History 344 - Empires in Global History

(Offered as HIST-344 [EU/TE/TR/TS] and EUST-344.) Many see today’s world resembling some features of the world in the nineteenth century. Some powers today claim regional hegemony, attempt to pursue the course of supranationalism, and encounter the challenge of diversity. The course will explore the historical experience of the British, French, German, Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian empires in the nineteenth century by focusing on how those imperial formations met the challenge of modernization and nationalism which included both accommodation of diversity and violent exclusion. Students will acquire the toolkit of comparative historical analysis and will focus on moments of interaction-entanglement of these imperial formations. Two meetings per week.

Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Semyonov.

How to handle overenrollment: preference to History and EUST majors

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Close analysis of historical evidence, which will include written documents, images, films, and maps from the historical period under study. Exploration of scholarly, methodological, and theoretical debates about historical topics. Exploration of methodological and theoretical debates about the writing of historical scholarship. Extensive reading, several argumentative papers, intensive in-class discussions. History majors may elect to write a 20-25 page research paper to satisfy the major research paper requirement. This paper would require independent research, including the framing of a research question, identification and analysis of relevant primary and secondary sources.