13162d

WiSe 13/14: Global Concepts

Margit Pernau

Additional information / Pre-requisites

The first session will take place on November 7th. We will make up the missed sessions in a block seminar, which will be scheduled with the students' input.

Comments

In the past, global history and conceptual history (i.e. the investigation of the transformation of the meaning and use of linguistic concepts over time) have developed separately, but both can profit from a combined approach. By approaching global history, conceptual historians are able to overcome their methodological focus on single languages and instead look at conceptual transfers between nations and languages. Global historians, on the other hand, can gain if they pay greater levels of attention to the ways in which world-views are created and transported in and through language. This is both the case for the languages of the primary sources as well as language as a tool of communication among global historians. This seminar of essays seeks to familiarize the students with several aspects of conceptual history and its relationship with global history. In a first part, "classical texts" from conceptual history will be read, followed in a second part by the criticisms which have been voiced from the proponents of intellectual history and discourse analysis. In a third part, current approaches to linking conceptual history and global history will be discussed. close