Syllabus
Class Schedule
Note: The schedule below remains subject to changes depending on the number of students enrolled in this module. Depending on students’ needs and interests, background and language skills, I may revise some topics and readings throughout the semester. In addition, with the ongoing uncertainty about teaching in person or remotely and online, the schedule below will remain subject to revision.
Schedule 1 October 2020 Welcome & Introduction: Transnational and Global History 8 October 2020 Shifting Approaches: From Comparative to Transnational History
Reading
*Clavin, Patricia, ‘Defining Transnationalism’, Contemporary European History 14/4 (2005), 421-439.
Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard, and Jürgen Kocka, eds. Comparative and Transnational History: Central European Approaches and New Perspectives. New York ; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009.
*Kaelble, Hartmut, Comparative and Transnational History: in Ricerche di storia politica (October 2017) online doi: 10.1412/87615
Levine, Philippa. ‘Is Comparative History Possible?’ History & Theory 53, no. 3 (October 2014): 331–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.10716.
Conrad, Sebastian. ‘What Time Is Japan? Problems of Comparative (Intercultural) Historiography’. History and Theory 38, no. 1 (1999): 67–83.
Cohen, Deborah, and Maura O’Connor (eds). Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2004. 15 October 2020 Method OR Ways of Doing? – Towards Transnational and Global History
Reading
*Bayly, C. A., Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, and Patricia Seed. ‘AHR Conversation: On Transnational History’. The American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (1 December 2006): 1441–64.
Cooper, Frederick. ‘What Is the Concept of Globalization Good for? An African Historian’s Perspective’. African Affairs 100, no. 399 (April 2001): 189–213.
Potter, Simon J and Saha, Jonathan, ‘Global History, Imperial History and Connected Histories of Empire,’ Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 16, 1 (2015).
McGerr, Michael. “The Price of the ‘New Transnational History.’” The American Historical Review 96, no. 4 (October 1991): 1056–67. (online)
*Saunier, Pierre-Yves. Transnational History. Theory and History. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. (Selected Chapters)
Werner, Michael, and Bénédicte Zimmermann. ‘Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity’. History and Theory 45, no. 1 (2006): 30–50. 22 October 2020 Reading & Discussing Key Texts
Reading
*Conrad, Sebastian. Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany. New Studies in European History. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. (Introduction and selected Chapters)
Van Ittersum, Martine, and Jaap Jacobs. “Are We All Global Historians Now? An Interview with David Armitage.” Itinerario 36, no. 02 (2012): 7–28.
*Wimmer, Andreas, and Nina Glick Schiller. ‘Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology’. International Migration Review 37, no. 3 (Oktober 2003): 576–610. 29 October 2020 Approaches I: Between micro history and global history OR How big is global?
Reading
*Andrade, Tonio. ‘A Chinese Farmer, Two African Boys; and a Warlord: Toward a Global Microhistory’. Journal of World History 21, no. 4 (December 2010): 573-591.
*Ghobrial, John-Paul A. ‘Introduction: Seeing the World like a Microhistorian’. Past & Present 242, no. Supplement_14 (1 November 2019): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz046.
Ghobrial, John-Paul A. ‘The Secret Life of Elias of Babylon and the Uses of Global Microhistory’. Past & Present 222, no. 1 (2 January 2014): 51–93. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtt024.
Peltonen, Matti. ‘Clues, Margins, and Monads: The Micro-Macro Link in Historical Research’. History and Theory 40, no. 3 (October 2001): 347–59.
Putnam, Lara. ‘To Study the Fragments/Whole: Microhistory and the Atlantic World’. Journal of Social History 39, no. 3 (1 April 2006): 615–30.
Struck, Bernhard, Kate Ferris, and Jacques Revel. ‘Introduction: Space and Scale in Transnational History’. The International History Review 33, no. 4 (2011): 573–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2011.620735.
Trivellato, Francesca. ‘Is There a Future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History?’ California Italian Studies 2, no. 1 (2011). http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0z94n9hq#page-2.
Vries, Jan de. ‘Playing with Scales: The Global and the Micro, the Macro and the Nano’. Past & Present 242, no. Supplement_14 (1 November 2019): 23–36. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz043. 5 November 2020 Time I: Was the early modern world (not) transnational? Sciences in motion and circulating knowledge
Reading
*Easterby-Smith, Sarah. ‘Recalcitrant Seeds: Material Culture and the Global History of Science’. Past & Present 242, no. Supplement_14 (1 November 2019): 215–42. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz045.
*Few, Martha. ‘Circulating Smallpox Knowledge: Guatemalan Doctors, Maya Indians and Designing Spain’s Smallpox Vaccination Expedition, 1780–1803’. The British Journal for the History of Science 43, no. Special Issue 04 (2010): 519–37. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000708741000124X.
McAleer, John. ‘“A Young Slip of Botany”: Botanical Networks, the South Atlantic, and Britain’s Maritime Worlds, c.1790–1810’. Journal of Global History 11, no. 01 (March 2016): 24–43. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022815000339.
Raj, Kapil. ‘Introduction: Circulation and Locality in Early Modern Science’. The British Journal for the History of Science, no. 4 (2010): 513. https://doi.org/10.2307/40962587.
Saunier, Pierre-Yves. ‘Circulations, Connexions et Espaces Transnationaux. (French)’. Circulations, Connections and Trans-National Areas. (English), no. 57 (December 2004): 110–26.
Stouraiti, Anastasia. ‘Colonial Encounters, Local Knowledge and the Making of the Cartographic Archive in the Venetian Peloponnese’. European Review of History: Revue Europeenne d’histoire 19, no. 4 (2012): 491–514. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2012.697874. 12 November 2020 Space I: (Unthinking) Borders and Border Regions
Reading
Baud, Michiel, and Willem Van Schendel. ‘Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands’. Journal of World History 8, no. 2 (1 October 1997): 211–42. https://doi.org/10.2307/20068594.
Eliassen, Finn-Einar. ‘Transnational lives. Biography as “connected local history”’. Historisk Tidsskrift 91, no. 3 (2012).
*Rüger, Jan. ‘OXO: Or, the Challenges of Transnational History’. European History Quarterly 40, no. 4 (10 January 2010): 656–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265691410376488.
Readman, Paul, Cynthia Radding, Chad Carl Bryant, and Palgrave Connect (eds.). Borderlands in World History, 1700-1914. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
*Zahra, Tara. ‘The “Minority Problem” and National Classification in the French and Czechoslovak Borderlands’. Contemporary European History 17, no. 2 (1 May 2008): 137–65. https://doi.org/10.2307/20081399.
Annotation
Introduction
Over the past ten years transnational and global history have emerged as some of the most vibrant fields in late modern history. With their interest in cross-border activities, with their focus on the flow and interconnection of ideas and goods and their transformation between different cultural and national contexts, with their emphasis on people on the move who create nodes between cultures, transnational and global histories very much reflect the world we live in.
The module is designed as an entry point to the field of transnational history, its approaches, and tools. At the same time the module is designed around key aspects of today’s work life and transferable skills: a strong sense of sharing, exchanging, collaborating and presenting in an informal setting. It is deliberately designed to be open and flexible as it seeks to allow students to take ownership of the content and the cases or fields to be studied. Following an introduction to the field along a series of text-based seminars, the module is mainly designed around a number of themes, concepts, approaches, tools, and practical workshops that aim to equip students with the skills to research, analyse, interpret, discuss and write transnational histories - that is “doing” and “practicing”. Sessions will vary in style and content from text-based sessions, to research presentations, to in-class writing exercises.