Kategorie: New Avenues in Global History
This TRAFO Blog series originated from the seminar “New Avenues in Global History” held by Sebastian Conrad in the summer term of 2024 at the Freie Universität Berlin. In the seminar some of the latest trends in global history have been discussed by the students, taking only books and publications into consideration that were published in the 2020s. The topics of the contributions to the series have been chosen by the students and offer a variety of themes that are connected by some shared overarching guiding questions: How has global history changed? What challenges does it face today? And where is the field headed?
The series covers a diverse spectrum of themes, such as the history of disabilities, the history of capitalism, intellectual history, and more. By taking the latest, cutting-edge scholarship in the field as a starting point, the present contributions can be understood as applied case studies by a new generation of global historians.
A common guiding framework allowed the contributors to critically engage with emerging trends in the discipline and explore its future directions. Each text underwent reviews by their peers.
If you are interested in contributing to this series, please contact Alex Favalli (communication@trafo-berlin.de).
By Sebastian Conrad. In this moment of rapid political and cultural change, a reassessment of what global history stands for, what it can contribute and where its limits lie is a timely exercise. Global history as a subfield has had a fast and successful career. Virtually unknown at the turn of the century, it has by now acquired an almost ubiquitous presence in the discipline. This first phase, the era of the field’s establishment was followed by a series of critical assessments. In the wake of the financial crisis, and then the worldwide populist turn of the 2010s, the globalizing trends of the previous decades gave way to anti-globalizing movements and talk of a “backlash” and a “decoupling” of the world. What’s next?
