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New courses

2023/24

 

The Department of International History will be introducing the following new courses in 2023/24. They are available for selection starting in September 2023.

Postgraduate courses

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HY4B8 - On German Memory Politics: From the Cold War to New Global Challenges

Professor Stefanie Schüler-Springorum

In this class, we will discuss the development of Germany’s “coming to terms with the past”. The course will reassess a history that has become fixed in a solid narrative to the extent that it forms part of Germany’s identity and its foreign policy. At the same time, this specific form of historical identity – which sometimes borders self-rightousness  - has lately come under pressure from a variety of angles: postcolonial approaches which try to situate German history in the broader framework of imperialism and its crimes, the controversial memory of German socialism and of the unification period with its dramatic socio-economic consequences for one part of population and life-threatening ones for other, and last but not least the memory of West and East Germany’s migration histories, their long march into public consciousness and their still virulent marginalisation.

We will thus deal with the global dimension of collective memory and its status in Germany’s post-migrant society against the backdrop of the Holocaust, the recurrence of “end-of-debate” demands on the one hand and the perseverance of German “guilt pride” (N. Frei) on the other.

We will read the relevant texts available in English while the teacher will take care to present important new research which has not yet been translated (for example Axel Schildt’s brilliant account of the 1950s and 1960s). Furthermore, there will be use of social media tools which in recent years have begun to offer new perspectives on hitherto marginalized memories, like the Archiv der Flucht (Archive of Flight/Migration) at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, “De-Zentralbild” (on the memory of migrants in the GDR) at the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung and many other regional, local and grassroot projects.

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HY4B9 - China and the United States Since 1949

Dr Elizabeth Ingleson SAR 2.06

Trade wars. The end of engagement. Racial violence against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. A new Cold War? This course addresses some of the major questions and issues facing the United States and China today through a deep historical analysis of their shared past. It explores the decisions of a range of people in both countries - including policymakers, immigrants, businesspeople, and workers - as they navigated and helped shape the bilateral relationship since 1949.

Throughout the course, we focus on three core themes: globalisation, geopolitics, and race. Together we will ask, how did both countries shape, and become shaped by, the post-World War Two era of globalisation? How have both nations’ understanding of their roles in Asia affected the geopolitical architecture of the region? And how have the relationships between foreign policy and race affected the lives of ordinary people in both nations? We will explore topics including how Mao used the history of American imperialism to support his political agenda in the Third World; how African Americans understood their own history of oppression in relation to Mao Zedong Thought; how Chinese Americans navigated and influenced the changing social and political terrain within the United States; and how trade ties have been shaped, and limited by, the two nations' diplomatic relationship.

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