MEDVL 7235

The Global Premodern: Methods and Perspectives

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2020-2021.

This seminar investigates and interrogates the emergence of a global consciousness (a hallmark of "the modern") across a range of academic disciplines. Our focus will be the historical retrojection of this call to "go global" upon the premodern, including a global history of ideas, a global history of science, a global medieval studies, and (of course) a global history of music. We will consider the various methodologies and methodological challenges (not least of which is the Eurocentrism of the very idea of the "premodern"), sub-disciplinary configurations (e.g., "historical ethnomusicology"), and liberal politics involved in the doing of global history within the Anglo-American academy. Topics include: historical global histories of music (Al-Farabi's Kitāb al-mūsīqī al-kabīr, François-Joseph Fétis' Histoire générale de la musique, and Sourindro Mohun Tagore's Universal History of Music: Compiled from Diverse Sources, Together with Various Original Notes on Hindu Music), recent historiographical debates about longue durée history vs. "micro-history" (in response to Jo Guldi and David Armitage's The History Manifesto), networks of exchange and migration, the (perennial) problem of periodization, and a range of specific case studies (TBD by the participants of the seminar).

When Offered Fall.

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