Seminars

Description:

Global history, developed in its broad analytical scales and distinct focus on connections and entanglements, has predominantly been a query into the origins of capitalism, modernity and global Western domination. The focus on objects, transactions, transfers, and forms of Western imperial domination served to reveal the reasons for what Kenneth Pommeranz dubbed “a great divergence”, as well as the formation of Western science, gender roles, and the environmental transformations (or rather catastrophes) we observe nowadays. Such conceived global history has always been challenged from different directions and even upturned (with Europe provincialized after Dipesh Chakrabarty), while alternative frameworks – whether analytical or geographic – motivated a conversation between specialists in various fields, thus making global history one of the most productive areas of historical inquiry.

This course will build upon the current richness of the new research in the field of global history, and it will take pleasure in departing from the mainstream. Topics such as the great divergence, capitalism, history of objects and products will be sidelined, whereas other questions – global revolutions, Asian globalizations, comparisons and entanglements between Europe and Asia are going to brought to the fore. Moreover, this seminar will examine global history through two geographical lenses – Eastern / Central Europe and East / Southeast Asia. More precisely, we shall look at how studying these geographical areas – often treated as somehow marginal – permits rethinking and rewriting the global narrative. We shall look at how these areas have been linked to one another either through a comparative analysis, or through new theorizations on the development of the early modern and modern world. The topics analyzed during the seminar are as follows: Steppe and Central Asian origins of modernity; East Asian capitalism (or its absence); comparative revolution and global communisms; imperial debacle, decolonization and entangled history of Central Europe and postcolonial world; memories of communism – memories of colonialism as political histories of oppression.

Bibliography:

East Asian capitalism 4/10/2024 11:00-16:00

• Brook, Timothy. “Weber, Mencius, and the History of Chinese Capitalism.” Asian Perspective 19, no. 1 (1995): 79-97.
• Faure, David. China and Capitalism: A History of Business Enterprise in Modern China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006. (pp. 11-25)
• Gipouloux, François. The Asian Mediterranean: Port Cities and Trading Networks in China, Japan and South Asia, 13th-21st Century. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011. (pp. 7-27)
• Kung, James Kai-Sing. “The Economic Impact of the West: A Reappraisal.” The Cambridge Economic History of China, Volume II “1800 to the Present,” edited by Ma, Debin and Richard von Glahn, 354-413. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
• Edwards, Andrew David, Peter Hill, and Juan Neves-Sarriegui. “Capitalism In Global History”, Past & Present 249, Issue 1 (November 2020), e1–e32,

Steppe and Central Asian origins of modernity 11/10/2024 11:00-16:00

• EBOOK ORDERED Akhtar, Ali Humayun. 1368: China and the Making of the Modern World. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022. (pp. 1-13, 29-46)
• Stanziani, Alessandro. Eurocentrism and the Politics of Global History. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. (pp. 21-57)
• EBOOK ORDERED Favereau, Marie. The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021. (pp. 1-25, 164-205)
• ILL ORDERED Stanziani, Alessandro. After Oriental Despotism: Eurasian Growth in a Global Perspective. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. (pp. 91-106)
• ON LOAN, RECALLED FOR SCANNING Poskett, James. Horizons: A Global History of Science. Viking, 2022. (pp. 46-93)

Comparative revolution and global communism 14/10/2024 11:00-16:00

• Smith, S. A. Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. (pp. 111-150).
• Pons, Silvio. “General Introduction: The Communism and the Global History of the Twentieth Century.” In The Cambridge History of Communism, Volume I: World Revolution and Socialism in One Country, 1917-1941, edited by Pons, Silvio and Stephen A. Smith, 1-27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
• Graziosi, Andrea. “Communism, Nations and Nationalism.” In The Cambridge History of Communism, Volume I: World Revolution and Socialism in One Country, 1917-1941, edited by Pons, Silvio and Stephen A. Smith, 449-474. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
• Lanza, Fabio. “Making Sense of “China” during the Cold War: Global Maoism and Asian Studies.” In De-Centering Cold War History: Local and Global Change, edited by Pieper Mooney, Jadwiga E. and Fabio Lanza, 147-166. London and New York: Routledge, 2013.

Memories of communism – memories of colonialism as political histories of oppression 18/10/2024 11:00-16:00

• Lim Jie-Hyun. Global Easts: Remembering, Imagining, Mobilizing. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. (pp. 92-126)
• Mark, James. The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010. (pp. 61-92)
• Lowe, David and Tony Joel. Remembering the Cold War: Global Contest and National Stories. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. (pp. 1-22, 163-208)
• ILL ORDERED Citron, Suzanne. “L’impossible révision de l’histoire de France face au passé colonial.” In Histoire globale de la France colonial, edited by Bancel, Nicolas, Pascal Blanchard, Sandrine Lemaire et Dominic Thomas, 629-634. Paris: Philippe Rey, 2022.
• ILL ORDERED Bancel, Nicolas and Pascal Blanchard. “Mémoires et patrimonialisation de l’histoire coloniale: l’introuvable musée colonial. In Histoire globale de la France colonial, edited by Bancel, Nicolas, Pascal Blanchard, Sandrine Lemaire et Dominic Thomas, 647-652. Paris: Philippe Rey, 2022.

Decolonization and entangled history of Central Europe and postcolonial world 21/10/2024 11:00-16:00

• Sidel, John T. Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2021. (pp. 72-95)
• Burton, Eric, James Mark, and Steffi Marung. “Development.” In Socialism goes global: the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the age of decolonization : a collectively researched and written monograph edited by Mark, James and Paul Betts, 75-114 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).
• Thomas, Martin and Andrew S. Thompson. “Rethinking Decolonization: A New Research Agenda for the Twenty-First Century.” In The Oxford Handbook of The Ends of Empire, edited by Thomas, Martin and Andrew S. Thompson, 1-26. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• “A World of Contradictions: Globalization and Deglobalization in Interwar Europe” and Becker, Peter. “Passports as Instruments of Deglobalization.” American Historical Review 128, Issue 2 (2023) [part of the AHR History Lab section: “A World of Contradictions: Globalization and Deglobalization in Interwar Europe” edited by Tara Zahra and Peter Becker, 703-730]

Histories of gender, race, sexuality and disability are crucial, fascinating, and multifaceted – and they often went unacknowledged in overall accounts of the past. Taking historical approaches to these different topics as our vantage point, the seminar not only explores various forms of discrimination like racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, cis- and heteronormativity, but also engages with the struggles against such powerful systems, thereby addressing the dynamics of activism and identity formation as well as questions around normalization and tokenization. Our conversations will highlight transdisciplinary perspectives that allow us to trace complex trajectories, to diversify early modern as well as modern histories by focusing on experiences and subjectivities that have long been marginalized, and to ask what different histories such endeavours may generate. Along the way we will discuss secondary readings as well as primary sources and encounter some expert guest speakers. Each participant will be asked at one point to present a brief summary of the discussion in the previous session. There will also be an open session the contents of which will emerge from discussions within the seminar group. Our concluding field trip will explore the potential of anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-ableist criticism in situ, as it were, in present-day pre-Christmas Florence.

Session 1, 3 October

INTRODUCTION 1: Intersectionality and intersectional approaches in historical research

Required Reading:

• Kimberlé Crenshaw: ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.’ The University of Chicago Legal Forum 140 (1989), 139–167.

Further Readings:

• Vincenza Perilli and Liliana Ellena: ‘Intersezioni. La difficile articolazione.’ In Sabrina Marchetti, Jamila MH Mascat and Vincenza Perilli (eds.): Femministe a parole. Grovigli da districare, Ediesse, 2012.
• Chen Yan and Karen Offen: ‘Women’s History at the Cutting Edge: a joint paper in two voices.’ Women’s History Review 27 (2018), 1, 6-28.
• Catherine Kudlick: “Disability History: Why We Need Another ‘Other’”. The American Historical Review 108.3 (June 2003), 763-793.
• The Combahee River Collective: The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977). In: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (ed.), How We Get Free. Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017, 15–27 (https://www.reed.edu/cres/assets/Combahee-River-Collective,-Black-Feminist-Statement,-How-We-Get-Free---Taylor.pdf).
• Kaisa Ilmonen: ‘Feminist Storytelling and Narratives of Intersectionality.’ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 45 (2020), 2, 347-371.
• Sima Shakhsari: ‘The queer time of death: temporality, geopolitics, and refugee rights.’ Sexualities, 17 (2014), 8, 998-105.

Session 2: 10 October

INTRODUCTION 2: Intersectional Histories

Required Readings:

• Margaret R. Hunt: ‘Relations of Domination and Subordination in Early Modern Europe and the Middle East.’ Gender & History 30 (2018), 2, 366–376.
• Laura K. Nelson: ‘The Inequality of Intersectionalities in Chicago’s First-Wave Women’s Movement.’ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 47 (2022), 4, 905–930.

Further Readings:

• Joanna de Groot: ‘Women’s History in Many Places. Reflections on Plurality, Diversity and Polyversality.’ Women’s History Review 27 (2018), 1, 109-119.
• Michael Rembis, Catherine Kudlick, and Kim E. Nielsen: ‘Introduction.’ In eaedem (eds).: The Oxford Handbook of Disability History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018, 1-20.
• Jordana Silverstein: ‘Intersectionality, Resistance, and History-making: a conversation between Carolyn D’Cruz, Ruth Desouza, Samia Khatun and Crystal McKinnon.’ Lilith 23 (2017), 15-22.
• Mary Lindemann: ‘The Body Debated: Bodies and Rights in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Germany.’ Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (2008), 3, 493–521.
• Roland Betancourt: ‘Imperial Brutality: Racial Difference and the Intersectionality of the Ethiopian Eunuch.’ In: Bryan Keene (ed.): Illuminated Manuscripts and the Global Middle Ages, Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum 2019, 165-174.
• Christopher Phelps: ‘Class: A Useful Category of Analysis in the History of Sexual Harassment.’ Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas 19 (2022), 1, 1-26.

Session 3, 17 October

INTRODUCTION 3: Intersectionality – a contested concept

Required Readings:

• Florynce Kennedy: ‘Institutionalized Oppression vs. the Female.’ In Robin Morgan (ed.): Sisterhood is Powerful, New York: Vintage Books 1970, 438–446.
• Leslie McCall: ‘The Complexity of Intersectionality.’ Signs 30 (2005), 3, 1771–1800.
• Jasbir K. Puar: ‘“I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory.’ philoSOPHIA 2 (2012), 1: 49–66.

Further Readings:

• Susan Burch and Ian Sutherlan: ‘Who’s Not Yet Here?’ Radical History Review 94 (Winter 2006), 127-47.
• Anna Bogic: ‘Theory in Perpetual Motion and Translation: Assemblage and Intersectionality in Feminist Studies.’ Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice / Études Critiques sur le Genre, la Culture, et la Justice 38 (2017), 1, 138-149.
• Robert McRuer and Julie Passanante Elman: ‘The Gift of Mobility: Disability, Queerness, and the Cultural Politics of Rehabilitation.’ Feminist Formations 32 (2020), 2, 52-78.
• Ashley Bohrer: ‘Intersectionality and Marxism: A Critical Historiography.’ Historical Materialism 26 (2018), 2, 46-74.
• Lise Vogel: ‘Beyond Intersectionality.’ Science & Society 82 (2018), 2, 275-287.
• Mara Pieri: ‘The Sound that You Do Not See. Notes on Queer and Disabled Invisibility.’ Sexuality & Culture (2018), 1-13.
• Anna Carastathis: (2008): ‘The Invisibility of Privilege: A critique of intersectional models of identity.’ Les ateliers de l'éthique / The Ethics Forum, (2018), 3(2), 23–38.

Session 4, 24 October

TOPIC 1: Eastern European Histories of Racism

• Guest speakers: Vita Zalar and Bogdan Iacob

Required Readings:

• James Mark, Anikó Imre, Bogdan C. Iacob, and Catherine Baker: ‘Introduction: racial disavowals – historicising whiteness in Central and Eastern Europe.’ In eadem (eds.): Off white. Central and Eastern Europe and the global history of race, Manchester: Manchester University Press 2024, 1–30.
• Jelena Savić: ‘Drunken whites’. A Lexicon Of Decoloniality In Eastern Europe: How to Decolonise an Art Organization, 2023

Further Readings:

• Angéla Kóczé, Violetta Zentai, Jelena Jovanović, and Enikő Vincze: ‘Introduction Romani Feminist Critique and Gender Politics.’ In eaedem (eds.): The Romani Women’s Movement. Struggles and Debates in Central and Eastern Europe. London: Routledge 2018, 1-25.
• Celia Donert: The Rights of the Roma. The Struggle for Citizenship in Postwar Czechoslovakia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2017.
• Angela Kóczé: Gender, Ethnicity and Class: Romani Women’s Political Activism and Social Struggles, Budapest: Central European University, doctoral dissertation, 2011.
• Jennifer Erickson: ‘Intersectionality theory and Bosnian Roma: Understanding violence and displacement.’ Romani Studies, 27 (2017), 1, 1-28.
• Victoria Shmidt: ‘The Intersectionality of Disability and Race in Public and Professional Discourses about the Roma in Socialist Czechoslovakia: Between Propaganda and Race Science.’ In: eaedem (ed.): The Politics of Disability in Interwar and Socialist Czechoslovakia: Segregating in the Name of the Nation, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019, 145-176.

NO SESSION ON 31 OCTOBER

Session 5, 7 November

TOPIC 2: Pornographic intersections

Required Readings:

• Maxime Cervulle: ‘Queering the Orientalist porn package: Arab men in French gay pornography.’ New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 6 (2009), 3, 197–208.
• Jennifer C. Nash: ‘Strange Bedfellows. Black Feminism and Antipornography Feminism.’ Social text 26 (2008), 4, 51–76.
• Further Readings (including queer and feminist approaches more generally):
• Jennifer Nash: Black bodies in ecstasy. Reading race, reading pornography. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.
• Maria Lugones: ‘Toward a Decolonial Feminism.’ Hypatia 25 (2010), 4, 742-759.
• Sally Hines and Yvette Taylor (eds.): Theorizing intersectionality and sexuality. Palgrave Macmillan: Houndmills, New York 2010.
• Robert McRuer: Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York: New York University Press 2006.
• Kate Imy: ‘Queering the Martial Races: Masculinity, Sex and Circumcision in the Twentieth-Century British Indian Army.’ Gender & History 27 (2015) 2, 374-396.
• Laurie Marhoefer: ‘Was the Homosexual Made White? Race, Empire, and Analogy in Gay and Trans Thought in Twentieth-Century Germany.’ Gender & History 31 (2019), 1, 91-114.
• Marlon B. Ross, ‘Beyond The Closet As Raceless Paradigm.’ In: E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G Henderson (eds.), Black Queer Studies. A Critical Anthology, Durham: Duke University Press 2005, 161-189.
• Riley Snorton: Black on Both Sides. A Racial History of Trans Identity, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2017.
• Saidiya Hartman: ‘Venus in Two Acts.’ Small Axe 12 (2008), 2, 1-14.
• Fuentes: Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2016.
• Jennifer Morgan, Jennifer Brier and James Downs (eds.): Connexions. Histories of Race and Sex in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press 2016.
• Linda Heidenreich: “Jack Mugarrieta Garland: A queer mestiz@ in the ‘American West.’, Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, 21, 2015, 65-77.
  
  

Session 6, 14 November

TOPIC 3: Intersectional perspectives on the history of disability

Guest speaker: Elisa Heinrich

Required Readings:

• A. Katritzky: ‘Shackshoone. The disabled non-European performative body in 17th-century London.’ In Mark Hengerer (ed.): Der Körper in der Frühen Neuzeit. Praktiken, Rituale, Performanz, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2023, 323–343.

Before the session, Elisa will share a primary source and a draft of hers with the seminar. Below you find some information on this draft.

Preliminary Title Working Paper: Activism and self-representation of women* with disabilities in German speaking Europe during the 1980/90s

This paper looks at the organising and activism of women* with disabilities in the context of both feminist movements and radical disability rights movements such as the 'Krüppelbewegungen' in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. It briefly discusses dis/ability history as a research field and how feminist, queer and anti-ableist perspectives might work together to diversify the histories of these regions. It also touches on the challenges that dis/ability history poses to our narratives of particular feminist struggles, or more broadly, of what constitutes activism.

Further Readings:

• Coreen Anne McGuire: ‘What is disability history the history of?’ History Compass 22 (2024), 6,
• Alison M. Parker: ‘Intersecting Histories of Gender, Race, and Disability.’ Journal of Women’s History 27 (2015), 1, 178-186.
• Beth Linker: ‘On the Borderland of Medical and Disability History: A Survey of the Fields.’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine 87.4 (2013), 499-535.
• Rosemarie Garland Thomson: Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press 1997.
• Agnes Arnold-Forster: ‘Medicine and the Body in Second-Wave Feminist Histories of the Nineteenth Century.’ History 106 (2021), 668-686.
• Matthew Smith: ‘Hyperactive Around the World? The History of ADHD in Global Perspective.’ Social History of Medicine 30 (2017), 4, 767-787.
• Ryan Lee Cartwright: ‘Sissies, Loafers, and the Feebleminded: Disability and Nonheteronormativity in Rural White Eugenic Family Studies,’ GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 28 (2022) 28, 4, 515–540.
• Yolanda Pringle: “Investigating ‘Mass Hysteria’ in Early Postcolonial Uganda: Benjamin H. Kagwa, East African Psychiatry, and the Gisu.” Journal of the History of Medicine and the Allied Sciences, 70 (2015), 105-36.
• Jonathan M. Metzl: The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease. Boston: Beacon Press, 2008.
• Stephanie Hunt-Kennedy: Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean. Urbana: University of Illinois Press 2020.
• Corbett Joan O’Toole: ‘The Sexist Inheritance of the Disability Movement.’ In: Bonnie G. Smith and Beth Hutchison, Gendering Disability, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press 2004, 294-300.
• Rosemarie Garland-Thompson: ‘Integrating disability, transforming feminist theory.’ In: Lennard J. Davis (ed.): The Disability Studies Reader, New York: Routledge 2017, 371-373.
• Hailee Yoshizaki-Gibbons: “Compulsory Youthfulness: Intersections of Ableism and Ageism in ‘Successful Aging’ Discourses,” Review of Disability Studies 12 (2016), 2-3,
• Ryan Lee Cartwright: ‘Out of Sorts. A Queer Crip in the Archive.’ Feminist Review 125 (2020), 62–69.
• Ela Przybylo and Breanne Fahs: ‘Feels and Flows: On the Realness of Menstrual Pain and Cripping Menstrual Chronicity.’ Feminist Formations. 30 (2018), 1, 206-229.
• Jina B. Kim and Sami Schalk, ‘Reclaiming the Radical Politics of Self-Care: A Crip-of-Color Critique.’, South Atlantic Quarterly 120 (2021),2, 325–342.
• Mara Pieri and Raffaella Ferrero Camoletto: ‘Doing gender and sexuality through experiences of illness and aging: between dominant and counter-discourses.’ About Gender - International Journal of Gender Studies, 11 (2022), 22 https://riviste.unige.it/index.php/aboutgender/article/view/2031
• Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2013.
• Karin Ljuslinder, Katie Ellis and Lotta Vikström: ‘Cripping Time – Understanding the Life Course through the Lens of Ableism, Introduction.’ Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 22 (2020), 1, 35–38.
• Jennifer L. Erkulwater: ‘How the Nation’s Largest Minority Became White: Race Politics and the Disability Rights Movement, 1970–1980.’ Journal of Policy History, 30 (2018), 3, 367-399. doi:10.1017/S0898030618000143
• Esme Cleall: ‘Orientalising deafness: race and disability in imperial Britain.’ Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 21 (2015), 1, 22-36.

Session 7, 21 November

TOPIC 4: Non-human involvements in intersecting hierarchies

Guest speaker: Adam Mezes

Required Viewing and Readings:

• Jenny Ornborn: Mechkar - the story of a Bulgarian bear owner, Documentary film, Sweden, 2005.
• Pelin Tünaydin: ‘Pawing through the history of bear dancing in Europe,’ Früheneuzeit-Info 24 (2013), 51-60
• Ádám Mézes: ‘Vampire Contagion as a Forensic Fact. The Vampires of Medveđa in 1732’, Historical Studies on Central Europe 1 (2021), 1, 149–176.
• Further Readings:
• Katherine Ott, David Serlin, Stephen Mihm: ‘From Cotton to Silicone: Breast Prosthesis before 1950.’ In eaedem: Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics, New York: NYU Press 2002, 102-118.
• Katya Motyl: ‘Re-Embodying History’s ‘Lady’: Women’s History, Materiality and Public Space in Early-Twentieth-Century Vienna.’ Gender & History 33 (2021), 1, 169-191.
• Katherine Ott: 'Material Culture, Technology, and the Body in Disability History.' In: Michael Rembis, Catherine Kudlick, and Kim E. Nielsen (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Disability History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018, 125-140.
• Sara Rahnama: ‘Hats and Hijabs in Interwar Algeria,’ Gender & History 32 (2020), 2, 429-446.
• Frances Bernstein: ‘Prosthetic Manhood in the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.’, Osiris, special issue on Scientific Masculinities 30 (2015), 1, 113-133.

Session 8, 25 November

TOPIC 5: Gender and Colonialism: A Retrospective

THIS SPECIAL SESSION COINCIDES WITH THE URSULA HIRSCHMANN LECTURE 2024 AND WILL TAKE PLACE ON A MONDAY IN THE BADIA TEATRO

Guest Speaker: Mrinalini Sinha

Required Reading:

• Mrinalini Sinha: ‘Historically Speaking: Gender and Citizenship in Colonial India.’ In Judith Butler and Elizabeth Weed (eds.): The Question of Gender, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011, 80–101.

Session 9, 28 November

OPEN SESSION

Session 10, 5 December

EXCURSION

Material History Seminar - First Term 2024/25
Prof. Carlotta Sorba
October 3 to December 12, 2024 Thursday 14.30-16.30 (12 December only: 14.30-18.30)

Seminar Description

What has the material-culture turn meant in historiography? What inspirations did it draw from other disciplines such as anthropology, archaeology and art history? To answer these questions, the seminar will combine theoretical perspectives and case studies, with the aim of understanding how placing the material world of things at the centre of research does not just mean adding an element to the research agenda but changing and reconfiguring it.

The first session will be devoted to the definition of the research field, through the analysis of the notion of “material culture” and the idea of “material engagement approach” in the humanities. Thereafter, the discussions will deal with many different research trajectories that have developed around materiality in recent years. The themes addressed through the lens of material culture will include: consumption and global interactions; identities and social experiences; political practices; national and gender identities; emotions and memory. In the last session, a block seminar lasting the entire afternoon, we will host some researchers who are working in this area and discuss their ongoing research together.

Seminar preparation and participation

Preparation:

Everyone is expected to thoroughly read the set texts each week. Thorough reading means attending to different dimensions of the texts

1. identifying the author’s central arguments and how they relate to larger historical concerns and debates: how is the author responding to others in the field?
2. analyzing how the author constructs her/his argument.
3. attending to sources and evidence: how does the author correlate his/her argument to the sources? What claims do you think can be made with the adduced evidence?
4. asking yourself how the author is trying to change the way you think about the topic at hand.

Participation: Researchers are expected to take an active part in the seminar discussion on the basis of a list of readings provided for each session. Every session will be introduced by a brief presentation of the readings by some of the participants in the seminar.

Please note that there are some readings which serves as background texts and must be read for the first meeting

1. Richard Grassby, “Material Culture and cultural history”, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 35/4, 2005, pp. 591-603
2. Frank Trentmann, “Materiality in the the Future of History. Things, Practices and Politics”, Journal of British Studies, 48/2, 2009, pp. 283-307

Seminars

3 October – History and Material culture: an introduction

Material culture frames all of our actions and experiences, and it also helps create them. It has thus become increasingly obvious that materiality is an integral and unavoidable part of every culture and that the social world cannot be fully understood without it. During the seminar we will focus on some of the trajectories of investigation that the so-called material culture turn has opened up in historiography. In the first meeting we will try to give a brief history of it and indicate some of its main theoretical references.

1. Giorgio Riello, “Things that shape history. Material culture and historical narratives”, in K. Harvey (edited by), History and Material Culture, Routledge 2009, pp. 24-47
2. Gianenrico Bernasconi, “L’objet comme document. Culture matérielle et cultures techniques”, Artefact. Techniques, histoire et sciences humaines, 4, 2016, pp. 31-47

10 October – Materiality and Global History

1. Beverly Lemire, “Draping the body and dressing the home. The material culture of textiles and clothes in the Atlantic world c.1500-1800”, in K. Harvey (ed. by), History and Material culture, Routledge 2009, pp. 89-105
2. Giorgio Riello, “The Material Turn in World and Global History”, Journal of World History, Vol. 33, Number 2, June 2022, pp. 193-232

17 October – Material Culture and Social identities

1. Anne McCants, “Porcelain for the Poor: The Material Culture of Tea and Coffee
2. Consumption in Eighteenth-century Amsterdam”, in Early Modern Things. Objects and their Histories. 1500-1800,ed. by P. Findlen, Routledge 2021, pp. 316–341
3. Manuel Charpy, “Craze and shame: rubber clothing during the 19th century in Paris, London and NY City”, Fashion theory, 16 (4), 2012, pp.433-460
4. Thomas Denenberg, “Housing History: The Colonial Revival as Consumer Culture”, in The Oxford Handbook of History and material culture, ed.by Gaskell and Carter, Oxford University Press 2020, pp. 578-592

24 October – Itineraries of things

1. Hans Peter Hahn and Hadas Weiss, “Biographies, travels and itineraries of things”, in Mobility, Meaning and Transformation of Things. Shifting Contexts of Material Culture in Time and Space, ed. by H.P. Hahn and H. Weiss, Oxford: Oxbow Books 2013, pp.1-14
2. Beverly Lemire, “Empire and the Fashioning of Whiteness: Im/Material Culture in the British Atlantic World, c. 1660–1820”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 55, 1, 2024, pp. 57-87
3. Alessio Petrizzo, “Return to order and Material Culture: Missing Objects, Anti-Republican Narratives and Police Practices in Rome after 1849”, in Political Objects in the Age of Revolutions, ed. by E. Francia and C. Sorba, Rome: Viella 2021, pp.135-165

31 October - For a Material History of Politics (1)

1. Fureix, “Resisting with objects? Seditious Political object and their Agency in Restoration France (1814-1830)”, in Everyday Political Objects. From the Middle Ages to the Contemporary World, edited by C. Fletcher, London, New York: Routledge 2021
2. Simon Morgan, Material Radicalism: Commemorative Ceramics and Political Narratives in the Age of Peterloo, in Political Objects in the Age of Revolution, ed. by E. Francia and C. Sorba, Rome: Viella 2021, pp.97-116
3. Carlotta Sorba, “’Not Just Words: Emotional Bodies in the “Long 1848”’, in Sorba, Politics and Sentiments in Risorgimento Italy. The Melodrama of the Nation, London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021, Chapter 6, pp.177- 238.

14 November - For a Material History of Politics (2)

1. Manuel Charpy, “Political Fashion: elegance as subversion in the Congos of the Nineteenth and twentieth centuries”, in Everyday Political Objects. From the Middle Ages to the Contemporary World, ed. by C. Fletcher, Routledge 2021
2. Nicolas Offenstadt, “Les objets de la RDA. Une politique du quotidien”, Parlement. Revue d’Histoire politique, 3, 2023, pp. 106-132
3. Virag Molnar, “The Mythical Power of Everyday Objects: the Material Culture of Radical Nationalism in Postsocialist Hungary”, in National matters. Materiality, Culture, Nationalism, edited by Geneviève Zubrzycki, Stanford University Press 2017, pp. 147-172

21 November – Material culture, Gender and Sexuality

1. Barbara Bauman, “Pocketing the difference: Gender and Pockets in Nineteenth-Century Britain”, Gender and History, vol. 14, 3, 2002, pp. 447-469
2. Leora Auslander, “Culture matérielle, histoire du genre et des séxualités. L’exemple du vetements et des textiles”, in Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire, numéro speciale Objets et fabrication du genre, 40, 2014, pp.171-195

28 November- Emotions, memory and the afterlife of things

Denise Y. Ho, From Confiscation to Collection. The Objects of China’s Cultural Revolution, in The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture, ed. by Y. Gaskell and S. A. Carter 2020, pp. 355-378

1. Cavicchioli, The Remains of the Vanquished. Bodies and Martyrs of the Roman Republic from the Risorgimento to the Fascism, in Public Uses of Human Remains and Relics in History, Routledge 2020, pp. 208-229

12 December – Final discussion

We will prepare the last meeting together by inviting two/three scholars who are working on materiality and discuss with them themes and issues that emerged during the seminar and/or related to the research topics of the participants in the seminar.

Planetary Histories
Departmental Seminar
Organised by Profs Giorgio Riello and Glenda Sluga
Starts on 1 October 2024 (10 sessions will be held, lasting 2 hours each) 

Seminar description

Since the turn of the 21st century, the prospect of planetary histories has begun to appear on the horizon of historians’ views. This prospect is the product of the present’s great challenges, not least climate change. It has been fostered by the sense that ‘global’ provides only a partial and specific view onto the past, and by the spreading influence of the concepts such a the ‘Anthropocene’, the ‘Capitalocene’ etc. The aim of this course is to engage the various genealogies of the idea and methods of planetary histories, and its ambitions. It also aims to explore whether and how planetary histories might better help us capture the complex past paths that have led us to the multiple (human, non-human) experiences of the present. In the course of this seminar, we will sample some of the forms of interdisciplinarity that are giving shape to the planetary histories that we already have, and those still to be imagined.

Week 1. 1 October, 5-7pm: Introduction: From Global to Planetary (2h)

Please approach the readings with these questions in mind, they will guide our discussion this first week and over the course of the seminar this term: Why planetary histories? What is the difference between global and planetary history? Is the planetary necessarily or inevitably macro-history? What are the methodologies planetary histories can or might use?

• Glenda Sluga, ‘Sleepwalking’ from planetary thinking to the end of the international order, EUI HEC, 2021/02, ECOINT
• Christophe Bonneuil, ‘The Planetary Turn: In Search of a Longue Durée History’, American Historical Review, 128, Issue 3 (2023), pp. 1404–140.
• ‘ROUNDTABLE: From the Global to the Planetary. A Conversation with Glenda Sluga, Stephen Macekura, and Jonathan Blake, H-Diplo, 2023
• Kate Crawford, Calculating Empires.
• The Climate of History in a Planetary Age | Dipesh Chakrabarty | Sanjay Seth | Shruti Kapila – Youtube video.

Week 2. 8 October, 5-7pm. Planetary Spaces (2h)

How should we conceptualise planetary spaces in the present and the past? Historians make use of concepts such as empires, oceans, or continents to draw narratives in space. In other cases, forces such as globalisation or geographic similitudes such as archipelagos are invoked. In this seminar we consider different geographic and conceptual model of planetary spaces.

• C.A. Bayly, ‘“Archaic” and A-Modern Globalization in the Eurasian and African Arena, c. 1750-1850', in A.G. Hopkins, ed., Globalization in World History (2002).

• ‘Ocean as a method: Law, Violence and Climate Catastrophe’, The Funambulist 39:
• Peter Turchin, ‘A Theory for Formation of Large Empires’, Journal of Global History, 4, no. 2 (2009), pp. 191-217. doi:10.1017/S174002280900312X
• The Aesthetics of Geopower: Imagining Planetary Histories and Hegemonies [a conference program and introduction, 2024]

Week 3: 15 October, 5-7pm. Planetary Histories and the Science of Planetary Boundaries

Developments in historical themes and method have always been interconnected with those in other disciplines. The current Planetary ‘turn’ (if that is what is happening) is itself a product of contemporary shifts in scientific knowledge and thinking. This week we consider the impact of two specific influential concepts that have emerged out of science: Planetary Boundaries and Planetary Health.

• J. Rockström, W. Steffen, K. Noone, Å. Persson, F. Stuart Chapin III, E. Lambin, T. Lenton, M. Scheffer, C. Folke, H. Schellnhuber, B. Nykvist, C. de Wit, T. Hughes, S. van der Leeuw, H. Rodhe, S. Sörlin, P. Snyder, R. Costanza, U. Svedin, M. Falkenmark, L. Karlberg, R. Corell, V. Fabry, J. Hansen, B. Walker, D. Liverman, K. Richardson, P. Crutzen, and J. Foley, “Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” Ecology and Society 14, no. 2 (2009).

• Sarah Whitmee, et al., ‘Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health’, The Lancet, Volume 386, Issue 10007, 1973 – 2028.
• Warwick Anderson, and James Dunk, ‘Assembling Planetary Health: Histories of the Future’, in Samuel Myers and Howard Frumkin (eds.), Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves (2020), pp. 17-35.
• Teng Wai Lao and Jan Gresil Kahambing, ‘The Role of Museums in Planetary Health Bioethics: A Review’, in Alexander Waller and Darryl Macer (eds.), Planetary Health Bioethics (2023), pp. 434-451.

Week 4. 22 October, 5-7pm. Anthropocene (2h)

The Anthropocene has become a new geologic area in which humans become geologic forces. But how do humans have changed the planet over time? Does the Anthropocene start in the twentieth century, or can it reach back as far as the early modern period? And is it the right concept to characterise what Chakrabarty calls the ‘Planetary age’?

• Dipesh Chakrabarty, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021), chapter 1.
• Dagomar Degroot et al., ‘The history of climate and society: a review of the influence of climate change on the human past’ Environmental Research Letters, 17, No. 10 (2022):
• Emma Gattey, “Global Histories of Empire and Climate in the Anthropocene,” History Compass 19, no. 8 (2021): e12683.
• Ina Pesa, ‘Anthropocene Narratives of Living with Resource Extraction in Africa’, Radical History Review, 145 (2023), 125-138.
• Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, The Shock of the Anthropocene: the earth, history, and us (London: Verso: 2016), Chapter 5: ‘Thermocene: A Political History of Co2’.

Week 5. 29 October, 5-7pm (2h). Re-Imagining Histories of the Planet’s Economy

The History of Capitalism has challenged historians to think beyond national and even continental boundaries. But what are the challenges of re-imagining the history of the economy at a planetary level? Which kind of factors are underlined? Which are its actors? And what kind of historical narratives are suitable for such an analysis?

• Iris Borowy, and Matthias Schmelzer (eds.). History of the Future of Economic Growth: Historical Roots of Current Debates on Sustainable Degrowth (1st ed. Routledge, 2017), Introduction, Chapters by Bonneuil and Fressoz, Schmelzer,
• Ben Huf, Glenda Sluga, and Sabine Selchow, ‘Environmental Governance in the 1970s’, Contemporary European History, 31, no. 4 (2022):553-569.
• Nan Enstad, ‘The “Sonorous Summons” of the New History of Capitalism, or, What Are We Talking about When We Talk about Economy?’ Modern American History, 2, no. 1 (2019), 83-95.S
• Andrew Seal, ‘Resounding Clashes: Gender and the New History of Capitalism’, Society for US Intellectual History Blog, 19 Feb 2019: Gender and the New History of Capitalism | Society for US Intellectual History (s-usih.org)
  
  

Week 6. 4 November. Workshop. Planet Earth: Environment in History

Planet Earth is a familiar concept among both academics and the general public. It often evokes the environmental focus that has also fostered the study of Planetary Histories. This week we debate the role that environmental history has in creating a new narrative of both the future and the past of humankind. Does all of this require new ways of writing history? And does it also require new concepts? We select the intersection between the environment and the economy to critically assess how planetary history consider issues of inequality and so-called Capitalocene. We conclude the day with a round panel.

11.00-13.00. Environmental History and Planetary Histories

• Donald Worster, ‘The Vulnerable Earth: Toward A Planetary History’, Environmental Review, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1987), pp. 87-103.

• Bathsheba Demuth, The Walrus and the Bureaucrat: Energy, Ecology, and Making the State in the Russian and American Arctic, 1870–1950’, American Historical Review, Volume 124, Issue 2 (2019), pp. 483–510

• Author, Histories and legacies of extraction and toxicity: An introduction

and Historicizing a planetary future: A discussion with Emma Rothschild on the convergence of climate science and historical thinking in the “1800 Histories” project. | Toynbee Prize Foundation

• Antoine Acker and Laurent Warleouzet, ‘From the Globe to the Planet? New Challenges of Global and Environmental History’, Monde(s) 21/1 (2022), pp. 21-46

14.00-16.00. Capitalocene and Inequality

• Wendy Arons, ‘We Should Be Talking about the Capitalocene’, TDR 67/1 (2023), 35-40
• Jason W. Moore, ‘The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44/3 (2017), 594–630.
• Donna Haraway ‘Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene’ e-flux Journal issue #75 (08/16), 1-14.
• Eli Cook (2020), ‘Naturalizing Inequality: The Problem of Economic Fatalism in the Age of Piketty’, Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, 1/1, 338-378.

16.15-17.45. Round table with Christophe Bonneuil (CNRS/EHESS)

17.45-18.00. Introduction to The Conference “Commodities and Environments in Early Modern Global Asia 1400-1800”

Week 7. 13-15 November. Conference “Commodities and Environments in Early Modern Global Asia 1400-1800”

All researchers are required to attend at least 4h of the CAPASIA Project conference entitled “Commodities and Environments in Early Modern Global Asia 1400-1800” held on the 13-14 November 2024 at Badia and on the 15 November at the Biblioteca Riccardiana in central Florence. A full programme for the conference will follow.

Week 8. 19 November. The Future of Planetary Histories

Is planetary history also public history? What methods and genres does it encourage? Does planetary history require new set of skills for historians? What kind of collaborations and forms of interdisplinarity does it need?

• Walter G. Moss, ‘Reading Peter Frankopan's Ambitious Planetary History”,
• Ann McGrath, ‘Deep history's digital footprints’, in The Routledge Companion to Global Indigenous History (London: Routledge, 2021), 736-758.

And any other readings suggested by you all!

Core Course
Departmental Seminar
Organised by Profs Mónica Bolufer and Giorgio Riello
Tuesdays, 9-11am Starts on 1 October 2024 (11 sessions will be held, lasting 2 hours each) 

Seminar description

The Core Skills Course is aimed at fostering historical and transferable skills. The course promotes a shared culture of discussion and engagement among first-year researchers coming from very different backgrounds. It consists of two parts: the first part introduces researchers to the Department’s fields of expertise, and to a variety of methodological, theoretical and thematic approaches; the second part focuses on the concrete aspects of doing research and covers issues such as library and archival sources, publications and the peer-review process, and general aspects of the EUI History training programme. During the term, researchers are asked to read Arlette Farge, Le goût de l'archive, and Natalie Zemon Davis, L'Histoire tout feu tout flamme (in various languages; full reference in the second Historical Skills workshop, 22 November). 

1 October 2024: Periodisation. Speakers: Monica Bolufer Peruga and Giorgio Riello  

• Mónica Bolufer, ‘Discussing Gender, Discussing Modernities in the Global Enlightenment: The Many Lives of a Spanish Defence of Women in Europe and America’, in Mónica Bolufer, Laura Guinot-Ferri, and Carolina Blutrach, eds., Gender and Cultural Mediation in the Long Eighteenth Century: Women across Borders (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), 37-71. 
• Giorgio Riello, ‘Economic and Social History’, Journal of Early Modern History, 25, no. 6 (2021), 488-505.

8 October 2024: Transnational and Global Histories. Speakers: M'hamed Oualdi and Glenda Sluga

• M’hamed Oualdi, A Slave Between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), “Introduction: A North African Land and Its Ottoman and Colonial Legacies”, pp. 1-19.

• Glenda Sluga, ‘Globalizing Publics and the Future of Political History, pp. 624-26, part of the forum “Globalizing Publics”, American Historical Review, 129, n. 2 (2024), 544–627.

15 October 2024: Histories of Knowledge. Speakers: Lauren Kassell and Nicolas Guilhot

• Prospectus for Lauren Kassell, ed., The Cambridge History of Medicine, 6 Volumes, contracted for publication c. 2030.

• Nicolas Guilhot, ‘Conspiracies and the Liberal Imagination’, Social Research: An International Quarterly, 89, no. 3 (2022), 627-649.

22 October 2024: History and Material Culture. Giorgio Riello and Carlotta Sorba

• Giorgio Riello, ‘The Material Turn in World and Global History’, Journal of World History, 33/2 (2022), 193-232.
• Carlotta Sorba, ‘Faire de l’histoire du politique avec les objets’, Revue d’histoire culturelle, 4 (2022), Open edition RL : http://journals.openedition.org/rhc/1253

29 October 2024: Spaces and Environments. Speakers: Giancarlo Casale and Corinna Unger

• Giancarlo Casale, with M. Calcagni “Ottoman Port Politics: Qadis, Consuls, and the Khan of Acre (1696-1702)” forthcomingn the European History Quarterly

• Corinna R. Unger, ‘Nature, Resources, and Development: Historical Perspectives on the Global Environment’, Comparativ 32/6 (2022), 537-551.

5 November 2024: Diversity in History. Monika Baár and Benno Gammerl

• Monika Baár, ‘Disability and Civil Courage under State Socialism: The Scandal over the Hungaridan Guide-dog school’, Past & Present, 227 (2015), pp. 179-203.

• Benno Gammerl “Experiencing and generating alterity” Notes on biographical narratives of same-sex desiring men

11 November Historical Skills Workshop 1: 15.00-19.00. Training and Careers for Historians

This week we will discuss the different ways in one in which one can build a career in history. We have appended a series of links to useful sites. Please feel free to browse through them and bring back your questions for discussion and also to bring examples of your own to the seminar.

15.00-16.45. Doctoral training: hard and soft skills.
This panel will include four current PhD researchers in the final stages of their research. It will be a moment to reflect on the kinds of skills that researchers need to acquire during their PhD beyond research skills. These include conference and workshop presentations; formal and informal teaching; attending and organizing events; publications, blogs and other writing; public engagement, etc.

17.00-19.00. Careers
This second panel will include four colleagues who have recently completed their PhD. It will be an opportunity to discuss the skills they think should be acquired during a PhD, their experiences during their doctoral studies and the transition to the job market, the different types of careers that can be envisaged with a PhD in History, and anything else you might want to ask them.

These sources will be useful to familiarize yourself with debates and resources for History doctoral students.

Online Sources:

• https://thesiswhisperer.com
• https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/support/careers/CVGuideforPhDandPostdoctoralResearchers.pdf
• https://www.careers.cam.ac.uk/files/phdpostdoccvbook.pdf
• https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/administration-and-support-services/careers-service/public/the-application-process/How-to-write-a-CV-for-roles-outside-academia.pdf
• https://www.colorado.edu/graduateschool/sites/default/files/attached-files/grad_student_and_postdoc_career_guide_-_curriculum_vitae.pdf
• https://carrieres.sciencespo.fr/index.php/fr/article/228/228-fr-rediger-un-cv-en-francais
• https://www.fu-berlin.de/sites/career/internationales/tipps-zur-bewerbung/index.html
• https://www.historians.org/wherehistorianswork
• https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/summer-2018/searching-for-jobs-outside-the-academy-theres-no-straight-path-to-success
• https://www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development/career-resources/careers-in-public-history

12 November 2024: Business and Credit Histories. Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol and Alexia Yates

• Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol, ‘Banking on détente: Barclays, Paribas, and Société Générale in Poland, 1950s-1980s’, Business History 65, No 4 (2023), 699-718.
• Alexia Yates, ‘The Invisible Rentière: The Problem of Women and Investment in Nineteenth-century France’, Entreprises et histoire 2 (2022), 76-89 and Podcast: https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/podcast/intimacy-and-economic-life/

22 November 2024: Historical Skills Workshop 2. Libraries and Archives.

9-10.30am. Libraries, led by Federica Signoriello (Subject librarian, EUI Library)

10.45-12.00. What is an Archive? In conversation with Dieter Schlenker (Historical Archives of the European Union) and Emma Markiewicz (London Metropolitan Archives)

12.15-13.00. Visit to the Historical Archives of the European Union.

Readings:

You should read both books (in any language) in the weeks preceding this final workshop. It will allow you to create a list of questions on libraries and archives for our guests.

Arlette Farge, Le goût de l'archive (Seuil, 1989). Spanish: La atracción del archivo (Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 1991); Italian: Il piacere dell'archivio (Essedue, 1991); German: Der Geschmack des Archivs (Wallstein Verlag, 2011); The Allure of the Archives (2013, available online).

Natalie Zemon Davis, L'Histoire tout feu tout flamme: Entretiens avec Denis Crouzet (Albin Michel, 2004); Spanish: Pasión por la historia. Entrevista con Denis Crouzet (Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2006); Italian: La passione della storia. Un dialogo con Denis Crouzet (Viella, 2007); English: A Passion for History. Conversations with Denis Crouzet (Penn State University Press, 2010).

• ‘Le goût de l’archive à l’ère numérique’, special issue La Gazette des archives 253/1 (2019).
•  ‘Especies de espacios digitales: el pasado (re)mediado’, special issue Passés futurs 14 (décembre 2023).

Anaclet Pons, El (des)orden digital. Guía para historiadores y humanistas (Madrid, Siglo XXI: 2013).

Intro here: https://www.academia.edu/10953155/El_desorden_digital_Gu%C3%ADa_para_historiadores_y_humanistas 

Online Resources:

• https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/may-2018/making-historians-in-the-archive
• https://www.histecon.magd.cam.ac.uk/archives-asia/index.html
• https://news.ncsu.edu/2022/01/the-future-of-history/

Description

How can intellectual history help us make sense of the present? In this seminar, we will read, engage with, and discuss recent works in the discipline that speak to the current historical moment. We will roam widely across genres and read political biographies, conceptual histories, as well as narrative nonfiction. We will discuss essays tackling the sense of crisis defining our times, track how our sense of the future has changed, and discuss the range of expectations that seem to bear on the past; we will read works trying to map new forms of political subjectivization and their conceptual expressions; we will explore terms and concepts that have become central to our discussion of society and politics. This will be a collective effort, and together, we will edit the syllabus and select the main or further readings for most of the sessions (thus making the seminar a true work in progress). In the process, we will have an opportunity to touch upon different approaches, methodologies, or “schools” of intellectual history, even though they will not be the main focus of the seminar.

Please not this version of the syllabus does not include the “further readings” sections, which will be added later.

Introductory session

Decolonialism

Adam Shatz, The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon (FSG, 2024), Prologue, Epilogue.

Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (Verso, 2013), ch. 1

Fascism Redux?

Daniel Steinmetz Jenkins, Did it Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America (Norton, 2024), Introduction and Part II.

Long History and the Search for Origins

Stefanos Geroulanos, The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins (Liveright, 2024), ch. 19.

David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (Allen Lane, 2021), Ch. 1 & 2.

Rethinking Gender in Intellectual History and Political Theory

Sophie Smith, “Women and Intellectual History in the Twentieth Century, Part One: Rethinking the ‘Origins’ of US Intellectual History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 85, n. 3, July 2024.

Id. “Part Two” (in proof stage—TBC)

Patricia Owens, Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men (Princeton, 2025—selection of chapters TBC)

Genocide

Pankaj Mishra, “The Shoah after Gaza,” The London Review of Books, Vol. 46 No. 6 · 21 March 2024.

Charlotte Kiechel, "Legible Testimonies: Raphael Lemkin, the Victim's Voice, and Writing the Global History of Genocide," Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 13, no. 1 (2019): 2-63

Dirk Moses, The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression (Cambridge University Press, 2021), chapters 3 & 5.

Populism

Jan-Werner Müller, What is Populism? (Upenn Press 2016), Introduction and Conclusion.

Anton Jäger, “Populism and the Historians: Richard Hofstadter and the Birth of a Global Populism Debate,” History of Political Thought XLIV, n. 1, Spring 2023, p. 153-194.

New histories of neoliberalism

Clara Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (University of Chicago Press 2022), Introduction and Chapter 1 (The Great War and the Economy)

Johana Bockman “Democratic Socialism in Chile and Peru: Revisiting the “Chicago Boys” as the Origin of Neoliberalism” Comparative Studies in Society and History 2019;61(3):654–679

Jennifer Burns, Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (FSG, 2023)-TBD

Post-Liberalism

Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed? (Yale, 2018), Introduction.

Adrian Vermeule, “Liberalism’s Good and Faithful Servants,” Compact, Feb. 2023 (https://www.compactmag.com/article/liberalism-s-good-and-faithful-servants/)

Can we still make sense of the world?

Byung-Chul Han, The Crisis of Narration (Polity Press, 2024)

Benjamin Labatut, La piedra de la locura (Anagrama, 2021; also available in Italian: La pietra della follia, Adelphi 2021).

Jonathan Lear, Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life (Belknap 2022), ch. 3