History

In most societies, gift-giving acts as a critical form of social currency. Gifts mark special occasions such as birthdays; they cement diplomatic relationships; they act as bribes and charitable offerings. Gifts and gift-exchange can therefore tell historians much about the social, political, and moral norms of past societies. This course examines the fascinating histories of gift-giving in a cross-period and trans-regional context.

This course offers a political history of the environment through the mobilization of the working classes around issues related to common goods, industrial risks, health, and pollution. It also takes a global, long-term approach to these mobilizations. The course is designed as an introduction to research: it first introduces scientific writing through a reading note based on an article, then analyzes primary sources to present findings at a "mini-colloquium," and finally provides an opportunity to write a collective research article.

This is the first part of basic courses "Ancient History of China" for undergraduate students of department of history, covering the history from Xia Dynasty to the Southern and Northern Dynasty. The content is divided into four parts: the pre-Qin periad, the Qin and Han periad, Wei, Jin and the Southern and Northern Dynasty periad, the Institutional history part. The aim of the lessons is to enable students to understand the basic facts of this periad, its the main problems and developing issues, to establish an Overview of political, economic, institutional, cultural, ethnic changes, learn the basic methods of historical research, understand related academic works, important researchers and the latest academic trends, cultivate professional spirit, thus lay the foundation for the further study.

This course provides a rich introduction to modern British history, from 1801 to the present day. If students have not previously studied the period, it gives them the foundation for specialist courses in subsequent years. If students have some prior knowledge, it challenges them with new interpretations from the cutting edge of historical research. The course introduces students to new critical approaches to the subject and draws extensively on primary sources such as film, pop music, and visual imagery. It has a strong global dimension, showing how crises in India, Asia, and Africa shaped the "British World." 

This course examines how images of the “Old World” were constructed in the United States to define the nation in contrast with the political and cultural traditions of Europe. The tension between the American ideal of exceptionalism and adherence to an essential “Europeanism” continues to affect transatlantic relations. Students examine how these contrasting collective images were transformed during the twentieth century as the United States became a global power that influenced Europe. The course considers the following: which images of Europe have dominated American public discourse; how the geopolitical, political, and economic changes during the American Century affected the way Americans re-positioned themselves towards the Old World. After studying the literature, students explore one case study in a small research project.

Utilizing a multi-disciplinary approach based on infrastructural history, this course introduces students to modern and contemporary East Asia. While investigating the formations and transformations of empires and nations as sites of contests and tensions between different ethnicities, polities, and cultures, it also explores major cities in China, Japan, and Korea as the infrastructure of modernity rooted in the mobility of ideas, goods, capitals, and peoples. In doing so, it aims to gain an understanding of the dynamics of changes and continuities that shaped and are shaping the East Asian empires, nation-states, and societies. The major foci of attention are the intra-relations among the three East Asian nations, and the inter-relations between East Asian civilizations and Western civilizations from the late 19th century to now. 

This course focuses on the relationship between religion and politics. To untangle this relationship, the course examines the role of four core processes – globalization, nation-state formation, colonialism, and gender – in giving shape to contemporary relations between politics and religion. In the first place, it offers a sweeping historical survey, starting with imperialism, the French and Haitian Revolutions, and modern state formation. This leads to contemporary geopolitics, religious nationalism (Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Confucian), and socio-cultural contests (over sexuality, abortion, education, and migration). The central goal is to understand how recurring questions of the political community (who has power, how, and why?) are informed by and inform struggles over the place, role, and nature of religion.  Questions are addressed in an interdisciplinary fashion, where politics, history, and religious studies encounter one another. The course consists of interactive lectures and seminar-style discussions, including ones that are student-organized and student-led.

Arguably, no events had a greater impact on Irish history than the Great Famine. This course explores the social and economic conditions that led to famine, the way the Famine unfolded in Ireland, state and individual responses to the crisis, the experience of eviction and emigration, and the way the Famine’s memory shaped Irish identity and nationalism in the latter half of the 19th century. 

This survey course is an introduction to the history of Latin America in the 20th century. Students examine processes common to the region, the experiences of specific countries, and Latin America’s relations with the rest of the world. Beyond this, like Hobsbawm, the course considers how Latin America can help us think about the history of wider world.

This course explores the historical processes of Egypt and the Near East in antiquity, taking into account both internal aspects and their diachronic development, as well as the synchronic contexts in which the relationships between the two areas materialize, from the formation of the State and the emergence of urban life to their disappearance after the collapse of the Persian Empire.