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.

This course offers a study of the origin and characteristics of cultural studies. Topics include: the Birmingham School and the beginning of cultural studies; the cultural criticism of the Frankfurt School; influences of semiotics and structuralism on cultural analysis; poststructuralist perspective; the culture wars and the perspective of cultural studies.

According to a dominant historiography, philosophy is a Western endeavor. Its roots are to be found in Europe, more precisely in Ancient Greece, and its most significant developments are due to Western thinkers. In recent years, however, this narrative has been challenged by scholars and criticized from various sides. The narrative, it is argued, has itself a history: it was born at the end of the eighteenth century and came together with a marginalization of non-Western contributions to the origins and developments of the discipline. The process of appropriation of philosophy by Western historians, it is further argued, was not independent of racist prejudices and theories. This seminar is devoted to the recent literature on these topics. It aims to see how issues about race and racism have shaped current historiography of philosophy and explores alternative narratives that have been suggested to change this historiography.

This course examines political, social, and cultural developments in Ireland during the early modern period within a narrative and thematic framework, starting with Tudor political reform and continuing through to the Act of Union in 1800. Principal topics of the class include the impact of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation; the wars and rebellions of the 16th century and the demise of Gaelic Ireland; colonization and "civilization" of Ireland by the English and the Scots; Confederate Ireland and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms; the Cromwellian and Restoration land settlements; the War of the Three Kings; the Protestant Ascendancy and the Penal Era; the impact of the American and French revolutions; the rebellion of the United Irishmen; the formation of "Irish" and "British" national identities; Irish migration to continental Europe; and Ireland and Empire.

In this course, students discuss different theoretical and methodological approaches to environmental history as well as concrete case studies from the Middle Ages to recent times that exemplify the broad range of human-nature relations in the past, as well as the different ways to study these.