DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
MODULE HANDBOOK
2015-16
GLOBAL HISTORY:
THEMES, ISSUES AND APPROACHES
Module Convenor: Dr Howard Chiang
Context of Module:
This is the core module for the MA in Global History. The module, taught in the Autumn
term, may also be taken by students on the MA in History, the MA in Modern History, or
any taught Masters students outside the History Department.
Module Aims:
'Themes, Issues and Approaches' is the core course for the MA in Global History: it is
taught over one ten-week term and 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 local by taking up perspectives from Asia, Africa and the Atlantic and
Islamic Worlds.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the module students should be able to:
•
Recognise and evaluate the main intellectual traditions and historiographical
approaches that have given rise to 'global history'
•
Assess the ways in which historians have responded to the idea of 'globalisation'
and the various techniques and subject domains they have used to do so.
•
Offer an informed critique of 'global history', its sources, methods and outcomes.
•
Show that they have developed skills in carrying out library and on-line research
and skills in communicating and presenting their work.
Syllabus:
The course is taught in weekly 2-hour seminars; Tuesday 4.00-6.00 (except Weeks 7 &
8)
Week 1 (6/10):
Introduction (Howard Chiang, H0.16)
Week 2 (13/10):
Representing the World (Julia McClure, H0.11)
Week 3 (20/10):
Global Time (Julia McClure, H0.11)
Week 4 (27/10):
Material Culture (Anne Gerritsen, H0.18)
Week 5 (3/11):
Globalisation (Giorgio Riello, H0.14)
Week 6:
Reading Week (no seminar)
Week 7 (20/11):
Global Labour History (Aditya Sakar, H0.25) [3-5pm]
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Week 8 (25/11):
The Islamic World (James Baldwin, H0.09) [2-4pm]
Week 9 (1/12):
Africa in Global History (David Anderson, H0.13)
Week 10 (8/12):
Global Health (Howard Chiang, H3.58)
Preliminary Bibliography:
Journal of Global History (commenced 2006): you might want to compare the contents
of this journal with other, related journals such as Journal of Interdisciplinary History,
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, and Journal of World History or regional
journals like Modern Asian Studies and Journal of African History.
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), pp. 321-46
'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)
David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
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
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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)
Assessment:
You are required to submit one assessed essay of 5,000 words (not including footnotes
and bibliography). This is due on Thursday 17th December 2015 (first week after the
end of Term 1), to be submitted to the Postgraduate and Research Coordinator, room
H340.
You are also encouraged to submit one unassessed, formative essay of up to 2,500
words (not including footnotes and bibliography) by Tuesday 17th November 2015, to
be submitted to the module convenor.
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Week 1: Introduction (October 6)
Tutor: Howard Chiang (H.H.Chiang@warwick.ac.uk)
This is an introductory meeting to familiarise students with the general outline and
requirements of the module. The module will consider both thematic dimensions of
global history—gender, economy, globalisation, material culture, and modernity—
and the organization and distribution of the world according to socio-geographical
units. To set the stage for discussion in the subsequent weeks, we will begin by
delving into various broad-based theories and approaches to the historical study of
the globe.
Core Readings:
Shu-mei Shih, ‘Global Literature and the Technologies of Recognition’, PMLA 119,
no. 1 (2004): 16-30.
Maxine Berg, ‘Global History: Approaches and New Directions’, in Writing the History
of the Global: Challenges for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Maxine Berg (Oxford
University Press, 2013), 1-18.
Prasenjit Duara, The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable
Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Optional Readings:
Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘The European World Economy: Periphery versus External
Arena’, in The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the
European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (University of California Press,
2011 [1974]), 300-344.
Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking
a Research Agenda’, in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World,
ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Duke University Press, 1997), 1-56.
Ann Laura Stoler and Carole McGranahan, ‘Introduction: Refiguring Imperial
Terrains’, in Imperial Formations, ed. Ann Laura Stoler, Carole McGranahan, and
Peter D. Perdue (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2007), 3-42.
Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, ‘Imperial Trajectories’, in Empires in World
History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2010), 1-22.
David Palumbo-Liu, Bruce Robbins, and Nirvana Tanoukhi, eds., Immanuel
Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2011).
Shu-mei Shih, ‘The Concept of the Sinophone’, PMLA 126, no. 3 (2011): 709-718.
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Week 2: Representing the World (October 13)
Tutor: Julia McClure (J.McClure@warwick.ac.uk)
Seminar Questions
1. What similarities and differences can you see between medieval and modern
maps?
2. How has the world been represented in different places?
3. What do cartographic representations of the world depict?
4. How should we read the source material of world maps?
Seminar Activity: Bring an example of a representation of the world
Primary Sources
The Hereford Mappamundi
Kangnido world map
Harley J.B., and Woodward, David eds, The History of Cartography Volume Two,
Book One, Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and Asian Societies
(Chicago, 1992) (especially chapter 16, introduction to Southeast Asian
Cartography)
Core Readings
Bell, Duncan, ‘Making and Taking Worlds’, in Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori eds,
Global Intellectual History (New York, 2013), pp. 254-279.
Cosgrove, Denis, Apollo’s Eye: a cartographic genealogy of the earth in the western
imagination (Baltimore, 2001).
Harley, J. B., “Deconstructing the map”, Cartographica: The International Journal for
Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 25, 2 (1989), pp. 1-20.
Harvey, P.D.A., Medieval Maps (Toronto, 1991).
Scafi, A., “Defining Mappamundi”, in D.A Harvey ed., The Hereford World Map,
Medieval Maps and their Context (London, 2006), pp. 345-354.
Supplementary Readings
Edson, Evelyn, The World Map, 1300-1492, The Persistence of Tradition and
Transformation, (Baltimore, 2007).
Evely Edson, Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed Their
World, London, 1997.
Henderson, John. "Chinese Cosmological Thought: The High Intellectual Tradition."
In The History of Cartography: Cartography in the Traditional East and
Southeast Asian Societies. Ed. JB Harley, David Woodward, Vol 2 (Chicago
and London 1994), Bk 2: pp. 203-227.
Raaflaub, Kurt A., and Talbert J. A., Geography and Ethnography, Perceptions of the
World in pre-Modern Societies (Oxford, 2013).
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Week 3: Global Time (October 20)
Tutor: Julia McClure (J.McClure@warwick.ac.uk)
Seminar Questions
1. What problems does periodisation present for global historians?
2. Is periodisation Eurocentric?
3. How did the ‘Middle Ages’ differ around the world?
4. How has time varied across the world?
5. Is ‘modernity’ a global category?
6. How significant is the difference between the Christian and Islamic calendars?
Core Readings
Bashir, Shahzad, ‘On Islamic Time: Rethinking Chronology in the Historiography of
Muslim Societies’, History and Theory, 53 (2014): 519-544.
Davis, Kathleen, Periodization and Sovereignty, How Ideas of Feudalism &
Secularization Govern the Politics of Time (Philadelphia, 2008).
Dagenais, John. ‘The Postcolonial Laura’, Modern Language Quarterly 65, no. 3
(2004), 365-389.
Davis, Kathleen and Altschul, Nadia, eds, Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World:
The Idea of the “Middle Ages” Outside Europe (Baltimore, 2009).
Eisenstadt, S. N., ‘Multiple Modernities’, Daedalus, 129/1 (2000), pp. 1-29.
Göle, Nilüfer, ‘Snapshots of Islamic Modernities’, Daedalus, 129/1 (2000), pp. 91117.
Thompson, E. P., Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism, Past & Present,
38 (1967), 56-97.
Supplementary Readings
Chun-chieh Huang and Zürcher, Erik, Time and Space in Chinese Culture (LeidenNew York-Köln, 1995).
Fabian, Johannes, Time and the other: how anthropology makes its object (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
Oliver, Roland, Medieval Africa, 1250-1800 (Cambridge, 2001).
Stray, Geoff, The Mayan and Other Ancient Calendars (New York, 2007).
Symes, Carol, ‘When We Talk about Modernity’, The American Historical Review,
116/3 (2011), pp. 715-726.
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Week 4: Material Culture (October 27)
Tutor: Anne Gerritsen (A.T.Gerritsen@warwick.ac.uk)
Description and questions for discussion:
This seminar asks how objects form part of the global exchanges that structure and
shape global history. Students will have their own historical periods and geographical
areas of interest, so this session does not seek to consider the specifics of global
material culture through individual objects or examples. Instead, it considers more
theoretical questions of what global material culture might mean, and what kinds of
frameworks might be important to approach the topic. A wide range of theoretical
approaches are available (such as art history, area studies, archaeology,
anthropology, to name but a few), but for students of global history, some will be
more valuable than others.
Key (required) readings:
1. Craig Clunas, ‘Modernity Global and Local: Consumption and the Rise of the
West’, American Historical Review, 104, 5 (1999), pp. 1497-1511. (online)
2. Monica Juneja, ‘Objects, Frames, Practices: A Postscript on Agency and Braided
Histories of Art’, The Medieval History Journal 15.2 (2012): 415-423. (online)
3. Giorgio Riello, ‘Global Objects: Contention and Entanglement’, in Maxine Berg,
ed., Writing the History of the Global (Oxford: Oxford University Press and The
British Academy, 2013), pp. 177-193. (scan request put in)
4. Gary Schwartz, ‘Terms of Reception: Europeans and Persians and Each Other’s
Art’, in Thomas Dacosta Kaufmann and Michael North, eds., Mediating
Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in Asia (Amsterdam University Press,
2014), pp. 25-63.
5. Astrid Erll, ‘Circulating Art and Material Culture’, in Thomas Dacosta Kaufmann
and Michael North, eds., Mediating Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in Asia
(Amsterdam University Press, 2014), pp. 321-328.
Further readings:
Appadurai, Arjun, ed., The Social Life of Things (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986)
Baker, Malcolm, ‘Some object histories and the materiality of the sculpted object’, in:
Stephen Melville (ed.), The Lure of the Object (New Haven and London,
2005), pp. 119-34;
Berg, Maxine, ‘In Pursuit of Luxury: Global Origins of British Consumer Goods’, Past
and Present, 182 (2004), pp. 85-142.
Daston, Loraine, ed., Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (New
York, 2004);
Elkins, James, ‘On some limits of materiality in art history’, in: J. Huber (ed.),
Taktilität (Zurich 2008), pp. 25-30.
Falser, Michael and Monica Juneja, eds., "Archaeologizing" heritage?: transcultural
entanglements between local social practices and global virtual realities
(proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Cultural Heritage and the
8
Temples of Angkor, 2-4 May 2010, Heidelberg University). [electronic
resource]
Hamling, Tara and Catherine Richardson, ‘Introduction’, in Tara Hamling and
Catherine Richardson (eds.), Everyday Objects (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010),
pp. 1-13.
Howard, Deborah, ‘Cultural transfer between Venice and the Ottomans’, in Cultural
Exchange in Early Modern Europe, volume IV (Forging European Identities,
1400-1700), ed. Herman Roodenburg, ed. (Cambridge 2007), pp. 138-177.
Juneja, Monica, ‘Global Art History and the ‘Burden of Representation’”, in: Hans
Belting / Jakob Birken/ Andrea Buddensieg (eds), Global Studies: Mapping
Contemporary Art and Culture (Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz, 2011), pp. 274-297.
North, Michael, ed., Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between Europe and Asia,
1400-1900: Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections (Ashgate, 2010).
Riello, Giorgio, ‘Things seen and unseen: the material culture of early modern
inventories and their representation of domestic interiors’ in Paula Findlen,
ed., Early Modern Things: Objects and their Histories, 1500-1800
(Basingstoke: Routledge, 2013), pp. 125-150.
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Week 5: Globalisation (November 3)
Tutor: Giorgio Riello (G.Riello@warwick.ac.uk)
What do we mean by globalization? Which are the main features of globalization?
And are these historically contingent? When did globalization begin? Can we
pinpoint a specific date? Can we see different phases of globalization in the last 250
years? Are they characterised by different attributes? Is globalisation an
intensification of specific features at a global level (ex. communication,
transnationality, etc)? Or does it entail the birth of new forms of connectivity? And
why do so many social scientists insist that globalization is as recent as the 1970s?
Key Readings
Michael Lang, “Globalization and Its History,” Journal of Modern History, 78/4 (2006),
pp. 899-931.
David Harvey, “Globalization in Question,” Rethinking Marxism, 8/4 (1995), pp. 1-17.
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).
Dilip K. Das, “Globalisation: Past and Present,” Economic Affairs, 30/1 (2010), pp.
66-70.
Niall Ferguson, “Sinking Globalization,” Foreign Affairs, 84/2 (2005), pp. 64-77.
Further Readings
Richard Baldwin, and Philippe Martin, “Two Waves of Globalization: Superficial
Similarities, Fundamental Differences,” in H. Siebert, ed., Globalization and Labor
(Tubingen: Mohr, 1999), pp. 3-58; also in NBER Working Paper No. 6904, January
1999.
Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press,
2004),
ch
1.HY
100.B4
Michael D. Bordo, Barry Eichengreen, Douglas A. Irwin, "Is Globalization Today
Really Different than Globalization a Hundred Years Ago?" NBER Working Paper
7195 (1999).*
C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). D
299.B2
Jerry Bentley, “Globalizing History and Historicizing Globalization”, Globalizations,
1/1 (2004), pp. 68-81.
Frederick Cooper, “What is the Concept of Globalization Good for? An African
Historian's Perspective,” African Affairs, 100/2 (2001), pp. 189-213.*
Geoff Eley, “Historicizing the Global, Politicizing Capital: Giving the Present a
Name,” History Workshop Journal, 63 (2007), pp. 154-188.*
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Michael Geyer and Charles Bright, “World History in a Global Age,” American
Historical Review, 100/4 (1995), pp. 1034-60.
Charles S. Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative
Narratives for the Modern Era,” American Historical Review, 105 /4 (2000), pp. 807831. *
Bruce Mazlish, “Comparing Global History to World History,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 28/3 (1998), pp. 385-395.
Bruce Mazlish, The New Global History (New York, 2006), ch. 1 “Globalization
without End: A Framing”.
Adam McKeown, "Periodizing Globalization", History Workshop Journal, 63 (2008),
pp. 218-229.*
Branko Milanovic, “The Two Faces of Globalization: Against Globalization as We
Know It,” World Development; 31/4 (2003), pp. 667-683.*
David Northrup, “Globalization and the Great Convergence: Rethinking World History
in the Long Term,” Journal of World History, 16/3 (2005), pp. 249-267. *
Robbie Robertson, The Three Waves of Globalization: A History of Developing
Consciousness (2003).
Kevin O’Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson, “When Did Globalisation Begin?,” European
Review of Economic History, 6/1 (2002), pp. 23-50. *
Kevin O’Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson, “Once More: When Did Globalisation
Begin?,” European Review of Economic History, 8/1 (2004), pp. 109-117.*
Jeffrey G. Williamson, "Globalization, Convergence, and History,” Journal of
Economic History 56 (1996), pp. 277-306.*
11
Week 7: Global Labour History: Approaches and Debates (November 20)
Tutor: Aditya Sarkar (Aditya.Sarkar@warwick.ac.uk)
The purpose of this seminar is to introduce students to some of the major questions attending the development of labour and working-­‐class history over the last few decades. Two background articles sketch in some of the historiographical departures which have made the idea of a ‘global labour history’, proposed by Marcel van der Linden, compelling to many historians. The principal readings consist of four articles, none of which is directly concerned with the project of ‘global labour history’ in its present form, but which address historical problems with distinctively international and trans-­‐national dimensions. Two of the articles deal with the disposition of early industrial labouring groups towards the imposition of new forms of time-­‐discipline, and the seminar will raise the question of what a comparative study of these two cases might yield. The other two articles deal with labour movements in two very different ‘global’ contexts, respectively that of Atlantic Ocean seafaring in the 18th century, and African decolonization in the 20th. I will begin the session with a brief lecture situating the importance and the problems of the ‘globalization’ of labour history, and the rest of the seminar will be taken up by discussion and comparison of the readings. Background Reading: 1. Marcel van der Linden, ‘The “Globalization” of Labor and Working-­‐Class History and its Consequences’, International Labor and Working Class History, no.65, Spring 2004, pp.136-­‐156. 2. Frederick Cooper, ‘Work, Class and Empire: An African Historian’s Retrospective on E.P. Thompson’, Social History, vol.20, no.2 (May 1995), pp.235-­‐241 Principal Readings: 3. E.P. Thompson, ‘Time, Work-­‐Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’, Past and Present, no. 38 (December, 1967), pp. 56-­‐97 4. Keletso E. Atkins, ‘ “Kafir Time”. Preindustrial Temporal Concepts and Labour Discipline in Nineteenth Century Colonial Natal’, The Journal of African History, vol.29, Issue 02, July 1988, pp.229-­‐244. 5. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, ‘The Many-­‐Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves and The Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Historical Sociology, vol.3, no.3, September 1990, pp.225-­‐252 6. Frederick Cooper, ‘Labor, Politics and the End of Empire in French Africa’, in Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005), pp.204-­‐243. 12
Week 8: The Islamic World (November 25)
Tutor: James Baldwin (J.E.Baldwin@warwick.ac.uk)
As a historiographical category, the “Islamic World” has a controversial past. Critics of the
concept argued that it glossed over the great diversity of a vast region, and that it
unjustifiably foregrounded Islam as the fundamental force structuring and guiding these
societies. In the hands of scholars who instinctively associated progress with secularism, the
“Islamic World” became one of several tools with which the modern, dynamic West was
distinguished from the moribund, irrational Orient. But the category Islamic World may also
have much to offer the global history project. Global historians are interested in global
connections created by culture, commerce, migration, and transnational political forms such
as empire. These are the things that held together the Islamic World, which created not only a
global religion but two global languages (Arabic and Persian), encompassed vital global trade
routes (the Indian Ocean and the Silk Road), was home to many diasporas (Greek, Jewish,
Armenian, Hadrami), and produced numerous great empires (Abbasid, Timurid, Ottoman,
Mughal, British).
In this seminar we will consider key questions that emerge when studying the Islamic World
from a global history perspective. What makes the Islamic World a coherent unit? What
connection does the Islamic World have with Islam? How do we characterize relations
between the Islamic and the non-Islamic worlds? How should historians balance the
globalizing pressure of the Islamic World with the local particularities of different Muslim
societies? Is the Islamic World still meaningful in the age of modern globalization?
Core readings:
Cemil Aydin, “Globalizing the Intellectual History of the Idea of the Muslim World,” in
Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori (eds.), Global Intellectual History (Columbia University
Press, 2015), 159-86.
Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean (Cambridge
University Press, 2011).
Further reading:
Sebouh David Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade
Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (University of California Press, 2011).
James Gelvin and Nile Green, eds., Global Muslims in the Age of Steam and Print
(University of California Press, 2014).
Nile Green, Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam (C. Hurst & Co,
2015).
Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System, 1250-1350 (Oxford
University Press, 1991).
13
Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge
University Press, 2008).
Michael Cook, Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative
Perspective (Princeton University Press, 2014).
Stephen Dale, The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals (Cambridge
University Press, 2010).
John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000 (Penguin,
2008).
Faisal Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality and Modernity (C. Hurst & Co,
2005).
Richard Eaton, “Islamic History as Global History,” in Islamic and European Expansion: The
Forging of a Global Order, ed. Michael Adas (Temple University Press, 1993).
Richard Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (University of
California Press, 1996).
Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3
vols. (University of Chicago Press, 1977).
Marshall Hodgson, Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam and World History
(Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Roel Meijer, Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement (C. Hurst & Co, 2009).
Alan Mikhail and Christine Philliou, “The Ottoman Empire and the Imperial Turn,”
Comparative Studies in Society and History 54 (2012), 721-45.
Edward Said, Orientalism (Penguin, 2003).
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Week 9: Africa in Global History (December 1)
Tutor: David Anderson (D.M.Anderson@warwick.ac.uk)
Africa’s place in global history is well understood in terms of economic history and
the developments of trade and production since the 1500s. Other impacts of global
exchange, through colonial occupation and the social and political changes that were
generated from the eighteenth century onwards, are less clear-cut. This class with
therefore concentrate on cultural aspects of global history in Africa. You are asked
to focus only on THREE sources. Each is a major monograph, written on the history
of ritual murders – so-called “leopard murders” - each set in a different part of the
continent: one in Lesotho, one in south-east Nigeria, the other in eastern Congo.
The struggle to comprehend these murders, to unravel their mystic elements, to
make sense of their materiality, and to gain knowledge of the political systems and
cultural ideas that gave rise to them, allows us to gain insights on the interaction
between internal and external forces in shaping Africa’s political economy.
Select ONE of these sources. Read the book. Read around the book: follow up on
issues that interest you, and develop your understanding of the societies that gave
rise to these ritual murders, and of the Europeans who tried to come to grips with
things of which they had only a slim and uncertain understanding.
Reading
Copies of these books can be collected from my office – H314.
Murray, Colin and Pete Saunders. Medicine Murder in Colonial Lesotho: The
Anatomy of a Moral Crisis (Edinburgh; Edinburgh University Press, 2005)
Pratten, David. The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007)
Van Bockhaven, Vicky L.M. The Leopard Men of the Eastern Congo (ca.18901940): history and Colonial Representation (Tervuren: Musee royal de l’Afrique
central, 2013)
Essay Questions:
How do you account for the similarities between “leopard-murders” in Lesotho,
Nigeria, and the Congo?
What caused the “leopard murders”? Answer with reference to cases from Lesotho,
OR Nigeria, OR Congo.
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Week 10: Global Health (December 8)
Tutor: Howard Chiang (H.H.Chiang@warwick.ac.uk)
This seminar brings together the research agendas of two research centres in the
history department: the Global History and Culture Centre and the Centre for the
History of Medicine. Specifically, it does so by focusing on the history and cultures
of ‘global health’, a concept that has risen to prominence in recent years within policy
and research settings. While we will not be able to cover all facets of global health
history in a single seminar, we will try to address some of its major themes through
selected readings: infectious diseases (plagues, cholera, smallpox, HIV/AIDS,
SARS, etc.), colonial and tropical medicine (including theories of race), mental and
reproductive health, and institutions and organizations (e.g., the International Red
Cross, the Rockefeller Foundation, the League of Nations Health Organization, the
World Health Organization, and Biopolis).
Questions:
1. Is global health postcolonial? To what degree does this unifying framework
mask or anchor the re-packaging of earlier institutions and agendas, such as
'tropical medicine' and the subsequent 'international health'?
2. Does scholarly engagement with 'global health' risk merely echoing our
historical subjects' worldviews, and to what extent does it garner a new
analytic lens?
3. What are some of the priorities of global health that help us exceed the
limitations of global history or the history of medicine? On the contrary, do
global history and the history of medicine converge or diverge in ways beyond
the nexus of global health?
Readings:
Core:
Theodore M. Brown, Marcos Cueto, and Elizabeth Fee, “The World Health
Organization and the Transition from ‘International’ to ‘Global’ Public Health,”
American Journal of Public Health 96, no. 1 (2006): 62-72.
Andrew Lakoff, “Two Regimes of Global Health,” Humanity 1, no. 1 (2010): 59-79.
Warwick Anderson, “Making Global Health History,” Social History of Medicine 27,
no. 2 (2014): 372-384.
Cindy Patton, “From Colonial Medicine to World Health,” in Globalizing AIDS
(University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 27-50.
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Alice Bullard, “Imperial Networks and Postcolonial Independence: The Transition
from Colonial to Transcultural Psychiatry,” in Psychiatry and Empire, ed. Sloan
Mahone and Megan Vaughan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 197-219.
Further:
Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, Arthur Kleinman, and Matthew Basilico, Reimagining
Global Health: An Introduction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).
João Biehl and Adriana Petryna, eds., When People Come First: Critical Studies in
Global Health (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
For additional references, please consult the seminar tutor.
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