History

Runology is concerned with some 1300 years of the history of writing. Runes constituted the script used by many Germanic peoples from the second century A.D. Their use died out in Norway around 1400. This course spans the entire history of runes and gives an overview of both the secondary literature and the inscriptions themselves. For a relevant point of comparison, the course also includes a concise introduction to contemporary Roman Alphabet epigraphy in Scandinavia.

This course focuses on the origin and fundamentals of French theater: how it started and how it has become the theater we know today. It explores the following movements: The Fairground Theater, Pantomime before the Revolution, the Boulevard du Temple and pantomime after the Revolution, Melodrama, the evolution of performance halls and sets in the 18th and 19th centuries, Panorama and Diorama, and the circus.

Bringing together political science and history, this course examines British politics since 1945. The course is not just narrowly about politicians and political intrigue, though: it’s about ideas and ideologies, social change, and political communication. It starts by examining the structure and institutions of British political life. Students examine the construction of the welfare state and postwar social democratic settlement, before looking at the big turning point in the 1970s as politics shifted towards a "neoliberal" governing paradigm. Students consider how the Second World War, social change, the end of empire, and the development of Europe transformed politics in the postwar period. They also think about the practice of politics, the role of ideas and idea-producers like think-tanks, campaigning, and the media. There is a strong focus on linking history and contemporary politics, and students hear from people in the thick of current politics as well as visiting key sites in Westminster and Whitehall.

This course provides insight into three interconnected fields of inquiry: the interdisciplinary study of contemporary Scandinavia and the larger Nordic region; the analysis of a large variety of cultural products; and an understanding of how narratives and images reflect past and present transnational and transcultural relations. The interdisciplinary course relates close readings of literary texts, films, art works, and other cultural products to discussions of the larger socio-political and media-aesthetic context. Among other things, this context is marked by the global circulation of ideas and artifacts; migration and diversity; climate change and other environmental concerns; and decolonization processes. Within the Nordic region, changing relations between majorities and minorities and between centers and peripheries are at stake that link the region to transformations on a global level. A special focus is directed at cultural and geopolitical changes in the Nordic part of the Arctic; at shifting relations within the Danish Realm between Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands; at the situation of Indigenous people in the region including the Sámi of the northern Scandinavian peninsula; and at the legacies of the transatlantic enslavement trade linking Scandinavia to Africa and the Caribbean. The course looks at how artistic, medial, and public expressions represent and reflect these processes. It presents a variety of textual, visual, and audiovisual material, as well as discourses and practices that reflect current shifts in Nordic self-images; imagined communities on national, regional, and global levels; and transnational entanglements. In short, the course explores and expands the notion of Scandinavia or “Norden” and traces the region’s transnational connectedness as reflected by contemporary arts and public discourse.

This course explores the developmental context of Buddhist history and the evolution of important Buddhist ideas, systems, and cultures. It provides an analysis of historical materials and the interpretation of religious thoughts, as well as new perspectives and theories of Buddhism research in China and abroad. The course focuses on the history of Chinese Buddhism, taking into account topics such as early Indian Buddhism, Japanese, and Korean Buddhism.

The course examines key aspects of popular religious culture during the early modern period in Europe which witnessed the transformation of religious life associated with the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. It deals specifically with religious ideas and devotional practices at a popular level and the changes introduced by both Protestant and Catholic reformers. As part of the spectrum of belief it examines ideas concerning magic and witchcraft and it includes a study of the witch hunting which swept through Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Throughout the course particular attention will be given to the role of women in churches and society and how they were affected by the religious upheavals of the period. 

This course examines the development of American history. Students analyze and evaluate the key events and issues in the course of American history. The course explores the multi-race, multi-ethnic and multi-denominational co-existence of the British Colonial society in North America from the initial establishment, steady development to maturity. It follows as the new independent nation state grows up, but it is also faced with internal contradictions and crises. Students analyze the bloody civil war and the economic boom that followed strengthened and strengthened the country at great cost. The course also looks at the 20th century, as the United States was on the road of world hegemony and how it was faced with one round after another comprehensive social, cultural and fundamental values crisis, and the forces demanding social reform and conservatism were constantly competing.