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International History and Politics
01 April 2020

15 New Courses for Past, Present and Future Challenges 

This 2019-2020 academic year, the Department of International History of the Graduate Institute has introduced ten new courses for its students. Next year, the department will pursue this effort with the further introduction of an additional five new courses launched. 

Over the two years, a total of 15 new courses taught in the department will have been introduced. 

The Department of International History recognises the importance of a dynamic curriculum for its Master’s and Ph.D. students. It places great importance in offering a teaching plan which offers students the possibility to balance three things: the acquisition of research and analysis skills as international historians, the mastering of knowledge in the key questions of international history and politics, and the development of specific thematic or geographical expertise in areas of specialisation per students’ choosing at both Master’s (thesis) and doctoral (dissertation) levels. 

In addition to these three core aspects of scholarly training, the department sees, fourthly, merit in developing for the students a dynamic curriculum in sync with the present times, revisiting relevant past issues and gazing into the future to prepare it.

Accordingly, this academic year, students in the department were offered new courses on “Approaches to Global History”, “International Organisations and Global Narratives”, “Modern China: A Great Transformation”, “The Craft of Scholarly Writing”, “From Truman to Trump: US Foreign Policy and Security since World War II”, “A History of the Post-September 11 Era”, “An International History of Racism”, “Authoritarianism and Democracy in Latin America: From Independence to the 2010s”, “The Soviet Union and Russia: From Détente to the Syrian War”, and “Global Intellectual History”.

Earlier, courses had been introduced on “Corruption Histories” and “Histories of Truth, Fact and Uncertainty”.

Next 2020-2021 academic year, the Department will offer new courses on “Information Revolutions from the Alphabet to the Internet”, “Collapsology: What Disasters Can Do and Undo”, "Statehood and War" and “Totalitarianisms”. The curriculum will be further expanded with classes examining “Digitization and History”, “Europe and the World” and “Monetary History”.