Autumn Semester 2023
Autumn Semester 2023
Colour-Coded Conflict: A Global History of Racism and Anti-Racism, (c. 1500-2000)
Lecture
Prof. Dr. Harald Fischer-Tiné
Monday, 12:15-13:45, Room: IFW A36
Start: 25 September 2023
The lecture provides an overview of modern forms of racialism and racism as they developed since the late 15th century. It reconstructs the close entanglement of racist discourses and practices with European expansion, but it also looks at racialist patterns of exclusion and rac-ist world views beyond the West. Importantly, it demonstrates that racist rhetoric never went uncontested by also discussing in-depth the role of anti-racist resistance. In doing so it zooms in on critics and their interventions from the anti-racist writings and speeches of Bartholomeo de las Casas in early modern Spain to the American civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s or the South African anti-Apartheid struggle during the second half of the 20th century.
Through this thorough historicization of racial thought and racist practices, participants learn to better grasp 21st century phenomena related to their legacies, such as the "Black Lives Matter" movement or the current controversies in Europe, Australia and North America re-volving around the status and place of non-western migrants and refugees. Last but not least, students of the sciences are sensitized for the role their disciplines played in creating struc-tural inequalities.
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GESCHICHTE II (GLOBAL) Anti Imperialismus und Dekolonisation , c a . 1905 1975
Lecture (in German)
Prof. Dr. Harald Fischer-Tiné
Wednesday, 14:15-15:45, ML E 12
Start: 27 September 2023
Die Vorlesung bietet einen Überblick über die historische Entwicklung Grossbritanniens vom späten 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Zwischenkriegszeit. Wirtschaftliche Transformationsprozesse und insbesondere die Industrielle Revolution gehören ebenso zu den Themenschwerpunkten wie die sozialen Kosten der Industrialisierung oder die Herausbildung moderner Ideologien, Parteien und sozialer Bewegungen. Durch die Veranstaltung sollen die Studierenden exemplarisch mit der Geschichte eines europäischen Landes konfrontiert werden, das weltweit lange als ‘Mutterland’ und vielfach auch als Modell der Moderne wahrgenommen wurde. Obwohl dem Vereinigten Königreich in der geopolitischen Konstellation des 21. Jahrhunderts nicht mehr die gleiche Bedeutung zukommt wie im Betrachtungszeitraum, kann es doch als nachgerade ideale Fallstudie für die Transformationsprozesse gelten, welche sich modernisierende Gesellschaften durchlaufen haben. Ziel der Veranstaltung ist es weniger, die Teilnehmer mit den “Fakten” britischer Geschichte vertraut zu machen, als vielmehr ihre Sensibilität für zentrale historische Debatten im Umfeld von Moderne und Modernisierung zu wecken. Dabei wird eine Reihe von Phänomenen in den Blick genommen, die nicht nur für westliche Gesellschaften auch heute noch von ungebrochener Bedeutung sind: unter anderem Säkularisierung, Urbanisierung, Armut und Sozialpolitik, Umweltverschmutzung, Emanzipation und Wandel der Geschlechterrollen, Migration, und die Herausbildung einer Freizeit- und Konsumgesellschaft.
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Technology, Development, and Colonialism in the Age of Empire (c. 1800–1950)
Seminar
Dates and venues: 29 November – IFW C 42; 6 December – IFW C 42; 13. December – LFW B 3; und 20 December – IFW C 42
Time: 10:15–16:45 (Lunch Break 12:00–13:00)
This course explores the manifold interconnections existing between technology, development and colonialism in the period between c. 1800 and 1950. Central to this seminar is the development of technologies such as means of transportation, architecture, passports, medical techniques in relation to the colonial experience, decolonisation and development in the extra-European world, with a particular focus on Asian and African colonial settings. Taking into account theoretical texts and empirical case studies, in this course we will critically engage with debates about the role played by technology and development function across time, space and culture.
Students approach the history of science and technology from around 1800 to 1950 through examples from the relevant multidisciplinary scholarship with a special, albeit not exclusive, focus on colonial contexts in Asia and Africa. More specifically, students are sensitized to the historical, political and cultural variabilities of technology and development beyond their supposedly objective rationale and within discourses of so-called civilising and modernising missions.
The course is structured thematically, adopts a multidisciplinary approach, and uses theoretical texts as well as empirical examples. At the end of the course, students will be able to a) to develop new perspectives on their core subjects by bringing them in dialogue with the themes dealt with and by raising ethical questions; b) familiarise with relevant topics in the field of the recent scholarship in the specific context of colonialism; c) think critically of the present through a better understanding of technology and development and their relationship with culture and power.
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Techniken des modernen Strafens – eine globale Geschichte
Lecture (in German)
Lecturer: PD Dr. Stephan Scheuzger
Thursday 18:15 – 20:00 o'clock, Room: Zoom / IFW A 32.1
The lecture discusses the central role of techniques in the developments of punishment from the 18th century to the present in a global perspective; with a focus on deprivation of liberty, from solitary confinement to electronic surveillance. Furthermore, the course also explores techniques of the death penalty, corporal punishment or forced labor in their social contexts.
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Research Colloquium. Extra-European History and Global History
Prof. Dr. H. Fischer-Tiné (ETHZ), external pageProf. Dr. M.Dusinberre (UZH)call_made
Thursdays, 18.15-19.45, ETH Zurich, Clausiusstrasse 59, 8092 Zurich, Room: RZ F21
The fortnightly colloquium provides a forum for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to present and discuss their current work. Half of the slots are reserved for presentations by invited external scholars.