History

This course studies the history of civilization in the United Kingdom. The first part of the course examines the development of British politics, society, and empire. It discusses the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 which paved the way for parliamentary monarchy; political life (parties, elections) and the political and social integration of Scotland into Great Britain as important elements in the construction of British identity; and commercial growth and imperial expansion, in particular slavery and abolitionism (the movement against the slave trade) at the end of the century. The second part of the course studies various movements, tendencies, and artistic modes to analyze the question of representation of the nation and the empire. Topics include satirical engravings, caricatures, landscape paintings, war paintings, architectural elements, clothing, and musical works. It explores how the vision that the British had of their nation and their empire, from the 18th century to the 20th century, evolved within what can be called a "display culture."

The course is part of the LM degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. The course offers a multifaceted portrait of a world in deep transition. Students are expected to become familiar with a truly comparative and global approach to the complex forces that drove global change during the "long nineteenth century." The course highlights constitutional issues, structures, and models of education, the construction of nation states and empires in a comparative perspective, as well as the relationships between human beings and nature and gender relations. The focus of the course is food history, which has provided stimulating perspectives on the global history of the long 19th Century.

The course provides a brief introduction to prehistoric Ireland, and it covers in more detail the period from the arrival of Christianity in the fifth century to the eve of the first Viking attacks at the end of the eighth. The focus is wide-ranging, from early Irish politics and the emergence of a high-kingship to St Patrick and the impact of Christianization, from Brehon law and the bonds of society to the study of landscape and settlement and early Irish farming, and from Hiberno-Latin and Gaelic literature to the visual art that culminated in the creation of the greatest masterpiece of the Golden Age, the Book of Kells.

This seminar explores several different historical approaches to the abolition of slavery in North America. Abolitionism, centered in the North, was led by social reformers, such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society; and writers like John Greenleaf Whittier and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Black activists included former slaves such as David Walker, Frederick Douglass, and free Blacks alike. In the South, black activists of the Underground Railroad helped slaves escape to the North, Canada, and Mexico. Former slaves ran this secret organization like Harriet Tubman, free African Americans, and white supporters who facilitated the flight of roughly 40,000 people over two decades. At about the same time, religious abolitionists such as the Gileadites took up armed resistance and fought during “bleeding Kansas” against the interests of the slaveowners. The Civil War ended slavery officially, but its effects on the American nation linger on until today.

This course provides a critical understanding of a broad range of complex and diverse intellectual traditions in modern African worlds of thought. Its emphasis is on debates and arguments, conversations and contestations, and connections and displacements. In contrast to an essentialized and unitary notion of African thought, this course emphasizes the plural and dynamic worlds of African intellectuality, drawing particular attention to the vibrant histories of critiques and auto-critiques. In doing so, it also provides a basic sense of the various historical contexts of continental and diasporic activism in which these intellectual approaches were formulated and discussed. Among other themes, the course engages the debates on and around decolonization and violence, nationalism and tribalism, afro-communism and afro-feminism, precolonial epistemologies and customary law, aesthetics and materiality, religion and pedagogy, and postcolonial and neoliberal conditions. The study materials used in this course include original texts by African thinkers, visual sources, and musical compositions.