HIST3021

The years 1989 and 1990 saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, respectively. These events are emblematic of a changing world order which saw the dismantling of apartheid even as racialized separation, oppression, and exploitation went global. In a world increasingly characterized by separations and divisions (made visible in the proliferation of physical walls and the hardening of borders) between rich and poor, between the privileged and the disenfranchised, between those whose lives matter and those who are understood to be entirely expendable, this course asks students to think about historical constructions of difference (such as race and gender), and about the past and History in relationship to the challenges of the present and towards a future yet to come.

This course will introduce history majors to the methods and practices of historical knowledge production and to the philosophy of history. While attending to the work of history, and historiography, this course will also ask what history is for and what the historian does in research (as the detective and the archivist), in writing (as the storyteller and the analyst), and in (critical) thought (as the teacher and the philosopher).