History

This course offers an exploration to introduce the history of China and kingdoms from the 14th century through the end of the 1800s with focus on academic journals and discussion classes. Students translate course materials from ancient mandarin texts. Topics include: Qin monarchy, Han Empire, Tang and Song, Mongol Empire, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. AssessmentL final exam, class discussion, reading summaries.

This reading-intensive course studies some of the main conflicts that have occurred since 1945 – beginning with the wars in Indo-China (1946-54) and Algeria (1954-62) that saw the end of France as a colonial power. Conflicts covered in this course include: The Franco-Vietnamese conflict; Lebanon civil war; Islamic revolt in Afghanistan and occupation by the Soviet Union; and the American conflict in Iraq.  Students gain a clear understanding of the background and consequences of these conflicts, how immensely difficult it is for outside powers to intervene in any other state, and a deeper understanding of societies that are very different to those of the West. Students critically analyze the impact traditional mass media and social media have had, both in covering the conflicts and in fostering resistance or opposition to the powers that be.

The course offers a general introduction to the history, literature, and cultures of China. Emphasis is placed on the modern period from the nineteenth century onwards. Students develop basic knowledge on modern Chinese history, from the last empire to the republic to the current age of the socialist market economy. The course pays special attention to literature as a key expression of culture but also addresses Chinese linguistics as well as other cultural expressions such as film and philosophy. Throughout the course, theoretical and methodological questions are addressed concerning the study of China in a postcolonial and globalizing world.

This course examines key moments of the long-twentieth century of the Western civilization from the Great War to the Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Brexit. Challenging the dichotomy of ‘West’ and ‘East’, it pays attention to the way in which different civilizations interconnected themselves. 

This course surveys the internal development and external relations of East Asia since 1800. Topics include interaction with the West, internal rebellions and reforms, the importance of certain key figures, the changing roles of women, protests, and current social issues. By the end of the course, students should have a firm understanding of changes in East Asia over the past two centuries and be able to assess these historical factors that shaped the current societies.

The course surveys Japan’s international relations with China, Korea, and Europe between the 15th to 17th century. First, the course looks at the development of diplomacy and trade in East Asia, focusing on the “sea-closing policy” of China during the 14-16th centuries; the activity of Japanese diplomatic and trade missions to China, and the collapse of the tribute system. Then it investigates the relations with Europe during the 16th century, examining the new quality of foreign relations during the Edo Period; the development and role of the port cities Hirado and Nagasaki, and the trade with the Europeans and the Chinese. 
 

This course is about Berlin, and the story of its tumultuous and epoch defining twentieth century. This history is examined through various lenses: the biographies of individuals; the words of writers who bore witness to the vertiginous social, political, and physical changes the city underwent; and buildings and monuments whose physical construction, destruction and reconstruction reflected the ideological turmoil and conflict of twentieth century Berlin. Famous Berliners covered include the murdered Communist leader Rosa Luxemburg, the artist Käthe Kollwitz, the actress Marlene Dietrich, the Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, the adopted Berliner David Bowie, and the famous East German dissident musician Wolf Biermann. The contextualized stories of these individuals offer a unique perspectives politically, artistically, and socially into the tumult and struggle that marked their times in the city. These figures occupy a range of different positions as Berliners, as radicals, as artists of resistance to or collaboration with Nazism, and Communism, as drifters and exiles whose stories reflect Berlin's unique position in the twentieth century as no man's land, frontier, a city adrift in the sands of Central Europe. In a similar way, the course examines the words of writers who bore witness to the extremism and societal upheaval that marked twentieth century Berlin. From the witnessing of Roth and Isherwood to life in Weimar and Nazi Berlin, to the social and political commentary by Christa Wolf and Peter Schneider on the moral struggles of life lived on different sides of the Berlin Wall, the course assesses their writings in their historical contexts. Finally, the course covers the story of places in Berlin whose physical building, destruction, and rebuilding can be situated in the wider systems of ideology, power, and social relations that so cataclysmically defined the physical landscape of Berlin after 1933. In this, the focus is on the story of Potsdamer Platz, the Palace of the People and as an opposite postscript to Berlin's twentieth century, the Holocaust Memorial in Mitte. Structured largely chronologically, the course works with films and novels whilst building on a clear historiographical base provided in class seminars. The teaching is augmented by physical excursions into Berlin to trace the stories encountered and class discussions form the basis for a seminar paper that students are required to submit at the end of the course. This history course approaches the story of Berlin through the reflections and refractions of individual humans' lives who struggled upon the immense stage of a city at the very symbolic and literal heart of the catastrophes of the twentieth century.