History

This course explores how some of the myriad constructions and representations of sex and gender that emerged during the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), were performed in private, in public, and in the spaces where the two spheres intersected. Specifically, the course highlights how individuals and artists reacted to and expanded upon societal expectations concerning gender roles, during a period when Berlin became a global center of cultural innovation, artistic exploration, and scientific discovery. The stage and burgeoning film industry offer important documentation and a departure point to explore how German society grappled with the political implications of the First World War. In addition, both offer opportunities to explore how consumerism influenced the ways in which individuals chose to fashion their identities and the spaces around them.

If historians generally agree that Europe experienced far-reaching intellectual and cultural change during the 18th century, they rarely agree about the nature of that change or how to interpret it. This course introduces students to some of the major interpretations of, debates about, and approaches to the history of the Enlightenment in 18th-century Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. It asks students to engage with original sources (in English), alongside the historiography of the Enlightenment, and to come up with their own responses to that still troubling question.

The development of the Middle East and North Africa region is examined from an historical perspective. The course begins by exploring the major social, political, and cultural issues, events, and ideas which have shaped the region, primarily from the end of World War 1 until the present day. Particular attention is paid to the legacy of colonialism and the process of state-building, various inter-state conflicts and their domestic and regional consequences, the persistence of authoritarianism as well democratization efforts more recently. The course concludes by examining the Middle East and North Africa in the 21st century, including its changing place in the global political arena. The course is organized according to key events, themes as well as case studies.

This course examines Quebec history from New France to contemporary times. It include themes like ethnic relations, citizenship, gender and material culture. 

This is a special studies course involving an internship with a corporate, public, governmental, or private organization, arranged with the Study Center Director or Liaison Officer. Specific internships vary each term and are described on a special study project form for each student. A substantial paper or series of reports is required. Units vary depending on the contact hours and method of assessment. The internship may be taken during one or more terms but the units cannot exceed a total of 12.0 for the year.

The Ottoman Empire was one of the four principal political, military, and cultural forces in the premodern world (together with the Qing, Mughal and Habsburg empires), and still a power to be reckoned with in the modern period until 1918. With its core in the Aegean and Balkans, the empire exercised hegemony over large parts of the Middle East, North and East Africa, and Central Europe for many centuries. Taking the perspective of world history, this course provides a basic knowledge of Ottoman history and culture, especially during the last three hundred years of its more than six centuries long existence. In a more general sense, the course introduces the developing historical fields of empire studies and court studies. The course reviews the current historiographical debates about the nature and impact of Ottoman rule, including the question of ‘modernization’. Special attention is paid to the entanglements of politics, religion and ethnic identity in the region. This includes a critical appraisal of hackneyed terms and binaries, such as the east-west dichotomy, the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, and the very concept of ‘the Middle East’ itself. In addition, the course introduces students to Ottoman institutions of imperial rule, such as the court and the palace, the army, the role of religion, and Ottoman architecture.

This course introduces the current and past issues at stake in the political, legal, and cultural relations between religions and states. A subject of recurrent debate and controversy in France, laïcité (or rather, secularism) is rarely treated critically, dispassionately and from an international perspective. Such is the focus of this seminar. Depending on the areas covered, the course discusses more generally about “laïcité” (in the case of France) or “secularism” (in the case of Anglo-Saxon countries). The course is interdisciplinary, drawing on historical, political, legal, and sociological approaches. It also focuses on comparative approaches in Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. 

This seminar discusses the concept of genocide and the meaning of violence. As a first step, students read theoretical texts about genocide, mass violence, different forms of war and the Holocaust. Second, students study several examples of genocides in the modern and premodern periods. They analyze the specific nature of each and compare them to find out what unites and separates them. Students read theoretical texts about the concept of genocide and study the history of mass violence, war, and the Holocaust. Applying a global perspective, the course compares different forms of genocide and gets to the bottom of the question what unites and separates them.

In a process of progressive construction of knowledge, fields, sources, and methods of the history of contemporary worlds, initiation to the history of the 19th century constitutes an essential first step. From the end of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, this course demonstrates how the 19th century was primarily the century of the construction of nation-states. The affirmation of the principle of nationalities and the right of peoples to self-determination was achieved through multiple crises, revolutions, and military conflicts and new continental balances emerge. The 19th century is also that of the dynamics and tensions of industrial revolutions, in a new wave of globalization marked by an apogee of imperialism. The program of this EU, in its chronological, spatial and thematic definition, is specified each year within this general framework.

This course takes a sociological approach to study events that get termed, in a contested manner, as revolutions; it focuses on cases from the contemporary Middle East and North Africa region. The first two sessions of the course provide the sociological tools to study social movements. The rest of the course is divided into three parts: first, the socio-political factors that lead to a revolution; second, living in the revolution; and, third, the afterlives of the revolution. Overall, the course ask questions like: What socio-political context pushes people to protest? When do protests get termed a "revolution"? What are the differences in the experiences of the revolution along gender, socio-economic class, migrant-citizen, and racial lines? What type of afterlives do the revolutions take in terms of the discourses about them as well as the socio-political trajectories of the states experiencing them? A basic knowledge on the politics and societies in the Middle East and North Africa region, as well as knowledge of Arabic and French languages, is helpful but not required.