(BA) (4-year-programme) - The University of Hong Kong

122HIST2082.Europe and its others (6 credits)This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the evolution of European perceptions of non-European peoples and cultures from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. Students will learn toinvestigate how Western representations of non-Europeans were shaped by the various politicaldebates, scientific theories and colonial ideology that dominated European societies of the time. Thecourse uses the conceptual frameworks and methodologies of history and postcolonial studies toanalyze a wide range of primary materials that include visual documents, travel narratives, fiction,scientific texts, philosophical treatises, and documentaries.Assessment: 100% courseworkHIST2083.Gender, sexuality and empire (6 credits)Colonial history has been traditionally dominated by narratives of military conquests, pacification,economic exploitation, and political administration, in which the dominant players were explorers,military commanders, soldiers, administrators, and settlers. This course introduces students to a newway of looking at colonial history through the lens of gender. Students will explore how gender andsexuality were used by the colonizing nations to construct the image of their imperial self and managetheir relationships with the colonized peoples. Some of the topics we examine include the emergenceof “imperial” manliness as a model for manhood, the deployment of sexual(ized) and gendercategories in racial stereotyping of the colonized, the politics of interracial mixings, and the rhetoricof imperial motherhood and womanhood. The case studies of the course are based mainly on primarytextual and visual materials related to the British and French empires, the two leading imperial powersof the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Assessment: 100% courseworkHIST2085.The history of modern sexual identity and discourse (6 credits)This course focuses on two 'new sciences' arising in the late nineteenth century that have shaped themodern understanding of sexual behavior -- sexology and psychoanalysis. It looks at key thinkers whopioneered sexology such as Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, and MarieStopes alongside the acknowledged founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud. It will investigateprimary sources in sexual science that have been subject to censorship and not generally available,until recently, for comparative study with Freudian psychosexual discourse. It will consider thehistoriographical debate (particularly among gay and feminist historians) as to whether these earlyinvestigators of sexology and psychoanalysis formulated progressive or repressive definitions ofsexuality. It will explore the far-reaching consequences that these thinkers had on attitudes to the bodyand perceptions of gender and sexual difference.Assessment: 100% courseworkHIST2086.Bismarck: The Iron Chancellor (6 credits)Otto von Bismarck, a member of the Prussian nobility, began his political career as a conservativedeputy of the Prussian diet, became Minister-President and served as Chancellor of the new GermanEmpire. He was regarded as one of the leading European statesmen of his time. During his life spanfrom 1815 to 1898, dramatic upheavals in political, constitutional, economic and social history tookplace in Prussia and in other parts of Germany, which had a deep impact on European history in the19th and early 20th centuries. Therefore, the course will not deal with Bismarck’s personality andcareer stations alone but will also study the German Confederation and the German Empire, theRevolutions of 1848-49, the Unification Wars with Denmark, with Austria and with France, Germandomestic and foreign policies since 1871, and major developments that led into the First World War.Assessment: 100% coursework