MAKING AND UNMAKING OF EMPIRES

This field of concentration examines the dynamic relationships among the politics, institutional structures, and cultures of empire and nation building.  Courses examine how local and regional communities and peoples constructed, mediated and challenged empires in North and South America, India, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Students interrogate and analyze the interrelationships between subjects and citizens within the empires, amongst peoples of quite different origins, ethnicities, cultures, and languages. They also consider how imperial cultures and colonial peoples generated, constructed, and deconstructed identity discourses. Courses offer the opportunity for students to learn about forces for change that resulted in the unmaking of empires, as well as postcolonial politics, cultures, institutions, and economies. This intellectually vibrant and expansive branch of historical study ultimately helps us to analyze and understand the politics of empire and nation building. Such analyses of the past are important today as regional, national, and post-colonial boundaries become increasingly unstable in the face of a globalizing world.

Faculty:
Jane Calvert
Francie Chassen-López
Abigail Firey
Ellen Furlough
Dan Gargola
Phil Harling
Joanne Melish
Erik Myrup
Lien-Hang Nguyen
Robert Olson
David Olster
Karen Petrone
Jeremy Popkin
Daniel B. Smith