History

Berlin is a city layered with history: a palimpsest of ruins, reconstructions, and marks of the past, even of futuristic imaginations that are now history. These layers can seem romantic and invited the modern flaneur to imagine Berlin alongside other cosmopolitan and urban projection screens. But the multi-layered city also implies a casting aside, a covering up, digging up, and hiding. The ruins of Berlin tell a story of an injured city, whose wounds are variously exposed to lay the finger on the wound of historical reckoning, or plastered in a vain attempt to heal, or return to a state prior to injury, as artist Kader Attia put it about the city of Berlin. The city as a multi-layered palimpsest thus reveals psycho-affective and political strategies of future-making and heritage-mobilization. In this seminar, we trace and dig into the difficult, awkward, eerie, uncomfortable heritage of the city and speak to stakeholders involved in its transition: curators, activists, artists, citizens. The seminar will produce a modular book-case, which can be unpacked into a mini-exhibition, featuring students’ own profiled “difficult heritage” sites of the city with a brief problematization. These loose pages will be put together in a box to create a mobile, modular book-exhibition. Among the sites that may be visited are: Zionskirche, Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, Stasi Archive and headquarters, Humboldt Forum, Holocaust Memorial and the Sinti Roma Memorial, exhibition "looking back” at Museen Treptow-Köpenick. The seminar focuses on field visits with methodological exercises, which introduce students to diverse ways of doing research that they will build on to articulate their own research outcomes in a multimodal portfolio.

On this course, students explore global history from a “global south” perspective, examining processes of global interaction from the perspective of societies in the majority world: Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Following introductory topics on the theories and methodologies of global history, students look at case studies from various regions as examples of how societies in the global south have shaped and experienced processes of global integration.

This course examines the history of gender in Chile from the colonial era to the present. It discusses how ideas about the roles of men and women in society were historically constructed and influenced other social relationships. This course examines how gender shapes politics and politics shapes gender. It focuses on ways gender has molded historical processes such as the creation of State and citizenship, as well as the links between gender and sexuality, race, ethnicity, and class.

This course offers an in-depth introduction to the complex historical and conceptual reality of the central role played by Constitutions in the legal systems of present day democratic societies. It explores the evolution of constitutions and constitutional thought from their medieval origin to the gradual building and consolidation of the essential defining notions and principles of the new model of the State established as a result of liberal revolutions, such as sovereignty, legality, separation of powers, or recognition and protection of individual and collective rights. This course analyzes and compares important historical constitutional texts, including the current Spanish Constitution, and the particular political, economic and social circumstances at the moment of their writing.

Students taking this course learn about the history, theory, and practice of decolonization. This includes a critical look at decolonization versus decolonial thinking in practice, including the institutionalization of calls to ‘decolonize’ which seek finalized end points rather than ongoing modes of decolonial critique. Students undertake specialized study through examples and case studies which may include topics such as decolonizing history, heritage, public history and museums, decolonizing universities, curricula and education, decolonizing environmental activism, art and art history, literature and public spaces.

Since at least the 1980s gender has been considered a "useful category of historical research." In this class we will use this lens in order to understand major events and developments in U.S. history. By focusing on gender as a relation of power in social contexts we will explore changing images of masculinity and femininity as well as mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. In addition to that, we will also discuss intersectional connections to other categories of identification (e.g. race and class).

This course is offered exclusively to visiting and exchange students and offers students with little or no background in Scottish studies an introduction to the development of Scotland through the ages from an interdisciplinary perspective. With contributions from academic staff in archaeology, Celtic and Gaelic, history, and Scottish literature, this course addresses how Scotland has been affected by change over time, and how – through the years – Scotland has sought expression in language and literature and the physical environment. 

This course explores the making of a modern metropolis: London in the 20th century. Using the city as a classroom, students take a social and cultural approach to London’s history. The course attends to differences in the urban space, thinking about the dividing line of the Thames that separates the city North and South, or the East/West divide. They consider the multiplicity of lives lived in London, as shaped by structures including gender, class, race, and age. Students study some of the major events of this period including suffrage campaigns, two world wars, mass migration, and decolonization. They also think about how the public history of the city has been constructed through museums, walking tours, podcasts, documentaries, fiction, and film.

This course examines histories of sovereignty, land and water protection, decolonial activism, and artistic movements, focusing on connections between Indigenous peoples' in Aotearoa, the Pacific, Australia, and the Americas, as well as Asia, and Northern Europe.