Women’s- and Gender history of National Socialism, which has developed into a differentiated field of research in the last four decades, has clearly shown that Gender is highly relevant to the analysis of National Socialist ideology and politics in many respects. This applies to gendered hierarchies of the political public, to gendered strategies of the war economy, as well as to the racial politics of reproduction that affected women’s lives in unequivocal ways. Gender is also extremely relevant to analysing specific forms of participation of men and women in crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. When, however, gender policies of the National Socialist regime are addressed in a broader public phantasmatic images that identify submission with femality are widespread and in popular TV documentaries voyeuristic perspectives on the wives and mistresses of Nazi leaders often figure rather prominently. Among other things, this course will contrast such popular perceptions with a reflexive approach to the wide range of scholarly literature on the gender history of the National Socialism. It will also address gender as a category for the analysis of National Socialism which cannot be discussed without regard to the category of race—to which it is subordinated in National Socialist ideology and politics. The course will reflect the vibrant and controversial field of research from its beginnings in the 1970s up to the present, and thereby combine the approaches of social and gender history, discourse analysis and the history of memory.
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Because the Cold War was a series of ideological battles for the “hearts
and minds of mankind,” culture became a weapon. This seminar examines the
United States’ export of its ideals to counter communism abroad. Although
the course focuses on American-led projects, soft power, and psychological
warfare, the reach was global and thus offers the opportunity to examine
nations world-wide. The class opens with an examination of American political
power from the 19th-century’s claims about the frontier through the
American Century and Cold War conceptions of “truth,” “propaganda, " and
"informational" practices. The intersection of American governmental
branches and clandestine operations with international private foundations, the
press, advertising agencies, universities, corporations, and private individuals
unpack the complexity of export operations. The course continues to explore
cultural diplomacy through radio, music, modernist art, dance, literature,
books, magazines, film, television, architecture, and sports. It examines
the power of race, gender, and religion. The concept of soft power is
challenged by its intersection with military operations, hot wars, or the threat
of nuclear attacks in case studies of Korea, Berlin, Cuba, and Vietnam. Cultural
exports are examined in the context of secondary source readings and primary
sources including conventional archival documents as well as examples of art,
film, and performances.
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This course explores themes in the history of slavery and freedom in
Britain and the British world from 1600 to 1900. In the liberal tradition,
slavery and freedom are framed as theoretical and rhetorical opposites. In
practice, the lines between slavery and freedom were blurry and ambiguous. In
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sugar grown and processed in the
British colonies of the Caribbean by enslaved African workers was a cornerstone
of the imperial economy. Britain’s North American colonies were caught in the
economic and political orbit of the sugar islands. At the end of the eighteenth
century, the American, French and Haitian Revolutions transformed, but did not
end, the political economy of slavery in the British world. In 1807, Britain
abolished its slave trade. In 1834, slavery was abolished in the British
empire. Abolition did not, however, end Britain’s close association with
slavery. Cotton produced by enslaved people in the American South provided
Britain with crucial raw material during the industrial revolution. British
investments kept the empire imbricated in the global trade in enslaved people
and the commodities their labour produced. And yet, even as the British empire
became entrenched in the nineteenth-century world of slavery, British
nineteenth-century reformers placed ever greater faith in liberal ideas of
freedom, bureaucratic transparency, free labour, and free markets. This course
offers an opportunity to examine the place of slavery and emancipation in the
history of the British world, and the ambiguities and paradoxes of a liberal
empire built on the backs of enslaved people.
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This course delves into all of these issues and presents an overview of Caribbean political, economic, social and cultural history from the height of transatlantic slavery to the postcolonial era in the 1980s. It especially focuses on the three central themes of American and European colonialism, race and revolution and takes an expansive view of the Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanic and Dutch Caribbean. Wherever possible, comparisons and contrasts with the Caribbean the United States and Latin America are drawn upon.
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HY113 provides an introductory survey of events outside Europe in the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on the collapse of the Western colonial empires, the development of relations between the West and new states within Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the struggle between left and right in Latin America, and the rise of non-Western models of political development. It begins with the state of the European empires in the first half of the century; Indian, and Algerian independence; post-independence Africa and the rise and fall of apartheid; the rise of the non-aligned movement; North-South debates and the debt crisis of the 1980s; the path from independence to revolution in Cuba; the Japanese challenge to the West; the Chinese revolution; China under Mao and Deng; the Japanese developmental state; the development of the modern Middle East; and the Iranian revolution.
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This course provides an introduction to the international history of the early modern period by examining the complex political, religious, military and economic relationships between Europe and the wider world. The period between 1500 and 1800 enables the course to introduce students to a crucial period in international history. In political terms, it covers the rise of major dynastic states, with increasingly centralized institutions and concepts such as absolutism to promote the authority of the monarch, as well as the challenges to that authority and growing interest in political and social reform, culminating in the revolutions examined at the end of the course. Internationally, the period witnessed the gradual consolidation of leading European powers, as reflected in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), with formerly peripheral states emerging to challenge their position by the early eighteenth century. At the same time, the rise of major Islamic empires in Eurasia and the growing contact between Europe and the wider world provide students with important points of comparison between European and non-European states. The intellectual, religious and cultural developments of this period provide a constant context for these major political events.
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Human Rights are often assumed to have a precise twentieth-century origin in the 1948 Universal Declaration or in the succeeding decades of increasing activism. However, the history of human rights discourse and its practical impact emerged as only the latest stage of a sequence of intellectual debates and real-life struggles in specific historical settings over political, religious, economic rights, broadly defined. This course seeks to explore an (inevitably selective) range of these historical contexts in order to demonstrate the continuity of perennial themes of conflict between the claims of individual actors and corporate institutions, whether states, churches, empires or other institutions, while also showing how and when key changes take place in the recognition of rights of political action, conscience, property ownership, gender identity and workers’ rights etc. In each session a contrasted selection of contemporary writings is studied to recover the intellectual framework of the discussion and the role of the dispositive political, social, and economic circumstances of the debate are also considered.
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This course deals with the Russian Empire during its 'long eighteenth century' – in other words, from the accession of Peter I (also known as 'the Great') in 1682 to the death of Alexander I in 1825. The following topics are covered: Russia in 1682; the impact of the reign of Peter I on the internal development and international position of Russia; the social and political developments of the period 1725-1762; popular revolt during the eighteenth century; the domestic and foreign policies of Catherine II; the impact of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution on Russia; Russia and the Napoleonic Wars; the failure of constitutional and social reform in the first quarter of the nineteenth century; the Decembrist Revolt of 1825; the policies towards non-Russians within the Russian empire.
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HY226 focuses on the international and comparative history of the First World War. The military, diplomatic, political, economic, social, and cultural aspects of the conflict will all receive attention. The origins and outbreak of the war; the military campaigning on the Western, Eastern, Italian, and extra-European Fronts; the war at sea and in the air; the intervention of neutral powers, war aims and attempts to negotiate peace; domestic politics in the belligerents; the war's economic and social effects; the experience of combat; the Russian Revolution and the road to the Armistice; the impact of the war on the international system and on individual and collective consciousness.
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HY232 aims to explain the history of these regions as expressed and moulded by the peoples and their leaders during a particularly turbulent period in European history. Attention will be paid to international developments and to the two European wars, and the Russian Revolution which had a profound impact on these countries’ freedom to determine their destiny. The study of the inter-war period will include a debate of the reasons for the collapse of democratic institutions, the emergence of patriotic and anti-Semitic movements, economic failures and responses to German and Italian aggression. The establishment, development and the collapse of Soviet domination of the region after the Second World War will be discussed. In addition political, economic and cultural theories, which formed the background to the emergence of the independent states of Eastern and South Eastern Europe, will be considered. The course will develop these themes in the history of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania and the Baltic States. Final lectures will concentrate on the transition from Communism to democratic states. The break up of Yugoslavia and the wars in the Balkans will be considered in a separate lecture.
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What is history? How and for what purposes do we study the past? What kinds of debates and controversies result from historical study? The purpose of this course is to provide undergraduate students with an introduction to these important issues. We will discuss the history of history from ancient times to the present and how it has changed as an intellectual pursuit over the years. We will think about different types of history – for example, international history, intellectual history, social history, economic history, cultural history or the history of religion – and we will discern their different concerns and priorities. We will analyse some of the most important themes in modern historical study: empires and colonialism, war and conflict, nationalism. We will outline different ideological frameworks for conducting historical research, for example Marxism, postmodernism, and gender studies. We will debate some of the key philosophical questions surrounding historical research: for example, how historians determine facts, and whether or not historical study can ever be truly objective? Finally, we will look at different ways of presenting the past., from traditional history books to museums and TV history. The course is highly recommended for all those students studying history, especially those completing a history-based dissertation.
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