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Summer school „Globalizing the Local”

Summer school “Globalizing the Local: Unexpected Global Connections between Eastern Europe and the World” (University of Warsaw, 9-13 September 2024, room 125 at the Faculty of History)

We are pleased to announce the summer school  ‘Globalizing the Local: Unexpected Global Connections between Eastern Europe and the World’. The school is intended for MA and BA history students. Over the course of one week, the summer school will include  seminars taught by international and national scholars specialized in global history, especially but not exclusively on Eastern Europe and its international connections from a historical perspective.

The summer school will introduce students to the basic assumptions and methodological concepts of global history and show areas of dispute within this field as well as prospects for its further development. During the summer school, students will learn how to make use of global history methodology for their own work. This will be achieved by enriching students’ topics with comparative analysis on a global scale, or by searching for connections between the subject of students’ research interests and phenomena from more or less distant areas. The workshop will result in the creation of research projects that will be presented and discussed during joint online sessions with fellow students and faculty taking place after the course (the week 16-20 September).

We welcome students interested in the Early Modern and Modern history of Poland, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. The teaching staff will consist of both lecturers of the Faculty of History at the University of Warsaw and specialists from other renowned European universities. The school will be free (accommodation free of charge is possible for non-resident students). The language of instruction will be English. The students can expect to receive 4 ETCS for participation in classes and 2 ETCS for their final paper. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee ECTS credits for students whose final degree finishing date occurs before the end of the summer school or for those who are matriculating into graduate studies after the completion of classes. However, it will be possible to receive 4 ECTS immediately after completing the classes in Warsaw, regardless of the result of the subsequent online session.

In the event of a significant number of applications, we reserve the right to conduct online interviews with candidates. The interview date will be announced no later than 24 June 2024.

Students who are interested in the school are asked to pre-apply by writing an email to globalhistory@uw.edu.pl  by 23 June 2024.

Please include in the email:

  1. Your academic profile and your research interests
  2. Languages skills
  3. Title of your thesis (optional)

Syllabus

Globalizing the Local: Unexpected Global Connections between Eastern Europe and the World (University of Warsaw, September 2024)

Global history is one of the fastest growing disciplines in world historiography. It focuses not so much on the macro-historical approach which captures history in grand narratives, but on the search for non-obvious connections and comparisons between people, ideas and institutions in the changing world. The history of Eastern Europe is often being analyzed from a national perspective, while its relationship with the rest of the world is relegated to a secondary position. The summer school ‘Globalizing the Local: Unexpected Global Connections between Eastern Europe and the World’ aims at bringing the unexpected forwards by researching the connections between the local and the global, providing students with informative lectures and methodological tools to enrich their knowledge and their research skills. Over the course of one week, the summer school will provide an introduction to the field of global history. Students will have the opportunity to participate in lectures delivered by international and national scholars specializing in global history, especially but not exclusively on Eastern Europe and its international connections in historical perspective. The summer school will introduce MA students and third year BA students to the basic assumptions and methodological concepts of global history, and show areas of dispute within this field as well as prospects of further development. During the summer schools, students will learn how to make use of global history methodology to their own work. This will be implemented by developing enriching student’s topics with comparative analysis on a global scale, or searching for connections between the research objects that students explore and phenomena from more or less distant areas. The workshop will result in the creation of research projects that will be presented and discussed during joint sessions with fellows, students and faculty that will take place after the course.

We invite both MA students and third year BA students who wish to make use of Global history in their research to apply to the summer school. We welcome students interested in the Early Modern and Modern history of Poland, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. The  faculty will consist of both lecturers of the Faculty of History of the University of Warsaw and specialists from other renowned European universities. School is free. The main language of instruction will be English. The students can expect to receive 4 ETCS for participation and 2 ETCS for their final paper.

Type of Classes:

  1. Introduction to history and methodology of global history (lecture, 2 or 4h )
  2. Historiography and methodology (seminar/lecture, based partially on reading assignments, 8h)
  3. How to apply global perspective to locally oriented research?  (seminar, 8h, based mainly on reading assignments)
  4. Students presentations on their research and group discussion (8-10h  – participation of 2-3 teachers necessary, day 2 : students introduce their field of research, day : 5 final presentations). If the students’ daily hours of classes are not heavy, this will allow them to re-read the assigned texts and prepare the final presentation for day 5; Optionally, we can arrange the final online session for the next week (Sept 18 or 19), but then it may be a bit too late to gain additional 2 ECTS – what do you think?

September 9

9 am – 10.45 am Philipp Ther (RECET, University of Vienna): Keynote Speech (A)
11.00 am – 12.45 pm Sherzod Muminov (University of East Anglia): How “global” Is global history? A critical overview (A)
2.00 pm – 3.45 pm Piotr Puchalski (University of the National Association Commission): Drawing Global Connections: Polish Officers and Refugees in British Colonial Africa during World War II (B)

September 10

9 am – 10.45 am Student Presentations (D)
11.00 am – 12.45 pm Student Presentations (D)
2.00 pm – 3.45 pm Sherzod Muminov: Soviet Gulag as a Global Space (C)

September 11

9 am – 10.45 am Student Presentations
11.00 am – 12.45 pm Sherzod Muminov: Why it’s so hard to overcome national history, and other challenges faced by historians (B)
2.00 pm – 3.45 pm Piotr Puchalski: Looking beyond the Cold War: Polish Communist Policies in the Global South (B)

September 12

9 am – 10.45 am John Freeman (University of Warsaw): The Western African Context to Production in Early Modern Northern and Eastern Europe (C)
11.00 am – 12.45 pm Thuc Linh Nguyen Vu (RECET, University of Vienna): Strange but Familiar: Interconnected Histories Between Poland and Vietnam after 1955 (B)
2.00 pm – 3.45 pm Laura Pozzi (University of Warsaw): Museology and Exhibition Practices between China and Eastern Europe under Global Communism (B)

September 13

9 am – 10.45 am John Freeman: Searching for the ‘glocal’ and global entanglements in the early modern Baltic (C)
11.00 am – 12.45 pm Students presentations
2.00 pm – 3.45 pm Student Presentations
4 pm – 4.45 pm Concluding remarks