History

This course offers an introduction to the theories and methods of history as a field of knowledge. Our general area of enquiry for this course is international history in the 20th century. Students take up independent research projects related to some aspect of this field. The course begins with an analysis of history as a discipline by exploring how historians operate; the assumptions they work from; their methods and sources; as well as their disagreements. The questions considered in this section include: what distinguishes history from the social sciences; historical sources, methods, organization, and framing; the assumptions historians make their ability to infer causation; and how the recent rise of transnational and global history challenges (and complements) more traditional approaches to international history.

Then methodology, and particularly to the use of archival sources are reviewed. Students learn to identify sources and work with archival catalogues and hone their skills of analysis. The questions considered in this section include: methods use to collect and interpret different forms of historical evidence? what can our sources tell us about historical causation? how do we incorporate different types of sources, such as oral history and memoirs, into our analysis? how do we critically evaluate our sources, and interpret silences and omissions? how do we avoid drowning in the seas of evidence that can spill out from the archive?

Throughout the course, students pursue an independent research project on a chosen subject within the field of international history which reflects the process of devising and executing a piece of historical research. Students select a topic, devise a research question, assess historiographical literature, identify and select relevant sources, dig into the sources, managing notes, and put their analysis to paper.

Through guided reading of some of the masterpieces of modern Chinese literature, this course examines the history of modern Chinese literature and analyzes literary works within the framework of literary history.

Over thirty years after German reunification, this course revisits the period in which two German states existed, examining the fraught and complicated, but nonetheless deeply symbiotic, relationship they had with each other. How did two German states come into being in the first place? How did they develop, both separately and in parallel, and how did they determine each other’s history? Some of the debates the course engages with include: to what extent did the Federal Republic inherit the political, social, economic, and cultural mantle of Hitler’s Third Reich? Was there any choice but to reintegrate former Nazis into West German public life? Was the GDR a totalitarian state, exercising complete control over its citizens’ lives? Did the Berlin Wall have any advantages? How were immigrants and foreigners treated in the two German states? Finally, from the vantage point of the 2020s, the course considers whether one can now speak of a unified German nation, in which the historical divisions between east and west have been overcome.