History

This course explores the key aspects of the rise of Europe: concentrating on its environmental resources, aspects of power including rulership, community formation (including gender as a constituent of social relations), its belief and thought and its encounters with surrounding religions and cultures.

This course is about political, social, cultural, and economic change in the Benelux-countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) from the inter-war period to the present. Among the themes covered are the crisis of democracy in the 1930s; collaboration, resistance and accommodation during the German occupation of World War II; decolonization; Dutch, Belgian, and Luxembourgian post-war politics; the Cold War and European integration; development of the modern welfare state; cultural revolution and new social movements in the 1960s; linguistic and inter-communal tensions and federalization of Belgium; immigration, the polder-model, the "crisis of multiculturalism," and the recent rise of populism in the Netherlands.

This course examines Pacific Studies and the worlds of Te Moana-nui-ā-Kiwa (The Pacific). Through the study of taonga or cultural treasures drawn from specific cultures and societies, insights into Indigenous Pacific knowledges and practices are developed. Spanning deep history and the contemporary moment, this course provides a critical understanding of change in the Pacific over time and space.

With systematic teaching, we will help the students to learn the basic changing clues and major issues of 1200 years between Sui Dynasty in ancient China and Opium War, as well as the necessary historical knowledge of politic, economic, institution, culture, nationality and other aspects of this period; moreover to help the students to learn the basic method of historical research, the important academic works, famous experts and the latest academic trends; to train their professional awareness, and to lay the foundation for further study of the various dynastic histories and history of particular subjects, as well as the research and practice of the fields. By a variety of interactive forms of lecture, assignment and discussion, to develop students` humanistic spirits and inventiveness.

This course examines human experience as a source of truth, knowledge, and belief about war. Representations of human experiences of war play a significant role in human culture and society, often defining social memories and collective understandings of war. As such, this course examines how human experience is transmitted and interpreted via historical sources as well as cultural objects such as films, novels, and video games. It also engages students with key social, political, and moral arguments about the representation of war experience in the media, museums, monuments, and commemoration rituals. 

The imagining of history is such a prominent trend in popular culture that students need to be equipped to deconstruct representations of the past and to interrogate their own working assumptions about history imbibed from film and literature. This course explores three examples of how historical events and themes have been imagined in the world outside of professional historical scholarship. Students will examine how these subjects have been "brought to life" in film and literature. Students also have the opportunity to consider wider questions and problems which link together the three subjects addressed in the course. This is not a course designed to test the accuracy, in a narrow sense, of "historical fiction" in literature and film. Students rather examine the ways in which the past has been presented, interpreted, and re-interpreted in various genres; to uncover the assumptions or agendas that shaped creative decisions and the responses of audiences to genuinely popular representations of the past; and to reflect critically upon the qualities that make for a great work of historical imagination or reconstruction, qualities which cannot easily be replicated by the conventional methods of historical inquiry.

This course introduces students to world history through material culture. The main objects and configurations of material culture, from the body as commodity to cowries as money, are analyzed in this course. Food, drinks, drugs, fabrics, dress, houses, furniture, interior decoration, urban planning, and gardens structure a diversified program. The circulation of objects around the world, in some cases under different materials and forms, opens the way to consider cultural exchange between different civilizations, meaning forms of transfer, contamination, adaptation, and refusal.

This course is divided into two parts. In part one, it provides an overview of Latin American history from pre-Columbian America to today. In part two, it discusses the politics of the region including construction of the state, globalization, international markets, political institutions, and elections.

This course examines the history of France from the Old Regime to the present day through a constitutional lens to provide a better understanding of current political events.