Courses in the Summer Term 2021

Lecture (Course language: English)

Lecturer: Michael Pfeifer

Module(s): W04#01, FWGe#09

Credit Points: 3

Date: Monday, 10am-12pm

Description: This course offers an introduction to the forces that have shaped American political, social, and cultural institutions from the American Civil War through the present. The course traces American history as global history through study of the encounter and mixing of global cultures in the making of diverse American cultures and in the encounter of the United States with other nations in foreign policy, trade, and war. Major topics will include the Lincoln presidency and the American Civil War and Reconstruction; the conquest of Indian nations in the American West; the historical development of American foreign policy and involvement overseas; the onset of ‘Jim Crow’ racial segregation and the rise of racial violence (lynching); the “new immigration” from southern and eastern Europe; the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and the presidency of Woodrow Wilson; the 1920s, the “Jazz Age,” and the Harlem Renaissance; the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; U.S. involvement in World War II; the U.S. in the Cold War and the Truman and Eisenhower presidencies; the Vietnam War, 1960s social movements, including the Civil Rights Movement, and the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies; American culture wars in the 1970s and 1980s and the Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton presidencies; immigration from Mexico and other Latin American nations in recent decades; the Bush II and Obama presidencies, the Iraq War, and the American security state after 9/11; and American society (including white nationalism, racialized police brutality, the death of George Floyd, and Black Lives Matter), politics, and ‘America First’ foreign policy during the Trump presidency.

Seminar

Lecturer: Lisa Patt

Module(s): W04#02, FWGe#10

Credit Points: 3

Date: Wednesday, 10am-12pm

Description: In this seminar we trace the development of the US-American news media from the American Revolution to the present- from pamphlet to social media. Focal point of the seminar is the importance of the news media in the US, and the interrelation of news media, politics, and society. The first part of the seminar covers the history of US-news media and theories around the function and impact of various news media in society. Here, the concepts of the free press and freedom of speech are substantial as well. In the second part, we look at formative events in the history of the United States, such as the American Revolution, the Vietnam War, or 9/11, and use those examples to discuss how and why these events were covered in the press. The objective of the seminar is to develop an understanding of the special place and history of news media in the US and thereby allow us to better comprehend current developments.

Seminar

Lecturer: Vera Kallenberg

Modules: E10, W11

Credit Points: 6

Date: Thursday, 4-6pm

Description: The seminar deals with auto/biographical texts as sources and as (historical) scholarly method. This brings up questions about the relationship of foreign and self-interpretation, factuality and fictionality or narrativity and literariness, objectivity and partiality, experience and thought. On one hand, we will address these questions systematically and theoretically by discussing classical as well as recent approaches to auto/biography. On the other hand, we will exemplarily analyze the fractured and broken transnational lives of Jewish intellectuals marked by the violent history of the 20th century and the Shoah (such as those of Gerda Lerner, George Mosse, Ruth Klüger, Lisa Fittko, Hannah Arendt, Raul Hilberg, Siegfried Kracauer, Saul Friedländer, Theodor W. Adorno, Joseph Wulf, Jean Améry, Elie Wiesel, H.G. Adler, and others). A prerequisite is your willingness to attend the seminar regularly, to read theoretical and historiographical texts in German and English, and to present a selected auto/biographical text in the seminar. Additional requirement for earning a credit is the writing of an auto/biographical essay (deadline at the end of the semester).

Literature: As introduction, Levke Harders, Historische Biografieforschung, Version: 1.0, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 31.10.2020 docupedia.de/zg/Harders_historische_Biografieforschung_v1_de_2020 DOI: dx.doi.org/10.14765/zzf.dok-2014

Seminar

Lecturer: Anna Corsten

Modules: E8, W7, W9, WXX

Credit Points: 9

Date: Monday, 12-2pm

Description: For a long time, history was written from the perspective of important politicians, army commanders and rulers, in short from the perspective of great white men. This seminar looks at important stages of the 20th century by focusing not only on both biological sexes, but also on other categories of difference. Using various events such as the negotiation of women's suffrage, the two world wars, and the women's and civil rights movements, we look at how concepts of gender change in the private and professional spheres. In addition to the historical overview, we will look at categories of analysis that can be used to analyze processes from a gender history perspective. The event will take place online.

Seminar

Lecturer: Felix Krämer

Modules: M12, M13, M15, M16

Credit Points: 6/9

Date: Wednesday, 12-2pm

Description: Credit cards, student debt, real-estate loans or consumer credit are constant companions of life in the United States. As the seminar will show, different forms of liabilities do have specific histories coming from very different origins for example the conquest by European settlers in North America, slave capitalism or greatly unequal credit conditions in the 20th century. Various people had to cope with very different risks and consequences of being in debt in the course of the past centuries up to the financial crises of the present. The course will relate the social history of indebtedness to the history of political economy in the United States by taking secondary literature as well as primary sources into account.

Seminar (Course Language: English)

Lecturer: Michael Pfeifer

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

Credit Points: 6/9

Date: Monday, 4-6pm

Description: Lynching and collective violence, that is violence perpetrated by groups of people unauthorized by state or legal authority, has characterized many societies from the ancient world through the present day. Lynching has traditionally been defined by scholars as group murder inspired by motivations of criminal justice, race, or ethnicity; the leading scholar of the history of American rioting, Paul Gilje, has defined a riot as “any group of twelve or more people attempting to assert their will immediately through the use of force outside the normal bounds of law.” The patterns of lynching, rioting, and other forms of collective violence are often indicative of a culture’s underlying social structures and values, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and attitudes concerning crime and punishment. This course will examine how scholars have interpreted the history of lynching and collective violence across global cultures and eras. The focus will be comparative, examining scholarly approaches to the history of violence perpetrated by groups across global cultures, including Europe, Russia, the United States, Latin America, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. The chronological focus will be similarly broad, examining scholarship dealing with eras ranging from the ancient world to the present day.

Literature: Readings may include Roberta Senechal de la Roche, “Collective Violence as Social Control,” Sociological Forum, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 97-128; Sara Forsdyke, “Street Theater and Popular Justice in Ancient Greece: Shaming, Stoning, and Starving Offenders inside and outside the Courts,” Past and Present, No. 201 (November 2008), 3-50; William Beik, “The Violence of the French Crowd from Charivari to Revolution,” Past & Present No. 197 (Nov., 2007), pp. 75-110; Stephen P. Frank, “Popular Justice, Community and Culture among the Russian Peasantry, 1870-1900,”Russian Review, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Jul., 1987), pp. 239-265; Paul A. Gilje, Rioting in America (Indiana University Press, 1996); Michael J. Pfeifer, The Roots of Rough Justice: Origins of American Lynching (University of Illinois Press, 2011); Ida B. Wells, “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases”; Robert Weinberg, “Visualizing Pogroms in Russian History,” Jewish History, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall, 1998), pp. 71-92; George J. Bryjak, “Collective Violence in India,” Asian Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer, 1986), pp. 35-55; John C. McCall, “Juju and Justice at the Movies: Vigilantes in Nigerian Popular Videos,” African Studies Review, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Dec., 2004); Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, “When ‘Justice’ is Criminal: Lynchings in Contemporary Latin America,” Theory and Society, Vol. 33, no. 6 (December 2004), 621-651.

Colloquium

Lecturer: Felix Krämer

Module(s): M12, M13, M14, M15, M16, Pr#02

Credit Points: 6/9

Date: Wednesday, 6-8pm, every two weeks or block event on July 1. & 2.

Description: The class will discuss MA- and other research projects. Depending on the number of participants and the Corona-situation, we will meet for a two-day-session July 1/2nd and at some Wednesday evening 6.15-7.45 pm for video sessions. MA-students are encouraged to register for the class and join the discussions and to attend the colloquium of the Department of History every other Wednesday evening from 6-8 pm. Please register by email until April 19, 2020 the latest to felix.kraemer@uni-erfurt.de. By then, I will be able to provide you with more information on the modus of the class.

Colloquium

Lecturer: Felix Krämer

Module(s): M12, M13, M14, M15, M16, Pr#02

Credit Points: 6/9

Date: Wednesday, 6-8pm, every two weeks or block event on July 1. & 2.

Description: The class will discuss MA- and other research projects. Depending on the number of participants and the Corona-situation, we will meet for a two-day-session July 1/2nd and at some Wednesday evening 6.15-7.45 pm for video sessions. MA-students are encouraged to register for the class and join the discussions and to attend the colloquium of the Department of History every other Wednesday evening from 6-8 pm. Please register by email until April 19, 2020 the latest to felix.kraemer@uni-erfurt.de. By then, I will be able to provide you with more information on the modus of the class.