Teaching

DFG- Research Group Minor Cosmopolitanisms

The DFG-funded research training group (Graduiertenkolleg) Minor Cosmopolitanisms wishes to establish new ways of studying and under­standing the cosmopolitan project against and beyond its Eurocentric legacies. It investigates cosmopoli­tanisms as emerging in a plur­al­ity of locally em­bedded representational and performative practices in a variety of different parts of the globe. In so doing, it focuses on five research areas (bodies, ecologies, indigeneity, inequalities, and alternative genealogies) and five research perspectives (materialities, medialities, translations, aesthetics, and worlding).

Please visit https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/minorcosmopolitanisms/ for information about the research training group Minor Cosmopolitanisms.

Teaching cooperation with the Global History Lab at Princeton University (Since 2020)

At the Professor for Global History we have cooperated with Princeton University in the Global History Lab (GHL) since the summer semester of 2020. The GHL brings together learners from over 20 partner institutions around the world (a list of current partner organisations can be found here). It consists of two courses that build on each other: The seminar (English-language and hybrid) A History of the World 1850 to the Present spans over 100 years of global history, introduces concepts and models for understanding global integration and disintegration, and explores topics such as migration, trade, conflict and human-environment relations. Students subsequently develop their own global history research project in the follow up seminar Global History Dialogues Project (English-language and hybrid). Here, students learn together with learners from all over the world the theoretical, methodological and practical skills to plan and carry out an independent research project based on oral history methods. Ultimately, the results are published on the Global History Dialogues Blog and presented by the learners it at the GHDP international student conference. The Global History Dialogues project received the E-Learning Award for Innovative Online Teaching at the University of Potsdam in 2021.

Curious? Here and here we explain how the GHDP works.

Teaching cooperation with OFF University

Since 2021, the Global History Professor is in a teaching cooperation with the Off-University in Berlin. The Off-University was founded by politically persecuted, marginalised and silenced researchers and academics and stands for the preservation of academic freedom and knowledge production where authoritarian regimes shut researchers down. Through the collaboration with the Global History Professor at Potsdam University in the summer semester of 2022, Dr. Ahmed Kzzo and Dr. Nedal Haj Darwich offer a seminar (in English and online) on Cultural Heritage and Identities in the Middle East.

Teaching cooperation with the "European Digital UniverCity" (EDUC)

Also since 2021, the Professor for Global History offers courses in the university consortium "European Digital UniverCity" (EDUC). EDUC was founded in 2019 by the University of Potsdam together with five European partner universities whose goal is to increase the internationalisation of the European Higher Education Area. Participating universities are the University of Cagliari (Italy), Masaryk University Brno (Czech Republic), the University of Paris Nanterre (France), the University of Pécs (Hungary) and the University of Rennes 1 (France).

Jointly with her colleagues Isabella Soi and Nicola Melis from the University of Cagliari (Italy), Professor of Global History Marcia Schenck will teach a module on "Studying Borders Across Borders: Refugees in Global Historical Perspective”, in the summer semester 2022, as part of the seminar "Discussions about Refuge Seeking in 20th-Century Africa and Beyond."

Professor Schenck will also teach an exercise as part of a summer school in 2022 in Potsdam on the topic "Refugee Integration? Critical reflections on history and the present." In the online part of the course, five students from each of the EDUC partner universities learn to reflect on different contexts of refugees in global history through case studies. In this part of the course, teachers from all partner universities bring together their diverse fields of expertise. During a one-week stay in Potsdam, the 30 students reflect on the topic of integration with state and municipal actors, volunteers, representatives of migrant self-help organisations and non-governmental organisations, as well as museum staff. They share their conclusions in a final presentation.

Teaching projects at the Chair of Global History

Teaching at the Global History Professor prioritises independent work and the creative involvement of students. In this sense, several innovative teaching projects using digital resources have already been developed, such as an interactive online map in Louise Thatcher's seminar Queer Histories of Berlin in which students in 2021 collected and researched places in Berlin that were relevant in the history of lesbian women, gay men, trans persons and other people who challenged norms around sexuality and gender in Berlin.

In Eraldo Souza dos Santos‘ seminar Introduction to Documentary Filmmaking, students produced essay films on the history of Potsdam's Neues Palais, an archive of visual primary sources on the COVID-19 pandemic, and short documentary films on topics ranging from social protest and the power of language to how Germans remember the Second World War today. Students also produced short essays on traditional and contemporary documentary films. Some of these materials will be available on the website of the Professorship of Global History in the near future.