History

This course provides a historical introduction to Islam’s core beliefs, practices, and institutions as they have developed in diverse cultural and political contexts. The course considers a range of topics all approached historically, among them: Islam’s foundational texts, religious expressions, institutions and cultural forms, as well as the challenges posed by changing economic and social conditions for Muslim societies in the modern period. The objective is to provide an informed appreciation of the historical development, cultural diversity, and contemporary issues facing Muslim communities across the world.

 

This survey course examines the history of the Soviet Union from the Revolutions of 1917 until the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

This course provides a critical analysis of primary sources regarding political violence, often in the forms of written testimonies and oral history, such as interviews and documentaries. It examines the importance and key role of memory in the social construction of history, and the way in which historical documents and survivors' testimonials construct this memory. The course also examines the motives for survivors to document their experience of political violence, as well as motives for society to read and listen to these testimonies.

The focus of this course is on the study of the entanglement of culture and politics during the twelve years between Hitler's appointment as Chancellor and the end of the Nazi regime. The course takes a special interest on propaganda as a means of stabilizing the rule. Based on a joint analysis of the historical framework conditions that led to the rise of Hitler and the NSDAP, the course first deals with structures and institutions of National Socialism based on historical sources and scientific texts. Using concrete examples from film, literature, or architecture, it then examines the ways in which propaganda works. Countless novels, film, and television productions that deal with the most diverse aspects of the Nazi regime also testify to a comprehensive artistic review of the brown years. At the same time, studies suggest that concrete factual knowledge about National Socialism is declining. The seminar aims to counteract this and to provide the broadest possible overview of different facets of the topic of National Socialism.

This seminar studies the changes that take place in the context of an "Enemy of the State" and in the practices concerned with that situation. It looks at the evolution seen in Germany and in France since World War II. It examines how the model of a succession of four waves of terrorism-anarchy, far-left with the intent of social revolution, far-right, and ethnocentric based on religious fundamentalism- is relevant to these two countries. The main sources that are analyzed in this course are from the State (justice, security services, parliament, and State Summit) in addition to actors who are persecuted for their acts of terrorism. Also reviewed are publications and media products from this era such as films, expositions, etc.

This course focuses on the evolution of the role and function of the image in the contemporary history of Europe and the United States. At the crossroads of the history of media, art and mentalities, the course analyzes how the image has progressively become an essential part of mental representations. Using precise examples, this course looks at the history of the image as well as the methods of understanding and analyzing different types of iconographic documents.

This course analyzes shifts in political theory and international relations in the wake of the Renaissance in Italy and France. This course revisits the political history of the Renaissance through the lens of more contemporary tools and concepts of political sciences and the analysis of international relations. Students experience an exercise in “mastered anachronism” using current paradigms such as the security dilemma, transformational diplomacy, asymmetric conflicts, constructivist approaches, and the esthetic wave to analyze historical situations which were foundations for modern politics. In return, the course is an opportunity for the student to broaden their political culture beyond the normal genealogies of modern western politics (The Enlightenment and the Revolutions of the eighteenth century) by going backwards to Absolutist Europe and even further back to the foundations of pre-Renaissance Europe. The study of the clash between the Holy Roman Germanic Empire and the Pope, the civil wars inside the Italian cities, to the first affirmation of the Monarchies (English, Spanish, and French), the initial signs of the Reformation, then the effects of the rupture of the Religious Wars, etc. are an opportunity to develop a deeper knowledge of political innovations and experimentations which the modern world has inherited. This course is a rich think tank, as it discusses the following: first emissaries of the Grand Khan; the legislations of Machiavelli for the King of France; the invention of modern language of the State by Giovanni Botero, inventor of the raison d'Etat; the complex relationships of Raguse with Venice and the Ottoman Empire; the trial of Savonarole; the invention of Christian Humanism; the first public library by Gabriel Naudé, the secretary of Mazarin.

The course provides an in-depth examination of the history of Russia from 1917 to present day. Major topics include the Russian revolutions of 1917; the Soviet system under Bolsheviks and Stalin; the mass terror of the 1920s-1930s and during late Stalinism in the 1950s; the Great Patriotic War, the Thaw, the Cold War, the Perestroika, and the collapse of the USSR; the emergence of the post-Soviet republics; and the socio-economic developments in contemporary Russia. Special attention is given to continuities and discontinuities between Russia's imperial past and the Soviet period in Russian history, as well as the country's post-Soviet present.