Genocide in Comparative Perspective

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

Genocide as a phenomenon might be old but genocide research as an academic discipline is not. Although the term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish jurist, to describe and at the same time to contextualise Axis occupation policies in Europe and the term was soon codified in the Genocide Convention, academia ignored it for decades. This changed only in the late 1970s/early 1980s with sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists charting out a new field of research that often combined a comparative analysis of cases of mass violence with calls for intervention.

Historians are relative newcomers to this field. In this module you will examine whether the traditional scepticism towards a generic concept such as genocide is justified, invoked to describing such different incidents like the uprising in the Vendée, the Holocaust, or the counterinsurgency warfare in Guatemala. How can historians utilise this analytical approach and what is it that we can offer to an endeavour which from its conception was an inter- and multidisciplinary one?

You will begin with an analysis of Lemkin's quest for outlawing what he initially called `vandalism' and `barbarity', launched already in the 1930s against the backdrop of minority conflicts in a post-Versailles Europe and culminating in the UN convention after the horrors of the Holocaust. Starting with the Holocaust, you will then combine an in-depth analysis of three or four case studies with conceptual questions which are pivotal for the convention (and it legal application) but might prove dysfunctional for its utilisation as an analytical tool for historians, eg the tendency to concentrate on one victim group, an essentialist group definition, and the strict framing of intent. The last session will attempt a résumé and explore alternatives to the concept of genocide.

Germany, France and the Making of the 20th Century Europe

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

For all of the declarations about the need to write new integrated histories of the continent, modern European history is still predominantly taught and written as distinct and discrete national histories. In this module, by contrast. you will explore modern German and French history in an expressly integrated and comparative framework, addressing the ways in which these long-time historical enemies understood and interacted with each other since the late 19th century. To date, there is surprisingly little effort to consider these histories in relation to one another, and yet how these former antagonists became partners in European project of peace and stability in the second half of the last century is one of the most unlikely outcomes of the Second World War. You will therefore explore the entwined nature of these national histories, with a view to how their rivalry and reconciliation furnished much of the drama of European history over the course of the past one hundred years.

You will begin by studying the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and will assess its massive geopolitical impact for both countries and the reordering of European power, including the Commune in France and the new sense of national identity in Germany. You will then go on to discuss the divergent experiences and attitudes of empire itself, and how the Franco-Prussian war coloured their respective attitudes about overseas expansion. Next, you will study the outbreak, experience and failed settlement of the Great War, and then will take up the interwar dream of internationalism in the wake of man-made mass death, be it in diplomatic rapprochement, cultural exchange and political spectacles such as the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. Additional topics will include the coming of World War II and the traumatic experience of occupation, complicity and the Holocaust; the Cold War project to build a new and 'post-national' (western) Europe from the ruins of Nazism; the upheavals of 1968, with a view to investigating how and why the uprisings in Paris and West Berlin were shaped by their respective 'Vichy Syndromes'; as well as the seismic shift of 1989 and the subsequent remaking of a new Franco-German conception of Europe as a 'civilian power' to counter a brazen American unilateralism.

Historical Skills and Methods

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This module enables you to design, execute, present and evaluate group research projects in order to develop skills used by practicing historians including archival research, critical analysis and presentation of findings. During the module you will produce a portfolio consisting of a written report on a group research project, an individual research proposal (which may form the basis of your dissertation which is written in the summer), and a short reflective essay.

Human Rights in History

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

Interest in human rights has exploded in recent years, and has emerged as one of the most prominent international trends following the end of the Cold War. The early 1990s sparked renewed debate about the role and mission of the United Nations as a global mediating force in matters of war and peace, and human rights became for many a new yardstick with which to assess post-Cold War international politics and proper state-formation. Yet this idea of what Hannah Arendt has called the 'right to have rights' is a relatively recent historical development.

This module endeavours to trace the origins of human rights as a modern political ideology from the French Revolution to the present day. It will explore the extent to which the idea of human rights underwent radical transformation over the 19th and especially 20th centuries, entangled as it was in shifting notions of civilization, empire, sovereignty, decolonisation, minority protections and international justice. It will focus on how human rights fundamentally arose as a direct response to the legacy of man-made mass death associated with World War I and World War II, and in particular to the Third Reichs genocidal politics and destruction of unprotected civilians.

What is more, the module will pay particular attention to how these new norms of justice were globalised over the module of the second half of the century. Just as non-Europeanists interpreted Wilsons notion of self-determination in broad ways to suit various emancipatory causes beyond Europe in the interwar years, rights activists from India, South Africa, the American South and later Eastern Europe seized on human rights after 1945 as something that went far beyond simply internationalising American New Deal policies. From this perspective, this module aims to locate the history of human rights at the very heart of the broader story of modern moral politics and changing international perceptions of the relationship between law and citizenship, war and social justice.