Teaching

MO5710 Crossing borders: European History in Transnational Perspectives

(This course might be subject to minor changes depending on staff availability.)

This course focuses on late-modern European history and its historiography from the late-eighteenth to the late-twentieth century as well as the inter-connection between Europe (the West) and non-European areas.

Questioning the impact of the nation and nation-states as well as nation-dominated narratives, the module focuses on transnational aspects and approaches including comparative history, cultural transfers and entangled history. The course reflects on the ongoing process of the Europeanization of Europe and the increasing interest in global history, both of which challenge the writing of national as well as European history.

The first three sessions are dedicated to an introduction of the main concepts and methods currently used in the field of transnational history, such as comparison and transfer. Following the introduction of approaches and methods the course focuses on empirical examples such as the French Revolution, '1968', historical regions, the place of Russia in European history or the Nazi era in transnational perspective. Based on these empirical case studies the course seeks to find answers on how to frame transnational history chronologically and geographically in addition to national narratives.

This course will be team-taught by Prof Ansari, Dr Bavaj, Dr Nethercott and Dr Struck.

Structure

1. Introduction: Why transnational history?
2. Approaches
   • Comparison, transfers
   • Entangled history, circulation, histoire croisée
3. Transnational Spaces
   • Borders and historical regions
   • The Idea of Russia
   • 'Orientalism'
4. Transnational Moments
   • French Revolution
   • '1968'
5. Transnational Culture
   • Russian Modernism
   • Nazi Modernism
   • Concluding debate

Introductory Reading

• Burton, Antoinette, 'Who Needs the Nation? Interrogating "British" History', Journal of Historical Sociology 10 (1997), 227-249
• Cohen, Deborah & Maura O'Connor (eds.), Comparison and History. Europe in cross-national perspective (2004)
• Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard, 'Comparative History', in International Encyclopedia of the social and behavioural sciences (2001), 2397-2403
• Hopkins, Anthony, 'Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History', Past and Present 164 (1999), 198-243
• McGerr, Michael, 'The Price of the "New Transnational History"', American Historical Review 96 (1991), 1056-1067