Themes in Global & Comparative History (HI997)
Module Leader
Context of Module
Module Aims
Outline Syllabus (readings via Aspire Reading List)
Intended Learning Outcomes
Illustrative Bibliography
Assessment
Context of Module
This is the core module for the MA stream in Global and Comparative History. The module is taught over one 10-week term in the Autumn.
Module Aims
This core module for the MA in Global and Comparative History 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 the local by taking up perspectives from Asia, Africa and the Atlantic and Islamic Worlds. The aims of the module include:
- to widen and deepen students’ understanding of themes in the study of global and comparative history
- to help students develop a conceptual and practical understanding of the skills of a global and comparative historian
- to help students hone their ability to formulate and achieve a piece of critical and reflective historiographical writing
- to support students in developing the ability to undertake critical analysis
- to help students develop the ability to formulate and test concepts and hypotheses
Outline Syllabus
This course is taught in weekly 2-hour seminars.
Week 1: Introduction (Aditya Sarkar)
Room: H025
Week 2: Methods and Concepts in Global History (Guillemette Crouzet and Guido van Meersbergen)
Room: H014
Week 3: Global Economic History and Capitalism (Guillemette Crouzet and Guido van Meersbergen)
Room: H014
Week 4: Global Labour History (Aditya Sarkar)
Room: H025
Week 5: Environment and the Anthropocene (Robert Fletcher)
Room: H008
Week 6: Reading Week (no seminar)
Week 7: Global Urban History (Anna Ross)
Room: H012
Week 8: Gender (Anne Gerritsen)
Room: H018
Week 9: Empires (Robert Fletcher)
Room: H008
Week 10: Science (Michael Bycroft)
Room: H017
Intended Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
- demonstrate a conceptual and practical understanding of the skills of a global and comparative historian
- demonstrate the ability to formulate and achieve a piece of critical and reflective historiographical writing
- demonstrate the ability to undertake critical analysis
- demonstrate the ability to formulate and test concepts and hypotheses.
Illustrative Bibliography
Journals
Journal of Global History (commenced 2006): you might want to compare the contents of this journal with other related journals, in particular the Journal of World History, but also Itinerario, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Past & Present, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, or regional journals like the Journal of Asian Studies and the Journal of African History.
Books and Articles
- 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), 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)
- 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
- Pamela Crossley, What is Global History? (2008)
- Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori, eds., Global Intellectual History (2013)
- Lynn Hunt, Writing History in the Global Era (2014)
- Evely Edson, Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed Their World (1997)
- Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization (2004)
- Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean (2011)
- Jane Burbank & Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (2010)
- Bill Schwarz, The White Man’s World (2011)
Assessment
6,000-word essay, to be sumitted at the end of the module.