Courses
Fall Semester
ÉÅÐ 444 Introduction to Contemporary European History
Aims of the course:
To introduce students to the historical study of contemporary European History of the 19th and 20th centuries.
To suggest various and diverse angles of viewing developments in and amongst european states: politics, society, economy, ideology etc
To inform students of the diverse historiographical approaches to social, economic, and political phenomena: revolution, war, economic crisis, fascism, totalitarianism.
To cultivate and mobilize students ' abilities to formulate questions and raise issues, to seek connections, continuities and breaks in historical evolution, to analyze, synthesize, and recast historiographical approaches.
Outcomes of the course:
The acquisition of a solid field of knowledge of European History of the 19th and 20th centuries, from which students will be able to derive information and stimuli in order the organize their cognitive tools, to advance to specialized research, and to better understand contemporary developments in their own time.
ÉÅÐ 442 Parliamentarism and Democracy
Aims of the course:
To trace and follow representative systems in Europe from the House of Commons of 1649 to the disrepute of the term « democracy » after 1989, when the celebrations of the 200-year French Revolution ' s anniversary and the Berlin wall came down.
To explore the philosophical and historical foundations of the various european regimes in the last two centuries.
To highlight the transformations, breaches, and the weaknesses of the right to vote in european states in the 19th and 20th centuries and to explore the centers of power within european democracies.
To study the relationship between leader masses in Europe ' s historical trajectory in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Outcomes of the course:
To stimulate and/or deepen the students ' reflection on a corpus of information/developments which are usually taken either as granted and timeless realities or as self evident privileges or as common elements in the lives of all peoples.
Spring Semester
IEÐ 449 History and historiography of the French Revolution
Aims of the course:
To study the characteristics of the revolutionary period which differentiated what happened in France from the wave of revolutions which preceded it and are characterized by some historians as the « atlantic revolution ».
Ôo study issues related to the contemporaneous influence of the Great French Revolution as well as its impact on posterity at the levels of social transformations, ideological foundations, nations building, and historical conflict.
To study in parallel the revolutionary tradition created in France by the course of the Revolution and the british tradition of reform who started in the 17th century and was reflected in its opposition to 1789 in Edmund Burke' s Reflections on the Revolution in France.
To comment on the views on the French Revolution expressed in its two anniversary celebrations, 1889 and 1989, and try to explain them in the context of the particular social political and intellectual milieu in which they were shaped.
Outcomes of the course:
As Fran c ois Furet edged « to reflect on the French Revolution » by way of approaching not only the things we know about the era, the aims of the participants and the big events, but also to reflect on the manner whereby it was incorporated in the mythology of the left and the fears of the right in the 19th and 20th centuries; and moreover, to reflect on periodizations, interpretations, and the acceptance or rejections of its qualities by those historians who studied it in the course of the centuries that elapsed from the Great French Revolution to the present day.