Postgraduate Course: Topics in post-1945 European History (PGHC11361)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course provides an introduction to the advanced study of post-1945 European history. It is structured around historically and historiographically significant themes. Each class session addresses a particular theme or interpretative issue that has generated significant controversy in recent scholarship. The precise topics may vary slightly from year to year, depending on developments in the relevant literature, but the initial core themes include: continuity and change across the divide of 1945; ¿Americanization¿ and ¿Sovietization¿ in the context of the Cold War; the politics of public memory in the post-1945 period, particularly vis-à-vis the Second World War; the extent and character of social and cultural change in the Europe of the 1960s; the 1970s as an alleged turning point in Europe¿s post-1945 development; and the causes and consequences of the collapse of East European state socialism. All the topics are analyzed in a comparative, trans-national perspective that seeks to compare and contrast developments in Western and Eastern Europe, wherever possible. The course incorporates political, social and cultural approaches to history and also draws on ancillary disciplines, particularly in the social sciences, where appropriate. The main objective is to familiarize students with the key historiographical controversies, but the course will also draw on selected primary sources, with the aim of developing the students¿ ability to contextualize key events and to hone their skills at employing and critiquing primary sources. |
| Course description |
Not entered
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
After successfully completing the course, students will be able to:
- demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of some of the most important issues and themes connected to European history in the post-1945 period;
- independently identify and pursue research topics in post-1945 European history;
- exhibit an understanding for different conceptual approaches to the study of history;
- analyze and contextualize primary source material;
- arrive at independent, well-argued, well-documented and properly referenced conclusions in their coursework essay;
- demonstrate their skills in group discussion and oral presentations;
- demonstrate their written skills, their analytical and theoretical skills in coursework.
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Reading List
Indicative Blibliography
NB This is only a short and highly selective bibliography of some important general works, all of which are available in either the University Library or the NLS.
- Berned, Ivan T. Europe since the 1980s (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010)
- Biess, Frank and Moeller and Robert G, eds. Histories of the Aftermath: Legacies of the Second World War in Europe (New York: Berghahn, 2010)
- Borstelmann, Thomas. The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2012)
- Deak, Istvan; Gross, Jan and Judt, Tony, eds. The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000)
- Eley, Geoff. Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002)
- Ferguson, Niall et al, eds., The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010)
Garton Ash, Timothy.
- Hitchcock, William. The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 1945-2002 (London: Profile, 2004)
- Horn, Gerd-Rainer. The Spirit of ¿68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956-1976 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007)
- Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (London: Penguin, 2005)
- Levering, Ralph B. and Pechatnov, Vladimir, eds., Debating the Origins of the Cold War. American And Russian Perspectives (Lanham: Rowman&Littlefield, 2002)
- Lundestad, Geir, The United States and Europe since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003)
- Maier, Charles S. ¿The Collapse of Communism in 1989: Approaches for a Future History,¿ History Workshop Journal, nr. 31 (spring 1991): 34-59.
- Maier, Charles S. "The Two Postwar Eras and the Conditions for Stability in Twentieth-Century Western Europe," American Historical Review, vol. 86, no. 2 (April 1981): 327-352
- Marwick, Arthur: The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the The Unied States, c. 1958 ¿ c. 1974 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998)
- McFaul, Michael and Stoner-Weiss, Katherine, eds. After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004)
- Panayi, Panikos. An Ethnic History of Europe since 1945 (Harlow: Longman, 2000)
- Panayi, Panikos. Refugees and the End of Empire: Imperial Collapse and Forced Migration in the 20th Century (Basingstoke: Plagrave MacMillan, 2011)
- Sarotte, M.E. 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009)
Suleiman, Susan, Crises of Memory and the Second World War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2008)
- Torgovnick, Marianna. The War Complex: World War II in Our Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)
- Zubok, Vladislav and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin¿s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Topics Post-1945 European History |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Pertti Ahonen
Tel:
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Lindsay Scott
Tel: (0131 6)50 9948
Email: |
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