History

Starting from recent debates and problems like new nationalism, misogyny, political homophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism the course offers a historical inquiry into the construction and development of cultural differences marked through categories like gender, sexuality, class, race, and religion from the eighteenth century until the Holocaust. Through historical case studies, philosophy, and literature it looks at the way in which Western identity-discourse and its colonial subcode have formed dichotomies like self and other, black and white, the Orient and the West, male and female, worker and bourgeois, hetero- and homosexual, and how these differences became social inequalities. The course introduces gender as a category of historical analysis. Through a critical inquiry it reconstructs the paradoxes of a “dialectic of Enlightenment” (Adorno), that means the dark side behind its claim for reason, equality, brotherhood and freedom. The course traces and illustrates the ways in which the Enlightenment has provided a rationale to mark gendered, classed and racialized boundaries in science which, more often than not, resulted in inequalities. These inequalities became embedded in European society in such a way that the active, dominant subject came to be seen as white, male, and middle class. This discourse of dominance helped to carry out European colonialism and the imperial project. With the help of a literary analysis (Joseph Conrad HEART OF DARKNESS), the course introduces into the (critical) role literature can play within the dynamics of social change and cultural discourse. Furthermore, the course introduces into critical theories, like discourse analysis and the history of knowledge, postcolonial and gender/sexuality studies and studies on Orientalism. Thus, it examines the dynamic processes of the “history of sexualities”, their formation and contradictions, which emerged out of these processes. It reconstructs how masculinity and the image of man became a central trope of nationalism and colonialism. Last but not least, it asks how colonial and anti-Semitic discourse, stereotypes of the external Other (in the colonies) and stereotypes of an internal European Other (the Jews etc.) were intertwined and how we can better understand the Holocaust from a historical, multidirectional perspective.

This course examines thematically-organized topics, exploring global aspects of the human experience across time.

This course examines the historical background of the different migrant communities which have made up New Zealand society and their relationships with each other. It covers the different experiences and perspectives of iwi, English, Scots, Welsh and Irish migrants and those from Europe and Asia arriving before the 1980s, and of new migrants since that time.

The course explores the global history of three themes - goods, peoples, and ideas. Students interrogate the new forms of power which sought to reshape global connections in the period from c. 1450 and explore the ways in which polities and societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America engaged with and resisted the rise of European power and produced alternative imagined geographies, leading to the creation both of new connections and new forms of disconnection. The course also provides an opportunity to reflect critically on the writing of global history and to consider how to best make sense of the intersections of the local and the global in this period.

This course focuses on how collective action and social movements have sought to raise awareness and effect change in migration and identity issues. The course is designed to engage students in a multi-disciplinary, experiential research project on migration issues through a series of set themes related to collective action. It aims to better understand the forms of collective action on the on the issues of migration, based on the in-depth study of the Paris experience. It critically addresses concepts of integration, community, ethnicity, citizenship, asylum, and migrant rights by systematically putting them to the test through social and political mobilizations. As such, it will allow students to explore migrants’ diverse experiences as they interact with societies, culture, and institutions with a strong emphasis on the role played by activism. Given the predominance of migration in the nation’s capital city, a wide range of opportunities for case studies to develop research projects, crossing various disciplines such as history, political science, sociology, literature, journalism, and visual studies on social movements about migrants, migration and identity, and migration in Paris. The Parisian field offers myriad case studies on these issues as the undocumented migrants’ social movements, associations for the defense of migrants’ rights, aid and support institutions for foreigners, as well as organizations created by communities of origin. This is why, by focusing on the research dimension, this course intends to rely on, from a pedagogical perspective, meetings with social actors and collection of first-hand data. Research papers deal with collective action motivated by positions and identities related to migration, ethnicity, religion, anti-racism, nationalism, and diversity. The focus on migration and identity in an historical perspective is particularly relevant to developing research skills and service-learning opportunities for students.