Department of History

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Department
Educational programmes

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

Public lectures by the faculty of the department of history

Public lectures

Research

About the Department

The Department of History was created in 2012. The overarching goal of the department is systematic development of the field of global, comparative, and transnational history as a potent tool of overcoming the limitations of national history canon, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue in the field of social sciences and humanities, and brining new public relevance to historical knowledge. The department mission includes the development of new type of historical undergraduate and graduate education in Russia and pioneering new research fields in Russian historiography in dialogue with the global historical profession.

Publications

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

Soviet Memories as Part of Regional Repertoires of Usable Past in Contemporary Russia: An Analysis of Expert Interviews

Olga Malinova.

Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 2024. P. 1-25.

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

All publications

Delivered by:: Department of History

Type:: Minor

When:: 3, 4 module

Instructors

Kasatkina, Aleksandra

Ssorin-Chaikov, Nikolai

Тамбовцева Светлана Георгиевна

Full Syllabus

Abstract

Anthropology of belief and knowledge seek an understanding of an understanding: it aims at grasping what people across cultures admit to be true. How various systems of knowledge and belief distinguish the rational and the irrational? What is sense and senselessness? How are knowledge, belief, intuition and revelation distinguished in different social and cultural contexts? How are epistemologies related to aesthetics, ethics, moral order and everyday knowledge practices, and how are they embedded in forms of society that that articulate and constitute? We consider these questions by drawing on detailed ethnographies of science and religion. Cases that we explore range from studies of witchcraft and shamanism to laboratory and computer science, from conspiracy theories to knowledge about climate change and different religions.

Learning Objectives

be able not only read key ethnographies, but also make an individual research, based on the unique ethnographic experience, applying the skills learnt through the course.

Expected Learning Outcomes

A student knows the history of the discipline and subfields
Able to solve professional problems based on synthesis and analysis
A student can critically evaluate and rethink the accumulated experience (one's own and another's), think about professional and social activities.

Course Contents

ethnographies of magic
ethnographies of science

Assessment Elements

project essay
final essay exam

Interim Assessment

2022/2023 4th module
0.5 * final essay exam + 0.5 * project essay

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

E. E. Evans-Pritchard. (1960). The Organization of a Zande Kingdom. Cahiers d’études Africaines, (4), 5. https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1960.3678

Recommended Additional Bibliography

Bielo, J. S. (2016). A companion to the anthropology of religion. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 24(1), 103–106. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12247

Anthropology of belief and knowledge