History

This course explores the intersection of politics and culture in early medieval Europe through the strange fate of the Carolingian kingdom of Lotharingia. The slow-motion collapse of this kingdom, linked to an extraordinary marriage scandal, is uniquely well-documented, through secret treaties, letters both confidential and public, the minutes of staged show trials, records of tense summit meetings, learned legal advice, and rich and often spiteful contemporary narratives. Drawing on these sources, students explore key themes in early medieval European history, including the contested meaning of empire, dynastic rulership, the evolution of queenship, the use of the written word, legal pluralism, the impact of the Vikings, and the changing role of the papacy.

This course offers a comparative and connected history of the British and French imperial experiences, from the mid-eighteenth century until the end of the twentieth century. The British and French empires are usually considered as arch-rivals. By contrast, the course emphasizes Anglo-French collaboration as a key mechanism of Western expansion overseas, and examines how the two empires often influenced each other. Special attention is paid to ideas about race and cultural difference and how they shaped British and French colonial societies. The traditional view that the British favored indirect rule and the French assimilation is tested and its limits highlighted. The course provides the opportunity to engage with recent scholarship on European colonialism, key contemporary texts about imperial expansion, and visual sources.

This course begins by taking a brief historical perspective in an attempt to see how all the fundamental questions of Brexit and the future of the relationship between the various nations of Great Britain came to such prominence in the last decade. It looks back to the formations of separate national identities across the British Isles, how the relations between them evolved, and how the various "unions" came about: by conquest, by assimilation, or by unification. The main focus of the course then moves onto the more contemporary debates, from the post-second world war period up to the present day.

This course examines the collapse of communist system in East Central Europe and the post-1989 struggle for democracy in the region. The Polish case is examined closely as the example of this process. The course examines the process of transition from communism to democracy in East Central Europe and the global significance of the 1989 revolutions. It provides analysis of the core issues that shaped the region's politics: regime change, creation of civil society, economic reforms, and the changing nature of the post-communist system. 

This course examines the forms, channels, and strategies behind the distribution of propaganda. It reviews the history of propaganda from antiquity, through the Middle Ages, the invention of mechanized printing, and to the modern state. Particular emphasis is placed on propaganda in modern wartime. 

Piracy, understood broadly as violence or crime at sea, is a present day phenomenon and yet one which has a history spanning centuries and across all the oceans of the world. From pirates to privateers, corsairs to raiders, maritime predators take various names and forms. This course explores the history of pirates and piracy. By examining case studies from the 1400s onwards and by placing pirates into the context of oceanic history and maritime studies, the course seeks to demystify the popular images often associated with pirates.

This course explores the international history of the post-Cold War era. It examines the principal theme in contemporary international relations through a historical lens. The course covers the making of the post-Cold War international system, the causes of continued international wars and interventions, and why geopolitical competition between major powers has re-emerged as a central concern of international relations. 

This course offers an introduction to the historical and cultural aspects of Medieval European Civilization by drawing parallels between modern-day societal, economic, and cultural occurrences and the Medieval past.  The course explores weekly themes that reflect contemporary societal issues that lend themselves to a (historical) comparative analytical approach. Themes include modern misrepresentation of Medieval culture, the ‘White’ Middle Ages, modern reflections on Medieval pandemics, revolts and political order in the Middle Ages, and minorities and persecution in the Middle Ages. The course consists of lectures and tutor groups. Students are evaluated on their participation, presentation, scientific paper, and written exam. Prerequisites include any course in history or sociology or substantial high school knowledge in history.

This course examines the way Japan was, and continues to be, perceived in Europe and North America. The course analyzes a series of historical documents from European and North American sources and investigates how the view of Japan has developed in these countries over time.  Three questions are at the core of this investigation:
- Which images and stereotypes about Japan can be found in these documents?
- How much did these images and stereotypes change with time?
- How much did they stay the same?

In addition, the class entails group presentations about certain key periods in the history of Japan's encounter with Euroamerica.

An annexed territory and the only colony of settlement in the French Empire, Algeria was officially a part of France, and its loss represents not only a dramatic territorial amputation (more than twice the size of metropolitan France) but also a traumatic symbolic and ideological shift. Long repressed, cloistered and today fragmented and manipulated, the painful and sensitive memories of the colonization of Algeria and the subsequent War of Independence have contributed to the construction of a deeply divided society in France. This course examines the multiple relations between Franco-Algerian history, memory, and minority identities as represented in contemporary France (Algerian immigrants and their "French" descendants, Sephardic Jews, Harkis, Pieds-Noirs, mixed-race individuals). Other groups of people living in France participated in the Algerian War, such as conscripts, professional soldiers, porteurs de valise (French who supported the Algerian nationalists), and all claim different and often conflicting histories. The course material consists of scholarly texts (articles from different disciplines), literature (three novels), and a few films. The course examines how these different resources elaborate memorial discourses carrying public claims of Franco-Algerian identity. The different minority stances often contradict the official French (and, incidentally, Algerian) narrative(s) while being in conflict with the State’s interest. Through interdisciplinary critical readings, this class studies in depths the concept of "representation" and its several meanings: the mental representation (memory of a historical trauma), artistic representation (literature, films), historical representation (conventional narratives and non-conventional approaches), and political representation (representativeness). The analysis of diverse forms of discursive practices about the French colonial past in Algeria, leading to contemporary processes of minority identifications and "community" dynamics in France, allows the class to deepen its understanding of current debates about “wars of memory” and “competitive victimhood” in French society, while reflecting upon issues of citizenship and possible ways to think of conflicted identities as a legacy of colonialism and immigration.