Courses in the Winter Term 2023

Lecture

Lecturer: Prof. Jürgen Martschukat

Module(s):  W3 / W4; WG03; WG04; EG 09

Credit Points: 3

Date: Tuesday, 2 pm - 4pm

Description:

The lecture class will give a survey of the history of the British colonies in North America. The class will address topics from pre-Columbian history to the American Revolution. The conceptual focus will be on questions of global, cultural, and social history.

Seminar

Lecturer: Helen Gibson

Modules: W8, W10 / WG07, 08, 09

Credit Points: 9

Description:

How are raciality (race) and capitalism co-constituted? What is the decolonial significance of engaging  histories of racial capitalism (Robinson 1983) in Europe and North America? What are the implications of this significance on conceptualizations of property? "Focusing on or reducing colonial production to property (of lands and slaves)," Denise Ferreira da Silva writes, "occludes the economic character of the expropriation of the enslaved labor productive capacity, thus designing analytical models that read slavery outside of the actual workings of the capitalist mode of production" (Ferreira da Silva 2014, p. 83). This class will highlight the alchemy of redressing "the erasure of the expropriation of the total value produced by slaved labor in accounts of capital accumulation" (ibid.). Focusing on restitution of the total value of expropriated lands and labor, students in this seminar will grapple with legacies of expropriation beyond a global history of cotton (Beckert 2015).

Works Cited:

Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Knopf, 2015.

Ferreira da Silva, Denise. "Toward a Black Feminist Poethics: The Quest(ion) of Blackness Toward the End of the World." The Black Scholar 44, no. 2 (2014):  81-97. DOI: 10.1080/00064246.2014.11413690.

Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: the Making of the Black Radical Tradition. London: Zed Press, 1983, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Seminar

Lecturer: Felix Krämer

Modules: W4 / WG04

Credit Points: 3/6

Date: Thursdays, 10 am - 12 pm

Description:

From James Madison in 1809 to Joe Biden, every U.S. president has attended a church service the morning before his inauguration. But do such highly symbolic professions of faith by politicians already attest to the close intertwining of religion and politics in U.S. history? The seminar offers an overview of the culture-historical significance that religion and faith have had in the political landscapes of North America from the 16th century to the present. Thus, we will ask about the spirituality of Native Americans in situations of contact and conflict with European colonists, and about the religious contexts and racial justifications for land grabs and genocide. We will discuss the importance of religion in the American Revolution, in the legitimation of exploitation and slavery, and in the abolition movement. We will work through the religious revival movements of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries and various fundamentalist and evangelical currents in the seminar as a backdrop to issues such as the abortion debate, and we will look at the civil rights movement in the 20th century for its linkage of religious patterns to anti-racist politics. In addition to a historical overview of North American history, the seminar will offer a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives on different types of sources, from pamphlets to oral history interviews to TV news.

Seminar

Lecturer: Jürgen Martschukat

Module(s): M12, M14, M16

Credit Points: 6/9

Termin: Wednesday, 12-2pm

Beschreibung: The New Deal is considered the great exception in U.S.-history. Initiated in the United States in 1933 in reaction to the economic crisis and the Great Depression, the New Deal is a period of social policies, of the regulation of markets and of the utopia of a more just society. Particularly from the perspective of the current neoliberal age, in recent years the New Deal has gotten great attention as a social and political alternative. The class will look at the 1930s, the Great Depression and social reform from the perspective of a political, social, cultural and gender history. 

Colloquium

Lecturer: Prof. Jürgen Martschukat

Module(s): M12, M13, M14, M15, M16

Credit Points: 6/9

Date: Wednesday, 6-8pm, bi-weekly and block

Description: The colloquium will discuss MA- and other research projects. We will meet every other Wednesday from 6-8 PM, and additionally for a two-day-session (most likely in December). Participants are also expected to attend the colloquium of the Department of History. MA students are particularly invited to attend and contribute to the discussions. Please register for the colloquium until October 1, 2023 the latest by sending an email to juergen.martschukat@uni-erfurt.de.

Colloquium

Lecturer: Prof. Jürgen Martschukat

Date: Wednesday, 6-8pm, bi-weekly and block

Beschreibung: The colloquium will discuss MA- and other research projects. We will meet every other Wednesday from 6-8 PM, and additionally for a two-day-session (most likely in December). Participants are also expected to attend the colloquium of the Department of History. MA students are particularly invited to attend and contribute to the discussions. Please register for the colloquium until October 1, 2023 the latest by sending an email to  juergen.martschukat@uni-erfurt.de.

Winter Term 2021/22

Summer Term 2021

Winter Term 2021

Summer Term 2020