DEI Statement

AT Modern European History faculty are committed to a robust, inclusive, and culturally responsive curriculum constantly (re)shaped by enrolled students themselves that honors and brings to life our community’s diverse thoughts, world views, and cultures.  New historical scholarship that actively deconstructs Eurocentric narratives – developed by diverse voices who tell untold stories – plays a vital role in our work.  Transnational research and cross-cultural interaction is at the heart of history department curriculum, and this course takes particular aim at imperialism. 

History Department Description: Why Study History?

In the twenty-first century, historians increasingly engage in transnational research, building more accurate and inclusive global narratives regarding historical events. These narratives provide context for our own experiences with globalization today and empower us to be better citizens. Likewise, historical study propels cross-cultural competence and an appreciation for global interdependence. The department believes that historical study is uniquely structured to build appreciation of, and engagement in, a globalized world, and that students build valuable analytical and communication skills through careful attention to research processes and contextualization of current events in their historical antecedents. 

Historical thinking skills specific to DEI philosophy

·      Source analysis

·      Kaleidoscope/perspective

·      Competing narratives

Relevant course themes to DEI philosophy

·      Multiple perspectives and multilingualism

·      Cross-cultural interaction, connected global histories, inclusive narratives, globalization(s)

·      Religious diversity and religious tolerance

·      Reliance on the curriculum of Facing History, Facing Ourselves and Choices Program

·      Revolutions, resistance, and equality

·      Living up to the ideals of liberal constitutional democracy, freedom and justice  

·      Recurrent current event themes: polarization in politics, the re-emergence of the far-left and far-right in European politics, populism, post-colonial migration, refugee crises, diversity, “integration” and “inclusion” work in Europe today, resurgence of anti-Semitism & Islamophobia, EU work on combatting hate

                 

Unit 1 The Renaissance(s): Italian, N. Europe & Ottoman

·   Contesting the definition of “Europe” 

*  Women’s lives during the Renaissance

·      World context of Afro-Eurasia and long-distance trade

·      Muslim Scholarship’s Influence on Renaissance

·      Ottoman Empire’s peak and connectivity with Venice
*   Spain’s Attempt to Atone for 500 Year Old Sin (expulsion of Jews and Muslims)

Unit 2 Reformation(s)

·      Queen Elizabeth and the Ottoman Empire  

·      The Ancient Roots of Anti-Judaism

·      Hatreds: Luther’s views on Judaism and Islam

·      500^th Anniversary: German Lutherans reconcile with Catholicism and Judaism today

Unit 3 The European Modern State in a Global Context of Empire Building 

·      Global Context: Ottoman, Safavid, Ming and Mughal Empires 
*   Historians Ask Questions: Analyzing Data from the Atlantic Slave Trade

·      Scotland (Glasgow University) Slavery Reparations to West Indies

·      Multicultural Roots of Our Commercial Halloween

Unit 4 Research Paper Unit

·      Research Paper at the Intersection of Diversity, Identity and History (student-driven identity-based research papers)  

Unit 5 Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment

·      Natural rights, human rights, and freedom of expression

·      The Enlightenment and religious toleration

·      Race, abolitionism and humanitarianism

Unit 6 Revolutions

·      Haitian scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s work on Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Haitian Revolution

·      Workshops of the World: Mughal India and Song/Ming China  

·      Combating Eurocentric “Rise of the West” narrative: Why didn't India or China need an Industrial Revolution along the lines of British (coal, steam, railroads)? Indeed, why would it have been ludicrous for either region to pursue one?

Unit 7 Ideology & 19^th Century Revolutions

·       Phillis Wheatley & Romanticism, On Imagination

·      “Letter from Jamaica,” Simon Bolivar on the Latin American Revolutions

·      Jewish Enlightenment and Jewish Emancipation
* Frederick Douglas’s European tour 1845-1847

Unit 8 Unification, Nationalism, and Changing Jewish Identity

·      Austro-Hungarian empire, the late 20^th century Balkans war, ethnic/religious conflict, genocide  

·      Ellis Island virtual field trip: culture, identity and migration  

·      Jewish Emancipation, Acculturation, Anti-Semitism: Sholem Aleichem 

·      Changing Jewish identity in Late Modernity, Stefan Zweig, and the Dreyfus Affair

Unit 9 Late Modernity

·      Eurocentrism & Social Darwinism & race  

·      Role of imperialism in the creation of a “truly global economy” (e.g., extractive exploitation)

·      Sexuality and gender roles depicted in Stefan Zweig

·      Suffrage movement and Indian suffragettes in British suffragette movement   

Unit 10 Imperialism, the Resistance, World(ly) War I 

·      The creation of the European Union (changing world relationships as imperialized nations are liberated) (50^th anniversary of EU)

·      Asian resistance to European Imperialism (Qing dynasty, Meiji restoration, India’s First War of Independence)

·      African resistance to European Imperialism (New York Public Library Exhibition) and W.E.B. DuBois German university education and the beginnings of the Pan-African movement

·      Putting the “world” back in WWI, Scholastic Video

·      Forgotten Role of the British Indian Army in World War I
*  Middle Eastern and Asian delegations’ petitions to the Versailles Peace Conference (South Asia, Arab nationalists, Iraqi Assyrians, Vietnamese, Japanese, etc.) 
* Relationship between imperialism and post-WWII migration (e.g., “Windrush generation”)

Unit 11 WWII: Liberal Democracy, Fascism, and Communism Face Off

·      British Indian Army’s Role in WWII/I.N.A. and Red Fort Trials

·      China’s Unsung Role in WWII

·      Role of racial propaganda (the demonized “other”) in schools in creating the conditions for the Holocaust

·      Virtual field trip to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

·      Nuremberg War Crimes Trials

·      Anti-Semitism today, Black Lives Matter protests for racial justice, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and “Where Do Human Rights Begin?” (DEI work)  

Unit 12 The Soviet Empire, Decolonization, and the EU  

·      Double V: Connecting civil rights movement to global decolonization movement

·      Violent and non-violent methods to eradicate colonial rule

·      People’s Century (1947): Freedom Now (e.g., Ghana, India, Kenya)

·      People’s Century (1989): People’s Power (Poland)

·      Partition of British India and Pan-Africanism

·      The EU: economic disparities/inequalities between Eastern and Western Europe

Students end the year participating in a multilingual, Mock European Union Council aimed at bringing together EU member nations with India, China, Turkey, Russia, and the U.K. to problem solve on the current events of that particular academic year.