13352

WiSe 12/13: Theories of Global History

Margrit Pernau

Comments

Introduction to Theories and Controversies in Global History This seminar will provide an introduction to the current debates in global history. National history, which for the last two centuries provided the obvious frame of reference for any historian, is giving way to an emphasis on movements (by actors, goods and ideas) across boundaries. Equally important is the investigation of the boundaries themselves, no longer as given, but as the result of a creation process. Movement and its prevention, globalization and localization, therefore have to be viewed together. In a first step we will read and discuss a number of foundational texts on global history, new imperial and entangled history, transnational history and histoire croisée. The second step will focus on possible research topics the students are personally interested in exploring, and explore how these and other texts can help them structure their research. close

Suggested reading

Bayly, Christopher A. The Birth of the Modern World 1780-1914. Global Connections and Comparisons, The Blackwell History of the World. Malden: Blackwell Pub., 2004.
Burton, Antoinette. "Who Needs the Nation? Interrogating 'British' History." Journal of Historical Sociology 10 (1997): 227-48.
Conrad, Sebastian, and Dominic Sachsenmaier. Competing Visions of World Order. Global Moments and Movements 1880s-1930s, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. New York: Palgrave, 2007.
Cooper, Frederick , and Ann Laura Stoler, eds. Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Berkeley, 1997.
Freitag, Ulrike, and Achim von Oppen, eds. Translocality. The Study of Globalising Processes from a Southern Perspective. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
Stuchtey, Benedikt , and Eckhardt Fuchs, eds. Writing World History, 1800-2000. Oxford: GHIL/ Oxford University Press, 2003.
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. "Connected Histories. Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia." Modern Asian Studies 31 (1997): 735-62.
Werner, Michael, and Bénédicte Zimmermann. "Beyond Comparison. Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity." History and Theory 45 (2006): 30-50. close