History

The ‘Silk Roads’ are often considered to be the world’s greatest network of throughways that linked China to the Mediterranean world over land and sea. The historical development of Chinese culture and civilization cannot be scrutinized without a reflective understanding of the Chinese Empire’s dynamic interactions with the nomadic peoples and the Western world that were situated along the Silk Road. This course examines the geopolitical and cultural landscapes of Eurasia; the migration of peoples; as well as the spread of goods, religions, ideas, technologies, art and diseases between the East and the West. It explores the construction of an early form of globalization, and how it has contributed to the formation and dissolution of people’s ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural identities. This course ends by examining Chinese government’s grand initiative 'One Belt One Road', and inquiring about the way in which the geopolitics of the Silk Road region in the past still exerts tangible and long-lasting impact on the world today.

In the last twenty years the history of capitalism has been one of the most important themes in Global History. In this course, students are introduced to the key debates in this area. Students learn to differentiate capitalism from other kinds of economic organization, engage with the periodization for capitalism, and explore international trade and domestic institutions in the development of the modern economy. The central section of the course is taken up with the debates around consumption, slavery, and empire. Core reading in this section will include the classic Williams thesis, and its development in the literature on the relationship between cotton and chattel slavery in the group around Rockman and Beckert. The penultimate section addresses the history of finance capitalism, looking at the inflationary effects of silver supply from the Americas in the early period, the era of financial experimentation in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the eventual emergence of a recognizable world of international finance around the Gold Standard in the early 19th century. Students conclude with a consideration of Pomeranz's "Great Divergence" between Atlantic and Asian economies.

This course reviews and analyzes the main historical processes that shaped the United States from the Puritan Reformation that preceded the establishment of the 13 English colonies on the Atlantic coast until the Civil War (1861-1865).

The course will introduce Olympic movement and the related controversies and views from the perspective of culture In broad sense, analyze the relationship between Olympic culture and human and social development, politics, economy and world peace as well as the environmental protection. 

Course objectives It is intended that through the course students can learn and acquire the values and the positive character traits that are assumed to be developed in sport and Olympic Movement; to examine closely all aspects of the modern Olympic Games and Olympism in order to offer a comprehensive understanding of two key aspects of the Modern Olympic Culture: its historical developments and its present fundamental characteristics; the nature of the tensions created in the process of its evolution which have led to recent reforms.

This course provides a critical approach to the contemporary debate between three sub- disciplines dedicated to the study of the intellectual production of Latin America: the history of ideas, intellectual history, and decolonial studies. This course identifies, analyzes, and discusses the origins, theoretical-methodological foundations, discrepancies, and challenges of these three currents with a view to glimpsing possible routes for their own research projects.

This course studies the evolution of the population composition in Latin America and the Caribbean in recent decades, reflecting on the links between said demographic dynamics and some of the main economic, political, cultural and social transformations known in the region. This course takes a theoretical and methodological approach, considering the dependence between the size, structure and distribution of a population in interaction with socio-spatial transformations. It discusses demographic transition, aging, young people, the countryside-city relationship, urbanization, employment, territorial mobility, etc.

The first part of the course helps students to understand how Korea and Japan, existing in a region where politics and culture revolved around the vicissitudes of Chinese power, built quite unique early modern political systems that ensured centuries of peace and stability. The damage caused by 19th century European and American expansion is explored through political, economic, social, and cultural lenses. Analyzing fascism, democratization, nationalism, and communism, including the era of 'total war' (1931-1945), helps students to understand how early 20th century East Asia was part of global trends at a time when populism and mass movements reshaped the old world order. The course covers the Cold War "peace," which included the Korean War and massive social protest in Japan, to understand how much American and Soviet interests influenced the region. Finally, only through a close examination of the normalization of international relations, particularly with China, and dramatic changes in the Japanese and Korean economies at the end of the last century, can we come to understand how East Asia became one of the centers of global production, security crises, and cultural output.

This course introduces students to the basic knowledge and understanding of the 19th and 20th century sub-Saharan African history.  This course will offer:

1. A basic narrative of sub-Saharan African history from 19th century to the present;

2. Detailed knowledge of the histories of selected African countries after assignment;

3. An understanding of the framework in which sub-Saharan Africa has interacted with the rest of the world throughout the last century;

4. A way to approach contemporary issues in African politics, society and culture through a historical lens;

5. Experience in interpreting sources, engaging in historical debates, delivering analytical arguments both orally and in written form.

This course begins after the Republic of China government retreated to Taiwan in 1949. It discusses the cross-strait confrontation and the political and social development of the Republic of China in Taiwan, as well as the relations between Taiwan, the United States, and China during the outbreak of the Korean War. It then delves into the interaction between the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union relations.  

This course examines the history of Christianity in Asia from the early modern period to the present, focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries while covering China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and others. Over a broad chronology, this course highlights how Asian Christianities were shaped and reshaped within specific regional contexts and in parallel with changes in Christianity worldwide. Students will explore the interactions between missionaries and indigenous Christians, the various expressions of Christianity, and context-specific constraints such as imperialism, nationalism, and broader interreligious settings. Using both primary and secondary sources, this course illustrates the shape of Asian Christianity from past to present, the thorny nature of religious encounter, and its surprising outcomes in World History.