publics in the plural. For this purpose it surveys theories of publics through in-depth readings. Secondly, it tackles the question how to study publics from a global perspective through empirical research rather than theory by introducing exemplary case studies. Finally it turns to the threats to publics and identifies research areas and topics in global history that could be explored to study them.

Beyond engaging with the required readings, students will develop their own research projects through writing abstracts and drafts, discussing them with their colleagues and presenting them in a workshop setting at the end of the semester.

The seminar addresses MA students of modern and contemporary history, of global history, of contemporary history and media, as well as of related disciplines such as communication science or sociology.