For precise schedule of offerings see department catalog during pre-enrollment week each semester.

In recent years many jobs in a variety of fields come with the supplement ‘and the world.’ So what does ‘and the world’ signify? This class will explore this question using the field of modern British history as its case. We’ll begin by addressing the institutional imperatives in which the worlding of national histories, and the training of graduate students in ‘and the world’ fields, have taken shape in the contemporary academy. We will ask what relationship these developments have to the intellectual and historiographical shifts that have reconfigured the field of British history? The old conceit that Britain made the modern world was first qualified by the more modest assertion that ‘the British world’ had an extraordinary transnational reach but now we are asked to consider how the world made Britain. How have these historiographical shifts occurred and what do they mean to those who consider themselves historians of Britain, as well as those who consider themselves historians of the modern world. In passing it will rehearse many of the debates that those preparing for qualifying exams need to know about British history: its extension into the Atlantic and British worlds, the imperial turn in European history more generally, the history of globality and the provincialized place of Britain (and Europe) in world history, and the still little understood dynamics of late imperialism, decolonization and the Cold War in the formation of our neoliberal present.

This seminar will be taught synchronously, via remote instruction. It will meet regularly during the scheduled class times, and students will need to attend those meetings to succeed in the class.

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