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Regular version of the site
Contacts

Address:
190068 Saint Petersburg
123 Griboedov channel, Room 123

Phone:+7 (812)786-92-49 

Postal address: 
190068 Saint Petersburg
123 Griboedov channel

Administration
Department Head Adrian A. Selin
Academic Supervisor Evgeniy Anisimov
Book
Remembering the Neoliberal Turn: Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe after 1989

Gökarıksel S., Gontarska O., Hilmar T. et al.

L.: Routledge, 2023.

Article
Сholera Riots in Staraia Russa in 1831. People and the Authorities: Actions, Motives, Concerns
In press

Belan M.

Slavonic and East European Review. 2024. Vol. 102. No. 2.

Book chapter
The Stolbovo Treaty and Tracing the Border in Ingria in 1617–1618

Adrian Selin.

In bk.: Sweden, Russia, and the 1617 Peace of Stolbovo. Vol. 14. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2024. P. 99-118.

Working paper
The Image of the Past in Ciro Spontone’s ‘Historia Della Transilvania’

Khvalkov E., Levin F., Кузнецова А. Д.

Working Papers of Humanities. WP. Издательский дом НИУ ВШЭ, 2021

Global Histories of Empire

2019/2020
Academic Year
ENG
Instruction in English
5
ECTS credits
Delivered by:
Department of History
Type:
Elective course
When:
2 year, 1, 2 module

Instructor

Semyonov, Alexander

Semyonov, Alexander

Course Syllabus

Abstract

The shift in historiography: from studies of nationalism and critical theories of nationalism to theorizing empires and historical studies of diversity; approaches to historic empires (empires as actors of the global order, continental and colonial empires, imperial sovereignty and politics; modernizing empires and imperial transformations); a dialogue between post-colonial studies and new imperial history; key questions of new imperial histories: imperial sovereignty and citizenship; social history and agency in the context of diversity; political imaginaries of imperial and post-imperial order; production of knowledge and difference in the imperial context; global and entangled histories of imperial formations.
Learning Objectives

Learning Objectives

  • The aim of this course is to familiarize with current historical writings and reflections on empire. The ultimate thrust of the discussion is to scrutinize the epistemic revolution whereby the narrative of modern history previously written through the prism of national history has been recast to accommodate the fact of persistence of “imperial formations,” both in the sphere of international and global politics and in the area of management of diversity. The scope of the course mainly lies in the Modern history period, the geographic coverage is not universal, the main idea is to look at methodological debates and approaches. Global history has recently been constituted as a distinctive field of its own. Yet, in its thrust of overcoming the limitations of national history canon the global history has many resemblances with the field of imperial history. After all, empires were historic regimes that fostered connections and transfers in their often violent histories. At the same time, empires were habitually thought of by historians as autarkic and self-sufficient phenomena that allowed little space for cross-influence and entanglement. Following the optics of global history this course will be an attempt to explore the historic differences, comparisons and entanglements of empires in modern history.
  • ability to apply new approaches that explore diversity and management of diversity in the imperial settings
  • - ability to situate the historical experience of a given historical empire in the comparative and global context.
Expected Learning Outcomes

Expected Learning Outcomes

  • ability to situate the historical experience of a given historical empire in the comparative and global context
  • understanding the new analytical category of empire and how it is used to analyze historical experience of the 18-20 centuries
  • ability to apply new approaches that explore diversity and management of diversity in the imperial settings
  • - understanding the new analytical category of empire and how it is used to analyze historical experience of the 18-20 centuries; - ability to apply new approaches that explore diversity and management of diversity in the imperial settings; - ability to situate the historical experience of a given historical empire in the comparative and global context.
Course Contents

Course Contents

  • Global history and positionality. The challenge of post-colonial perspective.
    Global history and positionality. The challenge of post-colonial perspective. Current debates and disputed genealogies of global history. Is global history an academic fashion or a research innovation? Must Global history be comprehensive and universalist in terms of chronology and geographic coverage? Is global history only about connections and comparisons? Situating Global history in the modern historiography: comparative history, transnational history, World-System analysis, post-colonial critique, multiple modernities. Global history and national history. Epistemologies of Global history: universalism or nativism? Normative issues of Global history: Eurocentrism debated. A dialogue between the global history and imperial history: a convergence of constructivist approaches. The challenge of post-colonial perspective and the response of global history.
  • Introduction. Requirements and the structure of the course. The historiographic shift from history of nationalism and critical theories of nationalism to theorizing empires and historical studies of diversity
    Introduction. Requirements and the structure of the course. The historiographic shift from history of nationalism and critical theories of nationalism to theorizing empires and historical studies of diversity. The intellectual and political context of this intellectual shift. Brief introduction about positionality of the concept of empire in modern historical research. Empire as reified historic phenomenon and as a category of analysis. Grand narrative of modernity: transition from empire to nations? Comparative studies of empires and typologies of imperial formations: colonial and continental (land based aristocratic) empires. Normative issues behind research on empires. Key questions of historical scholarship as refracted in the historical debates on empire: historical narrative and epistemology of historical knowledge, temporal and spatial frames of historical knowledge, dialogue with the past and applied history, historical agency and hermeneutics of historical voices.
  • What is new imperial history?
    What is new imperial history? What makes the new imperial history new?
  • The temporal and spatial framing in the new approaches to empire and imperial formations.
    Global history? Is it not just history? The temporal and spatial framing in the new approaches to empire and imperial formations. Empire as an object of political history. Colonial and continental empires, the relative hegemony of modern colonialism as a framework and the problem of Eurocentrism, the Russian-Eurasian sovereignty and its contexts.
  • The problem of ideological justification of imperial rule and imperial universalism. Empire and modernity in languages of rationalization of the Russian Empire of the 19th century
    . Studies of imperial governance and practices in the longue duree. The problem of ideological justification of imperial rule and imperial universalism. Visions of empire and transformations of imperial politics. The dialectics of nation and empire. Ruptures in the history of the Russian Empire and the debate about the continental character of the Russian Empire. Empire and modernity in languages of rationalization of the Russian Empire of the 19th century and its historical significance for the early 20th century. Practices and epistemes in conceptualizing imperial diversity.
  • Back to social history, forward to post-colonial analysis
    Back to social history, forward to post-colonial analysis. How have we lost the social in studies of the Russian Empire? From sedimentary society and history of multinational empire to the “middle ground” and problem of imperial society. The rupture of mass politics and its social manifestations. The history of imperial city in the Russian Empire.
  • Imperial subjecthood and citizenship
    Imperial subjecthood and citizenship. Defining the political belonging: a non-normative account of citizenship. Beyond democratic-authoritarian divide: the dialectics of rights and obligations. Diversity and imperial subjecthood: discrimination or empowerment? The dynamics of regimes of subjecthood in the Ottoman Empire and Russian Empire.
  • The great war and empire
    The great war and empire: imperial collapse or imperial transformation? Icarian flights of political imagination and divergence of political practices. Political imaginaries of postimperial order. War and mass politics at the end of the Russian Empire.
  • Violence and genocide at the end of empire
    Violence and genocide at the end of empire. Violence and imperial politics. The balance of conquest and accommodation in the history of imperial formations. Transformative regimes of modernizing empires and new violence of gardening state. Armenian genocide of 1915 in comparative perspective.
  • Transformations of empires in the 20th century.
    Transformations of empires in the 20th century. Global order and politics of difference.
  • Concluding discussion. Multiple legacies of empire in the modern world.
    . Concluding discussion. Multiple legacies of empire in the modern world. Pragmatic approach to the legacy of empire: relevance of imperial politics in the world of global disorder and wars. Critical historical discussion of the problem of nation and nation-state in the contemporary world from the viewpoint of empire. Thinking with diversity: possible paths into the future.
Assessment Elements

Assessment Elements

  • non-blocking Exam: written assignment, review of literature and analysis of the debate
    Written assignment, review of literature and analysis of the debate on a given theme in studies of imperial historical experience. The review should include the analysis of the historiographic context, the historiographic tradition (for instance, intellectual history, social history, post-colonial studies) in which the texts is written, the main arguments and sources used in the research as well as a clear map of discussion and argued positions. The written assignment should be 15-20 pages long and will constitute 60% of the final grade. For every day the assignment is late one point is taken from the grade.
  • non-blocking In-class Participation
    Students are required to read the mandatory texts, formulate at least three questions to the text, prepare to answer the question of the thesis/argument of the author, the historiographic tradition within which the argument is made and treatment of sources that allows the author to put forth the argument.
Interim Assessment

Interim Assessment

  • Interim assessment (2 module)
    0.6 * Exam: written assignment, review of literature and analysis of the debate + 0.4 * In-class Participation
Bibliography

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

  • Benton, L. (2005). Benedikt Stuchtey and Eckhardt Fuchs, editors. Writing World History 1800-2000. (Studies in the German Historical Institute.) New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. Pp. viii, 367. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.4A99271D
  • Bonin Hubert. (2012). Howe Stephen (dir.), The New Imperial Histories Reader, collection «Routledge Readers in History », 2010. Outre-Mers, (374–375), 330. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsper&AN=edsper.outre.1631.0438.2012.num.99.374.4938.t15.0330.0000.2
  • Burbank, J. (2015). Eurasian Sovereignty: The Case of Kazan. Problems of Post-Communism, 62(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2015.1002326
  • Burbank, J. (DE-588)141712732, (DE-576)164382186. (2010). Empires in world history : power and the politics of difference / Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper. Princeton, NJ [u.a.]: Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edswao&AN=edswao.321297032
  • Conrad, S. (2016). What Is Global History? Princeton: Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1090930
  • GERASIMOV, I. (2017). The Great Imperial Revolution. Ab Imperio, (2), 21–44. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2017.0029
  • Gerasimov, I. (2018). Plebeian Modernity : Social Practices, Illegality, and the Urban Poor in Russia, 1906-1916. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1635990
  • GERASIMOV, I., GLEBOV, S., & MOGILNER, M. (2013). The Postimperial Meets the Postcolonial: Russian Historical Experience and the Postcolonial Moment. Ab Imperio, (2), 97–135. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2013.0058
  • Gerasimov, I., Glebov, S., Kusber, J., Mogilner, M., & Semyonov, A. (2010). Novaia imperskaia istoriia i vyzovy imperii. Ab Imperio, (1), 19–52. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=30h&AN=52945212
  • Gerasimov, I., Kusber, J., & Semyonov, A. (2009). Empire Speaks Out : Languages of Rationalization and Self-description in the Russian Empire. Leiden: Brill. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=351006
  • GLEBOV, S. (2017). BETWEEN FOREIGNERS AND SUBJECTS: Imperial Subjecthood, Governance, and the Chinese in the Russian Far East, 1860s-880s. Ab Imperio, (1), 86–130. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2017.0005
  • Judson, P. M. (2017). “Where our commonality is necessary…”: Rethinking the End of the Habsburg Monarchy. Austrian History Yearbook, 48, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0067237816000527
  • KHOURY, D. R., & GLEBOV, S. (2017). Citizenship, Subjecthood, and Difference in the Late Ottoman and Russian Empires. Ab Imperio, (1), 45–58. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2017.0003
  • Kumar, K. (2017). Visions of Empire : How Five Imperial Regimes Shaped the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1431829
  • Mogilner, M. (2007). Russian Physical Anthropology in Search of “Imperial Race”: Liberalism and Modern Scientific Imagination in the Imperial Situation. Ab Imperio, (1), 191–223. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2007.0088
  • Pedersen, S. (2015). The Guardians : The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Vol. First edition). Oxford: OUP Oxford. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=986840
  • SEMYONOV, A. (2017). How Five Empires Shaped the World and How This Process Shaped Those Empires. Ab Imperio, 18(4), 27–51. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=30h&AN=128449757
  • Suny, R. G. (2015). ’They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else’ : A History of the Armenian Genocide. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=944463
  • Weitz, E. D., & Bartov, O. (2013). Shatterzone of Empires : Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=523411
  • Williams, P., & Chrisman, L. (2013). Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory : A Reader. London: Routledge. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1052363

Recommended Additional Bibliography

  • Semyonov, A., & Judson, P. (2019). Finding Empire behind Multinationality in the Habsburg Case: Interview with Pieter Judson. Ab Imperio, (1), 25–43. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2019.0000