Convenor

Dr Anne Gerritsen

Context of Module

Module Aims

Intended Learning Outcomes

Syllabus

Preliminary Bibliography

Assessment

Context of Module

This is the core module for the MA in Global History. The module, taught in the Autumn term, may also be taken by students on the MA in History, the MA in Modern History, or any taught Masters students outside the History Department.

Module Aims

‘Themes, Issues and Approaches’ is the core course for the MA in Global History: it is taught over one ten-week term and is intended to give a critical overview of one of the fastest growing and most dynamic areas of modern historical enquiry – global history. It aims to provide students with an understanding of how global history has emerged from earlier approaches to the study of history, what makes it distinctive and what its principal strengths and weaknesses might be. As the core course, this module not only examines the range of historical methods and interpretations that constitute global history, but also looks at ways in which ‘the global’ can be investigated in relation to the regional and local by taking up perspectives from Asia, Africa and the Atlantic World.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the module students should be able to:

• Recognise and evaluate the main intellectual traditions and historiographical approaches that have given rise to ‘global history’
• Assess the ways in which historians have responded to the idea of ‘globalisation’ and the various techniques and subject domains they have used to do so.
• Offer an informed critique of ‘global history’, its sources, methods and outcomes.

• Show that they have developed skills in carrying out library and on-line research and skills in communicating and presenting their work.

Syllabus

The course is taught in weekly 2-hour seminars.

Seminar 1 - 13 Oct : Has Global History a History? (AG)

Seminar 2 - 20 Oct: Material Worlds: Global Connections and Dispersals (AG and MB)

Seminar 3 - 27 Oct : Environmental History as Global History (AG)

Seminar 4 - 3 Nov : Cosmopolitanism and Globality (AG)

10 November - Reading Week

Seminar 5 - 17 Nov : Case Studies (1) South Asia and the World (DH)

Please note: seminar 5 will take place in room H3.02, 3-5pm.

Seminar 6 - 24 Nov : Case Studies (2) Africa and the World (BE)

Seminar 7 - 1 Dec : Case Studies (3) The Atlantic World (BE)

Please note: seminars 6 and 7 will be held on Thursdays 2-4, room H5.45.

Seminar 8 - 8 Dec : Case Studies (4) China, the Local and the Global (AG)

Preliminary Bibliography

Journal of Global History (commenced 2006): you might want to compare the contents of this journal with other, related journals such as Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, and Journal of World History or regional journals like Modern Asian Studies and Journal of African History.

Janet L. Abu Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System, 1250-1350

Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization

Gurminder Bhambra, 'Historical Sociology, Modernity, and Postcolonial Critique', American Historical Review 116.3 (2011): 653-662

Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference

Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History ‘Global Times and Spaces: On Historicizing the Global’, History Workshop Journal, 64:1 (2007), pp. 321-46

‘Global Times and Spaces: On Historicizing the Global’, History Workshop Journal, 64:1 (2007), comments by Driver, Burton, Berg, Subrahmanyam, Boal, pp. 321-46

Eliga H. Gould, ‘Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery’, American Historical Review, 112 (2007), pp.764-86 (see also following article by Jorge Canizares-Esguerra on ‘Entangled Histories’, pp. 787-99)

David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

Bruce Mazlish, ‘Comparing Global History to World History’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 28:3 (1998), pp. 385-95

David Palumbo-Liu, Bruce Robbins, and Nirvana Tanoukhi, eds., Immanuel Wallerstein and the problem of the world: system, scale, culture (2011)

Kenneth Pomeranz, ‘Social History and World History: From Daily Life to Patterns of Change’, Journal of World History, 18: 1 (2007), pp. 69-98

Merry E. Wiesner, ‘World History and the History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality’, Journal of World History, 18:1 (2007), pp. 53-67

Assessment

You are required to submit one assessed essay of 5,000 words (not including footnotes and bibliography. This is due on Thursday 15th December 2011 (the week after the end of Term 1).

You are also required to submit one unassessed, formative essay of up to 2,500 words (not including footnotes and bibliography) by Friday 11th November (the end of week 6): to be submitted to the Postgraduate and Research Coordinator, room H340.

MODULE HANDBOOK