History

The course examines the successes and failures of British business and industry, with an emphasis on the post-World War II period. It assesses many of the hypotheses on why the UK economy grew more slowly than other OECD nations during this period. Explanations of relative economic decline are examined in the context of comparisons with other European nations and with the US, Japan and more recently China. The course is organized to combine major economic and political themes, such as de-industrialization, globalization, education and training, management organization and practices, labor relations, and Britain’s relationship with the EEC/EU, with case studies of industries as diverse as textiles, motors, banking, pharmaceuticals, and steel. By interacting themes and case studies, students get a sense of how national policies can affect business opportunities, and how governments can both aid and harm business. The impact of government policies such as nationalization/privatization, regional policy and competition are also examined in this context. The primary focus is on the post-World War II period, including current changes in performance, but the historical roots of Britain's recent performance are also considered.

This course focuses on the modern socioeconomic history of agriculture in China and the relationships between rural and urban; farm and industry; traditional and modern, and communism and capitalism.

The course aims to:

1. Understand the political economy of a non-industrial and non-western social system.
2. Learn how to distinguish between historical facts and present values.
3. Learn how to make meaningful comparisons between different societies and economies.

The purpose of this course is to provide students with a basic understanding of the transformation of the Japanese economy in the late early-modern and modern times, while at the same time acquiring a multifaceted view of historical facts. The course introduces the characteristics of the transformation process of the Japanese economy in the late early modern period and the modern period (19th century to 20th century). In addition to macroscopic perspectives such as industry, distribution, and trade structures, the course also focuses on microscopic perspectives such as the way people worked and lived at the time and the transformation of society.

The course focuses on the major turning points in Italian economic history, in which business management groups emerged. The course provides a chronological and thematic analysis of the historical-economic events in Italy, from its unification to present day, together with the analysis of various case studies selected from the most interesting successes and failures of Italian private and public companies in today's global economy.

In no other city did the Cold War materialize itself more concretely than in Berlin. Set in the emblematic capital, this course offers students a glimpse of the Cold War, understood as both a stable bipolar system of spheres of influence in the European theater, and a dynamic, largely unstable, environment of power struggle (and resistance) in the so-called 'Third World'. Particularly in the Global South, superpower interference facilitated, exacerbated, and fueled internal conflicts, often leading to bloody proxy wars – which nevertheless allowed local actors to internationalize their greed and grievances. These conflicts might have seemed far away from Berlin – the quintessential 'frontier city' –, but the block confrontation had important consequences here as well. The Cold War’s lingering effects make its study essential to understanding the present. From the perspective of a free and reunited Berlin, students will have the unique opportunity of both studying and experiencing the past under the Iron Curtain, which divided the world, the country, and the city – and made, back then, Humboldt University the scientific center of the GDR, with its extensive networks to the Soviet world, only a mile away from the Berlin Wall.

This course covers the political history of Europe from the second half of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. It reflects on the first half of the 19th century, when the great powers agreed to maintain the order established by the Congress of Vienna in Europe and to defeat the national movements. It then explores how liberalism and democracy experienced an important development in the second half of the 19th century when the achievement of Italian and German unity responded to the failures of 1848, in a Europe where, except for France and the United Kingdom, democracy did not progress. Until 1914, authoritarian regimes were numerous and quite powerful. Finally, it discusses the aftermath of the Great War when Europe was confronted with a new phenomenon, that of a fascist wave that affected both Eastern and Southern Europe.

This course focuses on the history of racial health and medicine in the United States. It provides a broad overview of issues related to medical racism in the United States from the colonial period to the present. While issues of discrimination and medical experimentation are addressed extensively throughout the semester, the course also considers the question of medical research, political mobilizations, and the institutional aspects of public health.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course explores some of the main dimensions of Soviet and Russian history in the 20th century. The course provides an overview of the social and political evolution of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1991 and its legacy for post-Soviet Russia. The course discusses topics including: the main stages of social changes and political governance from the 1917 Revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union; the social and political legacies of the Soviet experience for Russia after 1991; the major scholarly debates on State/society relationships; and how to contextualize Soviet social and political history in a broader framework, analyzing key junctures when Soviet international concerns or ambitions interacted with its domestic agenda.

Queer history is both a subject and a practice, and this course provides an introduction to both. It is, first, an introductory global history of sexuality, demonstrating the vast range of approaches different societies have taken to regulating and experiencing the body and desire. It also aims to introduce students to the method of queer history, one of many approaches to the past which illuminate how Historical Grand Narratives are produced, and how they might change. 

Archives do not just preserve the past, they allow for new questions about the present to emerge. They contain remnants of specific places and times, and they are the ground for new relations to spring and new connections to be made. In this seminar, we ask: Why archiving and for whom? How do archives shape societies and constitute knowledge? We will engage with “awkward archives” in Berlin – archives posing problems and causing disquieting frictions. In each of the seminar’s modules, we address a particular modern ideology through a particular Berlin archive, including the following: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Colonial Neighbours Archive of SAVVY Contemporary, Naomi Wilzig Art Collection, Museum of Natural History, a database of German colonial punitive expeditions, and the Hahne-Niehoff Archive of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. 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.