History

This course explores the history of the United States from the end of World War I to the present day. It is made up of four thematic sections which focus on: the state and political development; gender and sexuality; the US and the world; and race and ethnicity. Throughout, students focus on historiographical questions that occupy scholars and interrogate change and continuity in political and social ideology during the 20th and 21st centuries. As the course progresses students develop a keen understanding of the interconnected nature of these overarching themes in American life and use this to assess particular events or thematic issues in their broader context. By the end of the course, students have a solid factual understanding of the United States since 1920, a critical understanding of the historical processes that have shaped the country over the past hundred years, and the ability to construct more nuanced analyses of the US past and present.

This course helps students grasp fundamental notions of French society today by studying the roots and the development of the main institutions and concepts of French political life. It contributes to the overall purpose of the IFE preparatory session, which is to equip students to participate as fully as possible in French professional life and social and political discussion. The course establishes a thorough familiarity with the politically and institutionally constitutive elements of contemporary France by examining how history shaped institutions and outlooks which in turn shape France today. This includes an understanding of the interactions between the political/institutional sphere and social structures. It also discusses France’s role in the world, perceived and real, past and present. Students become familiar with the mainstays of French academic literature on these subjects. The course is taught in two parts, or “modules”, the first one focusing on the foundations and structures of the French State and the second on the French State in a European and international context from a historical perspective. As a survey for non-specialists, the course adopts a hybrid chronological-thematic approach to looking at the major notions of the state and the nation, since the Revolution. Founding principles, the rapid institutional developments of the 19th century, the effects of 20th century upheavals, and other themes are treated in turn. 

This course critically engages some of the key conceptual and methodological issues concerning the nature of the historical discipline and its modes of writing and enquiry. It explores different traditions of narrating the past, examines certain major formative moments in the life of the modern historical discipline, and analyzes various critiques of the historical knowledge as well as the reconfiguring effects they have had on the discipline. In exposing diverse styles and approaches of doing history, this course points at some emergent fields of historical enquiry and reflects on the complex relationship between the academic discipline and its popular and public variants.

The course provides an overview of Africa's historical, cultural, and societal development. Themes like precolonial societies and livelihoods, the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, independence, and postcolonial transformations are described with the help of anthropological, archaeological, and historical approaches and insights. Teaching is composed of lectures, seminars, group exercises, film screenings, and study visits.

This course is designed for international students. It is a course within the science of religion, and it deals with the religion in Denmark before the introduction of Christianity. The course reads poems concerning pre-Christian deities from Iceland as well as the medieval Icelandic writer Snorri, which makes it possible to get a glimpse of the mythology of the Scandinavians before Christianity. The gods Odin, Thor, Vanir, Loki and Balder are accentuated. The course also goes beyond mythology and tries to get an idea about the religious rituals and the religious experts of the Norsemen. The course includes an excursion to Lejre, Trelleborg and Roskilde and an excursion to Scania in Sweden to visit a couple of burial places in the shape of a ship and also some well-preserved runic stones. Students get an introductory understanding of ancient Nordic religion, mythology, its sources, as well as the archeological remains of it.