Global History M1

This is not a history course, traditionally understood. While it revisits a vast array of both renown and neglected episodes of history, from encounters on the silk roads over witch trials in Europe to the Japanese decision to enter WWII, it does not provide any encompassing, universal history. Instead, this is a course in historical perspective and reflection aimed at encouraging students to think critically about how such everyday historical notions as origins, progress, and development are always already part of our political imagination and academic analysis. In this sense, ‘history’ is not only inescapable, but it also shapes, in any specific variant, what seems desirable, possible, and necessary in research and political practice. Following a prelude on different perspectives on history, the course discusses in part I dominant myths and rationalizations of history, including ‘repetition’, ‘origins’, and ‘progress’, the master tropes behind such narratives as the rise and fall of great powers, the identity of ‘the West’, and mankind’s path of development. It probes in part II the fragmentation of these stereotypical imaginations by exploring contingencies and virtual histories, cultural connections and hybridity, and untold stories and silenced subjects. In part III, the course cursorily revisits elements of the global emergence of modernity, including in terms of political economy, international order, and dialectics of rule and resistance.