Global History A 2024/2025

Global History has come into its own as a scholarly enterprise at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Spurred by ongoing processes of globalisation, it flourishes as one of the most critical developments in the discipline of history today. This course will introduce students to the literature on and practice of global history, looking at the relationship between Europe and the rest of the world from the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. In this course, global Entanglements and local specificities, interactions, and hierarchies will be expressed in critical historical approaches. Moreover, global history will be investigated on defined objects and multiple scales (of objects themselves, time and space). The course will be divided into two main parts. After a week dedicated to the historiographical debates related to Global history, the main focus of the classes will be on Actors and Spaces on a global scale. Students will be expected to write a short research paper on a topic in global history. 

The course aims to provide students with solid knowledge and the ability to navigate the dynamics of global history from the late nineteenth century to the present day. By the end of the course, students will have a good knowledge of political and institutional events in a transnational and global dimension; they will be able to think globally about the historical-political and institutional transformations. The teaching activity of this module aims to strengthen the following skills: Critical Thinking: Students will be developing their ability to analyse critically both historical and present events from a global perspective. 

Reading: Students will become active readers who can articulate their interpretations with an awareness and appreciation of multiple perspectives. Each lecture will include discussions to ensure students have completed their assigned reading. These discussions will also foster a collaborative classroom environment where students collectively analyze the significance of historical developments. 

Writing: Students will be able to offer complex and informed analyses of historical documents. They will practice writing as a process of inquiry and engage other writers’ ideas as they explore and develop their voices as a writer. As shown below, over the course of the semester, students will complete a process-oriented writing assignment that emphasises analysis over description. Communication: Students will demonstrate the skills needed to participate in a dialogue that builds knowledge collaboratively, listening carefully and respectfully to others’ viewpoints while articulating their own ideas and questions.

Textbooks: Sebastian Conrad, What is global history? (Princeton, 2016); Richard Drayton and David Motadel, “Discussion: the futures of global history” in: Journal of Global History, (2018) 13, pp. 1-21

Students will also have to choose one book from the following list and discuss it at the final oral exam: Enrico Acciai, Garibaldi’s Radical Legacy: Traditions of War Volunteering in Southern Europe (New York, 2020); Michael Goebel, Anti-imperial metropolis: interwar Paris and the seeds of third world nationalism (Cambridge, 2015); Salar Mohandesi, Red Internationalism. Anti-Imperialism and Human Rights in the Global Sixties and Seventies (Cambridge 2023); David Motadel, Revolutionary World. Global Upheaval in Modern Age (Cambridge 2021); Brigitte Studer, Travelers of the World Revolution: A Global History of the Communist International (Verso, 2023); Martin Thomas, The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization (Princeton 2024)