Teaching

My research and my teaching inform one another. Some of my best ideas have come from classroom discussions with students, and I often enjoy testing ideas and arguments from my ongoing research agenda on students. I have taught the following courses as the primary instructor:

University of Regensburg

Afghanistan and the Great Powers: This seminar examines the history of modern Afghanistan from the beginning of the nineteenth century to today, exploring themes such as British and Russian imperialism; pan-Islamism and anti-colonialism; the Cold War and Soviet interventions; and American foreign policy and the “war on terror.” Challenging notions of Afghanistan as the “graveyard of empires,” the seminar explores themes beyond war and religion and examines Afghanistan as a laboratory for global trends and currents. Students will work with primary sources in translation that explore the perspectives of Afghans as well as the foreign powers (British Empire, Soviet Union, United States) that have aspired to transform Afghanistan throughout history.

The Cold War: A Global History: Decolonization and the competition between the United States of America and the Soviet Union shaped the 20th century, but the relationship between these two historical processes remains debated. The Cold War affected decolonization around the world. Countries like Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan were plunged into civil wars turbocharged by foreign interventions. At the same time, global decolonization changed the nature of the competition between the USA and the USSR. Washington was forced to defend and eventual reform legalized racial discrimination in the United States, while the nominally anti-imperialist Soviet Union was challenged as a status quo, white European power by the People’s Republic of China. In this lecture course, students will be introduced to the history of the Cold War, with an emphasis placed on developments in the Global South. In addition to weekly lectures, an Übung section will give students the opportunity to acquaint themselves with recent scholarly literature and primary sources (available in translation) about the Cold War. Exercises in the Übung will also give us the opportunity to learn more how historians have used sources from countries like the USA, Russia and China to write the history of the conflict anew and transform this struggle that shaped the world we live in.

Colonization and Decolonization in Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and Eurasia: Historians and anthropologists of Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and Eurasia have long reflected on how to apply concepts like colonization and decolonization to the regions they study. Territories from Kosovo to Finland, from Poland to Tajikistan were all colonized by land empires like the Habsburg Monarchy, the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire in early modern times. Later socialist regimes like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia reestablished control over these same territories. Yet, historians have often hesitated to describe the experience of territories like Bosnia, Ukraine, or Uzbekistan as fully analogous to, say, India under the British or Indochina under French rule. And still, after Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and widespread calls to “decolonize” scholarship, many scholars of the region feel obligated to discuss what it would mean to “decolonize” the field of Eastern European Studies. How to take into account the obvious hierarchies present in much of the region while also paying attention to regimes’ claims to have eliminated capitalist exploitation? How to do justice to Eastern Europe’s myriad links with the post-colonial Global South? How to integrate concepts of race into the supposedly “white” territories of Eastern Europe and Russia?

This workshop offers students, PhD researchers, and post-doctoral fellows an opportunity to engage with these questions and reflect on how their work can engage with them. On the one hand, we will spend much of the workshop discussing and reflecting on recent debates about the utility of concepts of colonialism within the field of Eastern European Studies, as well as calls to “decolonize” the field. We will also look at recent scholarship on colonization and decolonization vis-à-vis other empires and scholarly fields (Britain, France, United States Japan) to understand how adjacent fields have centered decolonization into their master narratives in recent years. On the other hand, we will aim to articulate together what, practically speaking, it would mean to “decolonize” the study of subjects like Austria-Hungary, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, or their successor states. We will focus on not only theoretical concerns, but also look to best practices for data collection, interviews, archival work, etc. Students and researchers will thus leave the class with a sense of current debates in the field, a better comparative sense of how historians and anthropologists of other world regions have approached colonization and decolonization, and practical tips for how to integrate these lessons into their work.

Hannah Arendt: Hannah Arendt stands out as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. Born in Germany and a student of philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers, Arendt would be forced into statelessness following the Nazi seizure of power. After her engagement with refugee and Zionist organizations in Paris, she would flee the Nazis again for the United States of America. There, at the dawn of the Cold War, she would rise to prominence through her analysis of totalitarian dictatorships and her interventions in political theory. Her reporting on the trial of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem upturned debates about the nature of evil in the modern world, yet it also made her a pariah within Jewish circles in the United States and Israel. Arendt’s controversial studies of power, alienation statelessness, and evil thus make her an essential figure in the intellectual history of the twentieth century. In this seminar, we will engage with much of Arendt’s work, ranging from her earlier books on Augustine and Rahel Varnhagen to her most famous and controversial works, such as The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem. Along the way, we will take advantage of the published correspondence of Arendt and the digitized Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress to reflect on the toolkit and methods of intellectual history. This course will be conducted in the English language, but the overwhelming majority of readings will be available in both English and German. Students will be able to write their final assignment for the class in either English or German.

Transregional Eurasia, 1850s-Present: This course examines the history of modern Eurasia from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present, focusing on interconnections between empires and polities in the post-Mongol space (Russia, China, the Ottoman lands; Central Asia, Iran; India, and Northeast Asia). Lectures take up questions of colonialism and conquest empires; inter-imperial competition; borderlands and minorities; wars and imperial dissolution; and the transformation of governance and institutions after revolutions. Intended to serve as a gateway for students interested in trans-regional area studies and history, this course is paired with an Übung (33150b) that emphasizes work with primary sources in translation.

Freie Universität Berlin

The Global Cold War. Decolonization and the contest for power between the United States of America and the Soviet Union were two of the major processes of the middle and late twentieth century, but the relationship between the two are still hotly contested by historians. Even though the Cold War between Washington and Moscow is now the object of study by historians, the impact of the Cold War on settings from Chile to Afghanistan to the Congo was profound, making an understanding of the intersection of the Cold War and decolonization crucial to understanding politics in the twenty-first century. In this seminar, we will read selections from the latest scholarship in the field to understand how geopolitics affected the trajectory of the post-colonial world. We will also discuss how historians understand the connection between “the global” and “the local” in writing history, and what kinds of sources and narrative strategies they use to connect processes in Washington and Moscow with events around the world.

Global History of Development. States have long sought to increase their wealth, and scholars have long reflected on international political economy and the wealth of nations. However, it was arguably only very recently that states have sought to raise the standards of living in lands beyond their borders, and more recent still that issues such as infectious disease, gender inequality, and fertility were managed as “global” issues with resources to match. Indeed, the rise of organizations like the WHO, UNICEF, and the UNDP means that not only state actors but also international organizations and NGOs are engaged in the promotion of “development.” In this course, we will look at the history of global development, addressing the question of how and why ideas and practices of “development” have gained so much traction since the mid-20th century. What do historians bring to the study of development that economists, anthropologists, and political scientists do not? How have socialist schemes for development differed from their capitalist cousins? And of what use might histories of development be today in light of precipitous wealth inequality between states, climate change, and the global refugee crisis? This course will engage these questions while providing students an overview of the recent literature on the global history of development.

Global History MA Colloquium: This colloquium will support the completion of a master thesis in global history. This colloquium’s primary goal is to provide students with a forum to present and constructively discuss their ongoing research. For this reason, each participant should be willing to share and discuss his*/her*/their research proposal for the MA thesis with other participants. The colloquium offers students an opportunity to learn from each other and reflect on the process and organization of academic research. We will talk about the delight, the difficulties, and the challenges of writing a master’s thesis (during a pandemic). Course Requirements: 1. participate regularly and actively; 2. submit a provisional title and an abstract for your MA thesis; 3. provide a research proposal for your MA thesis for discussion in class (7-15 pages, 12 pt, 1.5-spaced) for discussion in class; 4. deliver comments on another participants’ research proposal in class.

Der Kalte Krieg im globalen Kontext: Die Dekolonisation und die Konkurrenz zwischen den USA und der Sowjetunion prägten das 20. Jahrhundert, aber das Verhältnis zwischen diesen zwei historischen Prozessen bleibt immer noch umstritten. Der Kalte Krieg wirkte sich stark auf die Dekolonisation aus. Länder wie Korea, Vietnam und Afghanistan wurden in internationalisierte Bürgerkriege gestürzt. Gleichzeitig prägte die Dekolonisation auch das Wesen des Kalten Krieges und damit auch die beiden Supermächte. Die Rassendiskriminierung in den USA wurde immer mehr zum Politikum, während die Volksrepublik China mit der Sowjetunion für Einfluss in dem Globalen Süden konkurrierte. In diesem Seminar werden wir eine Auswahl der neuesten Literatur über den Kalten Krieg lesen, um die Auswirkung des Konflikts zwischen den Supermächten auf die Dekolonisation zu verstehen. Zudem werden wir anhand von Primärquellen und digitalen Archiven lernen, wie Historiker Archivquellen aus den USA, Russland, China und anderen Ländern benutzt haben, um die Geschichte des Konflikts neu zu verstehen und zu erzählen.

Racism In International Relations. Are international relations racist? The global wave of Black Lives Matter protests has drawn attention to the impact of racism in domestic politics, but perhaps an equally important question might be how racism has structured international politics. Events like the Haitian Revolution, the intersection of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and decolonization, and restrictions on immigration all highlight the ways in which racism has affected international relations. At the same time, many have argued that the academic discipline of international relations has failed to take racism seriously as a factor in international relations, pointing to the discipline’s racist origins in empire and silencing of intellectual traditions such as the Howard School. This course will explore the history of racism in international relations, exploring both historical scholarship that centers racism and international relations as well as interventions that analyze the history of international relations as an academic discipline. Topics that the seminar will address include the intellectual history of international relations; the “color line” and immigration restriction; Black internationalist thought; the anti-apartheid movement; and the international relations of white supremacist and white nationalist movements. In addition to thematic sessions, this seminar will also provide students with an introduction to working with digital archives, taking advantage of the recently digitized archives of the American sociologist and activist W.E.B. Du Bois. Several methodological sessions over the course of the semester will train students in working with digital archives given the realities of the Covid-19 pandemic. Students who take this seminar for written credit will be required to write a research paper drawing from Du Bois’ papers, which will be exhibited as part of a digital history exhibition developed within the framework of the seminar.

Rise and Fall of Russian Global Power. Since at least the nineteenth century, Russia—whether in the form of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union—has been a major player on the world stage. It was a leading member of the Congress of Vienna and a founding member of the United Nations. Reinvented as the Soviet Union, Russia under Bolshevik rule claimed leadership of the international socialist movement and maintained ties with left-wing movements in Europe and the Third World. Even in its diminished post-1991 incarnation, Russia remains the largest country in the world and possesses the capability to play spoiler in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia all at once. It remains a major developed economy and major player in world energy markets, and its nuclear arsenal makes it perennially relevant to international security. Understanding the history of Russia’s engagement is, therefore, essential to understanding the history of international order more broadly. This course examines the policies, strategies, and ideas that enabled the Russian Empire and, later, the Soviet Union to become great powers, as well as the post-1991 quest to secure recognition as a superpower in a multipolar world. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the grand strategy and key relationships of both the Russian Empire and the USSR from the Congress of Vienna to the Soviet collapse. Our final sessions will examine two recent case studies—Ukraine and Syria—where Russian power has forcefully shaped the world once again. This course does not assume any knowledge of the Russian language.

Russia and the Middle East. From its wars with the Ottoman and Safavid Empires to its recent military intervention into the Syrian War, Russia has been a major player in the Middle East. Beyond these military engagements, however, the Russian Empire took a special interest in the protection of Orthodox and Armenian minorities; the USSR supported national liberation movements from the PLO to Kurdish groups; and today, the Russian Federation has a larger Muslim population than any country in Europe. What impact have these encounters had on Russia as we know it, as well as Middle Eastern societies? This course will engage this question from the late Russian Empire to today, with some topics including Russian Orientalism, the rise of political Islam, and Moscow’s post-1991 foreign policy. While a knowledge of the Russian language or relevant regional languages is welcome, this course does not presume any such competencies.

The Russian Worlds of Islam. Today’s Russian Federation has a larger Muslim population than any country in Europe or the United States, and in spite of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia still directly rules over Muslim-majority regions like Chechnya, Dagestan, and Tatarstan. However, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union remain rather peripheral to historical discussions of Islam and empires, as well as to discussions of multiculturalism or secularism. This seminar explores the Russian worlds of Islam, beginning in the context of the Orthodox Romanov autocracy and ending shortly after the collapse of the officially atheist Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union. Focusing on developments inside Russia’s borders, we will compare Russia’s encounters with Islam to those of other polities. We will also work closely with newly available and translated editions of Russian and Soviet archival documents, honing our interpretative skills as historians. Students will thus emerge from the course with concrete skills that they can apply to the study of states’ and empires’ relations with Islam and religion more broadly. They will also be prepared to view Russia as a generative setting for theories about Islam in the modern world.

Socialism Internationalism in History. Talk of “socialism” is everywhere these days, between a democratic socialist revival in the United States and United Kingdom and the right-wing fixation on Venezuela as a bugaboo for socialism. These discussions tend to overlook, however, the powerful impact that Marxist- Leninist regimes had on the making of the modern world. The Soviet Union may be long gone, but socialist internationalism spread Soviet-style single-party states around the world from Cuba to China. Visions of socialist internationalism also helped prompt Soviet and Chinese interventions in civil wars during the Cold War, leaving lasting legacies in countries like Afghanistan, Angola and North Korea today. In short, socialism constituted its own kind of globalization, an understanding of which is essential to understanding the world today. In this course, we will examine how socialist states such as the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China contributed to the ideological and material spread of communism around the world in the twentieth century. The course will include both thematic sessions as well as case studies of particular countries and regions. Along the way, the course will explore themes such as planned economies’ place in the international political economy; socialist regimes’ attempts to reshape gender roles; and socialist culture and the intelligentsia. This seminar will also engage with new modes of producing digital historical scholarship. In lieu of a traditional final paper, students who wish to take this course for written credit will write a produce a short podcast drawing on primary sources related to the history of socialist internationalism. Several methodological sessions throughout the seminar will provide guidance on storytelling, scriptwriting, obtaining copyright-safe sources, and producing history podcasts.

Harvard University

Eurasia in the Twentieth Century. This course examines the twentieth-century history of the territories formerly at the core of “the Great Game”–Soviet Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Iran between roughly 1917 and 1992. Both the Soviet experiment in socialism, nationalist state-building projects, and the context of Anglo-American dominance shaped the politics and history of the region in significant ways, but often the entangled histories of the countries of the region are treated in isolation from one another. Students will examine the place of the region in a comparative context, exploring the extent to which practices of rule migrated across national and, later, Cold War borders. Major themes discussed in the course will include the nation-building and modernization; the impact of the Left and Islamist movements on the politics of the region; the revolutionary wave of 1978-1979 in Afghanistan and Iran and its aftermath; and the impact of the collapse of the Soviet project and the emergence of the five post-Soviet Central Asian republics. During a typical week in course, we will discuss a mix of secondary literature from the historiographies of the countries that constitute our field of interest and a primary source relating to the themes covered that week. Throughout, in addition to introducing you to the debates in the historiography, our goal will be to ask whether our picture of the region changes when we zoom out from the traditional scale of area studies analysis (the nation-state or the region as defined within its Cold War lens) and adopt a trans-regional view with an eye towards exchange across a space linked by Russian as well as Turkic and Persian languages, Islam, and–for much of the period we cover–Soviet socialism.